WfJRIlERI ",16(;(/,1" 25¢ No. 336 .~:';~~: X_,523 12 August 1983

W\I Photo Washington, D.C., 27 November 1982-5,000 jubilant demonstrators charge up Capitol Hill after Labor/Black Mobilization stops Klan march,

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Rooseveltian coalition which flopped so shown in Washington, D.C. last No­ Malcolm X blasted the 1963 March Democrat in the White House. That's miserably at the polls after four years of vember 27 when 5,000 responded to the on Washington, calling it the "Farce on . all. This march isn't about jobs, nor Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. It is call of the Spartacist-initiated Labor/ Washington." But he wasn't laughing as freedom, nor peace. And it's certainly this coalition which ties the working Black Mobilization and stopped the Ku he lashed out against M.L. King & Co. not about a new civil rights movement. class and oppressed minorities to its Klux Klan from marching in the who were sinking the black struggle in They aren't even making promises this sworn enemies through the treachery of nation's capital. This direct blow against the cesspool of the Democratic Party. time. "Still have a dream?" How about a the labor tops and black politicos. The growing racist terror was hailed by Malcolm X was burning mad because he job? A school lunch? A decent educa­ Democratic Party, which black people decent people everywhere who knew knew it was going to take a revolution to tion? These necessities of life are vote for in overwhelming percentages, is that if the Klan had been able to stage win black freedom in America. And the presented as a dream for blacks. at bottom the party of a necessarily their provocation in Washington it 1963 march, like its pale reflection on Thanks to the black misleaders, racist capitalism, the party of George would have meant more black families' August 27, was organized against unlike the 1963 March on Washington, Wallace, the Dixiecrats and even some homes firebombed, more burning militant black struggle. today there isn't even any struggle to sell crosses. But it was the kind of demon­ out. On the contrary, both Democrats open KKKers like California's Tom But if the first march on Washington stration which scares the hell out of and Republicans have been steadily Metzger. was a farce because it undercut black The reformist left is most anxious to Democratic liberals. It was masses of militancy, this time around it's tragedy dismantling even the token gains of the build the anti-Reagan popular front for blacks mobilized in struggle, led by for black America. Now a generation civil rights movement. And the people socialists and backed up by an impor­ on the podium August 27 certainly the Democrats. This is a strategy of later hundreds of thousands will once tant segment of the labor movement. aren't going to do anything to stop this. defeat. Indeed the August 27 march is a again stand with locked arms singing, And it worked. The 1983 march is for nothing but the celebration of defeat. No wonder the "We Shall Overcome" and the "Star Not only did that demonstration stop Democrats. That's why it's supported by Reagan White House, too, wants to get Spangled Banner." Once again the in on the act ofcelebrating black defeats the Klan in its tracks but it took the very words of Martin Luther King will be the bureaucrats ofthe AFL-CIO and the Klan route to the White House for an Cold Warhorses of the ADA. Similarly by making Martin Luther King's birth­ heard: "I have a dream." Now they say, anti-Klan victory march. On November the Labor Day marches planned by the day a national holiday. But another "We still have a dream." Democrat in the White House is no way 27 Washington was not a Klan town, it To the jobless, angry and hungry giveback bureaucrats in fifty cities are to fight racist reaction. The party of belonged to blacks and labor and those black people of this country, the march also crawls for the Democratic so-called Carter/Mondale is no less committed who hailed that demonstration. What organizers say: "Let 'em eat dreams." "friends of labor." than the Republicans to U.S. imperial­ stopped the Klan that day and gave the And what is their lousy dream when you The Democrats are trying to put ism's anti-Soviet war drive paid for by participants in the Labor/Black Mobili- strip away the preachy milk-and-honey together a combination for an electoral attacks against working people, the continued on page 8 rhetoric? They dream of putting a victory in '84. That is the content of the march slogan for a "new coalition of poor and minorities at home. We say: conscience." This coalition is not new, Break with the Democrats! Bring down nor is it one of conscience. It is an Reagan with labor/black action! attempt to repair the tattered old That blacks want to stnlggle was The March on Malcolm X on Washington '63 "Farce on That Wasn't Washington" SEE PAGE 7 SEE PAGE 8

l SYL, Labor/Black League Protest Coleman Young's Racist Curfew

DETROIT-"The RenCen should be \UJwn toN ~'. "{ crime. But the real causes of crime lie in ours, but it's Coleman Young's show- . the racist American capitalist system of piece. We say, turn it into a 24-hour m.t\,\~N ~ l\\lN(, -l production for profit, where life is cheap youth center with swimming pools and and the lives of black people are even free video games! ... STRESS killed 16 ~~t\S\ cheaper. The fight against the curfew blacks-Join us and beat STRESS II U)Rf(\.)! was a felt issue among black youth, back!" said Charles DuBois, member of many of whom took stacks of leaflets to the Rouge Militant Caucus of UAW pass out to friends at the local high Local 600. A half-dozen River Rouge ~o,JRtSSli schools. And the Rouge workers who auto workers had come out to an ~\ came out to the demonstration under~ August 3 demonstration at Wayne State stood the need for a class-struggle University, called by the Spartacus program to fight unemployment, and to Youth League (SYL) and Labor/Black .. ~ o-rt\t~S dump the labor traitors. Struggle League (LBSL), to protest Coleman Young had announced the Democratic mayor Coleman Young's ':.1 V~l' \ ~t~b~t campaign to enforce the curfew and racist curfew. WWJ, Detroit's all-news closed the capitalist showpiece Renais­ station, carried coverage of the IAWI1"~! ~ ~"1" ~ sance Center to black youth in late June, demonstration. \ the same week the Democratic National Young's curfew scapegoats Detroit's s tmlCW HNj)l Committee was in town. In 1980 Young black youth for the capitalist crisis , broke the AFSCME sanitation workers' which has created a permanent pool of strike to host the Republican Conven­ 70 percent minority teenage unem­ tion under the slogan, "Detroit Loves a ployed. The curfew was welcomed by Good Party." Breaking black workers' the racist cops who will use it as a license strikes, keeping the "lid" on the ghetto­ for police harassment, intimidation and this is how the black mayors front for murder. The police refer to it as their white capitalist masters. Young STRESS II, "Shop the RenCen, Enjoy was first elected in large part due to Safe Stores," in remembrance of WV-Photo black anger 9ver STRESS I. Now he Detroit, August 3-Ford Rouge workers Join protest called· by SYL and STRESS I, the notorious unit of police Labor/Black Struggle League at Wayne State University. implements STRESS II! killers that routinely gunned down The popular front means that blacks black youth in the early 1970s. deceased relative in Montgomery, Ala­ The anti-curfew demonstration met and working people must eat it­ "This racist curfew sucks, it makes us bama last spring. "Sitdowns Not with considerable polarization among anything not to disrupt the anti-Reagan sitting ducks" was a popular chant ofthe Souplines-Fight for Your Jobs," read Detroit's workers and students, as black Democratic Party coalition. Chuck two dozen demonstrators who rallied a Rouge Militant Caucus sign as Ford's mayor Coleman Young plays on the Fogel, editor of the Wayne State paper across from WSU's MacKenzie Hall. steel division is facing massive layoffs largely black working class' genuine fear The South End, said the curfew would An LBSL sign proclaimed, "Stop the and concessions. An SYL sign, "Rea~ of violence and crime to whip up "create a better business community" by Legal Lynching of the Taylor Family!" gan's Anti-Soviet War Drive Is Killing support for his ominous "emergency keeping youth out of downtown! The This referred to the victimization of Blacks and Labor in America" linked measures." No doubt in this city where Democratic Socialists of America Michigan black workers who defended the wave ofunion-busting, cutbacks and cashiers are enclosed in bullet-proof (DSA) argue that it's "not a burning themselves against a racist cop attack on racist terror in the U.S. to the govern- plexiglass many workers hold illusions issue." The DSA are the pro-imperialist ~-----..,,!" u ...... '\),vu."'h..-~ fVH~;;i.OIl policy. that the curfew might just stV' some continued on page 10 L- Protest Police Gangland-Style Murder of Michael Woods Jail Racist Cleveland Killer Cops! CLEVELAND-On July 23 about 50 with a history of atrocities against angry Clevelanders gathered at the blacks, boasts of killing dozens of downtown Justice Center to show Vietnamese. He was subsequently support for the family of Michael cleared of murdering Michael Woods by Woods, an unemployed black worker a closed-door grand jury and a mayoral wantonly murdered by racist killer cop committee. But numerous eyewitnesses Joseph Paskvan exactly one year ago to to the scene last year portrayed the the day. Called by Lucius Woods, the situation as calculated murder. The 24­ father of the murdered victim, the year-old Woods was on his way to get a demonstration focused attention on the birthday cake for his one-year-old son vicious racist brutality of Cleveland when he was shot by the gun-waving off­ cops and supported a court suit filed by duty cop who reportedly refused to the Woods family seeking damages allow him medical attention immediate­ against the cops and the city. ly after the incident. Paskvan. a notorious racist-in-blue The Spartacist League mobilized the largest contingent at today's noon-time rally. SL members and supporters IWfJRKERS initiated a spirited and militant picket line which was joined by the Woods I VANGUARD family, friends and supporters. The Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of Spartacist contingent chanted, "Venge­ the Spartacist League of the U.S. ance for Michael Woods! Jail Killer EDITOR Jan Norden Paskvan!" and "Gun Control Kills PRODUCTION MANAGER Noah Wilner Blacks-Disarm the Cops!" SL signs WV Photo CIRCULATION MANAGER linda Jarreau called for "Millions in Compensation to Cleveland, July 23-Spartaclst contingent demands "vengeance for Michael EDITORIAL BOARD Charles Burroughs, the Woods Family-Cops Must Pay!" Woods" at Justice Center protest. George Foster, Liz Gordon, Mary Jo and warned "Reagan's Anti-Soviet War McAllister, James Robertson, Reuben The local fake-lefts refused to the fence, taking no part in the demon­ Samuels, Joseph Seymour, Marjorie Stamberg Drive Means Racist Terror at Home." mobilize or effectively participate in this stration at all. A token couple of Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published The media did its best to redbait the demonstration. People United Against SWPers appeared briefly, only to col­ biweekly, skipping an issue in August and a week in December, by the Spartacist protest. A local radio journalist even Repression, a liberal coalition run by lect signatures for their reformist Publishing Co" 41 Warren Street. New York, tried to get Mr. Woods to disassociate the local supporters of black nationalist electioneering. NY 10007 Telephone 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861 (BUSiness). Address all corres­ himself from radicals ..."who have not Imamu Baraka, set up a small, silent The first anniversary ofWoods' death pondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY had a whole lot to do with your cause." vigil 100 feet away from the chanting takes place in the city recently judged 10116 Domestic subSCriptions $5.00/24 Issues Second-class postage paid at New But Woods honorably refused: "People protesters. A few cowardly ISOers second only to Chicago in the degree of York. NY in Cleveland know what happened. But refused numerous invitations to partici­ its segregation. It will take the mobiliza­ Opinions expressed ,n signed art/cles or I they're afraid to take a stand. You pate in the picket line. Rather than being tion of the powerful integrated workers letters do not necessaf/ly express the ed/tof/al know, police retribution is pretty rough. even remotely associated with revolu­ movement to unlock the social power to vle:~~ ~ So I ,guess that these people." he said, tionary politics. they finally went off to smash racist brutality once and for all. No. 33~__ 12 Augu~~~ referring to the demonstrators. "are not stand siiently with the PU AR on the Vengeance for Michael Woods' Jail afraid. and I appreciate their effort." sidelines. Some RCPers literally sat on Killer Cops!.

