The Internationalist No. 34 March-April 2013 50¢ We Demand: Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! Obama’s “BiPartisan” Immigration Reform Is A Fraud

APRIL 1 – Phony plans for “immigration reform” are the talk of the town in Washington. The group of Democratic and Workers’ Struggle Has No Borders Republican senators known as the “Gang

of Eight” have leaked reports that their Internationalist photo “bipartisan” proposal will be unveiled in the next two weeks. Labor and business spokesmen announce they have reached agreement on “guest worker” provisions. President Barack Obama has called for Congressional hearings on immigration this month. Immigrants’ rights groups are hopeful, saying “it’s now or never” for reform that would offer a “path to citizenship.” Don’t be fooled by the hype. The “reform” they are preparing will not be one to benefit the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, but instead it will serve the interests of the capitalists who profit from their labor. The “anti-reform” underway will deepen the exploitation and intensify the persecution of the millions of workers who perform many of the worst, lowest-paid and most danger- ous jobs in the country. In addition, it will involve ominous attacks on civil liberties and labor rights affecting everyone in the U.S. And it won’t just be because “reform- ers” are capitulating to the xenophobic, immigrant-bashing right-wingers. The liberal, supposedly “immigrant-friendly” Democrats have unleashed even more re- pression against the foreign-born than the conservative Republicans ever did. By now its widely known that Obama has deported Internationalist contingent in New York City 2012 May Day march. over 400,000 immigrants a year, more than the “bi-partisan” proposal the shortest time workers afraid to walk down the street without entering the country legally – easy enough, double the numbers expelled by George W. being contemplated is 13 years, but it could being demanded to “show your papers,” like just add a miniature tracking chip to the visa. Bush. The vast majority of these deportees be much longer, even double that, or never, if in Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa. This is an “immigration reform” Big are guilty of no crime whatsoever (being (a) the backlog of millions of “legal” applica- Get picked up for a traffic violation and you Brother would love. And that is no accident, present in the U.S. without a “lawful status” tions for citizenship isn’t cleared up first, (b) could end up in a concentration camp (“deten- for this measure is not being designed to is only a civil infraction). individuals can’t pay hefty penalties or pass tion center”) for months and then be deported, fulfill the needs of immigrants. Its purpose is Bush’s high-profile factory raids English and civics tests, (c) a commission of separated from your U.S.-born children. The to use immigrants to satisfy the requirements caught headlines, but the present ad- governors of border states doesn’t certify the same goes for a teenager who gets into a fight of capital, in a period in which U.S. capital- ministration has relied on “silent raids.” border as “secure.” at school. And now, in the name of “immigra- ism is looking to regiment the population in Since January 2009, the Immigration and In the meantime, the plans call for even tion reform” they want to extend these police an increasingly corporate state (education Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of greater militarization of the border, with state measures to the entire population. reform, health reform, etc.). In line with the Department of Homeland Security has continued expansion of the U.S. Border In order to verify “employment eligi- that, the “bipartisan” plan calls for greatly quadrupled the number of “I-9” audits of Patrol (which has already doubled in size bility” they plan a national registry with expanding the number of H1-B visas for in- companies for “employment eligibility since 2005) and extensive use of unmanned “nonforgeable electronic means” to estab- dividuals with advanced degrees in science, verification,” causing tens of thousands of “drone” aircraft “spies in the skies.” How lish identity and legal status. This is even technology, engineer and math (STEM), no immigrants to lose their jobs. This has also long until they start shooting down border worse than a national ID card because it will numbers yet but certainly raising the number given unscrupulous employers an addition- crossers from the air, as Pentagon and CIA contain an individual’s employment history. of new visas to over 200,000 a year. al tool to avoid paying wages, claiming they drones are already doing in a half-dozen In addition to checking the accuracy of ev- In addition to STEM visas to supply have to comply with an audit even when countries? A January 2013 study reported that eryone’s job applications, soon enough they the “best and brightest” to Microsoft, Apple, they don’t. Instead of paying workmen’s the U.S. already spends $18 billion a year on will use it to track “scofflaws” for parking Verizon, IBM and a host of small tech firms, comp for injuries, insurance companies call immigration enforcement, more than on the tickets, “dead-beat dads” for child support, American business wants a whole lot of im- ICE and get the injured worker deported. FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), DEA gun owners and any other category they can migrant labor to do the dirty work at the cheap- As for the fabled “path to citizen- (Drug Enforcement Agency), ATF (Bureau of think of – probably including you. They also est possible wages. For years this plan for ship,” this will be an extremely rough road Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) combined. call for an “exit-entry system” to track those continued on page 2 littered with obstacles, cost thousands (and As a result, the U.S. in some cases tens of thousands) of dol- has created a police state Lincoln, Lincoln and the Abolition of Slavery...... 15 lars per person between punitive fines and for immigrants. Not only in back taxes, and take years to travel. Under Arizona are undocumented The Emancipation Proclamation: Promise and Betrayal. . .16 in the least if in the name of “bipartisanship” sacred). La migra and Immigration... they ended up making “unlawful” status into el narco are working Immigrant Workers Subsidize continued from page 1 a crime. Call it a reform and the ruling class hand in hand against “guest workers” was a stumbling block with figures it can get away with a wholesale at- immigrants. Baby Boomers and Tea Partiers the unions, who rightly saw that this would tack on immigrants, labor and civil liberties. Two, an unprec- The hysteria against “illegal immigrants” whipped undercut the wages of workers in the U.S. But A real fight for immigrants’ rights must edented number of im- up by the racist right wing uses arguments made out now the AFL-CIO has apparently signed off be a fight against capital, which profits enor- migrants come from of the whole cloth. The undocumented are not a drain on a deal for a new “W visa” that would start mously from the present situation in which one country, Mexico, on Medicare, Medicaid, welfare or any other social at 20,000 a year and go to 200,000 annually, millions of workers have no legal rights, and in one of the largest program since they are not even eligible for those ben- to be paid the “prevailing industry wage” (like which seeks to garner even greater profits by migrations in modern efits. In fact, two-thirds of undocumented immigrants $7.25 an hour for food service workers?). “legalizing” them. This is a political fight, history. Until the 1980s, pay federal income taxes, and contribute an average Supposedly this would be on the basis of for the anti-immigrant hysteria is a diversion the number of Mexicans of $12 billion a year to Social Security whose benefits determining that there was a labor shortage. to distract attention from the current capi- in the U.S. was under they will never see. All those Tea Party retirees roam- This is absurd in current conditions where talist depression and direct workers’ anger 2 million; today there ing the country in their RVs should realize that their there are three job seekers for every job against “foreigners,” just as the German are roughly 12 million monthly government checks are being subsidized by opening, and the government disguises the Nazis (and homegrown fascists in the U.S.) Mexican citizens living the “illegals” they love to hate. real unemployment level by declaring the made Jews into a scapegoat in the 1930s. It in the U.S., one-tenth of Undocumented workers also pay state sales taxes long-term unemployed not in the workforce. must be a fight against the imperialist war Mexico’s entire popula- for public facilities and roads as well as property taxes Who would be most immediately affected by drive, which has made Arabs, South Asians tion; and when you add (via their rent) to pay for the schools. A 1997 study by this influx of temporary workers would be the and all immigrants into the “enemy within.” their children, that totals the National Research Council showed that immigrant undocumented workers already in the coun- It must be a fight against the phony “war 33 million members of families on average pay $80,000 more in taxes than they try. Moreover, “guest” workers are subject to on drugs,” which is a war on black ghettos Mexican families in the receive in benefits. But more than that, they contribute a form of “indentured servitude.” But in the and Latino barrios, portraying Mexican im- U.S., one tenth of the tens of billions of dollars to the economy. A 2006 study colonial period those servants at least would migrants as drug traffickers. It must be part U.S. population. (This by the Texas State Comptroller found that the 1.4 million be free after a certain number of years, where of a fight against Washington’s semi-colonial is in addition to the long- undocumented immigrant workers in the state contrib- today the “guests” may be sent back. junior partners in Latin America who have established Hispanic uted $17.7 billion to the state’s economy, and paid $500 As for the undocumented immigrants dutifully imposed “free market” policies that population from Texas million more in taxes than they received in services. A who sign up for legalization under this have driven peasants from the land and to risk to California in their “day without Mexicans” in Texas would cost a bundle. “reform,” in addition to informing the gov- their lives to seek a better life to the north. ancestral lands stolen ernment of their whereabouts, after going It must be a fight for international socialist from Mexico.) This con- through a background check to weed out revolution. Today immigrant workers often stitutes a veritable human bridge for revolu- layer that took control of the unions in the “criminals” as well as “others who pose a feel atomized and powerless in the face of tionary struggle on both sides of the border. post-World War II “red purge” that threw threat to our national security” and paying racist repression. They are not. Without the Three, immigration to the U.S. has out the socialists and communists who built a whopping fine they will placed in a “pro- labor of immigrant and U.S.-born workers, thrown together populations that in their them. It is beholden to capitalist law, and thus bationary” status for between eight and ten American capitalism would grind to a halt. countries of origin are often locked in incapable of organizing workers lacking legal years before they can even get a green card, The immigrant population in the United bloody internecine conflict, but here have rights. For immigrants to win, this sellout during which they have the right to work but States today is higher than at any point since common interests. There are 600,000 Do- bureaucracy must be driven out of the unions. little else. Their situation will be very similar the early 1900s after the waves of European minicans in New York City and 400,000 On the other hand, immigrant workers alone to someone on probation subject to control immigration that brought workers to the Haitians; together they constituted 80% seldom have the power to shut down a whole by a court, and anyone who for instance gets factories and mines. As of 2011, there were of the school bus workers who recently industry – they need the power of the whole caught smoking marijuana could lose all. 40 million immigrants in the U.S. While went on strike for a month. The youth of labor movement to back them up, including So what is emerging is a “reform” that undocumented immigrants are roughly the 200,000 Indians, 70,000 Pakistanis and in mass mobilizations to stop the deportations. would tell the police where to find the undocu- 12.5% of the population, they are 16% of 60,000 Bangladeshis in the city predomi- Key to defeating the “labor lieutenants mented, could well increase unemployment the workforce. In some industries, including nantly see themselves as a common South of the capitalist class” and to building real for immigrants, would lead to an expansion agriculture, construction, food preparation, Asian community of desis. This mixture union solidarity action is the forging of a of government police control and at most, for accommodation and household employees, offers tremendous opportunities for in- revolutionary workers party on a program a hefty price, would gain the status of inden- immigrants are well over 20% of the work- ternationalist revolutionaries opposed to of independent class struggle against Demo- tured servants or being on probation. Whether ers. Isolated and without rights, they are fratricidal nationalisms and imperialism. crats, Republicans and all capitalist parties the whole thing would go into effect at all prey to wage-gouging bosses, who use them Four, unlike in past migrations, immi- and politicians. The idea that “Immigration would depend on a ruling by a commission in to drive wages down. Joined together with grants are now widely spread throughout the Reform Can Stop Retaliation and Advance which border state governors like Texas and U.S.-born workers, immigrant workers can country. In meatpacking plants from Georgia Labor Rights,” as the NELP report declared, Arizona would have effective veto power. And transform the class struggle in this country. and Alabama to Iowa and Nebraska, running is an illusion. Any “reform” legislated by if there actually would be a tortuous “path to Several particular aspects of the current motels from Mississippi to Washington state, the political representatives of Wall Street citizenship” would be up to negotiation with wave of immigration deserve comment. cleaning buildings from Los Angeles to New and the capitalist corporations which live off Republicans like Jeb Bush, who changes his One, it is receding. The number of undocu- York, and in restaurants and construction sites of the exploitation of foreign-born workers, position from one day to the next. mented immigrants in the U.S. has gone from coast to coast there are now millions of any bill which conciliates the anti-immigrant This is what the Democrats and “main- down since 2008, first and foremost because immigrant workers who perform low-pay and yahoos, will necessarily be an attack on im- stream” immigrants’ rights groups want job opportunities are drying up due to the often dangerous jobs, who have no rights, migrants’ rights. cheer about. Not us Marxists. We demand capitalist economic crisis; second, because who are despised by reactionaries, and whose To hell with the national chauvinism and full citizenship rights for all immigrants. It of massive militarization on the border; and labor is absolutely essential to the capitalist ethnic hostilities that set workers at each oth- was bad enough when the left wanted to join third, because this has facilitated a takeover economy. But to awaken this sleeping giant of ers’ throats while the bosses are laughing all with liberals in begging for “amnesty” when of immigration by drug and smuggling car- immigrant workers, a key element is neces- the way to the bank! Communist revolutionar- there was no crime to begin with. This “re- tels, who have made border crossing much sary: a revolutionary vanguard. ies proclaim, “Asian, Latin, black and white, form” effectively treats the undocumented more expensive (and more dangerous, as Immigrant workers have often sought workers of the world unite.” For our class, as lawbreakers, and it wouldn’t surprise us migrants are often held for ransom and mas- to unionize, such as dining hall workers at workers’ struggle has no borders. These are Pomona College in California, port truckers not abstract slogans. Our call for full citizen- Visit the League for the Fourth International/ and construction workers in Seattle, frozen ship rights for all immigrants has been real- Internationalist Group on the Internet pizza workers in Milwaukee and elsewhere, ized, on several occasions. The great French http://www.internationalist.org only to face defeat as ICE immigration cops Revolution of 1789-99, the Paris Commune come to the aid of the employers (see these of 1871 and the Russian October Revolution and other examples in the report of the of 1917 granted to citizenship to all working The Internationalist National Employment Law Project, Work- people and defenders of the revolution. A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism ers Rights on ICE, February 2013). On the The United States is a land of immi- for the Reforging of the Fourth International other hand, immigrant workers at a Hot grants: everyone here came from some- and Crusty bakery restaurant in New York where else, some in chains, except the native Publication of the Internationalist Group, section of the League for the Fourth International City last fall won a groundbreaking union American population which was decimated EDITORIAL BOARD: Jan Norden (editor), Abram Negrete, Mark Lazarus, Marjorie Salzburg contract with a union hiring hall after two by the genocidal policies of colonizers and months on the picket line fighting a lockout. slave masters. What we are saying is that The Internationalist (ISSN 1091-2843) is published bimonthly, skipping July-August, by Mundial Publications, P.O. Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. Two factors have been key to defeat or everyone here should be able to live here Telephone: (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 E-mail: [email protected] victory: the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy with the same rights as everyone else. It’s a Subscriptions: US$10 for five issues. and labor solidarity. The present leadership of simple democratic demand, but it will take No. 34 1162-M March-April 2013 labor in the U.S. is a parasitic petty-bourgeois a revolution to achieve it. n 2 The Internationalist No to Gun Control: Racist Ruling-Class Ploy to Disarm the Population Who Controls the Guns? In the wake of the horrific Newtown a leash on the rest – and school shooting and a shooting spree at a thus should be opposed State Archives Washington shopping center in Clackamas, Oregon this by any defender of dem- past December, President Barack Obama ocratic rights. and the Democratic Party have joined with With the intense me- Republicans like New York City mayor dia focus on the shooting Michael Bloomberg and the liberal media of 20 children and six in launching a drive to tighten gun control adult staff at the Sandy laws. The main opposition comes from Hook elementary school the National Rifle Association (NRA) and in Newtown, Connecti- right-wing Republicans, as well as some cut, people have rightly conservative Midwestern Democrats. But begun to question what while there is a division among the capi- kind of a society could talist rulers over gun laws, they all agree cause such shocking and on intensified police repression across the brutal violence. But the board – as well as U.S. imperialist war in grief and fear are being Afghanistan and murderous drone strikes in used by the White House half a dozen countries. for a dual campaign of So-called “progressives” want to fur- limiting civilian access ther strengthen the repressive apparatus to guns and increasing the by disarming the population. All historical number of police inside evidence shows that “gun control” will not of schools. This blatant reduce violent crime or prevent rampages fear-mongering in order by deranged individuals. It will, however, to turn the schools into embolden racist police rampages in impov- jails is disgusting, and erished African American, Latino, Asian dangerous. Rather than and immigrant areas. The police are there aiding school safety, it Black Panther Party demonstrating at California State House in defense of their right to carry to “serve and protect” the interests of the leads to unwarranted and arms, 2 May 1967. capitalist rulers and to keep their victims often traumatic arrests of children, including Racism and Gun Control was the only thing between black families down. That’s why they want a monopoly on handcuffing and jailing seven-year-olds, as and their would-be murderers. Beginning In the United States, racism is behind gun violence. Gun control has always targeted well as imprisoning high school youths for in 1946 in Monroe, North Carolina, ex- control laws going back to slavery. Not only exploited populations in order to undercut minor infractions. We demand cops out of Marine Robert F. Williams and other African were slaves generally prohibited from having their ability to resist. In the United States, the schools. American veterans gathered 40 black men weapons, so increasingly were free blacks from colonial times to today, it is an incon- For liberals, violence is at the center of with rifles who backed off an armed Klan as fear of slave revolts grew. Following Nat trovertible fact that gun control kills blacks. the issue, and discussion over gun control motorcade which threatened the funeral of Turner’s Rebellion (1831), Virginia made it The Internationalist Group says no to becomes a simple equation of more guns a local black sharecropper who had been illegal for free blacks “to keep or carry any gun control and other schemes to keep the equals more violence. But this ignores the executed for killing his white landlord (from firelock of any kind, any military weapon, or working class and the oppressed disarmed fundamental truth that there are two classes Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert any powder or lead.” Tennessee changed its in the face of a rapacious ruling class and its in society, the capitalist rulers who assert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power constitutional clause from “freemen…have a murderous, racist state. Luckily, the chances their “right” to kill whomever they want [University of North Carolina Press, 1999]). right to keep and to bear arms” to “free white of actually outlawing guns for civilians in by gun, bomb or remote control drone, and Later, Williams, by then head of the men.” The Supreme Court’s infamous Dred the U.S., where there are an estimated 300 have a vast apparatus of private security Monroe NAACP, organized a black armed Scott decision (1857), holding that black million non-military firearms for a popula- guards, police, military and various other guard, with a charter from the NRA, that people had “had no rights which the white man tion of 325 million people, are virtually nil. armed government agencies to do it; and in a 1957 campaign to integrate a public was bound to respect,” laid out the connection Nevertheless, the measures presently being the working people who may spend years swimming pool held off a KKK motorcade between gun control and democratic rights. prepared in Congress such as intrusive in prison for shoplifting a stick of chewing with sandbag fortifications and gunfire. The “background checks” are aimed at keeping gum, or in olden times for the “crime” of Granting blacks citizenship: “would give them the full liberty of following year he gained fame in a nation- guns out of the hands of those the bour- picking up dead wood. The exploiters don’t speech in public and in private upon all wide tour publicizing the infamous Monroe geoisie deems to be its enemies, and to put want the exploited to have arms. subjects upon which its [the U.S.’] own “kissing case” (of a nine-year-old black citizens might speak; to hold public meet- boy sentenced to 14 years in jail because ings upon political affairs, and to keep and a seven-year-old white playmate kissed carry arms wherever they went.” him on the cheek). And in 1961, Williams Order Now! –from Clayton Cramer, “The Racist Roots rescued a white couple driving through the of Gun Control,” Kansas Journal of Law black community as a racist mob was beat- A series of articles that originally appeared and Public Policy (Winter 1995). ing up student Freedom Riders in downtown in Workers Vanguard Following the Civil War, the “Black Monroe (Robert F. Williams, Negroes with when it was the Codes” enacted in Southern states to ensure a Guns [1962]). For this he was charged with voice of revolutionary labor supply for the plantations also included kidnapping and forced to flee the country. Trotskyism, in response bans on blacks carrying knives or firearms. But black self-defense continued. In to a Maoist diatribe When those laws were repealed under Re- Bogalusa, Louisiana, the Deacons for De- against Trotskyism. construction, former Confederate soldiers fense and Justice were formed in 1965 to Articles cover permanent formed vigilante terror squads such as the guard civil rights marches and patrol black revolution, “socialism in Ku Klux Klan to seize guns from blacks, neighborhoods against KKK and other racist one country,” the popular front, the struggle for intimidate them from voting and drive them vigilantes during a campaign to abolish all the Fourth International, off their land. Later, under Jim Crow segre- segregation laws, open up local restaurants Mao’s China from Stalin gation, racist laws were couched in racially and integrate the local high school (see to Nixon, Trotskyism vs. neutral terms, but as a state supreme court “Bogalusa 1965: Deacons for Defense,” on the SWP, and more. justice said of Florida’s 1891 ban on cheap p. 21 of this issue). Next door in Alabama, handguns, it “was passed for the purpose of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Com- US$2 disarming the negro laborers,” “was never mittee (SNCC) formed the Lowndes County Order from/make checks intended to be applied to the white population Freedom Organization to run candidates for payable to: Mundial and in practice has never been so applied.” local office under the symbol of the black Publications, Box 3321, Following World War II and through- panther. When they were met with evictions Church Street Station, New York, New York 10008, U.S.A. out the 1950s and ’60s, armed self-defense and death threats, SNCC told its supporters in black neighborhoods in the U.S. South continued on page 20 March-April 2013 3 For a Nationwide Strike to Smash Capitalist Education “Reform”! Mexico: Labor Cop Gordillo Busted to Crush Teachers’ Resistance Translated from the upcoming issue of La Maestra. Education Secretary Emilio Revolución Permanente No. 2, newspaper of Let the Government Agent Gordillo Go, Chuayffet, who as secretary of government the Grupo Internacionalista/México. So Teachers Can Try Her for Murder! (interior minister) under president Ernesto MARCH 4 – At dusk on February 26, Elba Zedillo in 1994 was responsible for the hor- Esther Gordillo, “president for life” of the La Jornada rendous Acteal massacre – of 45 indigenous corporatist National Union of Education members of the religious collective “Las Workers (SNTE by its initials in Spanish) Abejas” (The Bees) who were murdered as was arrested at the airport in Toluca on they prayed in Chenalhó, Chiapas – is not an orders of Mexico’s attorney general. The ally but a sworn enemy of the workers, who headlines shouted, “Elba Esther Toppled!” has declared that the only educators who “Elba Prisoner,” “Elba’s Empire has Fallen.” will have a say in his “reform” will be those She was arrested in a military operation selected by the government. involving undercover agents posted in San All of Gordillo’s crimes – and they are Diego, California and various airports across much worse than the official charges – were Mexico; two Navy aircraft tailed her private extolled by, or committed in the service of, jet and after her arrest transferred the leader the same criminal state that now wants to of the SNTE to the hangar of the Attorney try her. Gordillo’s detention is a cover for General’s office [in Mexico City], where the drive by the new PRI regime to tighten a caravan of ten armored vehicles awaited the screws of government control over the her. With the streets blocked off by security teachers. The response of the workers to the forces, they took her to the Santa Martha fireworks around the arrest of the SNTE’s Acatitla women’s prison in Mexico City. capo must be to break the corporatist shack- With this spectacular show of state power, les, expel the charro2 bureaucracy imposed Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto put by the capitalist state, organize an indepen- government agent Gordillo, a faithful servant Elba Esther Gordillo and Enrique Peña Nieto when they were allies, at the dent union of the entire education sector of Mexio’s capitalist governments for over dedication of the offices of Section 36 of the SNTE, November 2010. and break politically with all the capitalist three decades, behind bars. The charges: day after the coalition government of the PRI, of senators, governors and even presidents parties, from the tripartite governing coalition money laundering, misappropriation of PAN and PRD,1 formalized in the “Pact for to suppressing rebellions of teachers. We of of PRI-PAN-PRD to the minor parliamen- SNTE funds and organized crime. In other Mexico,” promulgated the infamous educa- the Grupo Internacionalista have repeatedly tary parties (Party of Labor [PT], 3 Citizens words, corruption. tion “reform” law that was passed in record pointed out that the SNTE is not a workers Movement[MC], and AMLO’s MORENA). time by the obedient national Congress and union, but like the other corporatist labor To anyone knowing the first thing Elba’s Empire about Mexican politics, this was obviously state legislatures. The Elbazo was intended to bodies in Mexico, a state institution, a labor La Maestra Gordillo is a murderer of a settling of scores at the highest levels of crush any resistance by the teachers. police agency whose purpose is to prop up the teachers who has been placed in the dock power. For misappropriation of funds and Gordillo’s corruption was legendary, but regime and regiment the workers. Now “the by the bourgeois rulers who installed her as obscene corruption you could arrest nearly it was protected and even sponsored by suc- boss” has outlived her usefulness and it was general secretary of the SNTE in 1989, a year the entirety of the country’s ruling politi- cessive governments as payment for her ser- decided to dispense with her. Nevertheless, of roiling teachers struggles that shook the cians, high-level bureaucrats and military vices, which ranged from fixing the elections we also warn that the initial gleeful reaction country over and over with half-million-strong and police commanders. The representatives 1 by many teachers to the news of her arrest PRI: the Institutional Revolutionary Party of strikes. She herself said to reporters in 2006, of capital couldn’t care less that La Maestra president Peña Nieto, which governed Mexico is profoundly mistaken. Dissident currents “I came to the union by way of a decision by (“The Teacher”) Gordillo led a gilded life at for seven decades and recently returned to pow- among the teachers, particularly the CNTE the Mexican State… In difficult situations like her palaces on San Diego’s Coronado Island er. PAN: the clerical-rightist National Action (National Coordinating Committee of Edu- that… the executive is what counts” (Proceso, with extravagant shopping sprees (US$2 mil- Party of ex-president Felipe Calderón. PRD: the cation Workers), have made a monumental 2 March). As we wrote in 2006: lion in two years, which works out to an aver- bourgeois nationalist Party of the Democratic error in cooperating with, and even egging “The president of the national ‘union,’ age of $3,000 a day) at the luxury Neiman Revolution, whose former standard-bearer and on, the attorney general’s “investigation.” recurrent presidential candidate was Andrés the SNTE, Elba Esther Gordillo, was ap- Marcus department store and her constant The demand of class-conscious teachers must Manuel López Obrador. “AMLO” left the badly be: Peña Nieto, hands off the teachers! pointed by the Secretary of Government plastic surgeries. Elba Esther Gordillo was tarnished PRD in September, but this does not at an all-night meeting in the secretariat, the perfect target in order to promote Peña signify any fundamental change in his old party Only the most gullible could think that after her predecessor (Carlos Jonguitud, Nieto’s privatization agenda. You couldn’t or his new bourgeois political vehicle, MORE- the PRI president would act in defense of also a PRI flunkey) had been ‘resigned’ miss the fact that her detention took place one NA (Movement of National Regeneration). union rights, or to safeguard union dues, as hours earlier in a meeting with President he alleged in his state- Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Between them, ment on the case that Gordillo and Jonguitud are responsible was broadcast the next for ordering the assassination of more day on every radio and 2 Charro: corporatist “union” official. Liter- television station in the ally: cowboy. In an anti-communist purge of the country. His action was Mexican railroad workers union in 1948, the Noticias (Chiapas) intended to reinforce government installed a new leader, Juan Díaz corporatism, not to pro- de León, who liked to dress up in cowboy out- mote union democracy. fits. Accompanied by the Mexican army and po- What we have here is lice, Díaz de León’s forces stormed the union’s a governmental crisis, headquarters and arrested the union’s president. which was made clear This was quickly followed by charrazos (the when Peña Nieto called imposition of government-designated leaders) in other unions, marking the watershed in the an emergency meeting at transformation of Mexico’s formerly left-led Los Pinos, the presiden- unions into agencies of the capitalist state. tial mansion, of all 32 3 The PT has never been any sort of working- March of dissident teacher unionists in Chiapas on March 4. Altogether about 200,000 Mexican state governors (29 at- class party but was a phantom party set up by teachers stopped work for 48-hour strike against education “reform” and the imposition of tended), some of whom former PRI president Carlos Salinas de Gortari a new corporatist “union” leader by the government of Enrique Peña Nieto. owed their positions to to compete with the PRD for workers’ votes. 4 The Internationalist sectors. What they want least of all is that students should be educated to think criti- cally and be able to express themselves to Peña Nieto: Hands Off the Teachers! defend their interests.” – “ACE: Alianza Burguesa Contra la Educación ¡Defender las normales Break the Corporatist Shackles! Drive Out the Entire SNTE Bureaucracy! rurales!” (ACE: Bourgeois Alliance Against Education: Defend the Rural Build an Education Union Completely Independent from the State! Teacher Training Schools!), supplement to El Internacionalista, November 2012 PRI-PAN-PRD Capitalist Government Is Enemy of Public Education! Peña Nieto’s counter-reform and the Pact for Mexico are the continuation of the ACE. Break with the Bourgeoisie! Build a Revolutionary Workers Party! Now that the reform is being implemented, it is necessary for teachers in elementary, than 150 SNTE dissidents. Lately, with Now with the arrest of Gordillo, the workers committees should be formed to take middle and high schools across the coun- the PRI’s power eclipsed, Gordillo trans- SNTE, just as corporatist as ever, remains charge of expelling these bureaucratic hench- try, and likewise for the university workers ferred her institutional allegiances to the an arm of government control. La Maestra’s men from the facilities. unions, to mobilize in defense of their jobs [Vicente] Fox regime, and set up a new anointed successor, Secretary General Juan The independent currents must reject and to make education a real right. The ‘party,’ the PANAL (National Alliance Díaz de la Torre, was installed as president all state interference in their affairs and in militant teachers of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Party), to support the PAN candidate by amending the statutes in the early morning the internal affairs of the workers movement Michoacán have shown the way with their [Felipe] Calderón.” hours after the president’s arrest. But before in general. The bosses’ government has –“GEM: Caboose of the Mexican Popular work stoppages last year that prevented the he could take on his new office in the national no right to touch or to regulate the funds 5 Front”, The Internationalist No. 25, administration of ACE tests. Now the need council meeting in Guadalajara, according contributed by the workers, nor to grant or January-February 2007 is posed for a national strike of unlimited du- to La Jornada (28 February), he travelled deny recognition to union leaders (with the The state that employed the murderer ration of the whole education sector, with the to the capital: “the agreement to keep Díaz arbitrary toma de nota) or to register unions, Gordillo, which is responsible for over support of the industrial proletariat, to stop de la Torre was sealed in a negotiation with much less to impose or remove leaders at its 90,000 deaths in the past six years, which capitalism’s educational counter-reform. the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, after whim, as it has done since the firstcharrazos is an enemy of the militant teachers, has no The obstacle to this necessary mobiliza- which the [SNTE] leader travelled to Mexico after the Second World War, whose purpose right to judge its agent. Those who should tion is a dual one: on one hand, the corporatist City, where he met with the secretary of was to expel communists and class-struggle judge this criminal are the colleagues and SNTE continues to be a labor police force government, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, union militants of any sort. This is class war, families of the teachers who fought against that blocks the mobilization of the teachers who transmitted to him the message of the and we do not accept the intervention of the the corporatist control embodied by Carlos in defense of the positions they have gained; president.” This “decision of Los Pinos” state (whether through its executive, judicial Jonguitud Barrios and later by Gordillo on the other hand, the CNTE, the CEND stipulated that the new president of the SNTE or legislative branches) in the affairs of our herself, and who because of this were shot, and other unions in the education sector are would promise “not to interfere in the case of class. The goal of class-conscious workers tortured and disappeared at the express heavily subordinated to the bourgeois “op- Elba and to reach agreement in the matters must be, together with unions at the univer- orders of the charro clique (the misnamed position.” The PRD of the Chuchos (Jesús of wage negotiations and education reform.” sities like the STUNAM and the SITUAM, “Revolutionary Vanguard”) of the SNTE. Zambrano and Jesús Ortega)6 is part of the Immediately, the new charro boss announced to build a genuine labor union across the The most famous case is that of the teacher Pact for Mexico, and in this capacity the PRD his full support for the reform. whole education sector, completely inde- Misael Núñez Acosta, murdered in January not only gave its endorsement to the educa- pendent of the state and without the least of 1981 by three judicial police officers of The message is clear: as in the past, the tion “reform,” but its chiefs were in the front political tie to any of the bourgeois parties. the state of Mexico,4 who were contracted SNTE will be instrumental in implementing rank of the “distinguished” sponsors who for that purpose by Ramón Martínez Martín the bosses’ attacks on the teachers that it regi- For an Open-Ended National celebrated the law going into effect. The fol- and Elba Esther Gordillo, who at the time ments. In this case, the process of “universal Strike Against the Privatizing lowers of AMLO’s MORENA, for their part, were General Secretary of the SNTE and its evaluation” of teachers which has now been Education Reform! are once again following a “legal strategy,” as elevated to “constitutional status” (so that it Secretary of Labor and Conflicts in Preschool The Elbazo of Enrique Peña Nieto they have done before with disastrous results, cannot be altered by union bargaining or laws Education of Section 36 in the Eastern Zone aims to obscure the real intentions of the such as in the case of the 44,000 electrical passed by Congress) will be used as a pretext of the Valley of Mexico, respectively. new government: to impose an adminis- workers fired by Calderón, petitioning the to fire tens of thousands of teachers. Sections The crime against Misael Núñez was trative and labor “reform” on teachers in bourgeois courts for individual injunctions. affiliated to the CNTE, a dissident current that followed by the killing of more than 150 Mexico that strips them of the rights they This is being pursued not only by the CNTE has not broken with the SNTE but effectively teachers in the subsequent two decades un- have gained and subjects them to a bosses’ but was also the strategy of the SNTE under acts as an independent union, will be under der the patronage of Gordillo in conspiracy dictatorship. It is therefore urgent to begin Gordillo, in a timid show of insubordination particular scrutiny. The CNTE has organized with the government and the party which to organize mobilizations of unions in the that cost La Maestra dearly. The strategy of work stoppages of hundreds of thousands of have cast her out of office and imprisoned education sector, with the aid of the whole both does not go beyond the limits of pressure teachers, and bourgeois governments since her. Gordillo’s culpability for the murder of workers movement, to stop this capitalist politics focused on the bourgeois parliament. the PRI regime of Miguel de la Madrid (1982- teachers extends up to the present day. At the attack cold. Already the teachers of Guerrero In addition to all the defensive measures 1988) have tried to destroy it. Gordillo was a end of the convulsive struggles in Oaxaca have been on strike since the end of Febru- and mobilizations there is an urgent need to top leader of the PRI, serving as head of its led by the dissident Section 22 of the SNTE, ary and independent sectors have called for forge a truly class-struggle, revolutionary Congressional delegation and general secre- affiliated to the CNTE, Gordillo created a 48-hour strike of teachers nationwide on leadership among education workers. Such tary of its executive council for several years. a Section 59 made up of scabs and hired March 4-5. For these actions to be effective a leadership would insist on total political But as leader of a corporatist labor institution killers to help the government of Vicente it is necessary for them to transcend the nar- independence from the bourgeois state and her fundamental loyalty was to the state, and Fox (of the PAN) to fight Section 22. In the row limits of pressure politics to which the all bourgeois parties and politicians. Only thus she also served the PAN governments of subsequent years death squads of “Section leaders of the CNTE would confine them. by fighting a revolutionary struggle will it Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón. 59” have killed CNTE teachers again and Even though they recognize that the arrest be possible to effectively break the ties that Today it is more urgent than ever to again. Only a few examples: of Gordillo is a settling of scores among bind the teachers to the bourgeois state. As break out of the corporatist straightjacket ●● On 28 August 2009 the teacher Artemio the rulers and they oppose Peña Nieto’s Leon Trotsky wrote in his unfinished essay that binds the teachers to the bourgeois state. Camacho Sarabio was gunned down in San education counter-reform, they are offering “Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist With the SNTE decapitated, another boss was Pedro Jicayán, a town in the Costa region to cooperate with the government in pros- Decay” (August 1940): “The trade unions imposed within a matter of hours to carry on of southern Oaxaca, when a contingent of ecuting its case against her. This is a suicidal of our time can either serve as secondary the job that Gordillo was no longer capable of teachers tried to retake the bilingual school gesture, which the government will shortly instruments of imperialist capitalism for the executing. It is necessary for militant teachers “Libertad,” which was occupied by PRI use to “investigate” them as well. subordination and disciplining of workers to take control of their destiny by severing all loyalists and members of Section 59. In an article in defense of the rural and for obstructing the revolution, or, on the ties to the state. Currently there is a profusion contrary, the trade unions can become the ●● In May 2009 Leonor Ortiz Barriga, teachers of Michoacán, we recently wrote of organizations that claim to represent the instruments of the revolutionary movement the president of the Parents Committee of a about the fraudulent “Accord for Quality teachers. Besides the SNTE and CNTE, there of the proletariat.” middle school in San Pedro Totolapan, 50 in Education” presided over by Elba Esther is the National Democratic Executive Com- Break with all bourgeois parties and miles southeast of Oaxaca, who took part in Gordillo and her ally Felipe Calderón: mittee of the SNTE (CEND), associated with politicians! Forge a revolutionary workers the struggle of Section 22 to retake schools “With their ‘market orientation’ from the the PRD), a supposed Union of Education party! n taken over by Section 59, was murdered. most elementary grades, the ‘education re- Workers led by Carlos Jonguitud Carrillo, forms’ under this rubric aim to drastically 5 ●● On 4 April 2011, the teacher of indig- son of the former SNTE strongman, and other See “Teachers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Stop reduce the governmental budget dedicated Work to Stop High Stakes Test,” The Interna- enous education Luis Quiroz Quiroz was lesser formations. Those who are in the SNTE to primary education and to dramatically assassinated. He also took part in a mobiliza- tionalist special issue, Summer 2012. must fight to throw out the entire corporatist diminish enrollment in public higher edu- 6 Los Chuchos: factional opponents of former tion to retake a bilingual school. bureaucracy that runs it and which is crystal- cation. They aim at training rather than PRD standard-bearer Andrés Manuel López Ob- 4 The state situated around the national capital, lized in thousands of “commissioners.” In an education that would contribute to the rador who now control the party while AMLO Mexico City, which is in the Federal District. every school, in every workplace, education emancipation of the most impoverished has left to build his new vehicle, MORENA. March-April 2013 5 Bring Out Workers’ Power to Stop “Stop and Frisk” Cold East Flatbush Police State: Racist NYPD Kills Again