2 WORKERS VANGUARD Occupy Phone Installations to Win! Victory to Phone Workers Strike!

AUGUST 8-Some 700,000 phone out for a few more pennies, which the workers in three unions are out on their richest corporation in the U.S. can first national strike in years. This strike easily afford, in order to pave the way is effectively a lockout, provoked by an for a massive sellout that would give the arrogant phone monopoly intent on company a free hand to bust seniority, imposing a massive defeat on the transfer workers at will and further slash unions, particularly the Communica­ the workforce. The union tops are not tions Workers of America (CWA). The even demanding an end to job cuts­ bosses want to soften up the unions in only that more "advance notification" preparation for a government­ be given before layoffs! mandated reorganization, under which The CWA reflects what unrestrained AT&T plans on not only eliminating the class collaboration leads to. For jobs of tens of thousands of phone decades Watts and his predecessor Joe workers but on setting up the CWA to CWA Beirne have run a union that's never be dismembered. STRI',,~ broken qualitatively from its company Phone workers know their jobs and union origins. The CWA has never won future are at stake. Pickets outside an \GAIHSr a real strike: class-struggle tactics like AT&T building in New York chanted, (t? M sit-down strikes and flying picket "What do we want? Job security!" In squads are not even a distant memory. Brooklyn a couple of cops who tried to ~mL1 Absent are elementary trade-union aid scabs were taught a lesson by several gains like a union shop, under which all hundred rallying strikers. Phone trunk ,;".,;"j...... ,;.~ workers must join the union. Instead the lines were slashed in Miami and in company runs the shop floor like a several locations delivery trucks were plantation. In many locals shop stew­ turned away by pickets. But everywhere ards are appointed by and beholden to the lack of strike preparation was the craven bureaucracy, rather than the evident, and frequently union leaders membership. And under the "fact­ sought to quell militancy. In Chicago, finding" grievance procedure, stewards officials were booed when they told New York Tel headquarters, midnight, August 7: Workers want to fight. They don't defend the members but are forced hundreds of strikers that henceforth need a strategy to win. to supply evidence to the bosses to use only skeleton picket lines were neces­ against the workers. sary. And in one Bay Area location, contract for 14 months the ranks finally sharply poses a political break with the The roots of the CWA bureaucracy's officials ordered strikers to cease their blew up. But they didn't leave their whole capitalist order, the need to build servility to the company lie in its ties to attempts to stop scab trucks from buildings: they occupied every major a workers party to fight for a workers the capitalist state. You can't break the leaving a splicing garage. BC Tel installation in the province government. phone bosses unless you're willing to The CWA leaders, headed by Glenn around the clock! For five days they It's clear enough that phone workers take on the government-. And the CWA Watts, have told phone workers for held the company's precious private need to fight to defend their interests. hacks won't do this because they are years that strikes aren't necessary and property, while BC Tel shrieked help­ But Watts has been saying and doing the loyal lackeys of American imperialism. thereby permitted the company to go on lessly and ran to the courts for opposite right up to the strike. A decent The CWA withheld its affiliation to the the offensive. Now it's up to the phone protection. Subsequently the TWU tops leadership would have mobilized phone CIa until 1949, when socialists and workers. No confidence in the union caved in to the court injunction, but a workers against the company years ago. communists were being e·xpe\\ed {roan bureaucracy! What's needed to stop class-struggle leadership could have At the national convention only two the unions and the bureaucrats were AT&T is exemplary militancy and pushed the strike forward into a giant months ago, which was mainly a consolidating behind the Cold War. steadfastness. victory for labor. platform for presidential hopefuls from Today the CWA bureaucrats enjoy the Already the bosses have taken an ax What's needed here now is hundreds the racist, anti-labor Democratic Party, dubious distinction of being the fore­ to the workforce. Thousands of phone of thousands of phone workers occupy­ the CWA International reduced the most supporters and financiers in the workers have already been subjected to ing the buildings, rallying behind them strike fund. Watts even declared to the labor movement ofAIFLD, a CIA front forced downgrades, transfers and lay­ millions of other trade unionists and the delegates, "AT&T Chairman Charles up to its neck in supporting right-wing offs. The bosses are right now reassign­ poor. With a flick of the switch, phone Brown recently predicted a bright future coups from Brazil to Chile and EI ing workers to different work locations, workers could win millions of allies for the new Bell System, and that's good Salvador. Watts has been opposing often hundreds of miles away, and in among working people by providing enough for us;" and then boasted that a strikes here for years, while supporting many cases without regard to seniority. free phone service and thus striking a workable contract would be negotiated Reagan's "company union" Solidarnosc This is a set-up for next January, much-needed blow against the arrogant, well before the expiration date. in Poland. when AT&T will be split into several parasitic and widely hated phone Far (rom it! When negotiations broke Like the rest of the anti-Soviet AFL­ subsidiaries and "independent" regional bosses. off two days ago the profit-bloated CIa bureaucrats, the Watts gang wants operating companies. As part of this You don't go after the bosses' com­ bosses-who raked in over $7 billion no part in any action that challenges the operation, the bosses want to smash any munications system lightly. Striking a last year-"offered" a grand total of a normal functioning of the capitalist semblance of uniform national wages blow at phone means an immediate 3.5 percent wage increase over three order. The labor fakers criminally and benefits. Backed up by the courts. confrontation with the capitalist state. years to top craft, and nothing to lower­ allowed PATCO to be blown away by AT&T has already gotten the go-ahead But there are millions ofworking people paid phone workers, while demanding refusing to back up the striking air to establish separate pension plans for who hate AT&T and Reagan. This that phone workers pay 20 percent of controllers and shutting down the the new companies: a worker trans­ national strike by the CWA. even their medical insurance. AT&T is airports-because they didn't want a ferred from one part of the country to though forced on the union by the demanding elimination of evening and real struggle against Reagan's govern­ ,another would lose his pension. Phone company, still can potentially turn into midnight shift differentials, as well as a ment. That defeat gave a green light for workers don't know what company a powerful strike movement ifthe rest of host of other union givebacks, including AT&T and every other boss to attack they'll be working for in January-if the labor movement can be brought in downgrading almost half the craft the unions. they have a job at all-or even whether behind it. workers to 65 percent of existing top Striking phone militants determined they'll have a union contract! Manage­ What's going on here is an attempt by pay! to defend their union know that the ment is bitterly contesting recognition the richest and greediest corporation in Watts is now posturing about holding continued on page 11 of the CWA at the newly formed AT&T the U.S. to crack another union and give Information Systems. and union mili­ the whole labor movement a humiliat­ tants say that the bosses want to ing defeat. So it's in the interests of the eliminate the union entirely from this entire workers movement, including workforce. especially its more historically militant The Watts gang never wanted this sectors-many of whom have at least a Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League strike, and now they've left angry and tradition of actually fighting on picket frustrated phone workers out in the cold lines, in mass strikes, to defend the $5/24 Issues of Workers Vanguard [J $2/4 issues of without a program to win it. You don't workers' interests-to get behind this = (Includes Spartaclst) International rates Women and Revolution win a strike by letting management and strike. C New u Renewal $20 24 Issues~Alrmail scabbing phone workers cross picket Phone workers need to forge links $524Issues-Seamall [J $2/10 introductory issues of lines with impunity. In the highly with auto workers. transit workers. steel Workers Vanguard $2 19 Issues of Young Spartacus (includes Spartaclst) automated Bell System. the bosses can workers, Teamsters, with the unem­ ------~--~._--~_.- keep essential phone service running ployed and blacks. with all victims of Name . with minimum disruptions. But there is this decaying capitalist order! We need a way to win-lock the bosses out! strike action to bring down Reagan and Address The kind of class-struggle tactics the bosses who maintain this rotting .. Phone ( needed to win were demonstrated by society! Fight for a sliding scale of wages 11,000 phone workers of the Telecom­ and hours for all: full cost-of-living City State Zip _ munications'Workers Union (TWU) in protection, jobs for all through a shorter 336 British Columbia (Canada) who struck workweek with no loss in pay! This kind Make checks payable/mall 10: Sperlaclsl Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 in February 1981. After going without a of fight is desperately necessary, and 12 AUGUST 1983 3 Thought Cops in Barnestown

OBERLIN, Ohio-Call it the "conven­ Thanks to the Spartacist sales team "vanished" from the campus restaurant International: "the need for a strong tion that wasn't." As readers ofour last that went to Oberlin (and to the people and from a bakery. On the first day of party apparatus." Of particular concern issue of WV already know, July 30­ who give us SWP documents like "the the conference, we were rather surprised to Miah is the "district structures" and August 6 was the annual national Dianne Feeley letter" which Barnes has to find the SWP goon squad engrossed "state structures" being instituted in the gathering held in this college town ofthe tried to suppress from his members), the in Spartacist literature. organization. Supposedly, these bodies reformist Socialist Workers Party Oberlin farce had some educational Most SWPers remained too cowed to are essential to "centralize" industrial (SWP) of Jack Barnes. Some 1,000 value for some of its participants. Our openly buy a WV but most eagerly implantations; in reality they are anoth­ SWP supporters attended. idea of education was the tongue-in­ snapped up copies of the "question­ er effort to retake control of dissident Barnes the bureaucrat-having cheek "questionnaire" reprinted below, naire." "It's vicious, but very, very locals. Meanwhile long-time Barnes manifestly failed to reestablish tight and the article on the shrinking SWP of funny," one SWPer was overheard hacks continue dropping out (or going control of his SWP by increasingly eccentric social-democrats in the last telling another. We suppose the deni­ over to the other side?)-Dick (a.k.a. draconian purges and gross intimida­ issue of WV("Final Solution in Barnes­ zens of Barnestown can use a few laughs Catarino) Garza is reportedly one such tion tactics against minorityites-had town," WV No. 335, 29 July). these days. The popularity of this new casualty. cancelled the SWP's scheduled national The Barnes machine, of course, scathing leaflet (about 750 copies were Barry Sheppard's presentation­ convention and replaced it with a tepid outdid itself this year in attempting to distributed) testifies to the high level of devoted to applauding the SWP's "educational" gathering. Barnes seems prevent access to Spartacist literature by cynicism among SWPers, ofcourse. But discovery of the labor movement a to think that if he pretends to ignore an surrounding SWP members with goons it also bespeaks some de-zombification decade after every other left organ­ internal factional polarization (which to seek to intimidate WV sellers and of the SWP ranks under the heat of the ization established union im­ threatens a big split sooner rather than SWP potential readers. On the opening factional struggle that Barnes isn't plantations-added a little "histori­ later), it will ignore him. Indeed, in the day of the conference, they even took a talking about. In rare cases SWPers cal" perspective of a piece with Barnes' introduction to Barnes' Saturday night line of six Barnesite "watchers" off even protested being harassed by their denunciation of Trotsky as an ultraleft. speech, Pat Grogan referred to the campus and set up in front of the goon squad: "I'm not afraid of that It seems that the SWP survived a "semi­ organization as "homogeneous"! bookstore in downtown Oberlin, where paper," one older participant"declared; sectarian" period from 1947-1978! Barnes' idea of "education" was WV was on sale. (We soon persuaded from another, "Leave me alone-I'm Assailing critics of Barnesite union offerings like these: the bookstore manager to put our just buying a paper." work, Sheppard declared that they had • "Horne and Hearth: Should Work­ papers back on sale and the SWP pulled Inside, as well as stonewalling on the been accused of being "revolutionary ers Own Their Own Homes?" its "watchers" back to campus before we internal crisis, Barnesite hacks utilized grasshoppers" but it's "better to be a • "Key Questions in Developing a could get a photograph ofthe spectacle.) the non-eonvention to bait their critics revolutionary grasshopper than a le­ Proletarian Program for Farmers in the At various concentration points on and hard line it on the "turn to thargic counterrevolutionary slug." At U.S." campus, "mass mobilizations" of SWP industry," "centralization" and the least New York City transit workers can • "Report from the July 1983 Found­ goons maintained a vigil rain or shine. prospects for a "new International"(not heave a sigh of relief over the apparent ing Convention of the Minnesota State Nonetheless, we were able to sell 72 accidentally the name ofthe SWP's new imminent departure of one Mark ("I Organization"-billed as "Strengthen­ copies directly to conference partici­ theoretical journal-which has finally debated Klansman Torn Metzger") ing the Revolutionary Party in the pants; another 30 were sold in the stores published Jack Barnes' January public Friedman from their union. It's likely Upper Midwest" (read: smashing the and shops of Oberlin. And other speech formally denouncing Trotsky­ that other SWP supporters will follow. Twin Cities branch minority, rumored SWPers apparently obtained copies in ism). Thus, Malik Miah's presentation Even in the stultifying atmosphere of to have reached 50 percent). other ways: an additional 20 copies stressed the "lessons" of the Communist continued on page 11 Questionnaire for Participants of the 1983 SWP Non-Convention

I. Why is the SWP not having a 5. Grounds for expulsion from the D. More implantation into gar­ C. Doug Jenness convention this year? SWP don't include: ment D. Larry Seigle A. Don't know A. "Talking socialism" as white E. Stop publishing Trotsky's E. Only A-C B. Don't care new hires in the Alabama coal "ultraleft" books on the Perma­ F. All of the above C. Huge faction fight raging in the mines until racists started fire­ nent Revolution 14. Memorable Militant headlines I party bombing black miners' cars 9. Areas of agreement between the will always cherish include: D. What's a convention? B. Getting some gusano vigilantes SWP and Fidel Castro include: A. "U.S. Aid to Nicargagua [sic]!" E. Can't answer; don't want to be to get you a gun after the 1981 A. The Soviet intervention in B. "Victory in Iran!" expelled Miami racial violence Afghanistan C. "Where CIA Agents Go Wrong C. Fingering "ultraleftists" to the B. The crushing of Solidarnosc' on Poland" 2. Why does the SWP claim that Nicaraguan government counterrevolution D. "Mark Friedman Debates Dem Hedda Garza was testifying for the D. Linking arms with the Marcyite FBI during the "Watersuit" trial? C. Support to SP-Ied raids on CP Klandidate" goon squad and/or calling in offices in Portugal, 1975 E. "The Truth About Afghani­ A. Because the government attor­ the cops to seal off the Sparts' D. Whether the Angolan FNLA stan" followed by "Correcting ney for the FBI said so and "military victory" and USSR/ was progressive against the the Truth About Afghanistan" government attorneys never lie Cuba-defensist slogans MPLA in 1975 F. Don't know; the only thing I B. Because the Militant said so and E. Crossing picket lines E. Can't answer; never could figure ever read is Harry Ring's the Militant never lies F. Defending the KKK's "right" to it out column C. Because Hedda Garza was in a platform for genocide the Internationalist Tendency G. Marching with "captive na­ 10. Where can SWP members find out 15. The life of an SWP oppositionist is: D. Can't answer; don't want to be tions"-style reactionaries for what really goes on in Barnestown? A. Nasty expelled "Free Trade Unions" in Poland A. Workers Vanguard B. Brutish H. All of the above B. Young Spartacus C. Short 3. What was the most surprising C. Minority caucus meetings D. All of the above 6. What is the largest mass movement outcome of the May 1983 NC D. Wherever ex-members con­ E. There are no oppositionists in associated with the SWP? plenum? gregate the SWP-just loyal members A. The decision to cancel the A. An "international" of I) Fidel E. Wish I knew... (and ex-members...) convention Castro; 2) Lech Walesa; 3) any wing of the FDR/FMLN;4) the II. When will the next SWP con­ 16. Why did the SWP refuse to publi­ B. The suppression of information vention be held? cize the Gelfand case for so long? from the membership of the Ayatollah Khomeini A. Because it wasn't important plenum's proceedings B. Ed Sadlowski A. 1984 C. The minorities may have C. Those who have or are about to B. After the "World Congress" of B. Because the SWP leadership formed a joint Oppositional quit the "United Secretariat" didn't want to assist the SL in defending the workers move­ Bloc D. Can't answer; don't want to be C. After the minority is expelled D. The minority Oppositional Bloc expelled D. Never again (you lucky Sparts) ment against this attack Only Allah knows C. Because the SWP leadership is was not expelled on the spot 7. What will be the price of the next E. really stupid SWP Internal Information 12. Who will be your next national 4. Grounds for expulsion from the Bulletin? secretary? 17. Torn Kerry died: SWP include: A. $8.99 A. No one ever but Jack Barnes A. Loving the SWP A. Being older than Jack Barnes B. $99.99 B. Michael Harrington B. Cursing the SWP and having political differences C. Not available at any price C. "Pedro" Camejo C. Conveniently B. Being older than Jack Barnes D. Torn who? 8. How can the SWP improve its D. Larry Seigle C. Having political differences E. Quasimodo D. Talking to YSAers financial situation? 18. Why does the SL want to file an F. Can't answer; don't want to be amicus brief on behalf of the E. Talking in your sleep A. Stop turning down those expelled (see A) F. Writing poetry million-dollar bribes majority in the case of Asher G. Reading the Dianne Feeley B. Keep Frank Lovell off the N.O. 13. Who is the most boring "leader" of Harer?· letter before turning it in xerox machine the SWP? . H. Trotskyism C. Raise the issue price of the A. Doug Jenness *Special bonus question-you get a free sub I. All of the above Militant to $8.99 B. Doug Jenness to Workers Vanguard. 4 WORKERS VANGUARD Let Victims' Families Pass Judgement Richmond's Racist "Cowboy" Cops

OAKLAND-The Richmond, Califor­ some of the incidents incredible-until nia cops just might be the most brutal, it happened to me" (Examiner, 19 racist gang of murdering mad dogs in June). America. And that is quite a badge to wear in this~ racist country where cop The Klan and the "Cowboys" terror is a daily fact of life and death on ghetto streets. Richmond is Klan-infested and Klan For its size, about 75.000, Richmond violence is increasing. Since 1981 an has more serious brutality cases than active Klan chapter has recruited at any police department in the country. Richmond High School. Black residents And it's getting too expensive and too in Richmond and nearby communities public even for local ruling circles which in Contra Costa county have been shot regularly look the other way when, for at and firebombed and a number have instance, an Orange County cop guns been driven from their homes. The down a five-year-old black child, Pat­ interpenetration of the KKK with the rick Mason. while he is at home alone racists-in-blue has been widely ob­ watching TV. The flaunting ofsystemat­ served. But a tightly-knit gang of ic racist cop brutality in Richmond has Richmond cops has singled itself out as stirred up even the pro-cop courts and "the Cowboys." press. The Examiner series was useful in In the largest "wrongful death" providing a thumbnail sketch ofsome of verdict in U.S. history, a federal jury in the "cowboy" criminals, identifying early June awarded $3 million to the them by name and badge number. For families of two slain victims of the instance there is Clinton Mitchell who Richmond cops' racist street "justice": was one of the cops who shot Johnny Johnny Roman and Michael Guillory, Roman. Mitchell is nicknamed "Mad both black, both shot down in their own Richmond's "cowboy" cops, a racist band of kill-crazy nlghtrlders Dog." After many complaints ofbrutal­ bedrooms in separate incidents in 1980 badges, pose with Confederate flag of slavery. ity he was sent for special "retraining" in 1980. After "retraining," more than a and 1982. The cops falsely and routinely boys," dresses up in the costumes of effectiveness against great and often claimed in each case that their victims post-Civil War Klan-type raiders and tragic injury. The victims of the Rich- dozen Richmond residents were named in court as victims of Mitchell's racist had guns. In the case of Guillory, the gets photographed waving the Confed- mond cops' brutality deserve every cent trial showed that the "handgun" was a erate flag of slavery. Supported by the they can get. But the millions ofdollars terror. One of these victims, Sylvester Williams, recalled the night he and small packet of marijuana. It was clear entire Richmond police department, can not begin to compensate Richmond that Roman and Guillory were shot these self-consciously organized racist residents for the cops' reign ofdeath and friends were standing around talking in down because they were black. As the vigilantes with badges take their western racist terror. downtown Richmond when Mitchell foreman of the jury put it, "two white boots and gold jewelry in the shape of While blacks are the main targets of drove up and said: "I like to see niggers boys ... would not (have been) shot in pigs, their police dogs with names like "cowboy" lynch law and make up 70 run. Run niggers, run." Mitchell fol­ their bedrooms" (San Francisco Chron­ "Rommel" which respond only to percent of the arrests in this half-black lowed Williams home and beat him and icle, 4 June). commands in German, and drawn guns city, even those deemed "unlikely . his mother. "Mad Dog" Mitchell testi­ Roman and Guillory were two of six to hunt down Richmond's black suspects" by the Examiner are likely to fied that he "was a little excited." Bleeding, with teeth missing, Williams blacks to be killed bythe Richmondcops citizens. be beaten to a pulp. Last year 50 people was arrested. The ~~n~i"rt ~n COUi t. in the past two-and-a-half years. One of The Richmond "cowboy" police were beaten and mauled by the Rich- $6,300. Police Chief Garfield's response these, Willie Lee Drumgoole, was department has even managed to mond cops' German shepherds, which to the efforts of Mitchell's retraining? strangled to death in jail. Another man provoke a damning expose by the are used on even minor traffic "investi- . "He's turning out to be a pretty good notoriously right-wing labor-hating gations" or to clear out noisy parties and was shot on his front porch. No criminal policeman" (Examiner, 20 June). cop-loving Hearst paper, the San crowds at sporting events. Bystanders Gary Dixon is another typical Francisco Examiner. Two weeks after like 18-year-old Robert Fowler are "Cowboy"-a former Green Beret who the record $3 million verdict in the often the victims. Fowler was leaving a served twice in Vietnam and once in Roman/Guillory trial, the Examiner football stadium when a fight broke out Central America. Garfield calls him a (beginning June 19) ran a series of which he watched from the sidelines. "bad attitude case." Dixon says openly, articles on the Richmond cops titled, "Rommel" was used by the cops to clear "j wish they would have resisted (arrest), "With the Authority of Law-Police the crowd and the dog attacked the just so I could beat the shit out of 'em." Violence in Richmond." The series young man, biting his face and legs and Whether or not the Richmond "Cow­ presented a hair-raising picture of the crotch. Fowler was arrested but later boys" are actually Klan members isn't Richmond cops as an outfit just short of found "not guilty" of "assaulting a known or admitted. But as their famous Nazi stormtroopers and Klan night- police dog." The city paid $3,000 in the self-portrait shows they are living the riders. The articles presented a moun- lawsuit. dream of the KKK. With virtual·' tain of statistics: you are 90 times more On a summer evening in 1980 the impunity and with state power they have likely to be bitten by a police dog in "cowboy" cops beseiged the home of subjected the black and minority popu­ Richmond than in San Francisco, Roman Ortega where they claim a lation of Richmond to a reign of racist Richmond jails one-tenth of its popula- "noisy party" was taking place. With terror. And they can do it without white tion as "suspects" every year, there are snarling police dogs and swinging hoods. As the lawyer for the Roman five times as many police brutality . batons the cops waded into the party. family said in a recent lawsuit, "The complaints per 100,000 population They sent 10 people to the hospital and lynch mob inevitably is worse if those in against the cops in Richmond than three were bitten by the dogs. Ortega, a the crowd wear uniforms and badges." against the infamous LAPD, 10 times 23-year-old paraplegic was dumped This organized lynch mob of "cowboy" more than NYC. While the cases that from his wheelchair and repeatedly cops has got to go. Let the victims' are taken to court can only be a slight beaten on the legs. Later one ofthe mad- families pass judgement on this self­ reflection of the actual cop violence dog cops defended the attack saying that identified and "independent" gang of inflicted on the Richmond population, "a paraplegic sitting in a wheel chair can racist marauders! nevertheless over the past 15 years the still grab you...and try to get your gun."

,,.w'lF" city and its insurance companies have Ortega's police brutality lawsuit is still WV Photo For Labor/Black Mobilizations been forced to pay $2 million in 127 pending. Against Racist Violence When militant longshoremen defied police brutality cases. "I don't care what you do so long as court Injunction In June 27 port shutdown, Richmond cops made It is not in the avalanche of statistics, they go to jail and they're bleeding" was Richmond's cops are perhaps the themselves scarce. however, but in the piling up offirsthand the instruction to the cops quoted in the most obvious of the breed, but from Los accounts by the victims of Richmond Examiner. And that is one order the Angeles to the East Coast, the cops are charges have ever been brought against cop attacks that the Examiner article Richmond police obey with sadistic more boldly and dangerouslyexpressing the Richmond killer cops. And the captures the real stench of this outfit. enthusiasm. A fourteen-year-old pom- their self-conscious "independence" verdict in the Roman/Guillory case is The stories almost always end with the porn girl was sprayed in the eyes with from civilian authority. A stunning now under appeal. price of the settlement of a police mace when she asked a coppatrollingthe gesture of cop bonapartism took place It is the wide open display of racist brutality lawsuit: cops injure the back of Richmond High School if she could get in California recently when a sheriffs violence and police-state defiance which a 50-year-old disabled grandmother into her own school locker. Years later deputy got shot in the line of duty by a has caught the jaundiced eye of impor­ when they come to arrest her son- she still must wear dark glasses. She nutty "mountain man" in the hills of tant sectors of the capitalist class. They settlement, $7,500. A striking Chevron only got $300. The Richmond cops even Santa Cruz. The nut was shot down. But prefer their killer cops to operate with worker on picket duty has his head split clubbed the city's Human Relations at the cop's funeral, hundreds of cops some cover and connection to civilian open by one ofthe "Cowboys"-$I,200. Officer, Joseph Battle, Jr., last year came organized from various jurisdic­ authority. And when a few do get A warehouseman eating his lunch is when they claimed Battle was driving tions up and down the California coast exposed, they like to be able to claim it is attacked by cops who notice his car recklessly. They stormed into his house in a show of police force. only some "bad apples." But not in lacked a front license plate: 12 stitches in and also arrested and handcuffed his It is because Richmond is a particu­ Richmond. Here a whole section of the the head and an eye injury-$6,822. wife. Battle, whose job it is to flack for larly open and nasty version of what is police department, dubbed the "Cow- And so it goes totaling the dollar cost the brutality complaints, said "I found continued on page 10 12 AUGUST 1983 5 Military, Victory to Leftist Rebels-No Negotiated Sellouts! With the Guerrillas in EI Salvador their calls for a negotiated settlement in response to Reagan's war preparations. ~r- According to the New York Times (5 AUGUST 6-Brinksmanship, gunboat .2 diplomacy, the Big Stick: Ronald a; August), "Although Cuban and Nicara­ a.2 ' Reagan has set off a fireworks display of :0 guan leaders in recent days have :J imperialist domination in Central publicly reiterated their support for the ~ Salvadoran rebels, in private they have America. But he's not just "playing with 0; told them that urgent negotiations are fire" as some liberals charge; he's :Eo heading straight for war involving (f) needed to safeguard the survival of the American forces. This prospect has set Sandinista Government and even the bourgeois rulers in the region scram­ safety of Cuba...." This is nationalist bling to negotiate an end to the fighting treachery, and shortsighted besides, for before it becomes an apocalypse here. they are next on Reagan's hit list. Worried that direct U.S. intervention However, for the guerrillas in the field could inflame the restive masses, and it's a different question. Asked about even more concerned about the power­ Nicaraguan junta coordinator Daniel ful effect a victorious social revolution Ortega's July 19 offer to put an end to in El Salvador could have on their arms shipments to "either side" in the exploited workers and peasants, the bitter Salvadoran civil war, a Salvado­ Contadora Group-Mexico, Vene­ ran guerrilla leader replied, "This is a zuela, Colombia and Panama-have heavy meal. It will take a while to increased efforts for a negotiated digest." Any kind of "power-sharing" settlement. Imperialist liberals in agreement that would leave the murder­ Washington, who think Reagan's going ous army intact (not to mention the about the anti-Soviet war drive the imperialists' phony baloney about "free wrong way. are also rushing to nego­ elections" at gunpoint) would not only tiate. Even the leftist rebels' supposed be a betrayal of their fallen comrades, allies, Castro's Cuba and Sandinista but a death warrant for the combatants Nicaragua, are pushing talks. Hthey are and their families. Only the Spartacist successful in negotiating a sellout of the tendency calls for a military victory for struggle, it will be the workers and the leftist insurgents in El Salvador, for peasants of the isthmus who pay in building Trotskyist parties on the blood the price of a "political solution." program of permanent revolution Reagan gloats that the Big Stick throughout the region, from the un­ policy is paying off. Already in his stable dictatorships of South America's supposed non-blockade of Nicaragua Southern Cone and north to Mexico the U.S. destroyer McCormick last Heroic leftist guerrillas have Reagan's butchers on the run. and the imperialist heartland of the weekend challenged the Soviet cargo tive of the Salvadoran oppositIOn United States. ship Ulyanov, then shadowed it for 24 late Salvadoran leftist .guerrillas, th~ Fr~nt hours before turning away at Nicara­ Democratic Revolutionary . \lln. ,...,...;,.,t h£>J..,u", .'In interview with Somozal~t ~~~_~t,e~~e~~ .R 'r",l~.,...h,~ "1\'1. Swedish journalist Jens Rydstrom, a gua's 12-mile limit. In his press confer- CIA-sponsored f.hD.o_\. nJy' .\.,\,. i1(U'':c,'\onc, Iormer r R ]u1>,'pressirre -ra-c'tlCYs:WaslrlngtOn· hasn't man for the genocidal Guatemalan correspondent for the Communist party tJeets complet~ with air~aft ca~ri~~;~~"d even demanded that the Sandinistas do government. Calling the talks the first paper Ny Dag. Rydstrom along with the battleshi~ New Jersey's 16-inch anything concrete to capitulate. The "small steps" to a "solution" to the civil another Swedish journalist and an ~uns, along WIth an air force of 140 jet White House is set on overthrowing the war, the dissident Christian Democrat American were in the headlines last flghter~ and 5,~00 ground troops­ left-nationalist petty-bourgeois regime Zamora, who was once a U.S. nominee February when they disappeared out­ accordmg to Philadelphia Inquirer (31 in Nicaragua, as a prelude to war moves In the Salvadoran junta, as well as the side Aguilares, EI Salvador, later J~I~) altogether more than 20,000 U.S against the Cuban and Soviet bureau­ rest of the FDR/FMLN leadership, turning up with the rebels at the mlht~ry personnel are to be involved i~ cratically deformed/degenerated work­ have long advocated a "negotiated guerrilla stronghold on Guazapa volca­ the al~-ground-sea maneuvers over the ers states. solution" of the heroic struggle of the no. His account offers a revealing next Sl~ months. Make no mistake: the On the same weekend of the Ulyanov Salvadoran masses for social liberation. glimpse into the struggle of the exploit­ escalatmg U.S. intervention to annihi- incident, Ruben Zamora, a representa- Now Cuba andNicaragua have renewed ed and oppressed of El Salvador.

survive, but also for a just distribution Rydstrom: I found it at times bombing of the Guazapa volcano, and of the land. They also had seen very controversial. I asked them specifically according to the guerrillas that was the WV Interview concretely the advantages of the eco­ about what would happen after a first time they ever saw the Salvadoran nomic system that the guerrillas try to triumph of the guerrilla front. They said air force attack in nighttime. They claim establish. Ofcourse, it is very difficult to that all of the five parties of the FMLN that Salvadoran pilots wouldn't be WV: Guazapa is about 25 kilometers do in a war situation, but they were were in favor of the collectivization of capable of such a thing, so their from the capital, and a lot of people cultivating the land that they had taken agriculture, but that to establish a viable conclusion was that it must be an fighting there are from the capital. from the abandoned flncas [farms] in political platform they did not push this adviser in the plane. The inefficiency of Rydstr6m: The majority of the fight­ the area in a collective manner. Issue. the air force was also quite striking. I heard figures that they wasted $5 million ing forces are peasants from the area, WV: Did people talk about socialism as WV: On Guazapa there are representa­ on this, and during the campaign but there are quite a lot of former a goal? tives of almost all of the groups in the university students, teachers and so on. FMLN. Could you see differences? according to the guerrillas five guerrilla Rydstrom: Yes, they did. The coman­ It's interesting to see the difference in soldiers were killed-about $1 million dantes emphasized that their party was a Rydstrom: I was with the PRTC approach to the war between these two per soldier. There was a massacre Marxist-Leninist party. But they were [Central American Revolutionary groups, the combatants who are cam­ among the civilian population, 60 or 70 also very careful to point out that the Workers Party] all the time and we pesinos and the combatants who come killed in an air attack when the army Common Platform of the FDR-FMLN didn't have too much contact with the from the town, mostly students but also attacked Tepestenango. [Democratic Revolutionary Front­ other groups. Of course they have joint factory workers. For the campesinos it's WV: How many people were evacuated Farabundo Marti Front for National military command which plans actions a more natural thing to join the from Guazapa? Liberation] was not a socialist platform on a large scale, but in the actual combat guerrillas-they had lived in that area, but what they called a revolutionary­ they worked very much on their own­ Rydstrom: It was an awful lot of been subjected to massacres from the democratic platform, which did not they had their terrain to defend. They people, probably altogether 8,000. The government forces. For the people from imply collectivization of the agricultural seem to have split up the area between first guinda, when the civilians had to the town, to leave the town and go up sector, for example. them. pull out, was after severe attack. After a into the mountains is a much greater day they realized that they wouldn't be WV: Yet they were farming collectively WV: When you left there was a tremen­ decision. I could distinguish two levels ahle to hold their positions. so they dOllS government attack against of political consciousness. The campesi­ in the areas that were under their ordered the guind