It Will Take Workers Revolution To Avenge Kimani Gray!

Late on Saturday, March 9, plain- on 14 June 2012. We remember Ramarley clothes police officers patrolling Brooklyn Graham, an 18-year-old unarmed man,

in an unmarked car shot eleven bullets at executed by NYPD narcotics squad in his AP 16-year-old Kimani (“Kiki”) Gray at the bathroom in front of his grandmother, on corner of East 55th Street and Church Av- 2 February 2012; Sean Bell, executed in enue in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Gray was hit a hail of 50 NYPD bullets on his wedding by seven rounds, three in the back; he was day, 25 November 2006; Timothy Stans- dead by the time he arrived at Kings County bury, 19 years old, executed by NYPD in Hospital. This was a “good shooting,” said Brooklyn for opening a door while black, NY Police Department spokesman John C. 24 January 2004, and so many others. So Cerar. There was “nothing to indicate that who are the dangerous potential killers? this shooting was outside the guidelines,” Not Kimani Gray. said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Police say Kimani pointed a gun at Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed them, which they claim to have recovered. that Kimani Gray’s alleged handgun – which Why, then, was he shot in the back? Why wasn’t used on anyone – was illegal. “I’m have none of the many witnesses said he was doing everything I can to keep guns off our holding a gun? Why has one, hospital clerk streets, as you know, and keep young people Tishana King, who witnessed the shooting away from guns,” said the billionaire, as he from her third-floor window, said she is condemned the “violence” of protesters. Mr. certain he had nothing in his hands? The Bloomberg, the only gun that killed anyone cops’ story stinks. Protester among 46 arrested during police assault on March 13 demonstration belonged to what you boast of as your “pri- And what about the supposed right against cop killing of Kimani Gray. vate army,” the NYPD guard dogs of the to bear arms? Gun control is the bour- city’s racist capitalist ruling class. geoisie’s ploy to disarm the population Crime,” with unwarranted home and school racist treatment by the NYPD, tackled “Blame Kimani Gray,” screamed a so that their badge-toting gunmen have visits, persistent street harassment and and arrested for the “crime” of walking headline in the 14 March New York Post. a monopoly on deadly firepower. This is on-line tracking, including inventing fake on a sidewalk during Brooklyn’s annual And the blame-the-victim campaign is on. why we Internationalists are opposed to Facebook identities to lure the gullible. Is West Indian Day parade in 2011. At the The victim, of course, is a young black man all gun control laws: gun control kills it any wonder that one of the targets of the same time, he has voted for every city in the impoverished West Indian neighbor- blacks! Who shot and killed an innocent gang in blue has ended up dead? budget since his election, totaling billions hood of East Flatbush. The capitalist press man? Not Kimani Gray. Every night throughout the week that of dollars for the NYPD. While saying is smearing Kimani and his brother as “gang What gives undercover police the right followed, hundreds of mourners and protest- the outrage in the community is justified, members” when it was the police who shot to stalk and assassinate a black youth on ers gathered at the corner of East 55th St. along with his “outside agitator” baiting a 16-year-old youth in the back. the streets of Brooklyn? Because he – ac- and Church Ave. On Wednesday, March 13, Williams said it is necessary to “channel The two officers who killed Gray, Ser- cording to official sources in the New York after the city’s autopsy revealed that Kimani the anger properly.” For him and other geant Mourad Mourad and Officer Jovaniel Times – “adjusted his waistband in a suspi- Gray had been shot in the back, police at- “progressive” Democrats, that means Cordova have been named in five federal cious manner”? Shades of another NYPD tacked a group of 200 protesters who were keeping it confined to the safe channels of civil rights lawsuits over illegal stop and assassination of another young black man attempting to march in the direction of the pressuring the capitalist party and capital- searches, false arrest and the like, paying – Amadou Diallo, 23 years old, executed in 67th Precinct. The cops arrested some 46 ist state they represent. out over $200,000 in settlements. But you the doorway of his home in the Bronx by people, shoving marchers to the pavement The murder of Kimani Gray will am- can count on the bosses’ press to defend its NYPD on 4 February 1999, as he reached and assailing marchers and bystanders with plify the outcry against the NYPD’s racist hired killers to the hilt, especially when their for his wallet. pepper spray as police helicopters buzzed “stop and frisk” policy, as a federal lawsuit victim is a black man. In fact, the NYPD has at least one overhead. Among the arrested was Gray’s over the policy brought by the Center for Neighbors and friends of Kiki Gray re- program for stalking and harassing black sister, Mahnefeh. Constitutional Rights began its trial on membered the police execution of Shantel and Latino youth, called the Juvenile Rob- We demand: Drop all charges against March 18. The Internationalist Group de- Davis, 23 years old, an unarmed woman bery Intervention Program or J-RIP. As the the protesters! The killer cops have turned mands an immediate, unconditional end to shot and killed as she fled from NYPD just New York Times (4 March) approvingly East Flatbush into an occupied zone. The this policy of racist profiling and “random” blocks from the scene of Gray’s murder, headlined, “Police Trail Youths Before the very presence of these thugs in blue is an searches. But as we wrote last summer, imminent danger to the life and liberty of “‘Stop and frisk’ is neither the first nor the black people and all residents in the area: most horrendous aspect of racist police-state All cops out of East Flatbush now! repression of blacks, immigrants, and other At a City Council budget hearing, oppressed groups. Cops don’t just stop, they Democratic Councilman Jumaane Wil- murder too” (The Internationalist Special liams, whose district includes East Flatbush, Issue, Summer 2012). quarreled with top cop Kelly. But after the And note that the various pressure Wednesday night police assault on march- groups linked to the Democratic Party that

Internationalist photo ers, Williams furiously lashed out on his claim to oppose stop and frisk don’t even Twitter feed against “adults from OUTSIDE propose to end it, only to clean it up a little. the community who incite our angry young The deadly police occupation of the people!!!” So in the face of the cop rampage ghettos is not going to be solved by asking did Councilman Williams demand that the sharp questions of cop commissioner Kelly police from “OUTSIDE the community” in City Council hearings, nor can it be over- get out? Did he at least demand that all 45 come by the isolated explosions of rage and arrested protesters be freed and the charges despair in the ghettos themselves. What’s dropped? Not that we have seen. urgently needed to stay the hand of the Internationalist contingent in march protesting cop murder of Kimani Gray, Williams, a black man of Grenadian killer cops is to bring out a force superior March 24 ancestry, has himself been the target of continued on page 7 6 The Internationalist Portland Unions Denounce FBI Raids, Grand Jury Witch Hunt of Activists PORTLAND, OR – On July 25 of last munity organizations initiated a struggle to year, several homes of activists in the end the city of Portland’s relationship to the