------_.~_. ---- ~.- ._~ --.------, nlike the August 27 march in shipment of oil to Italy at the time of D.C., which is nothing but a Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia. But crawl for the Democrats, there How Stalinists, Liberals Sold Out unlike white liberals, who accepted the Uwas a time when the opportunity democratic pretensions of U.S. imperi­ was posed for a March on Washington Blacks During World War II alism, blacks were attracted by the CP's to be made part of a powerful black antiwar line. Even a vicious Cold War struggle for equality. This was in 1941 .. anti-Communist admitted: as the United States was gearing up for "The Party was sharply aware that the imperialist butchery of World War Negroes had little enthusiasm for the II. The march was called by A. Philip war.... Negroes remembered all too Randolph, the pro-Democratic Party well the role played by black soldiers in World War I and the violent attacks leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping The March leveled against them [lynchings of black Car Porters, to protest the racist men who dared to wear a uniform] after treatment of blacks in the mushrooming their return from Europe. They found it American war industry and armed difficult to become enthusiastic ahout the defense of democracy in Europe forces. But to squelch the explosive issue when they had so little ofit in the lJ nited of abolition of Jim Crow, Roosevelt on Washington States." ordered Randolph to call off the march. -Wilson Record, The Negro and The fate of that March on Washington the Communist Party (1951) Movement (MOWM) highlighted the The march had been scheduled for I intimate connection between black July 1941. On June 22, Nazi Germany liberation and the American workers That Wasn't attacked the Soviet Union. After fight­ movement, and the urgent need for a ing exclusively against the impending revolutionary vanguard party to lead war, to the point of denouncing the that struggle. MOW's protest against discrimination While British and German workers in in war industry as a diversion, suddenly uniform were slaughtering each other the CP became pro-war. "Everything on behalf of the "Allied" and "Axis" for Victory over the Axis!" shouted the imperialists, the Soviet Union, home­ Daily Worker, meaning nothing for land of the October Revolution, was struggle against racist capitalism here. under attack. The key way American Then .. three days later, President Roose­ workers could defend the USSR was by vdt signed an executive order against carrying forward the fight for revolution discrimination in war industry. Pre­ at home. But this program ran smack up dictably, and it was predicted by the against the social-patriots of the AFL Trotskyists, the pro-Roosevelt, pro­ and CIa, the pro-Democratic Party British, pro-war Randolph canceled the misleaders and the Stalin-loyal Com­ march. He touted FOR's establishment munist Party (CP) who joined hands to of the Fair Employment Practices call off the class struggle "for the Committee (FEPC), a committee with­ duration." From the day Hitler invaded out enforcement powers, as a "second Russia, the CP subordinated everything emancipation proclamation." The CP, to Roosevelt's war effort, while the now once again popular-front patriots, Democrats .. black and white, together hailed the executive order as a victory with the Stalinists crucified the struggle and made no criticism of the march for black equality on the altar of the Culver Pictures cancellation. "anti-fascist" imperialist war. March on Washington Movement demonstration In NYC, June 1942, against However, Randolph's betrayal didn't legal lynching of black sharecropper Odell Waller In Virginia. But World War 11 was not a war go unchallenged. Pressure began to against fascism; it was an inter­ "The policy of the War Department is Negroes who will be able to get there mount again from young MOW leaders imperialist conflict. Churchill's Britain not to intermingle colored and white only because hundreds of thousands of who denounced his bureaucratic heavy­ fought to keep hundreds of millions of enlisted personnel in the same regimen­ others support the march morally and handedness in canceling the march. tal organizations. This policy has financially-this would really strike colored people enslaved in its worldwide proved satisfactory over a long period fear into the hearts of the administra­ From all over the country, MOWM colonial empire. The policy ofauthentic of years. and to make changes would tion and the bosses." chapters sent telegrams p~eading with revolutionaries in the "democratic" produce situations destructive to mo­ -from Albert Parker.. Negroes Randolph to make plans for a future imperialist countries was: the main rale and detrimental to the preparations March on Washington (June march. Many challenged his unqualified for national defense." 1941). reprinted in Fighting praise of the "second emancipation enemy is at home! In defending the Racism in World War II Soviet degenerated workers state Now highly urbanized and increas­ (Monad Press, 1980) proclamation." In early 1942 Randolph ingly proletarianized as a result of was forced to "unpostpone" the march against Nazi Germany, the Trotskyists "We support a militant action, not World War I migrations and the and began to set the MOWM in motion were revolutionary defeatists toward Randolph's reason for it," said the buildup for the coming war, blacks again. Instead of a march on Washing­ their "own" imperialist ruling classes. SWP. began to exert pressure on their "lead­ ton, though, a series of local marches The notion of U.S. imperialism as a Meanwhile, the CP opposed the progressive force against fascism looks ers" to drop the hats in their hands and were scheduled for June 1942 and to use those hands for something other March on Washington, not only boy­ eventually held. The largest of these pretty threadbare in the sequel. The cotting the march but actively sabotag­ than pleading and begging. It was the rallies was held in Madison Square arrogant "world policeman" against ing it. At first the Stalinists used ultra­ communism, the terror bomber of pressure of these masses, especially Garden on 20 June 1942 with 25,000 black workers now organized in unions left arguments-pointing to Randolph's anti-Jim Crow fighters on the street. Vietnam-U.S. imperialism works to social-patriotism, they denounced the preserve in power the most hideous as a result ofthe CIa's giant organizing The long list of speakers were cheered, strikes of the 1930s, that pressed the march as "the supreme effort of Ameri­ especially those who gave vent to the torturers, mass butchers, feudalists and ca's big shot businessmen to win the Randolphs and Whites into more direct masses' hatred for segregation and those militarists from South Africa to Central masses of the Negro people to the war action-. against the industrialists' Jim who demanded the freedom of Odell America. The second imperialist world program of the Administration" (Daily Crow policies. Waller, a black sharecropper who was war should have been the convulsive Worker, 16 June 1941). This was during On 1 January 1941 Randolph pro­ scheduled to be executed for slaying his death agony of capitalism, but with the the period of the Stalin-Hitler pact, help of the Stalinists it ushered in the posed a July march on Washington landlord in self-defense. ("Anti-Jim Crow, Pro-Jobs March") to when the Kremlin had ordered an brutal "American Century." During antiwar line in the imperialist "democra­ World War II the Trotskyists alone force Roosevelt to pass an executive CP Betrays Black People order abolishing discrimination not cies." This had cost the Stalinists the continued to fight for world socialist support of many of their erstwhile allies only in war industry but in all industry. Today, the Stalinists try desperately revolution, to liberate all of the op­ in the Rooseveltian "popular front." By Later known as the "Double V Cam­ to cover up their crimes against the pressed and colored peoples from the the late '30s, thousands of blacks who paign" ("victory for democracy abroad working class and black people which capitalist system of racism, unemploy­ had been won to the party particularly ment and war. and at home") the proposal for a march flow from the anti-revolutionary policy aroused the enthusiasm of blacks to through its defense of the Scottsboro of the popular front. Writing in the challenge their pariah status under Jim Boys had also quit, many of them out of What "Democracy" for Blacks? continued on page 10 Crow capitalism. March on Washing­ disillusionment over the Soviet Union's As U.S. imperialism began a rapid ton youth chapters were formed in war buildup in 1940, American blacks several cities; MOW leaflets, buttons eagerly awaited the opportunity to work and other paraphernalia were widely A _ist Pamphlet 250 in war industry, and to participate in distributed in preparation for the July ..Mar~8uJktJni­ government-financed training pro­ march. The growing movement was grams set up to overcome the shortage fueled by an unprecedented outburst of =- of skilled workers. But in these pro­ black protest within the armed forces. WHAt S'IJIAllsr grams, in the military as well as in While the Trotskyists of the then­ IWIIACk lIIERAlJUff?' industry, blacks faced restrictions and revolutionary Socialist Workers Party ~ were assigned to a minimum role and VI. (SWP) opposed Randolph's pro­ ItIIckNda • m rigidly segregated. In the Navy, the imperialist line on the war, it was clear blacks could enlist only in the all-black to them that in the context of the black messmen's branch. The Marines and the sailors' protests the March on Washing­ Air Corps excluded blacks entirely. ton could serve to escalate the fight for 1 ~",,-,,,,,;,~ «r'~.,..,. ~~""'* i Black Americans were prevented from black rights and link it with the labor .• ;-l'i:· ..... __ ""'e ! enlisting in the Army, except for filling a movement in the fight against imperial­ --~- few vacancies in the four regular black ist war. An SWP pamphlet at the time 25¢ units that had been created shortly after stated: $-1.00 $2.50 the Civil War. In the fall of 1940. "A militant march on Washington .. the Make checks payablelmail to: Roosevelt explicitly defended these jim nation"l capital of Jim Crowism. a SpartaCist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Crow policies: march made up of thousands of 12 AUGUST 1983 7 Malcolm X Called '63 "The Farce on Washington"

they said. That was revolution. That they weren't even in the march. You REPRINTED FROM was revolution. That was the black were talking this march talk on MALCOLM X SPEAKS revolution. Hastings Street, you were talking GROVE PRESS (/966) It was the grass roots out there in the march talk on Lenox Avenue, and on street. It scared the white man to Fillmore Street, and on Central The Negroes were out there in the death. scared the white power struc­ Avenue, and 32nd Street and 63rd streets. They were talking about how ture in Washington, D.C.. to death: I Street. That's where the march talk they were going to march on Washing­ was there. When they found out that was being talked. But the white man ton. Right at that time Birmingham this black steamroller was going to put the Big Six at the head of it; made had exploded, and the Negroes in come down on the capital. they called them the march. They became the Birmingham-remember, they also in Wilkins. they called in Randolph, march. They took it over. ... And as exploded. They began to stab the they called in these national Negro they took it over, it lost its militancy. It crackers in the back and bust them up leaders that you respect and told them, ceased to be angry, it ceased to be hot. 'side their head-yes. they did. That's "Call it off:' Kennedy said, "Look, you it ceased to be uncompromising. Why. when Kennedy sent in the troops, all are letting this thing go too far." it even ceased to be a march. !t became down in Birmingham. After that. And Old Tom said, "Boss, I can't stop a picnic. a circus.... Kennedy got on the television and said it, because I didn't start it." I'm telling They controlled it so tight, they told "this is a moral issue." That's when he you what they said. They said, ''I'm not those Negroes what time to hit town. said he was going to put out a civil­ even in it. much less at the head of it." how to come, where to stop, what signs rights bill. And when he mentioned They said. "These Negroes are doing to carry, what song to sing. what civil-rights bill and the Southern things on their own. They're running speech they could make. and what crackers started talking about how ahead of us." And that old shrewd fox. speech they couldn't make; and then they were going to boycott or filibuster he said. "If you all aren't in it. I'll put told them to get out of town by it, then the Negroes started talking­ you in it. I'll put you at the head of it. sundown. And everyone of those about what? That they were going to I'll endorse it. I'll welcome it. I'll help Toms was out of town by sundown. march on Washington. march on the it. I'll join it." ... Now I know you don't like my saying Senate, march on the White House. As soon as they got the setup this. But I can back it up. It was a Gordon Parks march on the Congress, and tie it up. organized, the white man made avail­ circus. a performance that beat any­ Malcolm X bring it to a halt. not let the govern­ able to them top public-relations thing Hollywood could ever do, the ment proceed. They even said they experts; opened the news media across performance of the year. Reuther and loved Negroes and fooled a whole lot were going out to the airport and lay the country at their disposal, which those other three devils should get an of Negroes. And the six Negro leaders down on the runway and not let any then began to project these Big Six as Academy Award for the best actors should get an award too. for the best airplanes land. I'm telling you what the leaders of the march. Originally because they acted like they really supporting cast.

County killer cop who gunned him close companions of Martin Luther inspired by the Democrats who capitu­ Don't Crawl for down was let off. In New York City King. Atlanta mayor Andrew Young lated to the anti-busing racist mobs on black workers have been beaten to death who lay down in front of sanitation the streets of Boston and Louisville. by racist mobs and the courts just trucks in the '60s to defend an Atlanta The supporters of Washington ask Democrats ... acquitted one of the ringleaders of the sanitation strike is now running those "What else can he do?" Indeed what else (continued from page 1) lynch mob. A black man can't walk into trucks and in charge of strikebreaking. can any of the black mayors do who are zation such a tremendous sense of their Cicero, Illinois or Gravesend in Brook­ In Washington ex-SNCC leader mayor running the capitalists' racist offensive potential social power was the strategy lyn without taking his life in his hands. Marion Barry is the cutback king in the cities. And that is just the point. that can mobilize workers and black As the courts and cops make black lives engineering the mass expulsions of Harold Washington runs Chicagointhe people for rea/freedom and rea/power: cheaper the murderous KKK and Nazis black students from the University of interests of Continental Bank, not the the strategy of proletarian revolution. the District of Columbia. In Detroit South Side. Kenneth Gibson runs Democratic Congressional delegate "progressive" black mayor Coleman Newark for Prudential Insurance. Walter Fauntroy's soup-kitchen "com­ Young responds to the 70 percent black Coleman Young runs Detroit for munity unity" diversion flopped as youth unemployment with cops' night­ Henry Ford II and the auto barons. angry black Washington residents sticks and pistols, reviving the racist cop That is because blacks can't gain their decided that the Klan must be stopped terror squads to enforce the youth freedom in America this side of the rather than ignored. After the victory it curfew. These black Democratic mayors socialist revolution. Segregated as a was Fauntroy who along with the are on the cutting edge of Reagan race-color caste at the bottom of bourgeois press tried to discredit the reaction. It is their cops who brutalize American society, the racist oppression demonstration as some kind of "black the black population. of black people is intrinsic to capitalist riot" led, in Fauntroy's words, by These massive defeats for black society. "Tarzan Trotskyites." After having lost people are cynically touted as examples But blacks do have potential power in so many of his constituents to militant ofblack political power because they are the U.S. because while they are segregat­ and effective action. it is no wonder that organized by black overseers. From ed at the bottom of society they are also shortly after November 27 Fauntroy Jesse Jackson's ploy to increase his own integrated economically into the prole­ among others announced the 1983 demagogic voice in the name ofa "black tariat. Integrated workers struggle March on Washington to get blacks on candidate" and voter registration against capitalism for black rights­ the Democratic track of defeat. schemes to the Harold Washington revolutionary integrationism is the campaign in Chicago, the black mis­ source ofblack and proletarian power in leaders of the Democratic Party can America. A march that could really labor/Black Power vs. only offer new defeats to the black begin to turn things around in this Democrats masses. Democratic bigwigs like Ken­ country would be a march of the ghetto After Martin Luther King's '63 "I nedy and Mondale rushed into Chicago masses in support of their brothers in have a dream" speech, the young civil because they need the black vote. While the auto and steel plants who were rights militants of SNCC (Student Non­ the left hailed and tailed the Washington occupying them in a strike against Violent Coordinating Committee) start­ campaign, we told the bitter truth: layoffs. What is urgently needed in the ed wearing "I have a nightmare" buttons "Harold Washington Will Betray Black U.S. is real black leadership-pan of a to show their anger with King's liberal Chicago," proclaimed Worker~ Van­ multi-racial Trotskyist vanguard party pacifism. And 20 years later, life for the guard. Now Harold Washington has which can bind the factory to the ghetto masses of blacks compacted in devastat­ delivered his first smack in the face to in the struggle for workers power which ed ghettos has become worse as capital­ Chicago blacks in the form of city alone can lay the basis for black ism declines into crisis. Every year the AP worker layoffs. liberation. Urban League and other black groups Leaders of air controllers union Nowhere is the defeatism of this (PATCO) Jailed by Reagan In 1981. publish grim statistics proving the "elected leadership" more evident than How the Democrats Killed the deepening gulf of racism. But blacks in their response to the question of Civil Rights Movement don't need a pile ofstatistics to know life take their cue. Nightriding violence is on integration. The 1983 march which is and livelihoods in the ghetto are a the rise from coast to coast as the supposed to celebrate the civil rights The purpose of the 1963 March on nightmare. It is registered most of all in fascistic fringe of the anti-Soviet war movement doesn't speak to the question Washington was to channel the explo­ the children, a majority of whom now drive comes home in white sheets and . of busing. When Harold Washington sive anger of the civil rights movement .live below the poverty line. Black teen­ waving blood-soaked swastikas. ran for mayor in the most segregated into legalistic reform and electoral agers are thrown wholesale onto the What has changed since the March on city in America, he did not call for support to the Kennedy Democrats. streets where they are marked as targets Washington of 1963 is the growing busing to break up the segregated Everyone who participated in this for the racist cops. On the very basics of number of black Democratic faces in schools. Jesse Jackson went to Norfolk, march should remember how King & life black people in America are on the city haUs of black and proletarian cities. Virginia recently where thousands of Co. censored the speech of John Lewis. edge of survival. Martin Luther King was assassinated blacks were marching against segregat­ chairman of the Student Non-Violent The capitalists answer with more cops when he was leading marches in support ed schools. There he explained that he Coordinating Committee-the most and racist terror. Not even a five-year­ of striking Memphis garbagemen. To­ wasn't marching for integration but for militant wing,of the civil rights move­ old black child, Patrick Mason, at home day city workers can have their strikes the "voter registration boost." This ment. Lewis, who declared that "the watching TV, was safe. The Orange broken by ex-civil rights activists and "separate-hut-unequal" defeatism was party" of Kennedy is the party of 8 WORKERS VANGUARD Eastland" and asked "Where is our head of-and trying to contain within movement by firing an entire union of direction of the independent political party?", was pressured into deleting the bounds of capitalist reform-a mass air controllers (PATCO) for going on mobilization of the working class. That from his prepared speech the statement: movement against racist oppression. strike. This attack momentarily united is why the bureaucracy sabotaged real "We cannot depend on any political But the August 27 march is organized by organized labor across race and craft trade union solidarity with PATCO and party for both the Democrats and the very people who have suppressed lines against Reagan and the govern­ got behind Reagan and the Democrats Republicans have betrayed the basic significant black struggle for over a ment, generating Solidarity Day in to defeat the strike. This defeat set the principles of the Declaration of Inde­ decade, even struggles to defend the September 1981, the largest and most stage for the wave ofgiveback contracts pendence." Those few trade-union limited gains of the civil rights move­ integrated labor demonstration in in industry after industry which have bureaucrats involved in the civil rights ment. The Democratic BEOs (black American history. Significantly, no slashed the living standards of the movement, notably Walter Reuther and elected officials) serve as the indispen­ Democratic politician dared address American working class. Nevertheless, A. Philip Randolph, were especially sable front men for Reagan's austerity in this massive militant rally, while on the in September 1981 the labor movement determined to censor and suppress the big. black proletarian cities like West Coast Mondale was booed off the took over Washington for a day and black militants like SNCC's Lewis. demonstrated the SOCial power to turn it With the mass ofthe black population into the capital of a workers govern­ and many young militants rebelling ment. What was lacking was revolution­ against King's disastrous liberal paci­ ary leadership. fism and his support to the party of The Democrats' and labor bureau­ Kennedy and Eastland, a revolutionary crats' only answer to Reaganomics is socialist organization could have gained national economic protectionism, that significant influence in this movement is, economic warfare especially against and radically changed the course of the Japanese. "Buy American" chauvin­ American history over the next 20 years. ism leads straight to "white power" race­ The Spartacist tendency, which origi­ terror. In Detroit last year a white auto nated in this period, raised the demand foreman beat to death a Chinese for a South-wide Freedom/Labor Party American. Vincent Chin, whom he took to link the fight for black equality with for a Japanese. The Fraser regime of the the working-class struggle against capi­ Auto Workers, which works overtime talist exploitation. Such a party, break­ pushing protectionist poison, is respon­ ing with the Democrats, would have sible for this racist atrocity. Meanwhile given tremendous impetus to similar Jesse Jackson. in addition to wooing the action among Northern workers. This Dixiecrats, is now trying to whip up would have required the organization of anti-Japanese protectionist sentiment the union ranks to oust the pro­ among blacks, and Democratic presi­ capitalist bureaucracy, its liberal Reu­ dential frontrunner I'.1ondale talks ther wing as well as the openly reaction­ about landing the U.S. Army in Tokyo ary and racist Meanyites. However, the to sell American cars. Protectionism Spartacist tendency's forces at that time does not create jobs, rather it feeds into were too small to win the mass ofyoung the climate of racist reaction whose black activists to Trotskyism. main target is blacks. In the 1960s the black movement was The answer to layoffs, cutbacks and faced with two dead ends: the liberal givebacks is the fight for a workers pacifism of King and the no less WaShington 1'051 government that will rip the productive defeatist ideology of Stokely Carmi­ Anti-Klan protesters on November 27 say: Finish the Civil War! wealth of this country out of the hands chael and the nationalists. Both failed to of the capitalist class and establish a see the need to mobilize the power ofthe Detroit, Chicago and Gary. The heirs of platform with shouts of "PATCO! planned economy. This is key to the unions, through challenging the racist George Meany in the AFL-CIO head­ PATCO! PATCO!" liberation of all oppressed minorities. pro-capitalist bureaucracy: King and quarters, the very people who willfully These workers were so angry at the Black workers particularly will playa the black ministers because they were sabotaged and humiliated the civil government that they were open to vanguard role in forging a revolutionary committed to the Democratic Party; rights movement, are major organizers class-struggle answers even when pre­ workers party fighting to mobilize the Carmichael and the black nationalists of August 27. Thus AFL-CIO chief sented by an openly Marxist publica­ power oflabor in industrial and political because with the defeats and sellouts of Lane fS.irkland, who is one of the tion. The SL sold over 8,000 copies of struggle against the bosses and their liberal reformism, they had taken the sponsors of this march for "peace," was WV with the popular headline "Labor: government. road of black separatism which ignored just appointed to Reagan's commission Shut Down the Airports!" to the It took a social revolution to free "the white working class." The two dead to prepare direct U.S. military interven­ Washington rally alone. That headline blacks from the chains ofslavery. And it ends represented by King and Carmi­ tion in Central America. captured the felt need ofevery worker as will take a workers revolution to at last chael led to a decade with no significant At the same time, the labor tops are to what was needed to win the PATCO free black Americans and all working black struggle, thus encouraging the doing Reagan's dirty work in enforcing strike and stop Reagan's union-busting people from the shackles of capitalism. present racist reaction spearheaded by massive layoffs, plant closures, throw­ offensive. But that would have required That is the task to which the Spartacist the Reagan White House. ing millions onto the unemployment/ a class-struggle mobilization against the League is dedicated. Finish the Civil The 1963 March on Washington was soup lines. Not long after he took office, capitalist government, a strike that was War! Black Liberation Through Social­ organized by people who were at the Reagan frontally challenged the labor inherently political and pointed in the ist Revolution! • Jesse James Jackson and August 27 We print below excerpts from a these phony endorsers of the Aug 27, your votes for the Democratic Party. statement by a black trade unionist 1983 march was NOwhere near the Recently didn't J.J. Jackson go to from the Tidewater area who helped designated place to stop the Klan, but Alabama and have a meeting with ~ organize the "Nat Turner Brigade" in yes some of them were over on the Segregation Wallace, and then make the November 27 Labor/Black Mobi­ other end of town fooling the masses. the statement that the "South Will lization that stopped the Ku Klux Klan These people know who they are, Rise Again." This is the slogan that from marching in Washington, D. C. and if you want to know just who they was used immediately after the Civil War, and for a black man to even think - are then pick up an endorsement sheet of the August 27,1983 March and you about saying such a thing is a disgrace, , This March on Washington is just a can just about read all their names but Jesse James Jackson is a house front for the Democratic Party to sway because they are all listed there, Mayor Negro so if the South rises again, he people their way and get votes for the Marion Barry, Walter Fauntroy, got will sleep in the same house as his future elections. The D. P. doesn't give the nerve to have honorable placed in master, eat the same food (the left­ five cents about unemployment, the front of his name, he ought to be overs) as his master, and wear the same anus race or basic rights, or programs ashamed of himself, and just read the clothes (the hand-me-downs) as his of any sort to ensure freedom for endorsers, especially the individual master and still his master will let him anybody but the people big business endorsers for none of them were near make speeches to the field Negroes, the \ tells them. the correct place to stop the Klan. same as he is doing now, for nothing ~ Surely they cannot be talking about They were on the other side of town, will change for J.J, Jackson and his a program to ensure freedom because for it is the same as sending a defensive Younger Brothers. if this is correct, then all of these football team to stop an offensive team So '. if you want to go into counterfeit endorsers would have been from running a touchdown and the Washington on the 27th of August, for in Washington November 27, 1982 at defensive team take their position a 20 year anniversary, you go right the foot of the hill to stop the KKK outside the stadium. ahead and when the Toms tell you Grigg/Time from marching from the Capitol And :he one who will be telling you dance, you dance, but dance good. If Jesse Jackson poses In front of building down Constitution Ave. on to all these lies will be no other than Jesse they want to go into Washington on Alabama statue of Jefferson Davis, the White House. They should have James Jackson old JJJ, and the others August 27, 1983, and parade around president of defeated slavocracy. been there. BUT OH NO, the Klan with him are HIS brothers, NOT THE on the streets for Democrats to gain didn't march They didn't dare to SAME when you and I say brother; I votes, then it's their decision to make. fault. Tel! people the truth ami later as march for there were 5,000 labor and mean the Younger Brothers. Jesse If they are fool enough to let Jesse times go by, people will listen to you let me call them people from the field James J. and the Younger Brothers. James JaCkson make a complete again. Tell people a lie. and they will I to stop them (the Klan). Not one of They will be in Washington to steal puppet out of them, then it's their never listen to you again. I

12 AUGUST 1983 9 tration's war program" (The Commu­ With the onset of the Cold War and 1943)," ... Negroes, have not rallied suf­ March on nist, July 1943). To counter this the the collapse of the "anti-fascist" alli­ ficiently to strengthen the President's Stalinists formed the "Negro Labor ance, the Communist Party at Stalin's hand" (quoted in the anthology, Fight­ Washington ... Victory Committee" in order to mobi­ behest criticized some of the more ing Racism in World War II). lize pro-war sentiment among blacks. egregious acts of racist class treason it .U nder the ferocious bourgeois pres­ (continued from page 7) So vitriolically opposed to any struggle committed during World War II. They sure to "keep Negroes in their place." August-September 1979 Political Af­ for Negro rights did the Stalinists were blamed on Earl Browder, general only the then-revolutionary Trotskyist fairs, CP leader Kendra Alexander become that in 1945 when four black secretary of the CP during that period. SWP fought for militant black and retells the timeworn Stalinist fairy tale WACs at Fort Devens were courtmar­ But when the CP today calls on the labor action against the poll taxers, that, "in a basic sense the history of the tialed for complaining about the lack of Klan-endorsed Ronald Reagan and the lynchers and Jim Crow segregationists, Communist Party is also a history ofthe medical care for wounded black sol­ racist capitalist state to "ban the Klan"; while courageously opposing the impe­ Communist Party's unrelenting com­ diers, CPer Davis jumped in on the side when it calls on Congress to trim the rialist war even though it meant jail for mitment to the freedom calls of black of the prosecution: anti-Soviet war budget rather than their leaders. At the height of the people." "Unrelenting"?! The only way "The U.S. general staff has on many demanding "not a penny, not a man" for Detroit pogrom by white supremacist occasions ... pro\ ed that they deserve the imperialist armed forces; when it mobs, the Trotskyists called for union he can accomplish this trick is by simply the full confidence of the Negro skipping the whole period ofWorld War people.... We cannot temporarily stop bqcks "progressive" and black Demo­ action to defend blacks: II, when black people were putting forth the war until all questions ofdiscrimina­ crats like Tom Bradley. Coleman Young "The chief responsibility for defending enormous efforts to batter down the tion are ironed out." and Marion Barry-it shows that the Negro people rests today upon the -Daily Worker, 8 April 1945 Stalinist-Browderist popular frontism is trade unions. The CIO. most powerful walls of Jim Crow. organization of the working people in The American Stalinists boycotted When the Trotskyists say that very much in command in the CPUSA Michigan, was established and grew the march and denounced Randolph Stalinism is the syphilis of the workers today. strong because of its policy of and thousands of blacks as "appeasers movement, we are not exaggerating one nondiscrimination.... "Flying squadrons of union militants of the Axis." They denounced the Trotskyists Fight for iota. During the war the CP even Labor/Black Mobilization should stand ready to protect the rights "Double V" slogan because, as a Daily opposed the fight to integrate the blood of their Negro fellow workers menaced Worker writer said, "Hitler is the main banks! In the interests of preserving The CP's treacherous suppression of by the mobs. The various local unions enemy" and "the foes of Negro rights in Stalin's wartime alliance with "demo­ should maintain order and clear their class struggle at home in the name of respective territories of anti-Negro, this country should be considered cratic" American imperialism, the CP "anti-fascism" only encouraged the antilabor gangs." secondary"-a statement that (as the became the bourgeoisie's super­ most right-wing racist elements to come -"SWP on the Anti-Negro SWP's Militant put it) would "gladden patriotic bloodhounds. In the labor out of the woodwork and attack blacks. Terror," Militant, 3 July 1943 the hearts of the poll taxers, lynchers, movement they became the most rabid While this so-called "war for democra­ Today as Reagan gears up a new war and advocates of white supremacy!" As strikebreakers, supporting the CIa no­ cy" was in progress, bloody race-terror drive, this time aimed directly at the for the black sharecropper Odell Waller, strike pledge: when John L. Lewis led a attacks were being inflicted on blacks in Soviet Union, the question of labor/ the CP had not a word to say about him coal miners' strike, the CP denounced it the U.S. Black soldiers were shot down black mobilization against reaction is until the day before his scheduled as "treason" and slandered Lewis as in cold blood and jailed for demanding posed with great urgency. Today it is the execution (Waller was on death row for "part of the pro-Nazi fifth column" (The their rights. Black doctors like Edgar Trotskyists of the Spartacist League 630 days), and then only attacked this Communist. July 1943). As part of its Keemer of Detroit were denied the right who fight for labor/black mobilization. legal lynching because it gave the "foul despicahIe whipping up of war hysteria, to practice even among segregated black such as took place in Washington on and hypocritical defeat:sts"-in particu­ the CP expelled all of its Japanese troops. In February 1942 KKK-incited November 27. Then 5,000 mainly black iar "the unspeakable Trotskyists"-an American members and supported the mobs attacked black workers and their workers and youth came out to the SL's opportunity "to d!\idc national unity locking up of everyone of JaD~inese families who dared to move into the call and stopped the Ku Kluxers in their and weaken our whole war effort" descent (more than 100.000 people) in Sojourner Truth federal housing pro­ tracks through disciplined and powerful (Daily H/erker. 2 July 1942)! American concentratIOn camps "for the jects in Detroit. That summer a "hate mass mobilization. while the reformists The CP became the most VICIOUS duration." Even more despicahly they strike" occurred in Detroit's UAW­ and Democrats blew hot air at a rally a defenders of (he racist status quo. In hailed the A-bombing of Hiroshima and organized ordnance plants against couple of miles away. We Trotskyists September 1941, black Stalinist leader Nagasaki. They also cheered Roosevelt blacks being hired into production. The continue the tradition of the Commu­ Ben Davis said publicly "the CP is on when the federal government jailed next year an anti-black pogrom took the nist International in Lenin's day, which disturbed by the increasing struggle of 18 leaders of the SWP and the lives of over 30 Detroit blacks, most of proclaimed itself"not simply the organi­ Negroes for jobs in defense plants." In Trotskyist-led Minneapolis Teamsters them shot by the police. All this was zation of the enslaved white workers of 1943 black CP leader James Ford union, who had led the 1934 general encouraged by the Jim Crow policies of Europe and America but equally the explicitly attacked the March on Wash­ strike there, for their internationalist the Roosevelt government in civilian organization of the oppressed colored ington Movement because it "was opposition to the imperialist war. Yet and military life. The Stalinists' re­ peoples of the world ... (whose] duty (is] creating confusion and dangerous after ~he wartime "anti-fascist" alliance sponse? When the MOWM blamed the to encourage and support the interna­ moods in the ranks of the Negro people inevitably fell apart, the CP itself fell administration for the anti-Negro out­ tional organization of the Negro people and utilizing their justified grievances as victim to the same witchhunting Smith breaks, the CP blamed ... blacks! Ac­ in their struggle against the common a weapon of opposition to the Adminis- Act. cording to the Daily Worker (18 July enemy." •