Pacific Northwest were broken into by JTTF. Finally, in 2005 they won a city coun- KGW federal agents who claimed to be seeking cil decision making Portland the first (and evidence for a grand jury investigation. only) city to pull out of the task force. As a The “crime” being investigated was alleged result, for several years city police were not vandalism of a federal building during May supposed to participate directly in FBI “anti- Day demonstrations in Seattle. However, terrorist” investigations. However, the deci- the warrants specifically mentioned sion was reversed in 2011, and particularly “black clothing” and “anti-government or during the Occupy movement that fall and anarchist literature” as items to be seized. subsequently, local police were evidently The “investigation” was really a fishing working closely with the feds, no matter expedition designed to force activists to turn how flimsy the pretext for the “investiga- over information on their friends and fellow tion.” By July 2012, this included targeting activists under parameters that are so vague activists based on their alleged association that just about anyone ever associated with with Mayday activities in Seattle. any of those targeted could be named as a Sweeping through homes under the pre- suspect. tense of looking for evidence in a petty van- FBI agents during July 25 raids on anarchist activists in Portland, Oregon. In addition to issuing the search war- dalism case is a blatant witch hunt designed harass, and dismantle these groups, and harass activists and union members, and rants, which included as “evidence” po- to intimidate activists. Citing political and Whereas several unions in Portland have Whereas the July raids and their associated litical and union literature, the grand jury union literature as evidence of any kind is a strong history of resisting FBI repression grand jury proceedings are politically proceeding seeks to compel witnesses to persecuting people for thought crimes. An- and the JTTF including a successful motivated and intended to suppress dissent testify and inform on their associates. Those archists were the immediate target, but any campaign for Portland to pull out of an expressed on May 1st, 2012, during the who refused to testify were jailed while the group considered to be revolutionary by the agreement with the JTTF in 2005, and celebration of International Workers Day, and grand jury proceeds, and could face federal federal authorities could be next. Whereas the history of FBI and federal Whereas any attack on any union is an charges that could result in lengthy prison Under the old Wobbly watchword, car- repression against union members and their attack on all unions, and sentences. Three of those targeted in the ried forward by the ILWU, that “an injury to allies include such prominent examples raids – Matthew Duran, Katherine “Kteeo” one is an injury to all,” supporters of the In- Whereas an injury to one is an injury to all, as the Palmer Raids, in which members Olejnik and Maddy Pfeiffer – heroically ternationalist Group in Portland-area unions be it therefore of unions and labor organizations were refused to testify and were held in the Sea- circulated a resolution calling on labor Resolved that we condemn the raids that targeted because of their actual or suspected Tac Federal Detention Center for months. organizations to denounce the July 25 FBI took place on July 25th and any future raids affiliation with the Communist Party and the Duran and Olejnik were released on March raids and defend those targeted. The reso- and defend the people targeted in them, and Communist Labor Party as well as actual or 7 but Pfeiffer remains in prison. lution (printed below) was endorsed by the be it further suspected membership in the IWW, between We join unionists and defenders of Industrial Workers of the World, Portland 1919 and 1920 which resulted in the arrests Resolved that we will make our best effort democratic rights in demanding that Maddy Local; International Union of Painters and of thousands of people and the deportation to mobilize our membership to support a Pfeiffer be released and any proceedings Allied Trades Local 10; International Alli- of upwards of 500, and mass meeting to condemn the attacks on our against anyone targeted in this dragnet be ance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local unions and resist FBI raids and repression dropped and their records expunged. The 28; International Longshore and Warehouse Whereas the Portland JTTF, and its counterpart, the Portland Red Squad has and defend our right to participate in unions, federal government of Barack Obama which Union Local 5 and Laborers International and be it further launched this attack on political dissenters Union of North America Local 483. been used to spy on workers participating should be held liable for millions of dollars in an organizing drive at Powell’s books in Resolved that we call for a meeting of union in monetary damages for its wanton abuse of Resolution Against 2000, the IWW over several years beginning members to discuss next steps in resisting the activists’ rights. as early as 1917, the International Longshore FBI repression and form a network to The grand jury resisters were held for FBI Repression and Warehouse Union (ILWU) throughout the respond to any future raids. over two months in solitary confinement, Whereas three homes in Portland, and 1930’s and in several instances since then, and Endorsed by: IWW Portland Local, IUPAT causing a deterioration of their health. Al- several others across the Northwest were Whereas the most recent July raids are Local 10, IATSE Local 28, ILWU Local 5, though they were being held as witnesses raided by the FBI on Wednesday, July clearly intended to similarly intimidate and LIUNA Local 483 and the purpose of the imprisonment 25th to collect evidence for a grand jury was to coerce testimony, federal district investigation, and judge Richard Jones noted “their resolve Whereas the residents of the homes in Thousands across New York City and appears to increase as their confinement Portland had their doors broken down, were East Flatbush... beyond who have felt the heavy hand of continues.” In ordering release of Duran tear gassed, and handcuffed in the course of continued from page 6 racist police violence are crying out for and Olejnik, the judge ruled that their executing the search warrants, and to that of the repressive apparatus. A class- justice. Across the country, even as Barack continued imprisonment was “purely Whereas the “evidence” collected in the struggle leadership of the unions, such as Obama is the first black president in the punitive,” yet they had not been charged July raids included such objects as of the Internationalist Group fights for, would White House, cop terror against poor with criminal contempt (or anything else), Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) call for a mass mobilization of union power communities and particularly black young and therefore their right to due process union literature, and along with the millions of oppressed black, men continues unabated. The bitter truth was being violated. Latino and immigrant residents against is that black oppression – ranging from Whereas the Portland branch of the IWW is In Portland, three homes were broken police brutality and murder. rampant prejudice to pervasive police a respected labor union which consistently into, and three activists detained. Although And that means not just another Sun- harassment to mass incarceration and acts in solidarity with other unions, a partner local police claim that they weren’t involved day parade, but surround City Hall and modern-day lynching like Kimani Gray in the planning of Portland’s yearly May in the searches, a recent reversal of the 2005 really occupy Wall Street until the NYPD’s – is in the bedrock on which U.S. capital- Day events, and the union representing decision to become independent from the racist “stop and frisk” is stopped cold. It ism rests. It will not be reformed away by workers in three local social service shops federal Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) should also demand that NYC officials and cop watches, civilian review boards, civil providing assistance to at-risk youth and make it unlikely that local authorities were employees cease all cooperation with the rights lawsuits or lashing out in desperate survivors of domestic violence, and unaware of the investigation. The city of federal ICE immigration police: no more acts of impotent rage. Portland has a long and tortured history of Whereas the right to participate in unions handing over of teenagers in Rikers Island to It will take a workers revolution that espionage against activists ranging from and organize ourselves as workers and the racist migra for deportation. Any effort overturns the foundations of capitalist rule Quaker peace activists to the Black Panther freedom of expression and freedom of in this direction will need to push aside the to put an end to what Malcolm X aptly Party. The notoriously corrupt Portland Red association are fundamental rights, and resistance of the pro-capitalist union bureau- called the “American Nightmare.” There Squad has often sought to intimidate and Whereas the FBI has a longstanding history cracy, which never lets an opportunity pass will be no justice for Kimani Gray, or for harass activists participating in a variety of of infiltrating and spying on activists and labor to salute the bloody flag of U.S. imperialism so many other like him, until the bourgeois organizing efforts. organizations in Portland through the use of and bow to the racist, strikebreaking cops. rulers and their racist police guard dogs are With this history in mind, beginning the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) and We say: cops, prison guards, security guards swept away by the multi-racial, international in the late 1990s several unions and com- the Portland Red Squad in order to intimidate, out of the unions! working class. n March-April 2013 7 Scabs Loading Ships – Grain Shippers Declare War on Union ILWU Locked Out in Vancouver, WA For Longshore Solidarity Actions! Defend the Union Hiring Hall – No Concessionary Contracts! Scab Cargo Too Hot to Handle! For Mass Pickets on the Docks!

PORTLAND – At 8 a.m. on February 27, well as for solidarity actions by ILA locals the United Grain Corp., owned by Mitsui, and affiliates of the ITF and the International locked the members of International Long- Dockworkers Council. shore and Warehouse Union Local 4 out Already, there has been a fight over the of its Vancouver, Washington terminal and concessionary contract at Temco/Cargill. began operating using management person- That “interim agreement,” which would nel and scabs. It was a long-planned move. be superseded by any agreement with the Armed guards from the Gettier “security” other NWGA shippers, includes a clause agency have been in the terminal for months. saying “The Employer has the right to se- “Replacement workers” were put up in area lect steady employees and their temporary motels waiting for the call. Scab tugboats replacements, five days or longer, for all were contracted. categories of work except Utility.” If that This is the first time in decades that a union-busting provision sticks, it won’t be West Coast port facility has worked a ship long before you can kiss the ILWU hiring with scabs. Not since the Inlandboatmen’s hall goodbye. Union’s 1987 coastwise strike against Crow- The hiring hall was the key gain of the ley Maritime have the shippers tried. When 1934 strike and has been the linchpin of they did then, longshoremen and boatmen the West Coast longshore union’s power marched on a Redwood City dock in the San ever since. When the U.S. Congress tried Francisco Bay Area to chase scabs off the to outlaw it with the “slave labor” Taft- vessel, never to return. Newspapers reported Troy Wayrynen/The Columbian Hartley Act, part of the post-war purge of it as shades of the 1934 Big Strike with the Hundreds of longshore workers and supporters came out to March 8 rally in “reds” and labor militants from the unions, ILWU flexing its muscle. Vancouver to protest union-busting lockout of ILWU by United Grain/Matsui. the ILWU stood its ground and finally Already this past December, United International labor solidarity is key to victory. forced the bosses and their government Grain and two other members of the to work behind picket lines and to set up a the Temco contract. Instead, they should to back down. Now the International is Northwest Grainhandlers Association (Co- management-controlled hiring list, bypass- have headed to the terminal to set up mass prepared to give it up without so much lumbia and Dreyfus) imposed a contract ing the union hall. It was sold as a “foot in pickets. as a whimper. that includes 12-hour shifts and effectively the door,” but longshore militants warned This flag-waving has no place in the But not everyone in the ranks is will- bypasses the union hiring hall, the key to it was a foot in the butt and would backfire workers movement, and will get the union ing to roll over and play dead. The day that the ILWU’s power. Those terms had been when the NWGA contract came due. Sure nowhere. It sank the Boron workers’ United Grain locked out the ILWU, the rejected by 94% of the longshore grain lo- enough, that’s exactly what has happened. struggle, when the ILWU tops picketed a Portland Business Journal reported that cals, yet the ILWU International instructed As we have noted before (see “Bring British consulate instead of having Local the union said that “five of its locals” had the membership to keep working under the Out Workers Power to Defend the ILWU,” 13 refuse to handle scab cargo from the ratified the giveback Temco deal. Make imposed contract. This is a threat to the The Internationalist, November-December struck plant. It is in flat contradiction to that four. Portland Local 8, which with future of the union, the bastion of organized 2012), the grain shippers are making record the ILWU’s long tradition of international three active terminals is the largest grain labor on the West Coast, and to its members’ profits. And despite inroads at EGT, ILWU labor solidarity. In fact, now that United port on the West Coast, voted the “interim livelihoods. power on the West Coast waterfront is still Grain is loading ships with scabs, it is vital contract” down. From the moment the union-busting intact. Instead of trying to make nice with that dock unions in Japan and internation- Portland isn’t alone. Also in February, contract was imposed, there should have the bosses who are hell-bent on destroy- ally refuse to work Mitsui ships. On March the Los Angeles-Long Beach Office and been mass pickets shutting down all the ing the union, it’s high time for the ILWU 15, Doro-Chiba, the Japanese rail union, Clerical Unit rejected the settlement that terminals of the grain monopolies, with membership to say enough! picketed Mitsui in Tokyo. their leaders had agreed to last December, the threat to close every port on the West On the East and Gulf Coasts, under In January, the West Coast coordina- ending a walkout that idled ten of the 14 Coast – as well as East and Gulf Coast heavy pressure from Washington, the In- tor of the International Transport Work- terminals at that largest port in the U.S. and ports – if there was any attempt to operate ternational Longshoremen’s Association ers Federation boarded a ship at United had the Obama administration panicked. with scabs. Now that this has happened, reached a last-minute “partial agreement” Grain in Vancouver. The captain and crew, (The OCU eventually knuckled under.) And a call should go out from the union for with the USMX employers association, members of the Japanese Seamen’s Union, don’t forget that Longview ILWU Local 21 dock workers everywhere to refuse to whose terms have not been announced. were well aware of the ILWU’s struggle. never voted on the sellout EGT contract, unload the scab cargo. All Mitsui cargo But local agreements over work rules have They informed the ship’s owner that under even though they have a right to under the ships must be treated as strikebreakers and been held up. The ILWU and ILA should a solidarity clause in the JSU contracts, ILWU constitution. union-busters! join hands. Powerful coast-to-coast and they would honor ILWU pickets. But there What’s going on here? In recent But you can’t call solidarity actions if international solidarity union action is were no union pickets to respect. Nor were decades, the top leadership of the Inter- Vancouver and other ILWU locals aren’t needed to DEFEND THE ILWU before there any Local 13 pickets when the ship national Longshore and Warehouse Union organizing actions themselves. Union offi- it is too late. docked in L.A. has moved a long way from the union’s cials have limited picketing at United Grain On March 8, a rally was called in “Seafarers from around the world are militant past. Even under ILWU founder to three pickets, while filing an impotent downtown Vancouver to protest the lock- grateful for the ILWU’s solidarity over the Harry Bridges, the union agreed to “mod- legal complaint. Most ominous of all, they out. But the focus is on the fact that United decades,” said the ITF delegate, and they ernization and mechanization” (M&M) negotiated a dangerously concessionary Grain is owned by the Japanese company “are eager to have the opportunity to sup- contracts that undercut union gains. A contract with Temco (owned by Cargill) that Mitsui. The call to “End the Mitsui Lock- port the ILWU” against the global grain “steady man” system was set up that, es- includes many of the dangerous provisions out” complained that the company has merchants (ITFGlobal, 21 January). But the pecially in L.A.-L.B. Local 13, fostered a that the other members of the NWGA are refused to reach an agreement “with its ILWU has to take the initiative. And there labor aristocracy. But now they are putting demanding – and they call this a “victory”! American workforce.” It contrasted this is reportedly sentiment brewing among the union itself at risk. Already a year ago, the ILWU tops to the “collective bargaining agreement longshore workers in Columbia River ports In spite of the rightward shift at the top, rammed through a worst-ever contract with American grain exporter TEMCO.” for such action. on a number of occasions, ILWU militants at the new EGT terminal in Longview, Yet American-owned Cargill/Temco has On March 13 Portland Local 8 voted a have been able to mobilize solidarity actions Washington. It gave up union jurisdiction one of the worst anti-union records in the motion calling on “all longshore locals to take overcoming the opposition and foot-dragging in the port, imposed 12-hour shifts and industry. The rally marched to the United immediate action against Mitsui operations resistance of the International leadership. The gave management and scabs the “right” Grain headquarters to deliver a copy of on the West Coast to defend the ILWU,” as continued on page 20

8 The Internationalist to the defense of the ILWU in this fight. And There Are No Neutrals In the Class War on the Docks that defense includes forthrightly opposing the capitulations and betrayals by the labor bureaucracy which sells out vital union gains Why We Defend the in the vain hope of an impossible “coopera- tion” with capital, endangering the workers organizations they preside over. Which Side Are You On, Occupy? ILWU and All Workers In objecting to the call to defend the ILWU, Little cites a number of betrayals …Including Against the Sellout Labor Bureaucracy by the ILWU tops. It should be obvious that defending a union, an organization or a movement is not the same as politi- cally supporting the outlook or policies of its leadership. When thousands of union members and workers joined in a pre-dawn mobilization in October 2011 to stop NYC mayor Bloomberg’s cops from evicting Occupy Wall Street, or when tens of thou- sands marched on the Port of Oakland that November to protest the mayor’s eviction of Occupy Oakland, that did not mean that they MarkDaMan PDX/YouTube necessarily agreed with the politics of the Occupy movement. We in the International- ist Group repeatedly defended OWS while strongly criticizing the bourgeois populism that was its ideological common denomina- tor. Likewise, it should be ABC to defend labor unions, which are workers’ first line of defense against the boss, despite the sellout policies of the leaderships who aid the em- ployers in controlling labor and blocking the road to the overthrow of capitalism. Little’s article grows out of a sharp dispute that took place among left, labor and community activists who came together at ILWU protests use of non-union labor at EGT plant then under construction in Longview, Washington, 3 June 2011. the end of November just as an ultimatum JANUARY 5 – In recent weeks, a showdown ing, but the grain bosses’ arrogance is already County miners’ song Which Side Are You from the NGHA bosses was about to expire has loomed on U.S. docks between the ship- provoking resistance: an entire shift report- On? is doubly true: on the West Coast and the threat of a lockout was looming. At ping bosses and port workers that has rattled edly walked out when they weren’t given a docks today, there are no neutrals. Yet in a public meeting on November 28, Little the capitalist ruling class. On the Atlantic and lunch break on a 12-hour shift. the midst of the Northwest grain battle, Oc- propounded his thesis that unions were Gulf Coasts, the International Longshore- The grain monopolies have been gear- cupy Portland activist Peter Little publishes institutions that sometimes did good and man’s Association (ILA) prepared to strike ing up for this battle for months, preparing an article, “One Year After the West Coast sometimes did bad and therefore it was container shipping on December 30 while the to assault one of the remaining strongholds Port Shutdown,” in CounterPunch (21-23 above all necessary to remain “independent” employers United States Maritime Alliance of union power. They hired a professional December) vociferously arguing against of the unions. A leaflet of the Port Working (USMX) threatened to lock out 14,500 ILA strikebreaking outfit, J.R. Gettier, which the call to defend the ILWU! Group appeared that made no mention of members. Over 100 leading business execu- reportedly put up “scores” of “replacement The workers in the ports, he writes, “can the fight over the grain contract, went on tives called upon President Barack Obama to workers” (scabs) in motels around the Port- choose for them- take “immediate action” to prevent a walkout land area. They built a new access road (scab selves whether this at all costs, including issuing an injunction alley?) into Portland’s main grain terminal struggle will be to