tion read, "Vengeance for Vincent Chin! this hard-hit labor/black city. The small the unions! Detroit... Jail the Racist Killers!" but important core of workers from The liberals and reformists are of (continued from page 2) In the present climate of Detroit, to River Rouge braved considerable pres­ course all clamoring for a reform of the protest the curfew brings you right up sure and then faced police intimidation Richmond Police Department. But for "socialists" whose friends at Solidarity front against the ire of Coleman Young in showing up to protest. At a video at least 15 years the various reform House supported the curfew in 1976 and the cops. Despite attempts to isolate showing and forum which followed the schemes, reviewing procedures, screen­ when it was first enacted. For them the the militants, the demonstration inter­ successful action, several workers and ing and training techniques, have only only "burning issue" is how to help the sected an ongoing mood of struggle at students who had participated joined resulted in more police brutality. Now auto bosses steal billions of workers' Wayne State, where the largely black the Detroit Labor/Black Struggle there is growing sentiment for a civilian wages and benefits (the givebacks which campus unions face a union-busting League!. review board. Here as elsewhere such a UAW tops engineered and DSA sup­ campaign and workers are charging board will not stay the hand of the cops' ports) and to push racist anti-Japanese racism against the administration. In racist terror. However, if the issue in protectionism. This deadly poison Detroit, the Spartacist League, SYL Richmond ... Richmond becomes a referendum on inspired the murder of Chinese Ameri­ and LBSL took the initiative in pro­ (continued from page 5) civilian control vs. racist police bona­ can Vincent Chin by a Chryslerforeman testing this curfew and what it will partism, revolutionaries critically sup­ and his stepson. Signs at the demonstra- mean-increased police roughriding in going on throughout America, that the port a civilian review board. Examiner and other bourgeois elements The scabherding, anti-union racist are increasingly concerned to rein in cops thrive in this climate of anti-labor SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY their more flamboyant and far out offensives and union bureaucrat sellouts expressions. But in the main the stories and givebacks. But the power of National Office Chicago Madison in Richmond take place in towns working-class militancy scares hell out Box 1377, GPO Box 6441 c/o SYL New York, NY 10116 Main P.O. Box 2074 throughout the South, and increasingly of the cops. Before the recent port (212) 732-7860 Chicago. IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701 in the Northern urban centers. Blacks shutdown in the Bay Area was sold out (312) 427-0003 (608) 251-3398 know that when it comes to racist by the ILWU labor traitors, the long­ Ann Arbor c/o SYL Cleveland New York harassment and cop violence, Rich­ shoremen's mass pickets defied all the P.O. Box 8364 Box 91954 Box 444 mond can be Anywhere, U.S.A. injunctions and restraining orders. Here Ann Arbor, MI 48107 Cleveland, OH 44101 Canal Street Station was the biggest "illegal" action in (313) 662-2339 (216) 621-5138 New York, NY 10013 Like many Northern and Midwestern (212) 267-1025 cities, Richmond got its first major influx Richmond where the cops delight in Atlanta Detroit of blacks when WWIl war industries beating up residents for parking viola­ Box 4012 Box 32717 Norfolk tions. They weren't about to go up Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit. MI 48232 P.O. Box 1972, Main P.O. required their labor. From 1940 to 1944, (313) 961-1680 Norfolk. VA 23501 the city's population skyrocketed from against 700 longshoremen, mainly black Berkeley/Oakland 23,000 to almost 100,000, mainly black and well organized. The racist "Cow­ P.O. Box 32552 Houston San Francisco Oakland, CA 94604 Box 26474 Box 5712 and white Southerners needed for the boys" didn't want to repeat Custer's last (415) 835-1535 Houston. TX 77207 San Francisco. CA 94101 shipbuilding industry. But after the war, stand. (415) 863-6963 most of the shipyards closed and unem­ I! will take socialist revolution to at Boston Los Angeles Box 840 Box 29574 Washington, D.C. ployment and poverty reclaimed many, last end the racist terror of the capitalist Central Station Los Feliz Station P.O. Box 75073 mainly black workers. Meanwhile, the state. And part of the struggle for Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles. CA 90029 Washington. D.C. 20013 (617) 492-3928 (213) 663-1216 (202) 636-3537 capitalists used their strikebreaking workers revolution, and the forging of police to try to break the unions in the oil the multi-racial Trotskyist party needed industry which organized in Richmond to lead it, is the mass mobilization of TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA after the decline of shipping. Yet the labor and blacks to fight racist violence Toronto Vancouver Richmond cops are affiliated to AFL­ in all its·forms. That is the program of Box 7198, Station A Box 26. Statlo~ A CIa Operating Engineers Local 3. All the Spartacist League and the Labor/ '-oronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 /gncou',er B.C V6C 2L8 (416) 593-4138 (604,\ 681-2422 cops are mercenaries ofthe bosses-paid Black League for Social Defense. strikebreakers. We demand: cops out of Jail the killer cops! • 10 WORKERS VANGUARD / Money Needed to Fight Moonie Libel That Kills The Spartacist League (SL), initia­ decades against Kla;1 racist terror. If right-wing connections in high places. tor and principal organizer of the the Moonies have th,~ir way, any group From his giant munitions plants in ~ Labor/ Black Mobilization which or individual in thl: lead of struggle South Korea to bilking his flower­ stopped the KKK in Washington, against the KKK and fascist terror will peddling zombies to his big-money D.C. on November 27, has been libeled be marked for destruction. backers, Moon's "holy war" of reac­ and set up by the ultra-right-wing cult tion is well financed. The Partisan Defense Committee of Sun Myung Moon. The Moonies' (PDC)-a class.. struggle, anti­ Everyone on the Moonie hit list has Washington Times article on the sectarian defense organization which a stake in this case: parents who have massive protest falsely accuses the is in accordance with the political seen their children twisted by the cult, Spartacists as would-be cop killers and views of the Spartacist League-has the left and civil libertarians who are a "violent" criminal organization launched a campaign to help pay for marked as "Satan" in Moon's drive for which should be outlawed. This is a and publicize this important legal theocracy, clergy and professors de­ libel that kills. battle. Defeating the Moonies will help ceitfully used to increase Moon's To defend itself the SL and SYL to protect all intended victims of the sinister influence, and decent Ameri­ filed a libel lawsuit on June 14 against Moonies, This case can be the instru­ cans everywhere who hailed the the Moonies and their publishing arm, ment to strike back against this ultra­ November 27 anti-KKK demonstra­ the Times-Tribune Corporation which right cult's most important thrust for tion as their own and want to see the publishes the Washington Times (see influence and power in America, the fascist terrorists stopped. SL statement on the libel lawsuit, Washington Times. "Moonie Libel that Kills" and the legal Your financial support and LanelNewsweek complaint in WV No. 332, 17 June It will be a tough fight. We have the endorsement are urgently needed to Racist Moon said: "White people­ 1983). The Moonies must not be truth on our side, but it will take more win this lawsuit. Please send contribu­ can contribute In the analytic, allowed to get away with targeting the than the truth to win against the tions to: Partisan Defense Committee, scientific area while black people organizers and participants of the Moonies. The cult seems to be made of P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station. can contribute in the physical largest and most effective protest in money, It has legions of lawyers and New York City, N.Y. 10013 area."

government than we had before. That's new satellite-well, they don't have as part of a struggle to smash the entire Guerrillas in not what they're aiming for, they're much of an alternative, do they? private profit system and replace it with aiming for military victory. WV: Well, the real alternative would be a workers government. EI Salvador WV: You think about in this country in a workers revolution throughout the A March 26 MAC leaflet demanded: the middle of the Civll War if there had area, which obviously could not be "We can't afford to follow the bureau­ (continuedfrom page 6) been a negotiated settlement, what limited just to Nicaragua or El Salvador crats' program of roll over and play would that have meant for blacks-no but would have to include the heavy dead. Our jobs and our union are on the WV: On the fighting in El Salvador, emancipation, slavery would still have battalions in Mexico.• line, It will take a sharp break from the many ofthe Democrats in the U.S. favor existed in some form. That's obviouslv present policies of our current mislead­ a "political solution" because they don't the implication in El Salvador, that if ership to stop the companies' plans cold. want to see the spread of revolution there were some negotiated settlement CWA ... We need one national contract with one throughout Central America. The Spar­ expiration date for the entire telecom­ obviously it would mean leaving in place (continued from page 3) tacist League on the other hand has the capitalist structure that has made the munications industry. We need contract called for military victory to the leftist life of the workers and peasant masses a bureaucracy's line, "what's good for the language calling for uniform wage insurgents and a revolutionary war hell for much more than the 50 years company is good for the workers," is a scales, benefits and working conditions throughout the region. We have pointed that the military has been running the lie. But what's necessary to turn this into at the highest level-no givebacks out that the United States was defeated country, The title of that movie, a strike that can win is to forge a new because of reorganization. For full CWA representation of all non­ in Vietnam not by the "peace move­ "Revolution or Death"-for the masses leadership that breaks politically from management job titles in all Bell ment" in the U.S., although that had an of the Salvadorans, that really is the the pro-company, pro-CIA union lops. impact, in terms of bourgeois public Fighting for that perspective is the subsidiaries, spinoffs and reorganized alternative. entities. All contract demands have to opinion which toward the end grew Militant Action Caucus (MAC), a small Rydstrom: I was very impressed. I be based on the fact that the jobs we quite defeatist, but above all because group of militants centered in the Bay come from a country that hasn't had any have are ours and nobody is going to they were defeated on the battlefield. In Area and Los Angeles with more than a war since 1810 and no war on its take them away without a fight. It's time terms of El Salvador, you've seen what ten-year history in the CWA. territory since 1523, and it was very hard we told the company to shut up, we're the oligarchy and the Salvadoran MAC has been the only grouping in for me to understand the implications of doing the talking! For strike action to capitalist ruling class is like-what do the CWA to demand militant industry­ this armed struggle. I was always very fight the layoffs, downgrades, forced you think it would take to defeat them? wide strike action against the bosses. In impressed with the attitude the combat­ transfers and firings and to fight for jobs Rydstrom: The guerrillas are making response to the "crime" of exposing ants had when they were facing for all-30 hours work for 40 hours progress in the armed struggle, but I collusion of union misleaders with the death. They had seen so many of their pay.". think they still have a very long way to company and organizing phone workers friends die, that they had to live with go before they can annihilate or defeat to struggle, CWA bureaucrats launched that possibility that they would be killed the government army. But my impres­ in battle. I think that many ofthe people a campaign to "Get MAC." Watts wrapped up the '82 CWA convention by Barnestown ... sion of the guerrilla soldiers is that that there had that feeling, that they had is what they are fighting for. We come done very much and they would die declaring: "When we go into negotia­ (continued from page 4) tions in 1983 ... the Militant Action back to this question of negotiations. happily if it was in battle. They were fighting and hoping for a Caucus ... will be picketing our meet­ Barnestown/Oberlin, politics will out military victory. They were talking WV: On Nicaragua, many of the same ings, will be urging our members to and things heated up for a while between about "it will take a long time yet, but we people in this country who are talking strike and not settle no matter how good British supporters of Ernest Mandel's are advancing," and they were hopeful about a negotiated settlement are also a settlement that we might get." That "United Secretariat" (USee) and Bar­ about [some day] being able to make the trying to pressure the Sandinistas into was the signal for Watts' local hench­ nesite Fred Feldman. At a workshop on same kind of military triumph as negotiating with the contras. At the men to go into action. In both L.A. and disarmament, Feldman went after the happened in Nicaragua. Many of them same time. the Sandinistas while resist­ San Francisco this year local bureau­ USee majority for its capitulation to the would feel it's a crushing anticlimax to ing the contra invasion-which is crats have launched McCarthyite witch­ pervasive anti-Sovietism of the Europe­ all of a sudden stop the war, lay down financed by the United States-have hunts against MAC-the most notori­ an anti-nuke movement (captured in the the arms, and we'll have a little bit better tried to follow a "middle road," to have ous being the ongoing eight-month slogan "For A Nuclear Free Europe a "mixed economy, nonalignment and vendetta ofSF Local 94 I5 president Jim from Poland to Portugal"). British political pluralism." What do you feel Imerzel to expel exec board member USec supporter Brian Smith responded will happen there? Sweden was always that Feldman's presentation was "slan­ Spartacist League/ Kathy Ikegami. supposed to be the "middle way," as a MAC has fought for a full union derous" and challenged the SWP to Spartacus Youth League matter of fact. ... "open the discussion" and "publish the Public Offices shop, elected stewards with the power to Rydstrom: Well, in the historical settle griev.ances through strike action, documents." Starved for political de­ -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ situation we see now in Nicaragua I very and the local right to strike, MAC bate, SWPers packed the workshop, Bay Area much doubt that it will be possible to exposed the CWA tops' rotten ties to the which extended for several hours. Ffl 500·800 pm. Sat 300-600 pm keep this "middle road," and I think that CIA, and has fought for labor action Meanwhile, in San Francisco, one 1634 Telegraph. 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) Oakland. California Phone (415) 835-1535 the external aggression and internal against imperialist war from Vietnam to Pedro Camejo, formerly a Barnesite conflict will force the government to El Salvador. Where Watts praises top-dog hatchet-man now turned fac­ Chicago choose the road to follow. I think that bloody segregationist George Wallace, tional globetrotter for the SWP's Tues 530-900 P m Sat 200-530 P m estranged international USec bloc 523 S Plymouth Court 3rd Floor eventually it will be a historical necessity MAC has helped mobilize phone Chicago IiI,nOIS Phone (312) 42 7 -0003 to fOUllW the CastrOlst road. to expro­ workers in labor/black actions to stop partners, gave a public talk August 5 to L.A. an audience laced with SWP members New York City priate pri\ ate property, On the other the Klan and Nazis. In MAC Tues 5 OO-g 00 p rr Sat 1200-400 P m hand. you have to understand the members sought to mobilize phone and ex-members, Will attendance there 41 VV'arren St (one block below dilemma of a small country liberating workers, including CW A convention be a new Barnes pretext for more Chambers St near Church Stl itself from the tyrant that Somoza was. delegates. for an emergency rally called expulsions, like the alleged recent New York r, Y Phoc;e 1212,267 -1025 If it's a small underdeveloped country, to stop the murder of three anti­ gathering of minorityites and ex­ Trotskyist League as Nicaragua is. they are dependent apartheid militants by the racist South members on the West Coast? Back in of Canada I upon external aid; and if the United African regime. MAC has fought Oberlin, the National Committee was Toronto States cuts off all aid. they have to look consistently for independence of the having yet another hush-hush plenum, Sat 1 00-500 P m for material aid from the Soviet Union, unions from the capitalist state and which we bet didn't spend its time 299 Queen St W SUite 502 bosses' parties. MAC calls for expropri­ discussing the plight of the working Toronto. Ontario Phone (416) 593~ and even if they try to maintain an independent path and not to become a ation of the parasitic phone monopoly, farmer. ..•

12 AUGUST 1983 11 the talk of a separate state will end! There is no chance for a Tamil to walk Direct Report From Sri Lanka in the streets in and around Colombo. He will be chased bv Sinhala commu­ COLOMBO, August 2-The news­ building that they came across and second wave of killings in the Welikada nalists declaring hrm a "tiger" and papers of 25.7.83 reported a news item burnt them. Vehicles on the roads were prisons. This time 18 Tamil prisoners hacked to death. We defended our released by the Department ofInforma­ stopped and petrol was taken by thugs were killed by Sinhala prisoners on the Tamil comrades and our other Tamil tion that 13 army personnel were killed from these vehicles to torch the build­ 27th. sympathisers. by a shootout and bombing by terrorists ings belonging to the Tamils. From The country is facing a severe short­ The government will bring their sixth in Thirunelveli, Jaffna area on the 22nd Colombo south on the Galle Road up to age of food. Long queues are visible in amendment to the constitution to ban around midnight. Kalutara (27 miles) not one Tamil front of government marketing sales any organisation which demands a sep­ The government had made arrange­ building was left. All were destroyed. depots. arate state or the right of self­ ments to bring down the bod ies of these Many factories have been completely The majority of the Sinhalese agree determination. The amendment will be dead army personnel and to bury them burned and destroyed. Some of these and approve this attack. There is no proposed in parliament on the 4th at Colombo. The bodies were airlifted belong to Indians. Hundreds of thou­ basis for any other observation. How­ August. The government intends to get from Jaffna to Colombo on the 24th of sands of women workers who were ever generally leftists do not side with it passed on the very same day. Any July. Relations and religious dignitaries employed in these have lost their jobs. these attacks. But at the moment the left party or individual who is guilty of such were invited to attend the funeral. The government reports that there are movement does not have the strength to activity will be punished. Their property However, the relations wanted the dead 50,000 refugees. The most distressing swim against this tide. The government will be confiscated and/or they will be bodies to be taken to their villages. The news is of the murder of Kuttimani and has used press censors and other sentenced to a 20-years imprisonment or government position and the relatives' 'Jeganathan and 35 other prisoners on 26 regulations to stop left opinions from death sentence. . stand were counterposed and the result July who were arrested under the surfacing. J.R. government is following Hitler's was the police inspector in charge of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The radio The Prime Minister in his address to methods and has proscribed the follow­ arrangement has been attacked. There­ and TV announced that about 100 other the nation on the 29th declared that all ing parties and their printing presses­ after all Tamil shops around Borella prisoners despite the orders of the organisations demanding a separate Nava Samasamaja Party (New LSSP), (Colombo-08) were looted and burnt. prison's officials broke open the cells [Tamil] state or any organisation that Sri Lanka Communist Party (Moscow), The deaths of the 13 army personnel and murdered these Tamil prisoners. supports such a view is to be banned and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People's were published in the newspapers of the However our information is completely their properties confiscated by laws that Liberation Front)-under the emergen­ 25th, and the anti-Tamil activities in the different. That is that the army broke are to be introduced on the 4th of cy law. Any party members who break Borella area on the evening of the 24th into the cells and murdered these August, Thursday. Thereafter, he said, this law will be given death sentences.• were spread through rumours. After prisoners. that the widespread attacks on the By the 27th these anti-Tamil attacks Tamil people were released. On the spread to Kandy. Whilst all these morning of the 25th all Tamil shops in happened the government kept silent. Fort and Pettah (in Colombo) were The army completely supported the destroyed and burnt. These attacks were Sinhala communalists to destroy Tamil done by the same thugs that the UNP shops. We saw that Tamil shops and deployed against the Supreme Court houses had been looted by Sinhala judges and the picketting workers. communalists during curfew hours! Some Buddhist monks too supported They were not stopped. Especially the this attack. Today Colombo stands as a curfew imposed on the 24th-26th from 2 bombed city. This example ofattacking p.m. was for name sake. Damage was the Tamils spread to the North and done during curfew hours in the Kuttlmanl, Jegan and Dr. S. Rajasunderam: three of the Tamil martyrs South of the city by the afternoon. presence of the army. murdered In Wellkada prison. Sinhala communalists looted any Tamil Newspapers of the 29th reported the PLOT Photos