under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. At the last and secured military backing from Obama’s defend the union or Top: Pete Shaw. Bottom: J.R. Gettier website minute, the ILA and UMX reportedly struck Coast Guard, which declared a moving to fight the union to a “partial agreement” on container payments, “safety/security zone” around any grain defend their inter- and extended the contract for 30 days to nego- ship or terminal, with violators facing up to ests.” Hello? Fight tiate other outstanding issues including work 10-12 years jail time. While ILWU leaders the union? Little’s rules. Washington and Wall Street breathed a fiddled around with delaying tactics, union shameful pseudo- sigh of relief at the reprieve in the midst of the militants sought to prepare for a major class neutrality can only year-end bargaining between Democrats and battle. Now D-Day has arrived. Facing an aid the bosses. His Republicans over tax hikes and spending cuts implacable enemy, longshore and other port article shows no in the “fiscal cliff.” But the fight is not over. workers can prevail, by adopting a policy understanding of On the West Coast, the Pacific North- of unflinching class struggle and using the the nature of unions west Grain Handlers Association (PNGHA) key weapon in labor’s arsenal that is more as mass organiza- has been demanding a giveback contract from powerful than the union-busting bosses and tions of the work- the International Longshore and Warehouse their government: solidarity. ing class: like the Union (ILWU), including no less than 750 The fate of the ILWU is at stake in this liberals, the big changes which would effectively bypass the battle with the shadowy, price-fixing grain business press and union hiring hall, slash workers’ vital safety cartel. A year ago all eyes were on the bit- the labor bureau- protections and gut union power. This is a ter struggle against union-busting at the crats, he equates make-or-break battle for the ILWU, in which Longview, Washington Export Grain Termi- the unions with all labor has a vital stake. The shippers, who nal. After months of militant action by the the pro-capitalist in this case are the four giant companies that union ranks and facing the prospect of coast- leaders. The article monopolize the world grain trade, threatened wide mobilization by ILWUers and activists also passes over the a lockout. On December 21, the 3,000 af- of the Occupy movement against EGT, the whole context of fected ILWU workers in the Puget Sound union leadership caved under pressure from the class struggle (Seattle, Tacoma) and Columbia River basin the bosses and their government and signed pitting port work- (Portland, Vancouver) locals overwhelmingly a dangerously concessionary contract. At the ers against the sin- rejected the bosses’ “last, best and final con- time, when many on the left (and in Occupy) ister agribusiness/ tract offer” with 94% voting “no.” A week were hailing the “victory” at Longview we shipping giants. later, at 6 a.m. on December 27, Columbia warned that the other grain shippers would We say: All those Above: Columbia Grain set up separate access road at Grain, United Grain and LD Commodities soon demand the same concessions. That’s who stand with the Portland’s Terminal 5 in anticipation of scabs. Below: imposed their union-busting contract. The exactly what is happening now. At a time exploited and op- Professional strikebreakers of J.R. Gettier advertise an union leadership told members to keep work- like this, the old refrain from the Harlan pressed must come army of black-shirted scabs and thugs. March-April 2013 9 about “community control of our public Roger Werth/The Daily News [Longview] American capitalism. Although coming infrastructure” and referred only to workers’ from the outside, and despite the yelps “struggle for democracy in the workplace.” from the bosses and their kept media, Seeing that the vital question of defending from the Democrats and sellout labor the union against the grain bosses’ union- bureaucrats, the December 12 West Coast busting offensive was left out, we in the In- port blockade aided the workers’ class ternationalist Group put out our own leaflet, struggle against the exploiters.” “Bring Out Workers Power to Defend the –“Longshore Workers, Truckers: Shut the ILWU!” (reprinted in The Internationalist, Ports, Coast to Coast!”, The Internation- November-December 2012). alist (28 December 2011) This set off a furious response from We added that “the basic problem with Occupy activists, including a lengthy e-mail the December 12 port blockade is not that from Little (part of which is reproduced in super-radical adventurist-substitutionist the last section of his CounterPunch article). Occupiers ran roughshod over the unions, When he refers to “the language of ‘stand but rather that with their liberal/reformist/ with the ILWU in building mass picket populist outlook, Occupy non-leaders are lines’, and ‘Defend the ILWU and its historic too soft on the union bureaucracy.” gains’,” it is our leaflet he is attacking. IG The lack of a Marxist class perspective supporters answered with an e-mail laying colors the entire article, sometimes leading out why “In this battle, it is fundamental for to bizarre conclusions. Little’s argument for working-class militants and their support- “Why Ports, why the Pacific Northwest, why ers to stand four-square in defense of the Now?” is that more grain is being shipped union.” We explained that a labor union is a through the Northwest because “the Mis- working-class organization, even if is headed sissippi River is at the lowest stage of flow by a bunch of sellout misleaders. The union is in over 50 years,” and grain prices have the membership, not the bureaucrats in their shot up because of drought due to climate cushy chairs finagling deals with the bosses. change while grain companies are “ship- In fact, the bureaucracy is a parasitical petty- ping massive amounts of grain (wheat, bourgeois (middle-class) layer with different soy, corn) to China to fuel its artificially interests than the membership they claim to stimulated economy.” So should China, a represent. But supporters of the workers’ side bureaucratically deformed workers state, in the class struggle, we wrote, must under- suffer from an economic depression like stand that it is a duty of workers everywhere the capitalist world? And if last week’s to stand with the union against the bosses. Midwest snowstorm raises the level of the Mississippi, will that dampen the West Coast “That’s the class line. It’s fundamental to ILWU longshoremen protest scab labor, occupy EGT terminal, 11 July 2011. understand this. That’s why, even if you class struggle? This nutty anti-Communist disagree with the union leadership, even put it. Media accounts said workers carrying sociology, talking in sociologese of what meteorology explains nothing. About the if they commit abuses, a class-conscious baseball bats broke down gates, ‘overpower- “metric” to measure mobilizations by, and fact that employers are on a union-busting worker would never go to the bosses’ ing’ security guards, who cowered as 10,000 referring to the “institution of the ILWU.” tear nationwide, with lockouts at an all- government or the bosses’ courts against tons of grain were dumped on the tracks and In this view, women, immigrants, blacks, time high, not a word. Why not? Because the union. That’s why a class-conscious railroad cars disabled. In short: the workers the unemployed and unorganized, sexual anarcho-liberals refuse to defend the unions. worker would never cross a picket line.” were taking care of business. That morning minorities, etc., are separate constituencies That is the crux of the matter. One thing that is striking in Little’s more than 1,000 longshoremen refused to alongside the unions and other “institutions” Little is clueless about the class struggle. e-mail and article is the bloated sense of show up for work, shutting down the ports of within society, divided by varying degrees He writes that “The ‘Defend the ILWU,’ self-importance that ascribes to the Occupy Seattle, Tacoma and Vancouver, Washington of oppression and privilege. For Marxists, position will not likely rally the thousands in movement almost magical transformative as well as Portland, Oregon” (“Showdown the liberation of all sectors of the population Occupy,” which may be true, because many powers. He writes of the Occupy-called on the West Coast Docks: The Battle of oppressed by bourgeois society is bound up in the heavily petty-bourgeois Occupy move- December 2011 West Coast port blockade Longview,” The Internationalist, November with the working class, the only social force ment don’t understand the first thing about that “our presence in the ports transformed 2011). These action by port workers even with the power to bring down capitalism. The unions. He says “it is not the role of those of not only our sense of power and possibility, before Occupy existed had vastly greater contradictory character of the unions is not us who are not Longshore workers to decide but the sense of what was possible for the transformative power than a couple of hun- that they are “institutions” that sometimes do whether or not to defend the ILWU, nor is it workers there.” Or again: “Occupy the Ports dred radical youth showing up at the docks good or bad, but that these workers organiza- for us to decide when its time to strike or not shattered the stagnation of decades of union- to win victories for them. tions are chained to capitalism by a parasitic to strike.” What is that supposed to mean? If led struggles with small solidarity mobiliza- The vitally necessary struggle to raise petty-bourgeois bureaucracy. These are the scabs tried to cross an ILWU picket line in a tions.” Decades of stagnation?! What about revolutionary class consciousness will not treacherous misleaders so aptly described strike or lockout, or a picket line in support of the May Day 2008 strike against the war by be produced by some deus ex machina of by American Socialist Daniel De Leon as the ILWU, should defenders of labor say “it’s the ILWU that closed every port on the West outsiders who aren’t subject to “the inher- “the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class.” not up to us to decide, let the scabs decide Coast? Or the 1999 coast-wide shutdown ent limits of trade unions.” Those limits Little claims on the one hand that the for themselves”? Hell no. ILWU members demanding freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal? – of fighting a guerrilla war to defend the December 2011 West Coast port blockades and supporters would try to convince them, Granting that Occupy activists were “out- interests of labor under capitalism, as Karl were “led by Longshore workers” – which but failing that, they would stop them. Picket siders to the ports,” Little portrays this as a Marx put it – will be overcome when we is nonsense, only a handful of longshore lines mean don’t cross, period. They are col- virtue, declaring that “the movement at the have reached the stage of building workers workers were actively involved. He simul- lective actions by the workers, and they must gates of the factory transformed the possi- councils that can undertake revolutionary taneously asserts that Occupy “maintained be enforced. Ultimately, this liberal argument bilities within the factory in a way in which action. What undercuts labor struggle today a fierce independence of the union” – also a is about refusing to defend union picket lines the inherent limits of the trade union could is rather the stranglehold of a privileged distortion, unless one equates the union with on the grounds of “self-determination” for not.” He asks “whether victories can be won labor bureaucracy that chains the unions the bureaucracy (as he repeatedly does). everyone. for Port workers … which do not undermine politically to the capitalist system (in the As we pointed out last year, contrary to the Little writes of the port truckers, who unity or further divide the working class as U.S. through the Democratic Party) and sub- claims of the union tops who opposed the are largely immigrant and non-white, a whole,” and opines that longshore work- jugates them to the bourgeoisie’s anti-labor shutdown, it was successful where there was including in the Pacific Northwest many ers “if left to determine it themselves, will laws. You can’t sidestep that obstacle, as at least some support from ILWU members East Africans and South Asians. Yes, their inevitably find distorted answers.” Occupy pretends to do (sometimes hobnob- and a flop where there were few or no con- struggle to unionize has been shamefully What smug arrogance! It is almost as bing with the bureaucrats they will denounce tacts. Don’t get us wrong: against social- ignored and even stymied by the ILWU if the opening verse of the second stanza of tomorrow). It is necessary to drive out these democratic academic Cal Winslow, writing International. The bureaucracy has also fos- The Internationale – “we want no conde- labor fakers in order to defend the unions, in CounterPunch (5 December 2011), and tered exclusionary practices and chauvinist scending saviors” – were written expressly not destroy them. This requires a revolution- others who opposed the port blockade and attitudes in the ranks. These policies have for Occupy. He’s flat wrong, besides. Back ary vanguard fighting for a program of class covered for the bureaucracy screaming been opposed by militants in the union who in July 2011, ILWU supporters occupied struggle both within and outside the mass “substitutionism,” we wrote: have called to organize the port truckers ever the EGT terminal, reportedly ripping down organizations of the working class. “The fact that Occupy protesters, howev- since their unions were broken in the late fences and blocking grain trains. Also, That is something that Occupy with er contradictory their politics, are taking 1990s due to the deregulation policies of “before sunrise on September 8, some 800 its populist politics claiming to represent up the cause of labor should be greeted. the Democratic Clinton administration. At union supporters ‘stormed’ the new Export “the 99%” and “the people” cannot do. Pete Many who have never before been on last year’s May Day rally in Portland, ILWU Grain Terminal, as an AP dispatch and every Little, like many anarcho-liberals in Occupy, a demonstration are experiencing, ‘up Local 8 militant Jack Mulcahy passionately subsequent article in the big business press sees the world through the lens of bourgeois close and personal,’ the hard realities of argued that port truckers were key. But Little 10 The Internationalist recent decades. They det is a former labor relations official for the were prepared to fight employers’ Pacific Maritime Association! As to the end, and their we have written before, he was serving the steadfastness won sup- bosses then and he’s serving the bosses now. port from many NYC Sundet said of the EGT agreement, unionists. which he negotiated, that it was “key to The history of the standardization of the grain export industry formation of industrial on the West Coast, particularly with respect Internationalist photo unions in this coun- to labor costs,” and that this “brings stability try, and of the Interna- for everyone”! Now we are seeing what this tional Longshore and “standardization” and “stability” means: Warehouse Union in endless givebacks. Longshore militants are particular, also bears asking, where will it stop? When the ILWU this out. As we noted leaders, faced with the PNGHA’s threat of a in an earlier article on lockout, instructed the ranks to work under “The Left, Labor and the imposed contract, they earned praise Occupy” (The Interna- from the bourgeois media: “Calmer Heads tionalist, May 2012), at Prevail in Port of Portland Disputes” edito- the outset of the last big rialized The Oregonian (29 December). The depression in the early business press speculates that the union may 1930s, unions were in intend to file an unfair labor practices suit even worse shape than against the employers before the National ILWU contingent in San Francisco May Day march in conjunction with West Coast port they are now. At the Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Far from shutdown against war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. First-ever strike by U.S. time that they launched being “smart tactics,” all such maneuvers unions against U.S. imperialist war was pushed through over resistance from union tops. the 1934 Big Strike that by the ILWU’s legal beagles assume that argues that organizing port truckers “means existing institutions of domination, be they led to the founding of the ILWU, West the NLRB, or the courts, or the Labor De- independence from the union itself, and it unions, foundations, or parties themselves Coast longshoremen were part of the ILA, partment are somehow favorable or at least may even mean a struggle against the union” and to develop new forms of organization.” whose president Joe Ryan was every bit as neutral, whereas they are all part of the capi- in the name of “unified struggles.” Struggle Likewise, supporters of the Seattle-based reactionary, pro-capitalist and submissive to talist state whose job is to subjugate labor. against the ILWU? If it weren’t for union anarchist Black Orchid Collective argue the bourgeoisie’s labor laws as any union bu- The union tops may offer terms such power on the docks, port truckers would that “Unions play a role in maintaining labor reaucrat today. San Francisco dock workers, as a purported deal with Temco (owned by find it a hell of a lot harder to unionize. In power as a commodity and in ensuring some led by supporters of the Communist Party, Cargill). But this would be based on huge fact, in May 2008 ILWU militants who led level of discipline at the workplace” (BOC were able to overcome the resistance of the concessions to the shippers. Yet the grain the West Coast port strike against the war website, 29 February 2012). Little, the BOC sellout leadership by massively organizing cartel is making money hand over fist. If worked together with port truckers who held and other Occupy “anti-capitalists” ascribe the ranks and refusing to bow down to cops, the PNGHA companies claim they are at a work stoppage, mainly of Sikh and Latino this to the nature of unions, not to the poli- courts and capitalist politicians. When San a competitive disadvantage because of the drivers, four days later in Oakland. cies of the pro-capitalist leadership. Francisco police attacked strikers on July 5, concessions granted to EGT (as we and In polemicizing against the call to To be sure, not everyone in what is left “Bloody Thursday,” killing two strikers and militant longshoremen warned they would), defend the ILWU, Little cites the EGT of the Occupy movement is necessarily anti- a strike supporter, the workers’ response was the ILWU could “level the playing field” by concessionary contract as an example of union, nor are many anarcho-syndicalists in a general strike that shut down S.F. striking EGT: there are plenty of health and where unions are bad. He doesn’t mention the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), The situation was similar in the 1934 safety violations to justify a walkout. But that we and longshoremen who defend the for example. On the other hand, the populist Minneapolis Teamsters strike and Toledo the union bureaucracy plays by the bosses’ ILWU against the grain bosses denounced pot pourri of Occupy also contains downright Auto-Lite strike, which together with S.F. rules, which means they are guaranteed to this sellout while Occupy (echoing the pro-capitalist elements, who have been promi- dock workers laid the basis for the Congress lose – the only question is by how much. bureaucrats) initially hailed it as a victory! nent in New York. Occupy Sandy, for exam- of Industrial Organizations (CIO) soon after. Faced with intransigent shippers, the two (See “Occupy and ILWU Declare Victory as ple, worked together with the NYC mayor’s All three strikes faced sabotage by union bu- U.S. longshore unions should join hands to Contract Finalized with EGT” portlandoc- office, the New York Police Department and reaucrats, all three were met by massive state prepare a powerful nationwide ILA-ILWU cupier.org, 14 February 2012). Some “fierce the National Guard during its recent relief ef- repression, and all three won because they dock strike against union-busting. Strike independence” from the union that was! If forts (see “Class, Race and Hurricane Sandy,” were led by “reds.” Of course, Communist committees should be elected to organize an those in Occupy who oppose defending the The Internationalist, November-December Party supporters in the ILWU soon dropped all-out struggle, other unions should be ap- unions against the grain cartel are ultralefts, 2012). But the politics put forward in Little’s their militancy, supporting Roosevelt and the pealed to for support, efforts should be made they are pretty opportunist ones. Little also CounterPunch article and by anarchists and Democrats in the name of the “popular front.” to enlist backing from and aid port truckers, cites the disruption of the 6 January 2012 semi-anarchists in the Portland Ports Working The Trotskyists who led the Minneapolis approaches should be made to black, Latino, Seattle forum in solidarity with Longview Group, while posing as ultra-left, if actually truckers faced down the arch-conservative Asian and white working-class communi- longshore by ILWU bureaucrats and carried out would aid the employers who are Teamsters bureaucracy led by Dan Tobin, but ties. That’s how to win a real class battle. hangers-on. In contrast to the International hell-bent on destroying ILWU union power on were later jailed by the government (egged We can talk until we’re blue in the face Socialist Organization, Socialist Workers the waterfront. And by blaming sellouts on the on by the CP) for their effective organizing about how longshore workers did just that Party, Spartacist League and others who nature of unions they are letting the bureau- of over-the-road drivers and their revolution- and won in ’34, and no doubt many will excused or even supported this attack on crats off the hook. These are the fundamental ary opposition to the second U.S. imperialist respond: that was then, and this is now. But workers democracy, we denounced it. class realities in this fight. world war. After WWII, the CIO unions were what was key then and what’s lacking now is Moreover, in the Internationalist video of Yes, as the Communist International purged of communists with the aid of the Taft- class-struggle leadership. Our job, and that that attack (which Little’s article links to) under Lenin and Trotsky noted, there will Hartley “slave labor” law which also outlawed of any who seriously intend to sweep away you can see the five ILWUers on the stage come a time during a revolutionary upsurge the closed shop, secondary boycotts and other capitalism, is to build that leadership. That and many in the audience chanting “ILWU, when the limits of trade unions will be a fet- powerful labor tactics. is a political fight, for the independence of ILWU,” defending the union against the ter that must be burst by forming workplace- Unlike most of labor officialdom, the the union from the capitalist state and the bureaucratic disrupters. level workers committees and regional ILWU resisted Taft-Hartley, defended the capitalist parties, and for a workers party workers councils as the organizational form union hiring hall and successfully chal- that fights for a workers government. Class-Struggle Trade Unionism for carrying out workers revolution. But to lenged the anti-communist exclusion clause In his article and earlier e-mail, Pete As we wrote in our recent leaflet, “This pretend that the U.S. today is even remotely in the courts. But even as the government Little asked rhetorically, “If workers in is class war: there are no neutrals here.” near such a level of struggle is a fantasy, or repeatedly tried to deport ILWU leader the grain elevator wildcat and the ILWU When Pete Little calls for “independence a cynical ploy. But, some may legitimately Harry Bridges, he and the union bureaucracy withholds support and orders them to re- from the union” and “a struggle against ask, is it possible to struggle inside the he headed negotiated “mechanization and turn to work – relative to what occurred in the union,” saying workers may have to unions for revolutionary, class-struggle modernization” contracts that undercut the Longview – will we still defend the ILWU?” “fight the union,” he places himself on the policies given the entrenched pro-capitalist union’s power. Still, the ILWU today is a The answer of any class-conscious worker side of the bosses. His are not off-hand bureaucracy and the string of defeats? We in far cry from what it was in the past, with the must be emphatically “yes!” If port workers remarks but reflect a program which labels the Internationalist Group answer, “yes.” We top leadership now following policies little are being sold down the Columbia River, unions institutions of capitalist domination. point to the example the immigrant workers different from other “business unionists.” If in standing with those who would fight Speaking at the 2007 U.S. Social Forum at the Hot and Crusty bakery in New York under pressure from the ranks, top leaders we defend the ILWU against the shippers – a confab of foundation-financed NGOs City who after being locked out and spend- like ILWU president Bob McEllrath take a and against the misleaders whose betrayals (“non-governmental organizations”) with ing 55 days on the picket line were able to stand and are arrested for blocking trains to jeopardize the union. Refusing to defend some leftists tagging along – Little (then win a union contract with a union hiring stop EGT union-busting, the union lawyers the ILWU in this hour of mortal danger can with the now-defunct Bring the Ruckus) hall, something unheard of in the restaurant are hard at work to prevent a repeat. And only aid the union-busting bosses and their called for “making a full break with the industry and exceedingly rare anywhere in meanwhile, Coast committeeman Leal Sun- labor lieutenants. n March-April 2013 11 Hot and Crusty Workers’ Victory Celebration A Rousing Success On February 16, a victory party and roñeros, a ska-punk band from Brooklyn, benefit was held for the Hot and Crusty sang about immigrant workers’ struggles, workers’ triumphant unionization campaign. international class struggle and the fight After a year-long effort and 55 days on the against capitalism. ATU 1181 members picket line, these courageous immigrant Dennis Jackson and Michelle Sylvester workers won a solid labor victory, including (Honey Boy and Honey Girl) performed a union hiring hall. (See “Hot and Crusty their school bus strike anthem “EPP” (about Workers Win with Groundbreaking Con- the fight for “employee protection provi- tract,” The Internationalist, November-De- sions”) and other songs. The Felicito Tapia cember 2012). Held at the Brecht Forum in Sonido Montana disk jockey crew pitched downtown Manhattan, the party – sponsored in, and documentary filmmakers Rachel by the Hot and Crusty Workers Association, Lears and Robin Blotnick previewed scenes the Laundry Workers Center and the Hot and from their documentary on the Hot and Crusty Workers Solidarity Committee – was Crusty struggle. a big success. The party concluded with Hot and Over 100 supporters joined Hot and Crusty workers and their supporters joining Crusty workers at the celebration, includ- to sing the “Corrido de Hot and Crusty,” an ing a group of Amalgamated Transit Union epic ballad in the traditional Mexican style (ATU) Local 1181 school bus workers, recounting the workers’ long struggle and whose month-long strike had just been eventual triumph. Highlighting the need ended, as well as activists from AFSCME and potential to organize the unorganized, DC 37, Transport Workers Union Local particularly super-exploited immigrant 100, the Immigrant Workers Justice and workers, the victory has already begun to 99 Pickets groups, the Professional Staff inspire others in New York’s food industry Congress-CUNY and other labor and com- (like those in midtown Manhattan’s Dishes Rosanna Rodríguez of the Laundry Workers Center speaks along with munity organizations. The Internationalist restaurant, who recently launched a cam- Mahoma López of the Hot and Crusty Workers Association. Group, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and paign) with its powerful example. n Class Struggle Education Workers partici- After greetings from organizers of the Right: Honey pated very actively in building and helping victorious campaign, live music and dancing Boy and Honey staff the event. were a highlight of the event. Los Skar- Girl sing their ATU strike song, “EPP.” Hot and Crusty Calendar 2013 Below: the Orquesta Get Yours Today Skarroñeros playing “Bella Ciao.” A Spanish- language 2013 calendar with more than a dozen beautiful photos of the 55 days of picketing in which immigrant workers won union recognition and a ground- breaking contact. All proceeds go to the Hot and Crusty Workers Association.

$10 (plus $1 postage)

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12 The Internationalist Labor Misleaders Bank on Democrats’ Flim-flam The Betrayal of the NYC School Bus Strike Needed: A Class-Struggle Union Leadership Fighting for a Workers Party On Friday, February 15, the month-long York Democratic governor Cuomo vetoed a strike by the 8,100 school bus drivers and ma- bill that would have guaranteed EPPs. But

trons of Amalgamated Transit Union Local in fact the letter was requested by the ATU Internationalist photo 1181 was called off by the union leadership. International in order to give the union tops There was no vote by the membership – the what amounted to a face-saving way to call decision was announced in a 45-minute tele- off the strike. The ranks did not buckle, the conference call. The next day the labor-hating leaders did. They had no program to win the New York Post crowed, “Union Strike Bus- battle, so they threw in the towel. ted.” The liberal New York Times proclaimed When they went back to work the fol- the outcome a “Win for New York Mayor” lowing Wednesday, February 20, more than Michael Bloomberg, who issued a statement 300 strikers were told their jobs were gone. gloating that “special interests” – which is When we arrived at the Reliant yard on how the capitalists and their politicians refer Zerega Avenue in the Bronx at 5:15 a.m. that to unions – “have never had less power than morning, drivers and matrons were being they do today.” Racist right-wingers on the refused entry by management, which said Internet blasted the largely black and Latino it had hired 120 “replacement workers,” or strikers as “greedy union thugs.” scabs. Cops (and even a couple of “white Although relieved to be earning a pay- shirts”) had been called in against the angry check again after weeks of watching bills workers, but eventually the union got the pile up, many strikers were angry about company to back off. In Red Hook, Joey being sent back to work with empty hands. Fazzia of Boro Wide Buses announced the ATU leaders said in “suspending” the strike company had shut down and all hundred- they were honoring the request of the five plus matrons were out of a job. Most but not Democratic mayoral candidates who signed all are now back. However, citywide more a joint letter calling on workers to return to than 100 strikers are still fired, particularly their jobs in exchange for a pledge to “revisit at Rainbow/All American in Astoria. The ATU strikers kept up fighting spirit throughout. On February 14, the day before the school bus transportation system and union’s response has been to threaten legal union tops called off the strike, hundreds turned out to jeer Bloomberg. contracts if elected.” (Four of the five call- action for unfair labor practices. From the first day of the strike, we not prepared to wage class war – and didn’t off-the-strike Democrats were previously The school bus strike was the biggest called in leaflets, on picket signs, and in even know how to when it had to – this is endorsed by the Working Families Party.) strike in New York City since the 2005 tran- a special tabloid strike supplement of The a meaningless cliché. For union militants, Local 1181 president Michael Cordiello sit strike, which for three days brought traf- Internationalist, close to 3,000 copies of both in the ATU and elsewhere, it underlines said the letter gave him “great confidence” fic in Manhattan to a virtual standstill. The which were distributed to strikers, to “Mobi- the need to draw the lessons of this strike, that the next mayor would be “far more ATU strikers stuck it out in the bitter cold, in lize Labor’s Power to Win NYC School Bus in order to prepare a battle plan for victory sympathetic.” But many bus workers The isolated areas of the city, for weeks. Picket Strike.” But while 5,000+ ATU members in the future. The key for that is a struggle Internationalist spoke with said they didn’t lines stayed strong, and two-thirds of the came out for the February 10 march over the within the mass organizations of labor for a trust the Democrats one bit. bus routes were shut down (the other third Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall, almost none revolutionary program to wage and win all- The candidates made sympathetic were non-union or Teamsters Local 584, of the rest of labor did. Delegations ranged out class war, which is what we are facing. noises, but they pointedly did not pledge to which shamefully did not go out). But the from a handful to less than 50 for the UFT Michael Bloomberg knows he is wag- uphold or restore the Employee Protection strikers could not by themselves shut down (with a membership of over 100,000 active ing a war on labor, and he is prepared to go Provisions (EPPs), the central issue in the the schools or seriously affect commerce in school personnel in the city). As we noted, to the limit. He cynically used special needs strike. Relying on the Democrats will not the city – that required solidarity action by the march was deliberately held on a Sunday children as pawns, reveling in the hardship defend union gains – they represent the the rest of labor, the United Federation of so it couldn’t possibly disrupt anything, and families were facing, in order to blame the interests of Wall Street and corporate bosses Teachers first and foremost, and that didn’t was addressed by a parade of Democratic union. Luckily most parents weren’t taken in no less than do the Republicans. Currently, happen. The UFT, Central Labor Council politicians, who a few days later issued the by the lies of the haughty billionaire mayor, Democratic president Obama is leading the and the rest of labor officialdom left the requested back-to-work letter. who during Hurricane Sandy told New union-busting attack on teachers, while New strikers twisting in the wind. It was all part of Operation End the Yorkers to kick back and watch TV (not so Strike. In the aftermath, a leaflet by Class easy when you have no power). Bloomberg Struggle Education Workers (“Who Knifed represents the enemy, the Wall Street finan- NYC School Bus Strikers in the Back?”) ciers and corporate moguls who live off the that was distributed to hundreds of return- wealth that working people produce. The ing strikers on February 16 stated: “It would obstacle we face in fighting them is the labor have taken the combined determination of misleaders, who religiously follow the capi- the whole NYC labor movement to break talist laws and support the capitalist parties. Bloomberg’s union-busting. But labor They’re playing softball when Bloomberg Internationalist photo leaders didn’t ‘walk the walk,’ they barely & Co. are playing hardball. But as history mumbled the talk.” While “salut[ing] school has shown over and over, if you play by the bus drivers and matrons whose brave month- bosses’ rules you’re sure to lose. long strike inspired us all,” the CSEW V.I. Lenin referred to strikes as a leaflet warned that “Labor tops’ reliance on “school of war” – class war. So what are Democrats leads to defeats” and concluded: the lessons to be learned here? First of all, “Victory requires a new, class-struggle lead- said the Russian revolutionary leader, “a ership and a workers party.” strike teaches workers to understand what The NYC school bus strike was a signal the strength of the employers and what event for labor. Instead of just lying down the strength of the workers consists in.” and taking it, as so many unions have done, Bloomberg and his class have all the money, workers were fighting back. The defeat of the obviously, but it is the workers who make strike is a bitter pill for the workers to swal- the system run. Second, a strike “opens the Internationalist contingent in February 10 march on City Hall. ATU leaders low. Yet while the battle was lost, the war is eyes of the workers to the nature, not only of embraced Democrats, heading their “request” to end strike. not over. For the union leadership, which was the capitalists, but of the government and the March-April 2013 13 laws as well.” So in the school bus strike we between the bosses and the workers. They not only saw the police penning in strikers, support the capitalist parties and imperial- we saw the mayor lying about a 2011 court A Test for the Left ist wars. The bureaucrats are an obstacle to decision, calling the strike illegal, and then The NYC school bus strike was also a workers’ struggle, which must be swept out blithely ignoring an NLRB ruling that the test for the left which claims to support the in order to win; the bosses are the enemy. strike was legal. For the bosses, “the law” is cause of labor. The Internationalist Group, Failing to understand this crucial difference just an instrument of their class rule. Class Struggle Education Workers and would spell defeat for workers. The task To win, it was necessary to understand CUNY Internationalist Clubs were active that faces us is not to get rid of the unions, that this was no isolated strike. School bus in support of the strikers from the start. but to oust the bureaucrats, break with the workers were up against a concerted union- We leafleted and went in groups to picket Democrats and all capitalist parties, and busting drive by the capitalist rulers nation- lines almost daily in Brooklyn, Queens and build a class-struggle leadership fighting for ally and internationally. It was not just over the Bronx. The CSEW held a forum on the a workers party on a program for a genuine dollars and cents, at stake were workers’ strike in late January where striking driv- workers government that can put an end to jobs. If Bloomberg wins, bus drivers’ pay ers and affected parents spoke, along with the capitalist system of war, racism and pov- will likely be cut in half (to the starting wage representatives of ATU Local 1181, TWU erty and open the road to a socialist society n of $14.50 an hour), hours reduced to part- Local 100 and the IG. We distributed thou- of abundance for all. time (as is already the case for ATU 1181 sands of copies of a strike supplement to The members on Long Island) and everyone’s Internationalist and marched in a contingent Wildcat? benefits slashed to the bone. It’s impossible over the Brooklyn Bridge on February 10. We saw on the Internet a flyer by a to get by on that, much less retire with dig- Our focus throughout was on mobilizing the semi-anarchist group, Fire Next Time, nity, in this most expensive city in the U.S. power of NYC workers in action, because titled “Flashpoint 1979: Wildcats, Workers’ It’s not just that the bosses are “destroying it was clear from the outset that bus drivers Power and Lessons for Today” (22 Janu- the middle class,” as the labor tops say. The and matrons couldn’t win on their own. ary). The leaflet argues that the 1979 school war on the unions aims at impoverishing all For the most part, however, not only did What’s disgusting? Union-busting! bus strike was a “wildcat” (unauthorized) workers. This is a battle for survival. NYC unions not bring out their hundreds of School bus strikers needed power strike and that’s why it won. But although The bus drivers and matrons were ready thousands of members, most socialist groups of NYC unions to win. But not only the papers referred to it as a “wildcat,” the and willing to fight. Even a day before the were also AWOL, nowhere to be seen. was organized labor MIA, most of the ’79 strike wasn’t an initiative of rank-and- strike was called off, hundreds turned out Teachers were the most directly affected socialist left was AWOL as well. file workers independent of and against the to jeer the mayor at his “state of the city” by the strike, and the UFT leadership predict- to Improve School Transportation (PIST), and union leadership. The ATU tops claimed speech at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn. ably cold-shouldered the strikers, despite bringing supporters from the Boston school the walkout wasn’t officially sanctioned, But the union leaders went about it as if this repeated efforts by a delegate who is active bus drivers union (USW Local 8751) to a but this was just a convenient fiction, as was the same old same old. They begged in the CSEW to get the union to act. But the February 2 caravan and rally at Zerega Avenue was its later pro forma call on strikers to Bloomberg to join the talks, to delay bids reformist opposition inside the UFT also did in the Bronx. A wrap-up article, “Lessons of comply with a back-to-work court order. on bus routes, they offered to help cut costs, next to nothing. The International Socialist the NYC school bus strike: Was it worth it?” Union officials led the bargaining through- they sought support from “elected officials,” Organization published an account, “A Bit- (Workers World, 7 March) is basically an out. In fact, as the New York Times (27 they asked for mediation, to no avail. They ter Setback for NYC School Bus Drivers” apology for the ATU leadership, with a pro February 1979) wrote: made no attempt to stop scab buses or to (Socialist Worker, 19 February), which was forma criticism of the Democrats, saying that “Both the union and the major bus picket out the Teamster Local 584 com- breathtaking in its sheer arrogance. The article the whole experience “lays the basis for the company – Varsity Transit … – say they panies. OMG, that would be a “secondary stated, “It’s unfortunate that Local 1181 didn’t next stage of the struggle.” This kind of sugar- boycott” under the slave-labor Taft-Hartley have not sanctioned the wildcat strike. reach out to the Movement Of Rank-and-file coating can only disorient strikers who are But both have been in sympathy with the law, which they wouldn’t dare defy. Above Educators (MORE) within the UFT.” A typical seeking to lay the basis for winning next time all, they didn’t seek solidarity action by striking drivers….” response of would-be bureaucrats: We didn’t by understanding what went wrong this time. What was true was there was plenty of teachers, students, parents, transit workers do anything because no one asked us to. On the other hand, the World Socialist militant action by strikers in the face of legal and all NYC unions to shut the city down. But on top of the arrogance we get Web Site of the Socialist Equality Party threats and relentless union-bashing propa- That is what it would take to win. mendacity, which is a fancy word for lying. positively encourages and feeds on demor- ganda from the media and repulsive racist In the face of this severe setback, there The article states: “MORE was eventually alization as a result of the defeat of the mayor Ed Koch. As Workers Vanguard (No. will inevitably be some demoralization able to push the UFT to publicly support the strike. The SEP is a dubious outfit of anti- 226, 2 March 1979) wrote at the time, when among strikers who fought hard and have bus workers in the strike’s waning days....” union, reformist political bandits. Dubious, it was the voice of revolutionary Trotskyism: nothing to show for it. Union militants Nonsense. MORE didn’t put the heat on the because its main leader is the owner of a “At this point many unions, faced with know that things would be even worse if UFT tops. Some phone calls to UFT officials non-union (scab) printing plant in Michigan. tear-jerking stories of home-bound they hadn’t fought, and workers gained a lot don’t amount to anything (we did that too, Anti-union, because they actively try to wheelchair-confined children, would have of experience during the strike, the first by but also went to the executive board and put get workers to leave unions, and side with buckled under. But the Amalgamated NYC school bus workers since 1979 . But forward a motion in the delegate assembly employers in telling workers not to vote for Transit Union Locals 1181 and 1061 in order to prevail the next time around, the calling for a mass rally). Aside from a token unions in representation elections. Reform- refused to budge.” key is leadership. The present local leaders presence of a few caucus members who ists, because they pretend that the aim of When Koch started his Operation Kiddie are mostly the continuation of the previous acted honorably, MORE was MIA. Barely a workers government should be “ending Lift, at first trying to corral city chauffeurs regime that the feds went after for mob ties. a handful of its supporters showed up at the rule of the financial oligarchy and the to drive kids to school, the ATU got the There have been opposition groups in 1181 the February 10 march, and in the one case reorganization of economic life to meet chauffeurs’ union (DC 37) to refuse. Koch before, such as Members for Change, which where MORE put out a call to join the picket human needs, not private profit” (WSWS, then used prison vans and some buses from won several positions and almost took the line at the DOE, almost none of them even 18 February). What’s needed is not simply Long Island, whose tires were soon slashed. local presidency in 2009, backed by many bothered to show up. “reorganizing economic life” to sideline the Mythologizing wildcat strikes and Haitian and Hispanic drivers and matrons The Progressive Labor Party, to its bankers but a socialist revolution. “direct action,” as many anarchists and syn- who make up 70 percent of the membership. credit, did show up on the picket lines The SEP writes (WSWS, 23 February) dicalists do, is part of a broader program of But a more representative leadership with some students on several occasions. that in this strike, “The union itself was counterposing the spontaneous conscious- running on a program of union democracy Naturally, PL did it in their Stalinist fash- fighting for interests that were separate and ness of rank-and-file workers to the struggle will not in itself be sufficient to defeat a ion, ordering students not to take copies of hostile to those of ordinary workers.” This for revolutionary leadership. In particular powerful opponent in a knock-down, drag- The Internationalist and making them give is a fundamental falsehood. Like the media circumstances, when the membership is sol- out fight. In fact, groups like the “Association the paper back. Challenge (13 February) and the union leaders themselves, they idly united against a hated union leadership for Union Democracy” have played a sinister also crudely removed the “Internationalist equate the union with the bureaucracy that in cahoots with the bosses (as with South role over the years by tying union opposition Group” signature from a sign in its front sits atop it and feeds off it. Yet the basis of African miners last August), a wildcat strike groups to the bosses’ government, far and page photo. You can’t teach old Stalinists the union is the membership, and the ranks can succeed. Most wildcat walkouts lose, away the biggest enemy of the working class. new tricks. Even as Challenge poses as a of drivers and matrons were out there on however, and the toll in lost jobs can be high. The key lesson of the strike must be the need “revolutionary communist” newspaper, it the picket line desperately fighting for their What was key in the 1979 NYC school bus to build a class-struggle leadership to fight for has nothing in common with Lenin’s Prav- interests. When they chanted “ATU 1181” strike is that the strikers courageously stood total independence from the capitalist state da, which means “truth.” PL’s opportunist they were referring to themselves. The union their ground and repeatedly defied the cops, and the capitalist parties. So long as labor is twists and turns can be mind-boggling, tops reflected different interests and a dif- courts and capitalist politicians. That kind of tied to the Democrats, it is bound to lose. We calling to “actively participate in Obama’s ferent agenda not in calling the strike but determination and a class-struggle program need a fighting workers party, and we need campaign” only to turn around and label in calling it off. and leadership to fight the capitalist rulers it now. It’s up to us, to those working people his policies “fascist.” They figure no one The labor bureaucracy, what American politically, “connecting the dots” between and our class allies among the oppressed will remember. socialist Daniel DeLeon called the “labor union-busting attacks here and imperialist who have drawn the lessons of past defeats, Workers World Party’s intervention in lieutenants of the capitalist class,” is a con- wars – and the war on workers around the to lead the way. n the strike was mainly in supporting Parents tradictory layer that seeks to act as a buffer globe – is urgently needed today. n 14 The Internationalist Lincoln, Lincoln, and the Abolition of Slavery Lincoln, the movie, was billed as relentless fighter for enlisting black soldiers Hollywood’s Great Movie of the season. for the Union army, many have asked. It had everything that the motion picture Where indeed? It is almost impossible moguls love: an illustrious director (Steven to tell the story of the events leading up to Spielberg), a renowned scriptwriter (Tony the passage of the 13th Amendment abol- Kushner), an accomplished lead actor ishing slavery and involuntary servitude (Daniel Day-Lewis) who gave a sterling without referring to Douglass. In a reveal- performance (and looked like Lincoln’s ing interview with Bill Moyers on PBS double), plus historical heft and plenty (21 December 2012), Kushner justifies the of flag-waving paeans to American “de- absence of important black characters in mocracy.” But in the end, it lost out in the the film by disingenuously arguing that Academy Awards to two flicks lauding the “Lincoln didn’t know any black people.” dirty work of the CIA: Argo (anti-Iran) and Yet Lincoln met twice with Douglass, first Zero Dark Thirty, which celebrates torture in 1863 where they talked of equal treatment and the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. for black soldiers, and again in 1864, when The Academy wants its patriotic gore to be the foremost African American champion crude and contemporary these days. of abolishing slavery sought assurances Lincoln has been called a history lesson that emancipation would not be sacrificed in film by various reviewers, and the movie in any peace negotiations. certainly comes off that way. Dealing with Answering Moyer’s reference to “some Matthew Brody/National Portrait Gallery; David James/DreamWorks II the formal abolition of slavery, it was timed criticism that the film presents blacks simply to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Abraham Lincoln and actor Daniel Day-Lewis as faithful servants waiting for white males Emancipation Proclamation. The problem is even within that constrained framework, could have called a special session of the new to liberate them,” Kushner elaborated: that history is a casualty of war in Lincoln. little sense is given that slavery was being Congress in March, in which the Republicans “I don’t accept the idea that the only At bottom, the film is a political tract billing destroyed in a great war outside the halls would have had a two-thirds majority. And thing to tell about emancipation is that the United States as an eternal beacon of of Congress. In order to sell its message so on and so forth. the victims of oppression are always about the wonderfulness of compromise The overriding concern to get bipar- freedom, and hailing Obama-style liberal- the authors of their own emancipation in politics, and “surrendering” some of the tisan support is Kushner’s, not Lincoln’s, ism and compromise. Lincoln is really all because it’s not the case. Frequently “romance of revolution,” the film engages and it is linked to his virulent denunciation about Obama, whom screenwriter Kushner people that are severely put upon and described as “Lincolnian” for giving up the severely oppressed don’t have the means. in a string of lies and distortions. of Radical Reconstruction. Since concilia- “public option” in order to enact the “afford- They’re ordinary people and they don’t The movie invents dissension among tion is wonderful, Kushner explained in an able health care” act, a huge cash giveaway have the means to rise up and destroy it the Republicans about the amendment which interview with National Public Radio (15 to the health insurance companies. on their own….” did not exist. In reality, the party was united November 2012): Barack Obama is no 21st-century Abra- Lincoln the movie deliberately excludes the behind this measure and pushed Lincoln to “The inability to forgive and to reconcile 2 ham Lincoln, but even less so was Lincoln role of blacks in the struggle to crush the slave champion it. According to the film, Lincoln with the South in a really decent and hu- a 19th-century Obama, as portrayed in the system. Showing Frederick Douglass would was in “a race against time” to push this mea- mane way, without any question, was one of the causes of the kind of resentment and film, intent on compromising to achieve the have made it harder to ignore the 200,000 sure through before the end of the war, when perpetuation of re-alienation and bitterness will-o’-the-wisp of bipartisanship. Works of black soldiers who signed up to fight against the returning Southern states would attempt that led to the quote-unquote ‘noble cause,’ art often take liberties with historical details to block it. Again, there is no evidence for the slavocracy – and whose contribution was and the rise of the Klan and Southern in order to dramatize a point, but the impor- termed “indispensable” to Union victory and this. It is not even true that it was vital that the lame duck Congress meet in January 1865. If self-protection societies. The abuse of tant historical inaccuracies in Lincoln go to emancipation by Lincoln the man – as well as the South after they were defeated was it had failed to ratify the amendment, Lincoln the heart of its message. Most striking is the the more than 50,000 among them who gave a catastrophe, and helped lead to just un- near total absence of African Americans, their lives on the battlefield or in Confederate 2 James Oakes – a professor of history at the imaginable, untellable human suffering.” except for a handful in peripheral roles, captivity in this cause. City University of New York and author of Outrageous! The Reconstruction period, and in particular of black slaves fighting for Lincoln is a narrowly-focused film. Slavery and Freedom (1990) and most recently, when the South was under military occupa- 1 freedom from bondage. “Where was Fred- It is not even about Lincoln so much as Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery tion and former Confederate officials and of- in the United States, 1861-1865 [2012] – com- erick Douglass,” the black abolitionist and about the politicking behind the passage of ficers were deprived of political rights while the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, mented: “Most troubling of all is the fabrica- 1 Northwestern University associate professor tion of a division among Republicans over the the mass of former slaves were enfranchised, which dragged on from February 1864 until of history Kate Masur objected in the New York Thirteenth Amendment. There was no such was one of the few interludes in the history Times (12 November 2012) that “Mr. Spiel- January 1865. The film pretends that the division. From the moment their party settled of American capitalism when there was a berg’s ‘Lincoln’ helps perpetuate the notion that abolition of slavery was a formalistic legal on the amendment in early 1864, they formed a semblance of democracy for the oppressed. African Americans have offered little of sub- process, initiated by Lincoln and carried solid, virtually unbroken bloc in support of it” The problem with Radical Reconstruc- stance to their own liberation.” out by the all-white U.S. Congress. But (PSC Clarion, February 2013). tion was not that it was too hard on the former slave masters, but not hard enough. The Missing from Hollywood’s Lincoln plantations should have been expropriated and the land handed over to the former slaves. Kushner’s attack on Reconstruction is an outrageous excusing of the rise of Jim Crow segregation. “Southern self-protection societ- ies” were night-riders for white supremacy, sowing terror. Such claims are not even Gone with the Wind, Hollywood’s nostalgia for the slavocracy of the Old South as the plantations were burning, but more Birth of Nation, D.W. Griffith’s glorification of the KKK lynchers (which was praised by another Democrat, Woodrow Wilson). For shame! Abraham Lincoln indeed played a revolutionary role in the U.S. Civil War, one of the most revolutionary events of the 19th century. But the ruling-class figure as agent of salvation is a recurring theme in Smithsonian, Boston Athenaeum, New-York Historical Society Spielberg’s political films. Schindler’s List Heroic fighters for the abolition of slavery: Harriet Tubman, John Brown and Frederick Douglass. continued on page 19 March-April 2013 15 The Emancipation Proclamation: Promise and Betrayal The 150th anniversary of the Emanci- Millions of Americans are taught the pation Proclamation – by which President fiction that Lincoln abolished slavery with a Abraham Lincoln unilaterally freed more stroke of the pen. That, of course, leaves out three million slaves in the Confederacy on 1 the fundamental issue – the Civil War – which January 1863 – went by with as little public made slave emancipation necessary for North- acknowledgement as possible this year. This ern victory. It is true that the Proclamation was to be expected. In his first inaugural exempted the slaves in the Border States such speech, Barack Obama had managed to avoid as Kentucky which were not in open rebellion mentioning “dangerous” topics such as race, and even some major slaveholding centers racism, integration or civil rights in any way, occupied by the Union such as New Orleans. shape or form. His second inaugural address, Yet this Proclamation and the enrolling of this past January, was larded with snippets 180,000 ex-slaves in the Union army marked from Lincoln and Martin Luther King. the turning point, after which the slaveocracy But Obama evoked the Civil War only was doomed – not because of a perfect law but to declare: “We made ourselves anew, and as part of a revolutionary struggle. vowed to move forward together.” Really? Steven Spielberg’s contribution to the What about lynching and Jim Crow segrega- The promise: “thenceforth, and forever, free.” But soon subjected to anti-revolutionary rewriting of American tion? One hundred years after the Proclama- wage slavery, lynching and denial of fundamental democratic rights. history, Lincoln (see accompanying article), tion, the nation was again being shaken by came out last fall in anticipation of the Proc- the Civil Rights movement –the struggle to without renouncing the whole framework of Frederick Douglass reached a strikingly lamation’s 150th anniversary. The movie regain elementary formal democratic rights bourgeois democracy, the U.S. bourgeoisie similar conclusion: edits out Lincoln’s revolutionary deeds by such as the right to vote in the South. Even cannot simply denounce the struggle against “The American people and the focusing solely on the 13th Amendment to the Lyndon Johnson had to declare in 1965, “A slavery without standing naked to the world. Government at Washington may refuse to Constitution, which formally and definitively century has passed since the day of promise, But it can and does revile the Nat Turners recognize it for a time; but the ‘inexorable did away with slavery, reducing even the pas- logic of events’ will force it upon them in and the promise is unkept.” and John Browns and ignore or trim down sage of this amendment to a series of sordid the end; that the war now being waged in This “wasn’t-it-tragic” dismissal of the other abolitionist fighters, just as the French backroom deals in the process. Ignoring or Civil War, burying not only the question of bourgeoisie denounces the “excesses” and this land is a war for and against slavery; and that it can never be effectively put distorting the role played by slaves themselves, slavery but also of on-going racial oppression, “fanaticism” of its Revolution and the egali- down till one or the other of these vital by the abolitionists and even the Union army has been the official ideology of American tarian aspirations it awoke. forces is completely destroyed.” to concentrate on Lincoln as a solitary figure capitalism at least since the end of Reconstruc- In the U.S. rulers’ campaign of his- –Douglass’ Monthly (May 1861), quoted is a huge falsification of history. torical amnesia, the issue of how slavery tion in 1877. Today Obama’s platitudes have in James McPherson, The Negro’s Civil It does not even do justice to Lincoln was abolished tops the list of events to be as their backdrop the presidentially-ordered War (Ballantine Books, 1991) himself, for the Proclamation represents a drone assassinations, his quota-driven deporta- mystified. Beyond all the references to the Abraham Lincoln was a towering break with his previous views, which antici- tion of millions of immigrants, and a “debate” political genius of Lincoln, at bottom it historical figure, as the leader of one of the pated the freeing of the slaves state-by-state, about gun control in which both sides agree was a conflict of two very different forms great bourgeois revolutions. But he was able with compensation, some time in the future. on stepped-up racist police terror. of capitalism. Karl Marx recognized from to fulfill that role because the contradiction In the first year of the Civil war, Lincoln the outset: between two variants of capitalism – those refused to proclaim emancipation and allow Disappearing a Revolution “One sees, therefore, that the war of the recruitment of black troops. He finally The signing of the Emancipation Proc- the Southern Confederacy is in the true based on slave labor and “free” wage labor – lamation, unlike the Declaration of Indepen- sense of the word a war of conquest for had come to a head, and a showdown could relented to pressure from abolitionist leaders, dence of July 4, 1776, was never going to be a the spread and perpetuation of slavery.... no longer be postponed. As Marx underlined Radical Republicans, and Union officers, an- holiday in racist, imperialist America. The first “The present struggle between the South in his famous “Address of the International nouncing his intentions in September 1862 bourgeois-democratic American revolution in- and North is, therefore, nothing but a Working Men’s Association to Abraham before actually issuing the Proclamation. This volved simple political separation from Great struggle between two social systems, Lincoln” (November 1864): marks the official beginning of a flowing Britain and was not fought over fundamental the system of slavery and the system of “…the working classes of Europe un- black tide into the Union forces. social issues. If anything, it only reinforced free labor. The struggle has broken out derstood at once, even before the fanatic At the same time, the freeing of the the power of the slaveholders in the South. (In because the two systems can no longer partisanship of the upper classes for the nearly 4 million slaves meant expropriation some places, the British freed slaves belonging live peacefully side by side on the North Confederate gentry had given its dismal without compensation of more than $3.5 bil- American continent. It can only be ended warning, that the slaveholders’ rebellion to rebels against the Crown.) lion worth of property, more than the entire by the victory of one system or the other.” was to sound the tocsin for a general holy Only a few voices were raised urg- worth of U.S. manufacturing, railroads, –Karl Marx, “The Civil War in the United crusade of property against labor, and that ing the extension of the rights claimed in ships and banks combined! In terms of the States” (November 1861), reprinted in the for the men of labor, with their hopes for share of the gross national product at the the Declaration of Independence to the Internationalist Group Class Readings, the future, even their past conquests were colonists’ human property. The great black time, this would be the equivalent of over Marx on Slavery and the U.S. Civil War at stake in that tremendous conflict on the $10 trillion in the U.S. economy today. abolitionist Frederick Douglass could thus (second edition, April 2009) other side of the Atlantic.” bitterly ask, in his 1852 speech, “What to the Furthermore, the Emancipation Proc- Slave is the 4th of July?” Likewise, Marxists lamation, the 13th Amendment and the today do not join in the patriotic celebration Dickinson College “Reconstruction Amendments” – the 14th of American independence. Amendment (1868, granting citizenship The second American Revolution – the to all those born in the U.S.), and the 15th Civil War – was quite another matter. It in- Amendment (1870, granting black men the volved a struggle against a type of exploita- right to vote) – were the outcome of real, tion of labor created by a previous form of armed struggles. From John Brown’s victory merchant capitalism (“primitive capitalist over pro-slavery terrorists in Kansas (1856) accumulation”) which was proving a barrier to the great battles of the Civil War to the to the consolidation of industrial capitalism military-political actions of the Reconstruc- based on wage labor. Although it did not tion period, not a single essential right was consummate a social revolution overthrow- won, truly won, through the passage of a law. ing capitalist rule (at the time industrial Reforms, as Lenin pointed out, are capitalism in the U.S. was poised for a vast often the partial outcome of determined expansion, while the workers movement was revolutionary struggle; reformism as a strat- in its infancy), in smashing slave relations egy for the oppressed is self-defeating. None of production the Civil War went beyond of the civil rights laws of the 19th century political rights to pose questions of property. ultimately protected blacks from subjection Just as the French bourgeoisie cannot The abolition of slavery was achieved by victory on the Civil War battlefields, to the sharecropping system, nor from the simple renounce the French Revolution where the recruitment of black soldiers was the turning point. complete denial of their democratic rights 16 The Internationalist Thomas Nast/Harper’s Weekly Thomas Nast/Harper’s

Left: Frederick Douglass’ March 1863 speech, “Men of Color to Arms!” was used by African American leaders for recruiting poster to enlist black volunteers to join the army to fight against slavery. Right: “A Negro Regiment in Action.” Engraving by Thomas Nast, fromHarper’s Weekly, 14 March 1863, depicts the battle of Island Mound, Missouri. The troops of the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, most of them escaped slaves from Arkansas and the Oklahoma Territory, fought off a charge by Confederate cavalry on 29 October 1862 in the first engagement in which black troops were used in the Civil War. in the period between the defeat of Recon- and ideologically subservient to the slave “Christian consciences” by William Lloyd Secession and All-Out War struction (1877) and the Civil Rights and masters). To keep this restless and hungry Garrison and his reformist abolitionist fol- In office, Lincoln attempted to retain black liberation movements of the 1960s. white population in thrall, the slavocracy lowers were completely wiped out. Any the loyalty of the slaveholders in the so- And now even those limited gains are being promised the poor whites new land and even abolitionist with eyes to see realized that called Border States (Kentucky, Delaware, systematically rolled back. possible eventual status as new slavehold- further pacifism would be useless now. Maryland), and refused to proclaim the ers. Only with new slave states and territo- Slavery and Capitalism The answer came from Kansas, a dis- overthrow of slavery. He even re-imposed ries could this promise be fulfilled. puted territory with an election nearing that slavery in Missouri in 1861 after Frémont, Slavery in the U.S. was a bourgeois • Second, the production of export crops would determine whether it would be slave then commander of the district, issued an institution – entirely a part of the U.S. and (cotton, tobacco, sugar) by the slave system or free upon entering the Union as a state. order of emancipation. Nonetheless, Lincoln world capitalist system. As early as 1847 was threatened due to soil depletion in Vir- A campaign of terror was waged against the did not recognize a right of secession and Marx wrote in The Poverty of Philosophy, ginia, Maryland and even South Carolina. Kansans, who were mostly against slavery, insisted that the United States retained pos- “Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon The slavocracy’s profits in these states were by racist gangs from neighboring Missouri session of all the rebel territory. And even which our present-day industrialism turns coming more and more from slave raising known as the “Border Ruffians.” Then in 1855 with the original, limited war aims, recovery as are machinery, credit, etc.” He would and the provision of slaves to other slave John Brown arrived. He brought with him a of the South required dislodging the slavoc- later define the contradictory nature of the states. The market for slaves in the other disciplined multiracial battalion of revolution- racy, which meant all-out Civil War. slave regime in the Grundrisse, his notes in states was limited, and so the expansion ists that included “Red 48ers” – veterans of the Even as the rebellion armed, the U.S. preparation for Capital: “The fact that we of slavery into other areas where extensive defeated 1848 revolutions in Germany and was ill prepared for war. The tepid quality now not only call the plantation owners in cultivation could be undertaken was im- Italy. Under Brown’s political and military of the initial Northern war effort was in- America capitalists, but that they are capital- perative. (Thomas Jefferson had foreseen direction, the settlers were armed and trained. carnated by General George B. McClellan. ists, is based on their existence as anomalies this problem long ago, and as governor of They proceeded to beat back the racists in McClellan owed his position to pressure within a world market based on free labor.” Virginia in 1780 organized military expedi- several bloody battles and Kansas was soon from the pro-slavery Democrats and sought The slaveholders’ power was enshrined tions to exterminate the native population free. It was a powerful demonstration of what to preserve the Union “as it was” (i.e., in the U.S. Constitution and their male chil- and push the borders of his state westward.) it would take to overthrow slavery. without touching slavery), while he and his dren formed the greater part of the officer • Third, the slavocracy needed more slave Against this backdrop, the Republican staff were close to the rebel officers of the corps of the U.S. Army. In the first half of states to maintain its political power in Wash- Party, newly formed on the basis of the for- Confederacy. In response to the string of the 19th century, this oligarchy extended its ington. While the American political system mer Free Soil Party, pledged itself to blocking Union defeats, Marx remarked in a letter slaveholding empire across the Mississippi had always favored the slaveholders, Northern the expansion of slavery entirely. The first to Friedrich Engels of 10 September 1862: as far north as Missouri through the Louisi- capitalism was forging ahead. The political Republican candidate for president, in the “In regard to the North’s conduct of the ana Purchase. It then moved into Texas and power deriving from it would soon overwhelm 1856 elections, had been the open abolitionist war, nothing else could be expected from a was instrumental in launching the invasion that of the South, despite the odds, unless this General John C. Frémont. Though he lost to bourgeois republic, where swindle has been of Mexico in 1845. That sordid and conquest was checked by the addition of new slave Democrat James Buchanan, an apologist and enthroned for such a long time.” ripped away from Mexico (where slavery states. While the House of Representatives, abettor of slavery who ran as a “moderate,” As Union losses mounted, Lincoln’s was illegal) an area that is now the western based proportionally on the white male popu- Frémont made a strong showing. resolve, bolstered by the increasing resolve U.S., from Texas to California. lation, would remain in Northern hands, the of the Northern workers and farmers who Marx explained, however, that as the Senate (where the better part of U.S. legislative By 1860, the 300,000 slaveholders in- were doing the fighting, hardened around manufacturing economy based on wage power resides) was and is non-proportional – tended to turn the U.S. presidential elections the understanding that no compromise could labor grew in the United States, with its con- every state no matter its population was (and into a referendum on rebellion – the only be made with the slavocracy and a Northern comitant small-holder farms, the leaders of still is) given two senators. Accordingly, parity rebellion in modern history, Marx pointed victory required smashing the slave system. the agricultural South based on slave labor (at least) between slave and free states had to out, whose rallying cry was “slavery!” As a In “A Criticism of American Affairs” (9 became increasingly alarmed and belliger- be maintained there. moderate Republican, Lincoln was opposed ent. While the rice, tobacco, and cotton pro- by the Radicals (who initially favored Wil- August 1862), Marx observed: duced by the slave economy were destined Abolitionism, Pacifist and liam Seward). Nonetheless, Lincoln’s deci- “New England and the Northwest, which have provided the main body of for the capitalist market, the “oligarchy of Militant sive victory in the general election against the army, are determined to force on 300,000 slaveholders,” as Marx called them, The outcome of the Mexican War had a divided pro-slavery opposition became the government a revolutionary kind of began to clash with Northern society. doubled the size of the United States, and the signal for the slavers’ rebellion. The warfare and to inscribe the battle-slogan In a series of letters written in 1861-62 the slaveholders were gaining in their design slaveholding cabal forced each Southern of ‘Abolition of slavery!’ on the star- to Die Presse in Vienna, Marx laid out the of creating a slaveholding continent. The state, one by one, to disclaim the Union. spangled banner. Lincoln yields only essential economic and political logic of the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850 They formed their “Confederate States of hesitantly and uneasily to this ‘pressure slave system’s expansionism: and enforced by Federal troops (so much America” as an armed camp, seizing Federal from without,’ but he knows that he • First, the 300,000 slaveholders also for “states rights”). The slavers threatened property, especially forts, ships and arms. cannot resist it for long…. lorded over a mainly poor white population also to expand their system into every new The poor white population, hesitant in many “So far, we have only witnessed the first of five million, which had little material territory and state in the United States, no areas, was mobilized around “Southern act of the Civil war – the constitutional interest in the continuation of slavery (al- matter how far west or north. Twenty years honor” and “states’ rights” to fight to the waging of war. The second act, the though often economically dependent on of pacifist appeals to the slaveholders’ death for slavery and white supremacy. revolutionary waging of war, is at hand.” March-April 2013 17 Evans Walker/Library of Congress Timothy O’Sullivan/Library of Congress Timothy

“Contrabands” (escaped slaves) crossing the Rappahannock River in Virginia Because slaves were freed without land, many were soon subjected to “wage to reach Union lines durng the second battle of Bull Run, August 1862. slavery” ... or worse. Sharecropping in Lowndes County, Alabama in 1936. Lincoln ultimately secured competent mili- fought to pass the enabling legislation, they man’s western armies dislodged the rebels ing a system of free universal public educa- tary leadership in generals Ulysses S. Grant knew that abolition would be won on the from Atlanta and began their “March to the tion. New state governments were elected and William Tecumseh Sherman who, like battlefield. Douglass, closely allied with Sea.” Lincoln was initially opposed to Sher- in which blacks played large and sometime Lincoln himself, adopted a more revolution- Sumner, thus waged a furious campaign to man’s strategy, but Sherman explained that it majority roles. More black voters registered ary approach to waging the war out of pure organize more and more black regiments. was necessary to scour out the plantations of throughout the former rebel lands than pragmatism. Nearly 200,000 blacks served under the Deep South, which had been the engines whites. Union troops now gained the upper Lincoln’s attitude was summed up in arms, comprising over 10 percent of the Union of the slaveholders’ rebellion. With Grant’s hand in the struggle against racist terror. a 22 August 1862 letter to Horace Greeley, Army; nearly 50,000 fell during the war, and endorsement, he took Atlanta in September, However, the land question was not editor of the New York Tribune: a higher number were wounded. Black sol- which was key to Lincoln’s reelection against resolved, at least not in favor of the former “My paramount object in this struggle is diers were under constant sentence of death. the Democrat McClellan that November. Then slaves. Radical Congressman George Julian to save the Union, and is not either to save Official Southern policy was to treat them as on the heels of the elections, Sherman slashed fought to amend the second Confiscation Act or to destroy slavery. If I could save the fugitive slaves rather than as prisoners of war. through Georgia and South Carolina, expro- to permit the permanent seizure of Confeder- Union without freeing any slave I would If captured they could be tortured or executed priating food, burning barns and plantation ates’ land. Without land, he argued, freedmen do it, and if I could save it by freeing all by the virulently racist rebel army, as at Fort houses and freeing an estimated half-million would find themselves reduced to “a system of the slaves I would do it; and if I could Pillow, Tennessee in 1864 when hundreds of slaves from bondage, effectively destroying wages slavery.” In September 1865, Thaddeus save it by freeing some and leaving others black troops were massacred while trying to the South’s economic reserves and breaking Stevens put forward a plan to seize 400 million alone I would also do that.” surrender by rebel forces under future KKK the Confederates’ will to fight. acres from the Southern oligarchy, provide 40 Yet even as he wrote that, Lincoln had con- marauder Nathan Bedford Forrest. In the wake of Sherman’s army came acres to each freedman and sell the rest to the cluded that freeing the slaves and enlisting But they marched with Sherman in tens of thousands of black refugees; partly to highest bidder (i.e., Northern investors). But black troops (both free and ex-slave) was Georgia (against Sherman’s initial opposi- reduce their numbers, courts were sometimes as leftist historian Eric Foner notes: decisive to winning the war. He already had a tion) and were with U.S. Grant as he cor- improvised on liberated plantations, with land “Yet to most Radicals, land for the freed- draft of the Emancipation Proclamation in his nered the rebel army at Appomattox in 1865. divided among the freed slaves. In January men, though a commendable idea, was desk drawer. One month later he released it. In retrospect, Lincoln wrote that without the 1865 Sherman issued his “Special Field Order not nearly as crucial to Reconstruction as Emancipation and Radicalism black soldiers, “we would be compelled to No. 15,” which granted coastal lands to thou- black suffrage…. It is hardly surprising abandon the war in three weeks.” sands of former slaves, from Florida to South that many Radicals proved reluctant to The announcement of the impending Uncounted African Americans, includ- Carolina. Sherman appointed General Rufus support a program that so contravened the Proclamation had an electrifying effect on ing women, also performed non-combat Saxon, a leading abolitionist and organizer sanctity of property as confiscation….” the abolitionist movement that had fought duties in construction, transport, supply, of black troops, to direct the settlement of –Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s for it. Frederick Douglass wrote that “the commissary and, crucially, reconnaissance blacks on their new land. Shortly after, Con- Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (Harp- proclamation … is the most important of any and espionage. The great abolitionist and gress passed the 13th Amendment abolishing er & Row, 1988) to which the President of the United States leader of the Underground Railroad, Harriet slavery and in March 1865 the Freedmen’s As a result, the former chattel slaves were has ever signed his name” (“Emancipation Tubman, became an unofficial Union battle Bureau was created and authorized to divide reduced to wage slavery or worse, share- Proclaimed,” Douglass’ Monthly, October commander, leading interracial raiding par- up some confiscated lands into 40-acre plots cropping and debt peonage. The struggle 1862). Likewise, Karl Marx wrote, in Die ties of Union soldiers to liberate slaves; on to be distributed to ex-slaves. for emancipation had run into the limits of Presse, 12 October 1862, that “his most one raid she rescued 700 slaves from ap- After Lincoln’s assassination on 15 a bourgeois revolution. recent proclamation – the Emancipation proaching rebel forces. Many of the slaves April 1865, only five days after Lee’s The former slaveholders, led by mass Proclamation – [is] the most significant liberated by “General Tubman,” as John surrender at Appomattox, his successor, murderer Nathan Bedford Forrest, met in document in American history since the Brown had called her, went on to fight in the Andrew Johnson, soon showed himself to Nashville in 1867 to enlarge the Ku Klux founding of the Union and one which tears Union army or navy. be a friend to the defeated slaveholders. He Klan set up by former Confederate soldiers at up the old American Constitution.” revoked Sherman’s field order and returned the end of 1865 and put the program of these Douglass’ immediate demand was to “let Victory and Reconstruction: land to previous owners. He abolished the death squads on a more professional military the black man have an arm as well as a heart “Forty Acres and a Mule”? Freedmen’s Bureau and appointed proslav- basis. As the Klan and other gangs renewed in this war, and the tide of battle which has The fundamental questions posed by the ery governors in the Southern states under their terror campaign, President Johnson did thus far only waved backward and forward, Second American Revolution of 1861-1865 military occupation. He opposed extending all he could to prevent a Radical-led military will steadily set in our favor.” Marx recog- converged around land to the tiller and the the vote to newly freed black men, claim- response. He blocked the dispatch of troops nized this also, and argued (in a letter to En- arms to defend it. The formerly enslaved ing this was up to the states. “Black Codes” to suppress the new rebellion and even gels of 7 August 1862) that the organization population needed land for cultivation and which sought to bind the ex-slaves to the attempted, unsuccessfully, to remove the of even a single black regiment “would have armed defense against the defeated but re- plantations throughout the South were im- Secretary of War, the Radical Edwin Stanton. a remarkable effect on Southern nerves.” In surgent white supremacists. Otherwise, they posed in 1865 and 1866 and accompanied by The Radicals then successfully impeached fact, black recruitment had already begun. would inevitably be prey to the former slave racist terror. In response to these outrages, Johnson, but fell one vote short of conviction. Lincoln’s proclamation meant that history’s masters. This was well understood by the abolitionists, Union officers and Radical Blacks armed themselves as best they tide had turned and slavery was doomed. leadership of the Radical movement – from Republicans rose up in resistance. could. They were given limited help by the This was understood by Douglass Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass In Washington, control of Reconstruc- Freedmen’s Bureau and some U.S. troops. and all the “Radicals” – a loose term then to Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner. tion was torn from the Johnson Administra- But massacres of blacks and battles with referring to all those within and outside the Paradoxically, General William T. Sherman, tion and, with the Army’s help, put in the the racist gangs continued unabated through Republican Party who were well aware that who was no abolitionist and refused to accept hands of Congress. The 14th Amendment 1868 and beyond. In the presidential elec- slavery was at the center of the conflict and black troops, issued the order to compensate (1868) and 15th Amendment (1869) were tions of that year, the Radicals backed Grant, were advancing a program for its complete former slaves in some areas with “forty acres passed and some Union troops, including who owed his victory to the 700,000 black destruction and for full political rights and a mule,” which was later adopted by Ste- black troops were activated throughout the votes he received. During his two terms in and economic well-being for the liberated vens as the core of Radical Reconstruction. South. Ten states of the former Confederacy office (1869-1877), he did attempt to fight blacks. While Thaddeus Stevens, Charles In 1864, as Grant surrounded the Con- were put under martial law. The Freedmen’s the white supremacist movement, which had Sumner and other Radicals in Congress federate capital of Richmond, Virginia, Sher- Bureau was reestablished and began foster- grown insurrectionary. His Radical-backed 18 The Internationalist counterrevolution against from someone who thinks the super-patriotic Radical Reconstruction Lincoln... Saving Private Ryan is an “anti-war film”). was then justified in na- continued from page 15 Another member of the Lincoln fan tional myth: the cause of (1993) focuses on the “good Nazi,” who club is the “World Socialist Web Site” of thorough-going emancipa- initially only wanted to be a war profiteer David North’s Socialist Equality Party. Its tion and racial equality was but ended up defending his Jewish workers. web site is so drenched in references to buried under layers of lies Amistad (1997) starts with the story of an defending the heritage of the revolution of so thick that generations of uprising on a Spanish slave ship, but spends 1776 that you can almost see them turn- schoolchildren were taught the bulk of the film on the legal case which ing up in Paul Revere costumes. So it’s no – by liberal and rightist his- was argued before the Supreme Court by surprise that “Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln torians alike – that Recon- former U.S. president John Quincy Adams. and the historical drama of the Civil War” struction had been a terrible The film misleadingly suggests the court (WSWS, 12 November 2012) not only ful- mistake, and even that slav- decision was against slavery, rather than just somely praises the film but also swallows ery was not the underlying against the slave trade. As imprisoned black some of the falsifications hook, line and issue of the Civil War. journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal pointed out : sinker, merely demurring, “Yet the role The need to fight for “For Africans born in the U.S., however, of the masses in history is minimized; the black liberation through it brought them no closer to freedom. Un- conception of politics as horse-trading is socialist revolution is high- like the captives of the Amistad, interna- privileged.” That’s putting it mildly. Punishment in forced labor camp in Georgia, 1930s. lighted by the fact that the tional law did not apply to their wretched But again, what else could be expected policies achieved some success against betrayal of Reconstruction meant that the condition, and for them, as well as those from an outfit that sides with the capitalists shackled Black millions in Cuba, there the KKK and other gangs, but not enough Southern rulers could not only rewrite the sto- against the unions, and reviles any reference was little to celebrate with this decision.” resources were deployed to turn the tide. ry to suit their interests, but roll back a large to the special oppression of black people Still, Amistad graphically showed the Meanwhile, the bourgeois rulers were grow- part of what Reconstruction had achieved, as “identity politics,” including the simple horrific conditions aboard the slave ship, and ing uneasy at the prospect of freed blacks as they pushed social relations as far back mention of the fact that African Americans the rebellion with the Africans as protagonists and labor joining forces against capital, as possible towards slavery-like conditions. are targeted for incarceration by the capital- – which Lincoln does not. If Spielberg is just especially after the Paris Commune of 1871. A number of recent works have ap- ist state’s racist drug war. Or that the vigi- a paternalistic liberal propagandist, Kushner peared documenting just how far they were lante slaying of Trayvon Martin was racist Defeat and Counterrevolution is ostentatiously backing away from his re- able to go in their attempts to re-subjugate murder. The historical distortions of Lin- In 1876 it seemed as if the promise of cent radical criticisms of U.S. capitalism and black labor. Among these is Douglas A. coln, along with liberal lies of a “post-racial “forty acres and a mule” were a dream. The imperialism. These were laid out in his 2011 Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name: The America,” are right up the alley of these Freedmen’s Bureau in particular had never play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from viciously “color-blind” scab “socialists.” been empowered by its designers to suppress Capitalism and Socialism, which was favor- the Civil War to World War II (Doubleday, the racist gangs and carry through a black ably reviewed in the pages of this newspaper. There are those defenders of Lincoln 2008), which shows just how massive was agrarian revolution. As historian Henry Steele At that time, Kushner was facing a witch who moan that nobody could make a film the use of black prison labor and other forms Commager flatly stated during the Civil Rights hunt by vicious anticommunist “neocons,” encompassing the entire Civil War. Granted. of coerced black labor – not only in the movement of the 1960s, “the Government… including a member of the Board of Trustees But Lincoln presumes to be about slave road-construction chain gangs depicted in failed the Negro. At a time when Congress set of the City University of New York (CUNY), emancipation, while deliberately ignoring innumerable films but in agriculture, coal aside millions of acres for homesteaders in the who sought to deny him an honorary degree. the key role the slaves themselves played mining and other vital parts of the Southern West and gave over a hundred million acres to Whether lured by Hollywood’s big in achieving it. In this vital aspect, it is a economy. As Blackmon observes, the judi- the railroad corporations, it could not summon bucks or Obama’s electorally timed accep- historical lie. But this is all you will get in cial/prison system was configured in ways up the generosity or the vision to give land to tance of gay marriage, Kushner has evidently this day and age when the Supreme Court that deliberately criminalized huge sectors the freedmen” (New York Times Book Review, moved on. His adulation of the Democrat in is debating rolling back the Voting Rights of the black population, while debt served 13 Sept. 1964). the White House goes hand-in-hand with Act of 1965 and anti-immigrant racists are as a new and very tangible shackle. While Radical resolve had secured the denouncing “the abandonment by the left of campaigning to abolish the 14th Amend- black vote and the presidency for Grant This should not suggest that the Civil the possibility of radical change through de- ment, which granted citizenship to all those in 1868, KKK terror played a key role in War achieved nothing for the oppressed: far mocracy” following the Vietnam War. And in born in the United States. swinging the 1876 elections to the Democrat from it, the abolition of chattel slavery was having Lincoln assert unlimited presidential It has been nearly a quarter-century Samuel Tilden. Some white supremacists a momentous achievement. What this does war powers in the revolutionary Civil War, since the only film dealing halfway truth- wanted to insist on Tilden becoming presi- show, as we have written, is that American Kushner echoes the Obama administration’s fully with black soldiers in the Civil War dent, but most were willing to compromise capitalism has racial oppression in its DNA, brief for running a reactionary imperialist (Glory 1989). It’s no accident there have with the Republicans. A deadly deal was and whenever one form of subjugation was Murder Inc. with drone strikes. For Kushner, been no Hollywood movies about Frederick worked out then, whereby the Republi- eliminated, a new way was soon found to “progressive people” have a “complicated Douglass (or John Brown, Sojourner Truth, can Rutherford Hayes would be seated as deprive black people of their rights. After job” of figuring out how “this terrifying new Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, or Denmark president in exchange for the formal end of slavery and the democratic interval of Re- weapon” is “to be used responsibly.” Vesey). For the arbiters of what’s fit for mass Reconstruction and the withdrawal of all construction, eventually the system of Jim Curiously, Spielberg and Kushner have consumption, the true history of the second U.S. troops from the South. Blacks were Crow segregation was instituted in the South. found defenders among purported socialists American Revolution and the fighters who now forced back onto the plantations. The And when that was formally eliminated in the like the International Socialist Organiza- brought it about is too hot to touch: at most Democrats and Republicans united and got 1960s, within a few years a new system was tion. A piece on the ISO website titled, “The you’ll get a sanitized liberal treatment in down to the problems of the postwar capi- instituted of constant police-state occupation great uncompromiser” (Socialist Worker, 29 the rarified ether of PBS. It will take a new, talist order: subjugation of black labor, ex- of inner-city neighborhoods and massive jail- November 2012) by Alan Maas opines that socialist revolution to give these champions termination of the Native Americans on the ing of African American and Latino youth. “Probably a bunch of reporters heard the of black freedom their due. n plains, restriction of the Chinese immigrant In this respect, wide attention has been press-kit descrip- workers in California, and, from sea to shin- drawn to the social and political functions tion that Lincoln ing sea, assistance to the bosses in smashing of the vast criminalization/imprisonment was about how the the workers movement – which broke out system in today’s racist USA – which has the 13th Amendment Order Now! highest incarceration rate in the world – by in an insurrectionary general strike in 1877. abolishing slavery Contains the analysis Ultimately, once permanent confiscation Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: was passed by a di- by Karl Marx of slav- and distribution of the land to ex-slaves was Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblind- vided and partisan ery under capitalism excluded, Reconstruction became an un- ness (New Press, 2010). Reformists hope to Congress, and they and his key writings stable situation in which the ex-slaveholders address this through a “new civil rights move- decided it must be on the second Ameri- retained economic domination while being ment” acceptable to liberal Democrats in the a fable about Wash- can Revolution. Also excluded from actual government. And the “age of Obama.” But the fact that American ington today….” articles by George Novack on slavery goal of the Northern bourgeoisie in the Civil capitalism seeks one way after another to No, actually, the au- subjugate, chain and disenfranchise the black and the plantation War had not been to eliminate the exploitation thor of the screen- system in North population points in the opposite direction: of blacks in the agrarian South, but rather to play says that’s America, as well eliminate the excessive political power of only the revolutionary overthrow of the capi- what the film is as polemics on the slaveholding class and to ensure that the talist system can clear the path to all-sided, about. But this is par the policy of com- fruits of this exploitation flowed into its cof- real and enduring liberation. for the course from munists on the fers rather than those of the British. In this task, the building of a revolution- the ISO reformists, Civil War. The promise of black freedom was ary workers party as a champion of all the who always posi- US$1 thus betrayed by the Northern bourgeoisie, oppressed is key, in which the descendants of tion themselves one Order from/make checks payable to: Mundial Publications, Box 3321, which sacrificed Reconstruction on the altar the slaves who fought arms in hand to crush step to the left of Church Street Station, New York, New York 10008, U.S.A. of profit and “national reconciliation.” The the slaveocracy will play a central role. n the Democrats (and March-April 2013 19 Gun Control and State self-defense when attacked. Repression This concern goes back through the ages. In the feudal Edo period in Japan, In short, gun control laws have always long swords were restricted to an aristocratic been part of a broader offensive to increase warrior caste, the samurai; when firearms state repression, which always has targeted were introduced in the 17th century, they the poor, the black, the most exploited and too were limited to the samurai. But when oppressed sections of capitalist society, and feudalism was abolished under the Meiji are used in particular against those who are Restoration beginning in 1868, feudal es- seen as “hostile” by the ruling class. It is no tates were taken over, samurai were banned accident that the most restrictive gun laws in from carrying swords, and a police force and the United States are in Washington, D.C., standing army were created, as in almost all because that is where the political rulers capitalist countries. In Mexico today, when reside and because at the time they were the military and police seek to occupy areas enacted (1975), Washington was the first of indigenous rebellions (Chiapas, Oaxaca) large majority black city in the country. In- or regions dominated by drug traffickers, ternationally, Nazi Germany and apartheid they arrest anyone with “arms of exclusive South Africa had draconian gun control army use.” laws, and when the Greek colonels took power in 1967, they immediately sought to Under capitalism, as in all class-divided disarm civilians. societies, the rulers seek to keep their sub- In fact, there are striking parallels be- jects at a qualitative military disadvantage. Robert F. Williams heroically fought off KKK mobs in Monroe, North Carolina. tween the handgun ban in the Gun Control “Democratic” and dictatorial regimes alike off weapons access to blacks … since they Act of 1968 and the 1938 Weapons Law of claim a monopoly of “legitimate” force in Who Controls... probably associated cheap guns with ghetto Nazi Germany, and not by accident. During order to suppress revolt. On the opposite side continued from page 3 blacks” (The Saturday Night Special [1973]). the hearings on the 1968 bill, Democratic of the class divide, those fighting for revo- to arm themselves in self-defense. And when the 1994 assault weapons ban was senator Thomas Dodd asked that the 1938 lution to sweep away the bourgeois social And in Oakland, California the Black passed under the Democratic administration Nazi law be translated by the Library of order of exploitation, poverty, racism and Panther Party for Self-Defense was formed, of Bill Clinton, it was part of a broader law, Congress, using the German text which war oppose any restrictions on the acquisition inspired by Williams, which carried out sponsored by now-vice president Joe Biden, Dodd (who had been part of the prosecution of means of self-defense. The working class armed neighborhood patrols on the lookout which created 60 new federal death penalty team in the Nuremburg war crimes tribu- will never match the enormous firepower of for police violence. When a state assembly- offenses and funded the hiring of 100,000 nal) supplied. The German law introduced the U.S. bourgeoisie, which doesn’t hesitate man introduced a bill to prohibit publicly more police. This was followed up by the handgun control, restricted gun ownership to kill millions in its imperialist wars. But a carrying guns, Bobby Seale led an armed Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty to “trustworthy” citizens, barred Jews from revolution will only occur when the army Panther detachment into the state house Act of 1996, which sharply curtails the right businesses involving firearms, and in a itself is divided or paralyzed, and leading up where he read a statement declaring the to appeal death sentences. clause added on 10 November 1938 (the day to that the working class will have to deal bill an attempt “at keeping the black people Today, the search for “illegal guns” after the Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews) with fascist bands and other scum. disarmed and powerless at the very same is the excuse used by gun control zealot barred Jews from owning any weapons, In any case, a disarmed population time that racist police agencies through- Mayor Bloomberg to justify the mas- even knives and clubs. would have great difficulty resisting the at- out the country are intensifying the terror sive “stop and frisk” dragnet which has While the 1960s laws restricted cheap tacks of capital, which is why the capitalists and repression of black people.” The gun subjected New York City residents more handguns (“Saturday night specials”) in a seek this. The key obstacle to the struggle control bill was passed, signed into law than 5 million times, overwhelmingly racist move aimed at the black poor, the for socialism in the U.S. today is the lack by Governor Ronald Reagan; FBI chief (87%) against blacks and Latinos, to po- current uproar has focused on so-called of revolutionary, and often even of class J. Edgar Hoover declared the BPP “the lice inspection for no reason. That this is “assault weapons.” The justification given consciousness on the part of American greatest threat to the internal security of obvious racial profiling was proven by a is that the Newtown killer used an AR-15 workers. The central task facing commu- the country,” and over the next few years tape recording presented in a lawsuit by rifle, a semi-automatic version of the M16 nists is overcoming that obstacle. But the 38 Panthers were killed by the police and the Center for Constitutional of a police automatic rifle which is standard issue in fact that the American working class has hundreds arrested. commander in the South Bronx telling of- the U.S. military in its wars and occupa- arms, and is not likely to give up its guns Meanwhile, as civil rights laws were ficers to go after “male blacks,” and more tions such as Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, without a fight, is a definite plus. passed to formally abolish Jim Crow seg- specifically “male blacks 14 to 20, 21” relatively few murders, robberies and other Gun control seeks to take that away. regation in the South, the Northern black (New York Times, 22 March). Such stops violent crimes against persons are com- “Background checks” allow the police to ghettos exploded in anger over poverty and have nothing to do with firearms (guns mitted with rifles. The government’s real decide who qualifies and who doesn’t. rampant police brutality. As liberal journalist are found in only 0.12% of searches) and objection is to having anything approaching Black, Latino and white working people Robert Sherrill wrote, a panicked Congress everything to do with intimidation and military-grade weapons in the hands of the will find it far harder to get approval than passed the Gun Control Act of 1968 to “shut criminalizing young black men. population so that they could respond in wealthy whites. Under New York’s 1911 Sullivan Law, permits to carry concealed ready to cave. In fact, the ILWU leader- drive because their fundamental alle- weapons, around 2,500 at last count, are ILWU Locked Out... ship under International president Bob giance is to capital. limited mainly to retired cops (who not continued from page 8 McEllrath and coast committeeman Leal Does that mean that union struggle is infrequently shoot their spouses, partners most notable recent example was the May Sundet think like labor contractors rather hopeless? Not at all. It does mean that a real in crime and each other), celebrities, Day 2008 West Coast port strike against than union defenders. fight against the union-busters will require capitalists and cronies. Permit holders the war on Iraq and Afghanistan, an overtly When Sundet negotiated the EGT a new, militant leadership with a program have included New York Times publisher political strike, defying Taft-Hartley. It was contract last January, he declared it was of sharp class struggle instead of this belly- (and gun control pusher) Arthur Ochs Sul- the first time U.S. unions had struck against “key to standardization of the grain export crawling class collaboration that threatens zburger, filmmaker Robert DeNiro, pundit a U.S. imperialist war. industry on the West Coast, particularly the survival of the ILWU. It will take hard William Buckley Jr. and moguls Donald But as the Journal of Commerce (13 with respect to labor costs” and that it work building an opposition within the Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Ronald Lauder February) noted, “Since the 2008-09 reces- “guarantees profit throughout the market union that stands on the best traditions of and David, John, Lawrence and Winthrop sion, the ILWU dockworkers have been chain.” That comes straight from the international solidarity and labor militancy Rockefeller. working closer with waterfront employers ILWU Dispatcher (January 2012). Read that built the ILWU and are key to defend- Naturally, billionaire mayor Bloomberg as well as with West Coast ports to shed it and weep. It’s no accident that Sundet ing it today. is hot for gun control and doesn’t want “guns the union’s image of being a militant and used to work for the employers’ Pacific What’s needed is a leadership that can on the streets.” After all, as he boasted in unreliable work force.” So, the maritime Maritime Association. Seems like he’s unite all waterfront workers, including the 2011, “I have my own army in the NYPD, bosses’ paper wrote, for the union leader- still working for the bosses. terribly exploited immigrant port truckers. which is the seventh biggest army in the ship, the contract rejection by the OCU was The ILWU leadership is surrendering A leadership that can stand up to the bosses, world.” If you don’t think this constitutes a “Black Eye,” which the International is before the employers’ offensive. Over their anti-labor laws and their capitalist poli- a private army, try demonstrating in front still smarting over. the past three decades, labor leaders ev- ticians – in particular the Democrats, right of his Upper East Side mansion. And if he Like the Wall Street financiers who erywhere have repeatedly capitulated to on up to Obama in the White House, who ever leaves office, he’ll just surround him- have shamelessly continued their loot- hard-nosed bosses, even to the point of sent the Coast Guard to defend EGT’s scab self with hired guns. If you are Joe or Jane ing and speculation that touched off the sacrificing the union’s existence. Why is operation. Instead of flag-waving for the Schmo or one of the hoi polloi (common current depression, the worst since the that? It is because they are a privileged American bosses, we need a workers party folk), on the other hand, and you want to 1930s, the West Coast grain shippers are layer, a bureaucracy, which tries to medi- to fight for a workers government, here and get a pistol permit in New York City, you playing for keeps. They smell blood. They ate between capital and labor. They are internationally, and a union leadership that can bet your last lottery ticket the answer is sense that the legalistic union leaders are incapable of fighting the union-busting says that loud and clear. n fuggedaboudit. 20 The Internationalist the one hand, highly militant, paramilitary tactics are used to protect their struggle; Bogalusa 1965: Deacons for Defense on the other hand, comparatively mild, In 1919, Bogalusa, Louisiana made anti-discrimination politics relying heavily the national news when white members on the 1964 Civil Rights Act characterize of the Carpenters union were murdered by their political perspectives” (Spartacist company gunmen and racist vigilantes for No. 5, November-December 1965). A July taking up arms to defend black union mem- 1967 report by the Louisiana legislature’s bers (see “Bloody Bogalusa, 1919: When “Committee on Unamerican Activities” on Four White Unionists Died Defending Their “The Spartacist League and Certain Other Black Comrades” at www.international- Communist Activities in South Louisiana” ist.org). In 1965, Bogalusa again was in as well as FBI files released later showed national headlines. An armed self-defense that local, state and federal police closely organization had been formed the previous monitored the SL’s activities in support of year by blacks in Jonesboro, Louisiana to the Deacons and the latter’s armed self- protect civil rights activists from the Klan defense of civil rights struggles in the South. and other racist vigilantes. The Jonesboro Towards the end of the group’s exis- group then organized a chapter in Boga- tence (the Deacons had largely disappeared lusa, Louisiana led by Charles Sims, which by 1968), individual Deacon spokesmen publicly surfaced in February 1965 as the became more explicit in upholding the “Deacons for Defense and Justice.” right of self-defense as against King’s moral Bogalusa was a company town. By suasion. But although they were courted 1965, the Great Southern sawmill had by both the Black Muslims and the black closed down and was replaced by a paper nationalist Revolutionary Action Move- mill, then owned by Crown-Zellerbach ment inspired by Robert F. Williams, the Bettman/Corbis (today by International Paper). At that Deacons never went beyond vague calls for point, the black community in Bogalusa Charles Sims of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in Bogalusa stands “black power.” As a group which had care- was poor and isolated, with many living in defiantly on courthouse steps holding Klan hoods. fully and successfully organized primarily shanties. It was also Klan country. The mill the core group, the Bogalusa chapter of the enter restaurants now allegedly open to them against white vigilante groups, efforts to set employed a dwindling number of blacks, Deacons had scores of supporters, “perhaps still needed to be escorted by the Deacons. up locals in the urban North, where racist concentrated in the worst, low-paying jobs. numbering nearly two hundred, [who] were The Deacons were fighting for an end violence was mainly the work of the police, Yet the experience of union activism had mostly paper mill employees who were will- to formal Jim Crow. They did not explicitly proved unsuccessful. It was to be the Black a lot to do with the rise of the Deacons, ing to help with security as needed.” challenge the turn-the-other-cheek pacifism Panthers who championed armed black self- which was a distinctly working-class orga- The Deacons guarded civil rights of Martin Luther King, Jr. and initially served defense directly against the bourgeois state, nization. In Bogalusa, it took shape from a marches and patrolled black neighborhoods mainly as a support group to organizing efforts and were met with murderous repression. new leadership of the local Voters League with radios, walkie-talkies, pistols and M-1 by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) The Deacons lasted as long as formal around A.Z. Young, who for several years rifles. By the end of 1966, the group had which at that time was equally committed to segregation. Yet today black people in al- led the black local of the Pulp and Sulphite grown to 17 chapters in the South. The non-violence. But they pragmatically under- legedly “post-racial” America are still a Workers Union, along with fellow paper Bogalusa Deacons were not only involved stood not only the role of the local cops as race-color caste segregated at the bottom mill worker Robert Hicks. in shoot-outs with the local Klan, but also accomplices of the Klan, but also of the federal of U.S. capitalist society. The struggle Lance Hill, in his book The Deacons had stand-offs with the police as well. In government, since the Deacons were subjected for social liberation urgently requires the for Defense: Armed Resistance and the large measure, the armed presence of the to surveillance and harassment from the FBI leadership of a revolutionary workers party Civil Rights Movement (University of Deacons forced local officials and business from their inception. Sims, for example, was that will achieve genuine equality for blacks North Carolina Press, 2004), wrote that leaders to agree to abolish all segregation equally skeptical about the use of federal and all the oppressed by the only means “The first meeting of the Bogalusa Dea- laws, provide equal protection for protest- troops, correctly seeing that their presence possible – sweeping away bankrupt, racist cons took place ...at the Negro Union ers, open up city government hiring and would merely freeze the racist status quo. American capitalism through international Hall,” where they met weekly thereafter. provide sewers, paved streets and lights It was quite symbolic for the Deacons socialist revolution. n As clashes with the KKK grew, leadership for black neighborhoods in May 1965. that one of their members kept a derringer The story of black armed self- passed to Charles Sims, who had been a The formal desegregation of the local high pistol in a hollowed-out bible. As a report defense in Bogalusa is portrayed in sergeant with the army in Europe during school meant renewed confrontations with by then-Trotskyist Spartacist League noted the excellent film Deacons for Defense World War II. Hill notes that in addition to the Klan. Even in 1967 blacks who dared to at the time, there was a duality to them: “on (2003) starring Forest Whitaker. League for the Fourth International Regimenting the Population control legislation being pushed by the In the 1930s, the rise for War Obama-Biden White House would require of the industrial unions of LFI, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY disclosure of all medical records concerning the CIO was prefigured by 10008, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] The push for gun control, along with mental health and all criminal records. The a series of citywide strikes ubiquitous police surveillance (CCTV FBI would be required to obtain and keep in 1934 of longshoremen Internationalist Group/U.S. cameras everywhere, drones in the sky), these records in their NICS (National Instant in San Francisco, truck Internationalist Group, Box 3321, Church Street stepped-up police provocation and police Criminal Background Check System) data- drivers in Minneapolis clampdown on protest are part of an overall Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. base. This would effectively make medical and auto parts workers in E-mail: [email protected] drive to regiment the population. For what? professionals, therapists and pharmacists Toledo. In each case the For war. Since the anti-Soviet Cold War end- New York Tel. (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 spies for the feds. If history is any indication, victorious strikers were Portland. OR Tel. (971) 282-7903 ed in imperialist victory, we’ve had the “war this surveillance will be used for more than led by “reds” and had to on drugs” (in reality a war on black ghettos just gun control. Count on it. fight off attacks by po- Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil and Latino barrios, as well as Mexico and But whatever the current slogan, the lice and National Guard other Latin American countries), and since Brazil: write to Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251- working class is the ultimate target of the troops. In Minneapolis, 740, Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil 11 September 2001 the “war on terror” capitalist rulers. As the class struggle sharp- the Trotskyist-led Team- : write to Caixa Postal 3982, CEP (which is really a war to terrorize the peoples ens, workers have been and will be faced with sters later set up a Union Rio de Janeiro 20001-974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil of the world into submission the dictates of the need to form workers defense guards and Defense Guard to fend E-mail: [email protected] Washington and Wall Street). There’s also workers militias. From the 1892 Homestead, off threatened attacks on trade war, currency war, and if U.S. hege- Pennsylvania steel strike, with its pitched the union hall by fascist LIVI/Deutschland mony is seriously challenged, shooting war battle between strikers and Pinkerton security Silver Shirts. In the 1941 against U.S. imperialism’s rivals. Germany: write to Postfach 74 06 41, 22096 Hamburg, guards, to the 1914 Ludlow, Colorado massa- sedition trial of 28 union Germany This regimentation means a full-scale cre of striking coal miners, to the 1917 strike activists and leaders of assault on civil liberties. Under current of copper miners in Butte, Montana (where the Socialist Workers Grupo Internacionalista/México background check laws, individuals pro- IWW organizer Frank Little was killed), to Party (18 of whom were México: write to Apartado Postal 12-201, Admón. hibited from buying guns include anyone the 1921 battle of Blair Mountain in Logan eventually jailed) over Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, México D.F, México involuntarily committed by a judge, those County, West Virginia where 10,000 armed their revolutionary op- E-mail: [email protected] declared incompetent and those convicted coal miners fought it out with an army of position to the imperialist Tel. Mexico City: 55-3154-7361; Guadalajara: 33-1752- of any drug offense, including misde- cops, finks and scabs, workers fought val- WWII, the U.S. declared 6643; Oaxaca: 951-129-2086 meanor possession of marijuana. But gun iantly but were outgunned. the defense guard to be March-April 2013 21 ATF raid was to look for Bill of Rights, including the right to freedom weapons. The FBI then of association, to equal protection under set up a siege, surround- the law, against unreasonable search and ing the compound with seizure, etc., these basic democratic rights hundreds of troops and are under attack by the very state that claims Monad Press cops. Finally after 50 to embody them. days it launched an all- Thus the Internationalist Group looks out assault, approved by to the power of the working class to make Attorney General Janet society anew, through workers revolution Reno, in which 76 mem- that will sweep away the present society bers of the racially inte- with its routine and brutal oppression, which grated commune were spawns the kind of violent rampages carried killed. The feds poured in Newtown and Clackamas, in Columbine, Threatened by Silver Shirt fascists, in August 1938 the Trotskyist-led Minneapolis truck drivers CS gas into the building Colorado or Virginia Tech, and replace the Local 544 formed an official Union Defense Guard (above). The U.S. later used this in charging which then ignited in present state of the exploiters and oppressors them with “sedition” for their revolutionary opposition to the imperialists’ World War II. the barrage of gunfire, with a workers state in which those who an overt act of arming workers in order to If the Cops Have All the Guns… as they knew it would. labor rule, and which can open the road to overthrow of the government. So if reformist left, labor leaders and Ardent advocates of gun control should a socialist society on a worldwide scale in The drive for gun control is a frontal as- bourgeois “progressives” along with big love the 1993 Waco massacre, because that’s which poverty, wars and racism will be rel- sault on the right to black armed self-defense city mayors got their way and guns in the what it leads to on a large scale. Likewise, ics of the past to be studied in history books, against racist vigilante and police attacks, and hands of civilians were somehow banned, “stop and frisk,” supposedly to search for not tragically experienced in daily life. for the right of workers to arm themselves. what would the result be? The police then illegal guns, leads directly to the 2013 po- Our task is to get from here to there, Yet some reformist social democrats such as would have free rein. This is supposed to lice assassination of Kimani Gray, because and for that we need to build a revolutionary the International Socialist Organization join be reassuring? According to a 2011 U.S. that’s what the NYPD procedure leads to. workers party. The problem in U.S. society in. An article by Danny Katch, “Sticking to Department of Justice study covering 2003- Both were “according to regulations.” Both today isn’t gun control, it’s who controls their Glocks” (Socialist Worker, 17 January) n 2009, every year around 700 civilians die were murder. And when there is protest, the guns. is shot through with bourgeois liberalism, “in relation to an arrest,” over 400 of them the response is to impose a police state on portraying opponents of gun control as “crazy” classified as “homicide by law enforce- the black and immigrant residents of the NRA spokesmen, “billionaire libertarians” and ment.” Taking a specific area, officers the Brooklyn neighborhood. As demonstrators Reforma... “trigger-happy racists.” After spending a few viene de la página 24 Los Angeles County Sherriff’s Department chanted at a March 25 demonstration in East sentences on the inequality of New York gun (LASD) in 2010 fired on 260 people on the Flatbush: “Kimani’s dead, the cops go free, individuos con grados avanzados en cien- control laws, Katch’s main complaint about “perception” that they might have a gun. that’s what they call democracy.” cia, tecnología, ingeniería y matemáticas gun control legislation is that it will only be However, in 61 percent of the cases, the Adam Lanza, a deranged youth, shot (STEM). Si bien todavía no se anuncia las “a symbolic statement against violence, and a suspect turned out to be unarmed (Police and killed 26 people, including 20 children cantidades, ciertamente se elevará el número shallow one at that” – in other words, it won’t Assessment Resource Center, 30th Semi- in the gruesome Sandy Hook school massa- de visas nuevas a más de 200 mil por año. go far enough. Annual Report, September 2011, cited in cre. Barack Obama has ordered drone strikes Además de las visas STEM para abas- Piously intoning that “Leftists like “Shoot First, Ask Questions Later,” Reason, in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, personally tecer con los “mejores y más brillantes” myself traditionally oppose gun control” January 2012). signing off on everyone on his “kill list,” that a Microsoft, Apple, Verizon, IBM y el and claiming to “really believe in all that self One example of this pattern of wanton have killed somewhere between 3,000 and montón de pequeñas firmas de tecnología, defense stuff,” Katch adds: police shooting stands out. Amid the hyste- 4,500 people, including at least 1,000 civil- los capitalistas norteamericanos quieren “But the United States of 2013 is a country ria around gun violence, in early February ians and close to 200 children in Pakistan muchos más trabajadores inmigrantes para with a vast arsenal and surveillance Los Angeles police launched a manhunt for alone (Columbia Law School, The Civil- que hagan el trabajo más sucio con los apparatus. Let’s face it: the revolution ex-officer Christopher Dorner. Denouncing ian Impact of Drones: Unexamined Costs, sueldos más bajos posibles. Durante años, won’t be purchased in the sporting Unanswered Questions [September 2012]). este plan de “trabajadores huéspedes” se goods department of Wal-Mart. So it rampant racism and corruption within the department, Dorner declared war on the Who, then, is the bigger mass murderer? tropezó con los sindicatos, que correcta- doesn’t make sense to oppose gun control mente veían que reduciría los salarios de chiefly on the basis of any future armed LAPD, allegedly killing three (two police The appeal for “non-violence” by advo- los trabajadores en EE.UU. Pero ahora la rebellion.” and a relative). The LAPD went wild, as- cates of gun control is the luxury of wealthy AFL-CIO aparentemente ha firmado un Nor does he oppose it on any other basis. Not signing 500 cops to the case. It sent out an whites who believe the police protect them. acuerdo para una nueva “visa W” que em- a word about the black militants who fought all-points bulletin to be on the lookout for Not so for poor African Americans, Latinos, pezaría con unas 20 mil al año, para llegar off racist lynch mobs, arms in hand. On the a black man driving a dark-colored pick- immigrants and working people. The preva- a unas 200 mil anuales. Supuestamente, contrary, Katch attacks Florida’s “Stand up truck. Clearly this was a shoot-to-kill lence of violent crime in impoverished urban los trabajadores “huéspedes” ganarían el Your Ground” law as do liberal Democrats order, and within hours T-shirts and signs neighborhoods is not the result of the legality “salario que prevalece en la industria” like Jesse Jackson in their attempt to use appeared on vehicles saying “Not Dorner, or even availability of guns. If it were, you (¿Como 7.25 dólares la hora en el caso de the vigilante murder of Trayvon Martin to Don’t Shoot.” Soon bumper stickers with would see the same in upscale suburban com- los trabajadores de los restaurantes?) build support for gun control (see our article, the message were available on the Internet. munities. It is the result of poverty, homeless- “Lynch Law U.S.A.: The Racist Murder People feared for their lives. ness, joblessness and all the other social ills Supuestamente, el aumento del número of Trayvon Martin,” The Internationalist, The concern was justified. On the morn- that plague oppressed populations, and it is de visas se determinaría sobre la base de May 2012). Even more telling is a reader’s ing of February 7, police shot three people, exacerbated by the racist police. un cálculo que establezca si hay escasez call for socialists to “think through how including two slight Hispanic women (one Placing a monopoly of violence in the de mano de obra. Esto es un absurdo en las people’s genuine outrage and disgust over of them 71 years old) delivering newspa- hands of the repressive apparatus of the condiciones actuales: por cada puesto de gun violence and crazy massacres can be pers. The pattern of the more than two dozen capitalist state and leaving civilians unarmed trabajo disponible hay tres solicitantes de channeled toward exposing and damaging bullet holes in the ladies’ vehicle focusing and defenseless will only intensify the killing. empleo, y el gobierno disfraza el nivel real the political right” by “banning of gun on the driver makes it clear that the fusillade Looking to bourgeois politicians – who with de desempleo al eliminar a los desemplea- shows” (“Why the Right Wing Clings to was an intended execution. Then when they their “anti-crime” rhetoric have created the dos de largo plazo del conteo de la fuerza Its Guns,” Socialist Worker, 22 January). finally tracked Dorner down in a cabin near biggest system of mass incarceration in the laboral. Quienes más directamente se verían Other reformist outfits such as Solidar- Big Bear, the police deliberately burned world, capped by the barbaric death penalty – afectados por esta afluencia de trabajadores ity and the red-white-and-blue Communist the place down. “We’re going to go ahead to bring peace to the streets of urban America a corto plazo serían los mismos trabajadores Party U.S.A. (which regularly calls for votes with the plan, with the burner,” said a San is begging a fox to guard a chicken coop. And indocumentados actualmente residentes en to Obama and just about any Democrat) join Bernardino County Sherriff’s deputy on the thinking that the black president in the White EE.UU. Es más, los trabajadores “hués- left liberals such as Mother Jones and The police radio. Several seconds later another House, commander in chief of the most vio- pedes” estarán sujetos a una forma de Nation magazines in going whole hog for said, “Seven burners deployed. And we have lent and murderous military apparatus on the peonaje por tiempo definido indentured( gun control. So, too, do a number of unions. A a fire” (Los Angeles Times, 14 February). planet, will protect black people from racist servitude). Sólo que durante la colonia, March 27 demonstration in Harlem billed as They then let the fire burn for a long time. violence is a deadly illusion. estos sirvientes al menos alcanzarían su “against gun violence” included representa- Clearly the cops wanted Dorner dead, not As for Second Amendment to the U.S. libertad después de cierto número de años, tives of Local 1199, SEIU 32BJ, CWA Local talking to the media. Constitution, promising that “the right of mientras hoy los “huéspedes” bien podrían 1180, TWU Local 100, the United Federation It was a replay of the Waco, Texas mas- the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not verse echados de vuelta. of Teachers and Professional Staff Congress sacre 20 years earlier of the Branch Davidian be infringed,” that is indeed a statement of En cuanto a los inmigrantes indocu- of CUNY. News accounts didn’t report any religious group by the U.S. Bureau of Alco- the individual right to own guns, including mentados que se inscriban buscando la le- mention of the recent NYPD murder of hol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Federal for protection against a despotic state, one galización mediante esta “reforma”, además Kimani Gray, nor the fact that handguns have Bureau of Investigation, ordered by the Dem- that goes back to the American Revolu- de informar al gobierno de su paradero, already been outlawed for almost everyone ocratic administration of Bill Clinton. The tion of 1776 and before that to the English después de pasar por una revisión de an- in NYC for over a century. alleged reason for the initial February 1993 Revolution of 1640. But like the rest of the tecedentes para eliminar a “criminales” y 22 The Internationalist “otros que representen una amenaza contra atomizados e impotentes frente a la repre- migraciones pasadas, los inmigrantes hoy Por otra parte, los trabajadores inmigrantes nuestra seguridad nacional”, y también sión racista. No lo están. Sin el trabajo de están ampliamente esparcidos por todo el ter- por sí solos rara vez tienen el poder de parar pagar una multa brutal, serán empadrona- los trabajadores inmigrantes y los nacidos ritorio estadounidense. En las empacadoras una industria en su totalidad: necesitan del dos en un status “probatorio” durante ocho en EE.UU., el capitalismo norteamericano de carne de Alabama y Georgia hasta Iowa y poder de todo el movimiento obrero para a diez años antes de que sean elegibles se paralizaría. Nebraska, operando moteles de Mississippi al respaldarlos, incluso en movilizaciones ma- para recibir una green card (de residencia La población inmigrante en los Estados estado de Washington, limpiando edificios de sivas para poner alto a las deportaciones.. permanente). Durante este tiempo tendrán Unidos hoy es mayor que en cualquier mo- Los Angeles a Nueva York, y en restaurantes Para derrotar a los “lugartenientes sin- el derecho a trabajar, pero poco más. Su mento desde los primeros años del siglo XX, y sitios de construcción por doquier en el país, dicales de la clase capitalista” y organizar situación será de hecho muy parecida a la después de las olas de migración europea ahora hay millones de trabajadores que reali- verdaderas acciones de solidaridad sindical de una persona que cumple una condena que trajeron a los trabajadores que poblaron zan trabajos mal pagados y con frecuencia es fundamental forjar un partido obrero condicional probatoria bajo la supervisión las fábricas y minas. Para 2011 había unos peligrosos, que no tienen derechos legales, revolucionario basado en un programa in- de los tribunales; alguien que en estas condi- 40 millones de inmigrantes en EE.UU., y que son odiados por los reaccionarios, y cuyo dependiente de lucha de clases en contra ciones fuera detenido por fumar mariguana, aunque constituyen el 12.5 por ciento de la trabajo es imprescindible para la economía de los demócratas, republicanos y todos los por ejemplo, podría perderlo todo. población, representan el 16% de la fuerza capitalista. Pero para despertar a este gigante partidos y políticos capitalistas. La idea de Así pues, lo que toma cuerpo es una laboral. En algunas industrias, entre ellas la dormido, se requiere un elemento clave: una que la “reforma migratoria puede detener “reforma” que informaría a la policía dónde agricultura, la alimenticia, el alojamiento, vanguardia revolucionaria. las represalias y hacer avanzar los derechos encontrar al indocumentado, que bien podría la construcción y empleados domésticos, Los trabajadores inmigrantes han in- sindicales”, como sostiene el informe del incrementar el desempleo para inmigrantes, totalizan más del 20 por ciento de los traba- tentado numerosas veces a sindicalizarse NELP, es ilusorio. Cualquier “reforma” que llevaría a una expansión del control jadores. Aislados y sin derechos, son presa –como en el caso de los trabajadores de los legislada por los representantes políticos de policíaco gubernamental y, cuando mucho y fácil de los patrones roba-salarios, quienes comedores de Pomona College en Califor- Wall Street y las empresas capitalistas que a un precio considerable, daría el estatus de los utilizan para disminuir el pago de todos nia, los troqueros portuarios y trabajadores lucran de la explotación de los trabajadores peón o persona sujeta a una pena probatoria. los trabajadores. Sin embargo, unidos a los de la construcción en Seattle, los traba- nacidos en el extranjero, cualquier iniciativa Que este sistema siquiera se implemente trabajadores nacidos en EE.UU., los traba- jadores que preparan las pizzas congeladas que concilie con los palurdos antiinmigran- dependería de una comisión en la que jadores inmigrantes pueden transformar la en Milwaukee y en otras partes– para luego tes, necesariamente representará un ataque los gobernadores de estados fronterizos lucha de clases en este país. verse derrotados cuando la policía migrato- contra los derechos de los migrantes. como Texas y Arizona tendrían un efectivo Varios aspectos particulares de la ria de la ICE acude en apoyo a los patrones ¡Al diablo con el chovinismo naciona- derecho a veto. Y si de hecho habrá una actual ola migratoria merecen un comen- (para estos y otros casos consulte el informe lista y las hostilidades étnicas que enfrentan tortuosa “vía a la ciudadanía”, estará sujeta tario. Primero, que está retrocediendo. El del National Employment Law Project, a los trabajadores entre sí mientras que los a negociación con republicanos como Jeb número de inmigrantes indocumentados Workers Rights on ICE [Los derechos de patrones se ríen en su camino a depositar Bush, cuya posición en la materia cambia en los EE.UU. ha disminuido desde 2008, los trabajadores en la congeladora], febrero sus ganancias en el banco! Los comunistas de un día al otro. en primerísimo lugar porque se han des- de 2013). En cambio, el otoño pasado los revolucionarios decimos “Asiáticos, latinos, Para los demócratas y los grupos vanecido las oportunidades de empleo; trabadores inmigrantes de una panadería de negros y blancos: proletarios del mundo “moderados” de defensa de los derechos también debido a la masiva militarización la cadena Hot and Crusty en la ciudad de ¡uníos!” Para nuestra clase, justamente la de los inmigrantes, esto es suficiente por de la frontera; y finalmente porque esto Nueva York ganaron un contrato que abre lucha obrera no tiene frontera. Éstas no son lanzar hurras. No para los marxistas. Ex- ha facilitado la creciente dominación del camino, incluso con contratación sindical consignas abstractas. Nuestro llamado por igimos plenos derechos de ciudadanía transito de la frontera por los carteles del de trabajadores, después de dos meses en la plenos derechos de ciudadanía para todos los para todos los inmigrantes. Ya era bastante narcotráfico y de contrabando, quienes han línea de piquete luchando contra un lockout inmigrantes se ha hecho realidad en varias malo cuando la izquierda quería sumarse subido considerablemente el costo (y lo (paro patronal). ocasiones. La gran Revolución Francesa de al clamor de los liberales burgueses para han hecho más peligroso, debido a que los Dos factores han resultado fundamen- 1789-99, la Comuna de París de 1871 y la pedir una “amnistía” cuando no existía cri- migrantes con frecuencia son secuestrados tales para la derrota o la victoria: la buro- Revolución Rusa de octubre de 1917 otor- men alguno. Esta “reforma” en efecto trata para exigir rescates, o masacrados). Aquí cracia sindical procapitalista y la solidaridad garon ciudadanía a todos los trabajadores y a los indocumentados como infractores de la migra y el narco trabajan codo con codo obrera. Las actuales direcciones sindicales defensores de la revolución. las leyes, y no nos sorprendería para nada contra los migrantes. en EE.UU. son un estrato parasitario Estados Unidos es una tierra de inmi- si en nombre del “espíritu bipartidista” En segundo lugar, hoy un número sin pequeñoburgués que tomó control de los grantes: todo mundo aquí vino de algún otro terminan convirtiendo el estatus “no legal” precedentes de los inmigrantes vienen de sindicatos en el curso de la “purga de los lugar, algunos en cadenas, con la excepción en un delito. Al calificarla de “reforma”, la un solo país, México, en una de las may- rojos” en la segunda posguerra mediante la de la población americana nativa que fue clase dirigente estima que puede permitirse ores migraciones de la historia moderna. que se expulsó a los socialistas y comunistas diezmada con las políticas genocidas de un ataque frontal contra los inmigrantes, los Hasta los años 1980, había menos de 2 que los habían creado. Está completamente los colonizadores y los esclavistas. Lo que derechos laborales y las libertades cívicas. millones de mexicanos en Estados Unidos. ceñida a las leyes capitalistas y es, por lo decimos es que todos aquí deben poder vivir Una verdadera lucha a favor de los Hoy hay más de 12 millones de ciudadanos tanto, incapaz de organizar a los trabajadores en este lugar con los mismos derechos que derechos de los inmigrantes debe ser una mexicanos radicados en EE.UU., lo que desprovistos de derechos legales. Para que los demás. Si bien se trata de una simple lucha contra el capital, que saca enormes constituye un 10 por ciento de la población los inmigrantes triunfen, es preciso expulsar demanda democrática, se requerirá de una ganancias de la actual situación en la total de México. Si se incluyen a sus hijos de los sindicatos a esta burocracia vendida. revolución para lograrla. n que millones de trabajadores carecen de resulta en unos 33 millones de personas de derechos legales, y que ahora quiere atesorar familias mexicanas residentes en EE.UU., beneficios aún mayores al “legalizarlos”. la décima parte de la población del país. Esta es una lucha política, porque la histe- (Esto se agrega a la población hispana The ria antiinmigrante es una distracción con el tradicional de Texas a California, arraigada Internationalist propósito de desviar la atención de la actual en sus tierras ancestrales que fueron robadas depresión económica capitalista y dirigir el de México.) Esto constituye un verdadero A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the enojo obrero en contra de los “foráneos”. puente humano para la lucha revolucionaria Reforging of the Fourth International Igual hicieron los nazis alemanes (y fascistas en ambos lados de la frontera. nativistas en los EE.UU.) en los años 1930 al En tercer lugar, la inmigración a los Publication of the Internationalist Group, convertir a los judíos en chivos expiatorios. EE.UU. ha amontonado poblaciones que section of the League for the Fourth International Debe ser una lucha contra la campaña de en sus países de origen eran fuertemente guerra imperialista, que ha hecho de los hostilizadas en sanguinarios conflictos Annual subscription US$10 for five issues. árabes, los asiáticos y todos los inmigrantes intestinos, pero que aquí tienen intereses Name______el “enemigo interior”. en común. En la ciudad de Nueva York hay Debe ser una lucha contra el embuste unos 600 mil dominicanos y 400 mil haitia- Address______de la “guerra contra la droga”, que en re- nos; juntos constituyeron el 80 por ciento de alidad es una guerra contra los guetos negros los trabajadores de los autobuses escolares ______Apt. #_____Tel.(___)______y los barrios latinos, que retrata a los mexi- que recientemente hicieron una huelga de un City______State/Province______canos como narcotraficantes. Debe formar mes. Los jóvenes de los 200 mil inmigrantes parte de una lucha contra los socios menores de la India, los 70 mil de Pakistán y los 60 Postal Code/Zip______Country______latinoamericanos de Washington que sum- mil de Bangladesh que viven en la ciudad isamente han impuesto las políticas de “libre se consideran predominantemente como Make checks/money orders payable to Mundial Publications and mail to: mercado” que expulsaron a los campesinos una sola comunidad surasiática de desis. Mundial Publications Esta mezcolanza presenta enormes opor- Box 3321, Church Street Station de sus tierras, obligándolos a poner en New York, NY 10008 U.S.A. riesgo a sus vidas al buscar una vida mejor tunidades para los revolucionarios interna- en el Gran Norte. Debe ser una lucha por la cionalistas, enemigos de los nacionalismos Write the Internationalist Group at the above address, or contact: revolución socialista internacional. Hoy en fratricidas y del imperialismo. Tel (212) 460-0983 Fax (212) 614-8711 día los trabajadores inmigrantes se sienten En cuarto lugar, a diferencia de las E-mail: [email protected]

March-April 2013 23 El Internacionalista marzo-abril de 2013 Exigimos: ¡Plenos derechos de ciudadanía para todos los inmigrantes! La reforma migratoria “bipartidista” de Obama es un fraude

1° de ABRIL ­– Tramposos planes para una “reforma migratoria” andan en boca de todos en Washington. El grupo de senadores ¡La lucha obrera no tiene frontera! demócratas y republicanos conocido como

la “banda de los ocho” ha filtrado reportes Foto: El Internacionalista de que su propuesta “bipartidista” será develada en las próximas dos semanas. Portavoces sindicales y patronales anuncian que han alcanzado un acuerdo en torno a las cláusulas de un programa de “trabajadores huéspedes”. El presidente Barack Obama ha pedido audiencias del Congreso sobre la inmigración para celebrarse este mes. Grupos de defensa de los derechos de los migrantes están esperanzados y dicen que es “ahora o nunca” para una reforma que ofrezca una “vía para la ciudadanía”. Que nadie se deje engañar. La “re- forma” que están preparando no ben- eficiará a los 11 millones de inmigrantes indocumentados que se calcula que viven en Estados Unidos; al contrario, servirá a los intereses de los capitalistas que explotan su trabajo. La “contrarreforma” en marcha profundizará la explotación e intensificará la persecución de los millones de traba- jadores que realizan muchas de las labores peor pagadas y más peligrosas en el país. Además, implicará ataques en toda la línea contra las libertades civiles y los derechos sindicales de toda la población. Esto no será el resultado exclusivo de que los “reformadores” estén capitulando a los derechistas xenófobos y antiinmigrantes. Los liberales demócratas, supuestamente “amigos de los inmigrantes”, han reprimido Contingente internacionalista en la marcha del Primero de Mayo de 2011 en la ciudad de Nueva York con aún mayor saña a los nacidos en el ex- Seguridad de la Patria ha cuadruplicado el izaciones o aprobar los exámenes de inglés Para verificar la “elegibilidad de em- tranjero que los conservadores republicanos. número de las auditorías “I-9” con respecto y civismo, (c) una comisión de gobernadores pleo” de un trabajador, se elaborará un Hoy es ampliamente sabido que Obama ha a la “verificación de elegibilidad para el em- de los estados fronterizos no certifica que la registro nacional con “medios electrónicos deportado a más de 400 mil inmigrantes por pleo”, provocando así que decenas de miles frontera esté “segura”. no falsificables” para establecer la identidad año, lo que representa más del doble de los de inmigrantes pierdan sus trabajos. Esto Entretanto, el plan pide una militarización y el estatus legal. Esto es aún peor que un que expulsó George W. Bush. La inmensa también ha dado a los patrones roba-salarios aún mayor de la frontera, con la continua carnet de identidad nacional, toda vez que mayoría de estos deportados no son culpa- una herramienta adicional para no pagar a expansión de la Patrulla Fronteriza norteam- contendrá el registro laboral del individuo. bles de ningún crimen en lo absoluto (estar sus trabajadores, al afirmar que tienen que ericana (que ya ha doblado sus efectivos Además de revisar la exactitud de las so- en EE.UU. “sin estatus legal” es únicamente cumplir con una auditoría aún si no es el desde 2005) y el uso exhaustivo de “drones” licitudes laborales de todo mundo, muy una infracción civil). caso. En lugar de pagar a los trabajadores no tripulados, aviones “espías en los cielos”. pronto las usarán para cazar “malhechores” Las aparatosas redadas de Bush en las la compensación requerida por lesiones, las ¿Cuánto tiempo transcurrirá antes de que que han cometido infracciones de tránsito, fábricas captaron los encabezados de los aseguradoras llaman a la ICE y hacen que el empiecen a disparar desde el aire a los que “padres morosos” para que paguen las pen- periódicos, pero la presente administración trabajador herido sea deportado. cruzan la frontera, como el Pentágono y la siones de sus hijos, poseedores de armas o se ha valido de “redadas silenciosas”. Desde En lo que toca a la fabulada “vía para la CIA ya están haciendo en media decena de cualquier otra categoría que se pueda pen- enero de 2009, la división de Inmigración ciudadanía”, ésta será extremadamente dura países? Un estudio publicado en enero de 2013 sar – probablemente incluyéndote a ti. La y Aduanas (Immigration and Customs y llena de obstáculos, costará miles (y en al- informó que EE.UU. ya gasta 18 mil millones “reforma” también proyecta un “sistema de Enforcement, ICE) del Departamento de gunos casos decenas de miles) de dólares por de dólares al año para la policía migratoria, entrada-salida” para rastrear a quienes en- persona, entre multas lo que representa más que los presupuestos tran legalmente al país. ¿Cómo? Fácilmente: punitivas e impuestos combinados del FBI, la DEA y la ATF. añadiendo un microchip rastreable a la visa. atrasados, y tomará años Como resultado de ello, EE.UU. ha crea- Esta es una “reforma migratoria” al para completar. Bajo la do un estado policíaco para los inmigrantes. gusto del Gran Hermano. Y no por casuali- propuesta “bipartidista” No sólo en Arizona los indocumentados te- dad: estas medidas no han sido diseñadas el tiempo más corto con- men que al caminar por la calle les exijan que para satisfacer las necesidades de los in- templado es de 13 años, “muestren sus papeles” como en la Alemania migrantes sino que, por el contrario, tienen Gerald L. Nino/CBP pero podría ser mucho nazi o en la Sudáfrica del apartheid. Si te como propósito usar a los inmigrantes para mayor, incluso el doble, detienen por una infracción de tránsito, pu- satisfacer las exigencias de los capitalistas, o simplemente no ter- edes terminar en un campo de concentración en un período en el que el capitalismo minar nunca, si (a) las (“centro de detención”) durante meses para norteamericano busca regimentar a la po- millones de solicitudes ser luego deportado, separado de tus hijos blación en un estado cada vez más empre- “legales” pendientes de nacidos en EE.UU. Lo mismo vale para un sarial (reforma educativa, reforma a la salud, ciudadanía no se han adolescente que se pelee en la escuela. Y etc.). En concordancia con ello, el plan resuelto primero, (b) los ahora, en nombre de la “reforma migratoria” “bipartidista” proyecta multiplicar consid- Vehículos aéreos de la Patrulla Fronteriza. ¿Cuándo individuos no pueden la burguesía quiere extender estas medidas de erablemente el número de visas H1-B para empezarán a disparar a los que cruzan la frontera? pagar las fuertes penal- estado policíaco a toda la población. sigue en la página 22