by eliminating Tamils in the south and man in the Indian Ocean. And he surely a peaceful cultural meeting and killed uplands and shipping the survivors to be aspires to be Jeane Kirkpatrick's model nine Tamils. This led to the birth of the Sri Lanka ... compacted in part of the Northern of a "moderately authoritarian" dicta­ guerrillaist Tamil Tiger movement. The (continued from page 16) Province. What is posed now as a tor. The Reagan administration has stage was set for the current government minimal democratic demand is a plebis­ praised Sri Lanka as a model for Third pogrom when Sinhalese soldiers ab­ village.. ,. Brandishing clubs and knives cite of the Tamil working people to World development, a free enterprise ducted and raped several young Tamil they checked vehicles for the presence of decide on the formation ofan independ­ paradise for the imperialists. For the women from PaJaly Teachers Training Tamils." At the Buddhist Temple of the ent state in the North. For the right of Lankan masses it's dollar-a-day wages College near Jaffna. Two of them, Tooth in central Kandy, a Tamil body and slave-labor conditions for women hopelessly degraded by prevailing reac­ was found floating in the idyllic lake. Tamil Eelam.' The repression and compaction of the workers in the "free trade zones" and the tionary values, reportedly committed Few horrifying tales have yet emerged Tamils is linked by many strings to a war Tamil plantation workers. The U.S. suicide the next day. Outraged by this from the sealed-off Northern Province. drive, against the USSR. Among a imperialists have designs on Trincoma­ atrocity, Tamil youth took to the streets Several reports tell of the fire-bombing frenzied mounting list of fake villains , lee as part of their plan to secure devastation from army helicopters of and erected barricades. Two army and alibis J. R. has fantastically accused hegemony over the Indian Ocean and vehicles of the occupying forces were whole Tamil villages and Jaffna Univer­ the Soviets of orchestrating communal­ encircle the Soviet U'nion. J.R. is willing sity. Rumors ofan army massacre over a ism, mass murder and plunder as part to trade the strategically important week ago are only now being confirmed of a plot to overthrow his government. deep-water harbor of Trincomalee in As retired V.S. Navy admiral by government admission. In Jaffna, By latest reports J. R. intends to throw exchange for access to U.S. markets for during a rampage of indiscriminate Edward Snyder put it when the out 80 percent of the diplomatic staff of cheap goods produced in the "free trade shootings of Tamils on July 25, govern­ USS New Jersey was brought out the Soviet and East German embassies. zones." The UNP government has ment troops ordered at least 20 Tamils of mothballs: "If you are a In his anti-Soviet frenzy J.R. even threw pursued a conscious policy of colonizing from a bus, including women, and shot the Vatican rep out of the country for Sinhalese into the previously Tamil­ Buddhist and someone trains a them one by one in the street. allegedly collaborating with the Tamil majority areas like Trincomalee, not battleship's 16-inch guns on you: The international Spartacist tendency terrorists and denounced Amnesty unlike the Zionist policy in the West 'Where do I sign up to be a has sponsored demonstrations in six International as a bunch ofcommunists. Bank. The Sri Lankan government's countries on three continents as part of Christian, boss?'" Sri Lanka's pretenses to "non­ request for military assistance from the an international campaign to save the alignment" are utterly sham. The UNP U.S., Britain, Pakistan and Bangladesh Tamil people from Jayewardene's ram­ (United National Party) government to repel the threat of a "foreign ambushed; 12 soldiers and one army page. The lives of three million men, points an accusing finger at the Soviet invasion" appeared to be an open officer were killed. The army response women and children-the fate of an Union as the "superpower with a long provocation against quasi-Soviet-friend was to unleash a bloody massacre. entire people!-is hanging in the bal­ history of subversion in the Third India. J.R., like his big brother in the Reports of the nightmarish violence all ance. This life-and-death matter calls World," as if it weren't the CIA and White House, seems to have no qualms over the island confirm the govern­ for urgent action by the international IMF which are busy worldwide bringing about dragging the world yet another ment's role in the terror. Eyewitnesses working class and its allies. We demand: down governments and starving the step closer to World War III. J.R.'s tell of army and police standing by for Smash J. R. 's massacre-Defend the people for imperialist profits. It's clear massacres pave the way for the bloody 12 hours as Colombo burned. Accord­ Tamil people! Immediate withdrawalof J.R.'s looking to sell Sinhalese labor USA! out of the Indian Ocean! ing to one account by numerous foreign Sinhala army unitsfrom all Tamilareas! u.s. power and strategic Trincomalee harbor Hands off Diego Garcia! No U.S. base tourists, nine Tamils were incinerated at Armsfor the Tamil people!The Tamils to the "superpower" which boasts about at Trincomalee! Down with the anti­ Colombo's main railway station as in the refugee camps are now at the its military might. As retired U.S. Navy Soviet war drive! policemen, troops and several European mercy of the same army butchers who admiral Edward Snyder put it when the tourists looked on: engineered and executed this pogrom USS New Jersey was brought out of J.R.-Sri Lanka's Plnochet "After being beaten the Tamils were for their passage to the North. Patria­ mothballs: "If you are a Buddhist and placed on the railway tracks by the tion of Tamils in Sinhala areas to the The bourgeois press is attempting to crowd which used papers and other someone trains a battleship's 16-inch North under the protection of the portray this conflagration as a spon­ debris as kindling to burn the battered guns on you: 'Where do I sign up to be a Indian army! Nofaith in Indira Gandhi! taneous outburst of communalist racial but still living people." Christian, bossT" For some time now -Guardian [London], 29 July No "UN" troops! strife or a backlash against the Tamil Sri Lanka has been begging to get into This atrocity taking place in Sri separatist movement. This is an obscene Army men were supervising the ASEAN (Association of South East Lanka marks a watershed in the history lie! The pogromist massacres have been pillaging, according to reports in Liber­ Asian Nations, pimps for genocidal Pol of that island nation; that society will instigated and organized by the ation [Paris] (4 August): Pot), the front-line instrument for never be the same again. The impact of government. "On Galle Road Mondav afternoon imperialist attempts to reconquer people were in their cars trying to get the bloodletting and mass population The government campaign to annihi­ Vietnam. home. but army men were stopping transfers can only be described as a late the Tamil nationalists actually them and helping the hooligans confis­ catastrophe. J .R. has ripped the country It's not for nothing he became known started when, at the World Tamil cate their gasoline to set fire to shops apart, forcing separation of the peoples as "Yankee Dickie"-J.R. is Reagan's Conference in 1974, the police attacked and homes. In Hight Street I saw an 12 WORKERS VANGUARD attack upon a recently opened tourist amendment to declare advocating se­ inn. Army men were supervising the looting of fans, furniture, mattresses." paratism an act of treason! The Com­ munist Party, whose own members are J.R. has done his best to behead the being hunted and jailed, supported the Tamil nationalist movement. The ban on the TULF fully. After making slaughter of 52 leading Tamil activists this clear, however, the CP MP walked held under the draconian Prevention of out of Parliament to protest only the Terrorism Act in Colombo's maximum­ outlawing of his own party! security Welikada jail was an act of raw vengeance by the government. Army No Faith in Indira Gandhi! men opened the jail gates and prison cells to allow professional killers into In desperation the leaders of Sri the cells of these Tamil militants. Lanka's Tamil community and many Groups of ten, armed with swords, rods Tamil exiles have appealed to India's and pistols, entered each cell. After ten Indira Gandhi to intervene on their minutes it was total silence. Two hours behalf. Gandhi draws significant elec­ later, jail wardens leisurely appeared on toral support from the tens of millions the scene to claim that some prisoners of Tamils in southern India. For six had broken out of their cells and days, the state of Tamil Nadu was attacked and killed some Tamil prison­ virtually shut down with strikes and ers before order could be restored. demonstrations. Militant, daily demon­ strations have been held in front of the Thirty-seven were dead. Two days later Der Spiegel 17 more prisoners were butchered in a Colombo: Police stood by as Sinhalese mobs burned and looted Tamil Sri Lankan embassy in New Delhi. A second sweep that was clearly meant to shops. 14-hour, 45-million-strong protest finish the job. When questioned about strike paralyzed Tamil Nadu on August muzzle the main voices ofTamil opinion the present safety of political detainees "Despite vigorous official denials, 2. Angry demonstrators marched independent sources confirm that the in light of two successive massacres, in the North. Then he unleashed the through the streets ofdifferent cities and bloody rampage. government did try last week to obtain government spokesman Liyanage re­ troops and equipmeqt from Bangla­ towns with human skulls atop poles sponded laconically: "We're not the J.R. has now extended his repression desh, Pakistan, Britain and the US as a burning effigies of Sri Lankan president only country which has prison riots" to Sinhala leftist parties. The Commu­ back-up force while it undertook a Jayewardene and shouting "Death to . nist Party, the Janatha Vimukthi cleansing operation. It was as much the Jayewardene!" and slogans urging Mrs. (Guardian [London], 3 August). lukewarm response from those coun­ The overwhelmingly Sinhala army Peramuna (JVP) and the Nava Samasa­ G.andhi to send the Indian army to Sri maja Party (NSSP) have been outlawed tries as the strong opposition from Sri has been an army of occupation in the Lanka's own armed forces that led to Lanka. Several hundred students vowed Northern Province with increasing and many of their leaders thrown in the plan being abandoned." in a memorandum to the prime minister troop concentrations for several years. Welikada prison! There have been over to sail 50 small boats across the narrow Now, like a foreign army of conquest, 1,000 arrests including prominent Playing the role of the bonaparte in Palk Straits and join the Tamil Tigers if. soldiers rape, burn, maim, pillage and leftists-among those jailed or being the classic sense, J.R. has shown himself she refused to act. Five thousand brutalize the population in unspeakable hunted are Rohana Wijeweera (JVP), to be a master ofthe imperialist-derived volunteers from different parts ofTamil ways. In the east coast port city of Vasudeva Nanayakkara (NSSP) and methods of divide-and-rule. He sets the Nadu took a blood oath to undertake a Sinhalese against the Tamils, the Tamils Trincomalee 130 Sinhalese sailors broke three leaders of the Communist Party. "pilgrimage ofsacrifice to Eelam" which against the Sinhalese left, and so on from their barracks and burned an Down with press censorship! No ban on will march 92 miles to the coast, then while jailing, killing or driving from entire Tamil village to the ground, Saturday Review and Sutantiran! Re­ cross the straits in small boats hewn out their homes each oppressed sector. Now killing one Tamil and injuring ten lease all victims of UNP terror! of tree trunks. J.R. has stepped up blood flows in the streets. security including armed patrols of the others. The government has stampeded One Big Lie After Another tens of thousands of families into The despicable deep-seated chauvin­ beaches at Rameshawaram to prevent ten refugee camps where there is no J.R. has now concocted a series ofbig ism and popular frontism of the the proclaimed army of political work­ food, no water, no sanitation, no lies to justify his crackdown on the leftist Sinhalese left, subordinate to the SLFP ers from reaching their destination. medical aid. The government is holding parties. At first he pushed the lie that the of Mr. Bandaranaike and later Mrs. In fact Mrs. Gandhi declared, "We up crucial foreign relief aid, food and violence was provoked by the terrorism Bandaranaike, has given the bourgeois are against any secessionist movement medical supplies. "We are sitting of the Tamil Tigers rather than by nationalists a firm grip on the Tamil in any sovereign country" (Asian Moni­ ducks," said a 32-year-old Tamil clerk in Sinhala chauvinism. Then he tried to people. The lefts' penchant for coali­ tor, 29 July). Gandhi said she "is willing the Pillaiar Hindu temple compound pin the blame on the Russians. Now he tions with the SLFP, a capitalist party to send troops to Sri Lanka to reinforce which houses 4,000 refugees in utter has spun an elaborate fantasy about a built pn the basis of chauvinist "&inhala . the island republic's army" (Daily squalor on the outskirts of Colombo. diabolical plot by the Sinhalese left in only" policies, has made them anathema Telegraph. I August)! This should come "They can throw bombs in here and collusion with left-wing military officers to militant Tamil youth. It was under as no surprise to rhose who recall that massacre us all like they did in Lebanon. to exploit the tensions between the the rule of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike the Indian government sent helicopters We can't stay here" (International Sinhalese and Tamils and unleash civil following independence that another and troops to help suppress the JVP-led Herald Tribune, 30-31 July). One recalls disturbances in five stages to provoke a social group-the Burghers, descend­ popular insurrection in 1971. Last week the carnage of the massacres at Shatila coup by the military and national police. ants of the intermarriage of Europeans she sent an elephant-the symbol of and Sabra. Asked by a reporter why he waited five with the Sinhalese-were driven out J.R.'s hated UNP-as a gift from the because they had previously occupied Indian government for the famous J. R. is moving fast to consolidate a days before publicly appealing for a the highest positions in the officer caste Buddhist holy shrine of the Temple of Pinochet-style dictatorship. The eco­ return to order, J.R. replied, "I might as and civil -service under the British. The the Tooth in Kandy aboard a ship that nomic interdependence of the Tamil and well have asked George Washington not reformist parties supported the SLFP was to transport Tamil refugees! The Sinhala peoples has been systematically to start his war of independence or coalition government of Mrs. Bandar­ fate of Lanka's Tamil masses must not destroyed while the survivors of the revolution. You people think it is a anaike that massacred thousands of be left in the hands ofIndira Gandhi, the anti-Tamil pogroms are being compact­ [communal] riot. It is not. It is a revolu­ embittered JVP-Ied leftist rural Sinha­ brutal oppressor of her own national, ed in a South African-style bantustan in tion, and we have to adopt counter-rev­ lese youth in 1971. In response to the ethnic and religious minorities in India! the North. J.R. carefully prepared the olutionary methods" ( Washington current crackdown against the left, Mrs. She orchestrated the communal blood­ way: first with his ominous "referen­ Post, 8 August). B has bragged that her own government letting in Assam, where untold thou­ dum" which extended the life of his J.R. wants to blame everybody for the had locked up the JVP leaders, and that sands died and a quarter of a million UNP-dominated reactionary "long par­ bloodletting except for those who did "when he [l.R.] took over, he let them were left homeless earlier this year. liament" until 1989; then with show­ it-the mutineers in his own army. The Sunday Times (7 August) reported: out" (Times [London], I August). When Gandhi went to war with Pakis­ piece local elections that were boycotted tan in 197 I, using the just Bengali by 92 percent of all the Tamils in the "...carefully-worded version of On August 4, Parliament, with the Jayawardene's speech, released to the struggle for self-determination as a North and East. He rounded up the main opposition party MPs ofthe Tamil press by the official censor, hides the United Liberation Front still in hiding pretext, the Indian army established an most well-known Tamil leaders and fact that after riots erupted on July 24, iron grip on the East Bengalis, and threw them in jail, where many were when 13 soldiers were ambushed and in the North and with a declared TULF killed by Tamil terrorists in Jaffna, a boycott, voted a complete ban on disarmed and slaughtered the guerrilla­ then butchered, following torture. He ist Mukti Bahini which had thrown itself shut down the Tamil paper Sutantiran sizeable number of Sri Lanka's 13,000 separatist politics. The mere advocacy troops were in a state of mutiny for four of Tamil Eelam, the formation of a at the mercy of the Indian bourgeoisie. and the English-language Saturday days as they wreaked vengeance against The young Tamil liberation fighters and Review, both published in Jaffna, to the country's Tamil population.... separate Tamil state, now brands one officially an outlaw, threatened- with leftist defenders of the Tamil people­ loss of civil rights, life imprisonment or Sinhala and Tamil alike-could certain­ __•. H•.•-•.·d··-~·..t;,:.,..""'1- ...._ the death penalty! Like the ex-shah of ly meet the same fate. Iran, J.R. has threatened to crush any Today Ceylon experiences the bitter opposition at home or among the more fruit ofdecades ofbetrayal and defeat in than 500,000 Tamils living abroad. the class struggle. It is necessary to begin Prime Minister Premadasa says, "Those again in the light of all experience since advocating any division of the country the British left in 1948. But history does will not be able to talk about it even in a not repeat itself. The bloody communal foreign land because we would punish struggle argues that even with proletari­ them upon their return to Sri Lanka" an revolution in Ceylon and South Asia (Philadelphia Inquirer, 3 August). For generally, a federated socialist republic the right of Tamil Eelam! in Ceylon will be necessary to achieve The TULF, a bourgeois nationalist the unity ofTamil and Sinhalese people formation like the early Kuomintang, on the basis ofjustice and equality (and has been widely discredited particularly to not ignore the Sinhalese people's among militant Tamil youth for their fears of the immense majority ofTamils attempted compromises with the J. R. in south India). government. Now with their fundamen­ Tamil militants who look to the tal principle of separatism plus legalism United Nations must recall the horrible outlawed, they have reached a dead end. fate of the PLO and Palestinian masses The wretched SLFP not only supported in the hands ofthese imperialist "peace- the ban of the TULF, they proposed an continued on page 14 13 most of the island's hard-currency objective. It turns the minds of the ism but a pogrom organized by the J. R. Sri Lanka ... earnings, after the Indian Tamil planta­ exploited away from the necessity to government for a strategic purpose tion workers are burnt out, thrown in overthrow the system of exploitation. It linked to the counterrevolutionary (continued from page 13) plunges them into internecine conflict perspectives of the American imperial­ refugee camps or shipped back to India? keepers"! Disarmed, dispersed and which lays them prostrate before their ists on a global scale. Under British The Sinhalese peasant smallholders common exploiters and oppressors." colonialism, Trincomalee [in the histor­ humiliated, the PLO abandoned thou­ won't work under the grueling slave­ The Bolshevik-Leninists of India was a ically Tamil Eastern Province] was sands of civilians to a bloody end at the headquarters for the British fleet-now labor conditions that the superexploited party of both India and Ceylon to which hands of Zionist/ Phalange terror. U. S. stateless Tamil plantation workers have the U.S. wants it as a stepping stone in troops and those of its NATO allies not we look as the best of the original the Indian Ocean to encircle the USSR. been forced to endure. Ceylonese subjectively revolutionary Just as the U.S. wants to turn the only did nothing to stop the Israeli The Sinhalese ruling class has always Caribbean into an American lake, they invasion of Lebanon, but set up the formations. An internationalist party, sought to manipulate the communalist they opposed the imperialist Second want to turn the Indian Ocean into an massacre at Shatila and Shabra. No antagonisms on the island. A recent armed U.S. bastion from which to confidence in Indira Gandhi! No to UN World War which many spent in India control the Indian subcontinent. Iran issue of Le Monde (4 August) graphical­ or in jail and continued the struggle for and the oil sheikdoms. We oppose all troops! ly describes the deep ethnic hatred An Indian invasion would surely independence from the British. They U.S. intervention in the area! For which has been fueled to a fever pitch by organized strikes among the plantation military defense of the Soviet Union result in a brutal reversal of the terms of the bourgeoisie: and Vietnam against imperialist oppression between Lanka's nationali­ workers and in Jaffna and Trincomalee, attack!" "This time we gave them a good lesson, winning the respect of a considerable ties, as did the 1974 Turkish invasion of and they should keep their heads down. layer of the Tamil intelligentsia and A spokesman for the Tamil Eelam Cyprus. When the Turkish army in­ It couldn't go on like that. In fact, the Liberation Council (TELC) called for a government should have reacted imme­ workers. The continuators of this vaded, the previously oppressed Cypriot United Nations peacekeeping force to Turks turned the tables and perpetrated diately when Tamil terror first began in tradition today arc we Trotskyists who the North. Enough is enough. The champion the rights of the Tamils and stop the terror. But the SL warned that great atrocities against the Greeks. As Tamils are privileged already.... We only a year ago these same imperialist Marxists, we are not in the business of couldn't let them walk all over us. Thev link the Tamil struggle to the class struggle of the proletariat for socialism. armies set up the massacre of the revenge of one people (the prior op­ came from abroad. They can live Palestinian people in the Sabra and pressed) over another (the prior op­ abroad. We only have one country, our Lasting national and classjustice for the country. Anything that leads toward Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. "No pressor). Rather we believe the eradica­ Tamils will only be secured through independence is unacceptable. Would permanent revolution-rule by the to UN peacekeeping force! U.S. out of tion of national oppression and true you allow your country to be sliced up workers and peasants-and a socialist the Indian Ocean!" the demonstrators social progress will require a socialist like that~ ... Of course, our reaction will chanted. revolution. As Marx wrote in "The doubtless have short-term negative federation of South Asia.• effects on the economy, but it was Future Results of British Rule in India": justified." London "When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bour­ The international Spartacist tendency On July 30 in London, in the largest geois epoch, the market of the world has consistently upheld the right of the Protest Anti­ single protest in the West, 4,000 people and the modern powers of production, minority Tamils to form their own state paraded past Prime Minister Margaret and subjected them to the common if they so choose. In the wake of the Thatcher's office at No. 10 Downing control of the most advanced peoples, government's anti-Tamil pogrom the Tamil Terror... then only will human progress cease to (continued from page 1) Street to County Hall. More than 100 resemble that hideous pagan idol, who bitterness and hostility between the militants, largely Tamils, marched would not drink the nectar but from the Tamils and the Sinhalese has evidently Los Angeles, San Francisco, Canberra, behind the Spartacist League/ Britain skulls of the slain." become insurmountable at least in the Sydney and Bonn. In the course of the banner, "Halt Anti-Tamil Pogrom in The Lankan economy, already ra­ short run. J. R. is carrying out the campaign, thousands of copies of Lanka! Down with Bonapartist JR vaged by the starvation austerity mea­ decimation and compaction of the Workers Vanguard and of the Tamil­ Regime!" The crowd picked up our sures dictated by the IMF, inflation and surviving Tamils in the North. A language lllangai Spartacist and other chants, "Thatcher arms Lankan unemployment, is now hopelessly in plebiscite on an independent state is iSt publications have been sold. butchers-Trade unions: stop it now!" ruins. A critical shortage of staples has merely a necessary democratic measure. Militant unionists in Canada and the "For Tamil right to separate-Lanka in one week jacked up prices 400 While Marxists unconditionally U.S. have raised the call for an interna­ percent! This has been exacerbated by defend the Tamils' right to form a tional labor boycott of all Sri Lankan the fact that the food commissioner and separate state, we are less than enthu­ goods. In Australia, SL/ANZ leaflets his deputy, both Tamils, have fled the siastic about the prospects for an have called on Melbourne dock workers capital. The Tamil people are, or were, independent Tamil Eelam in the barren to boycott Sri Lankan cargo on the the merchant/professional class in that North with the inevitable concomitant Indian ship Vishva Kaumudi (see box). country, a legacy of British imperialist economic dependence on India. With or Everywhere, both in Spartacist-called policy which had incorporated many without independence the North alone demonstrations and in united-front Tamils in the mechanisms of the British is economically unviable. With little actions with Tamil exile groups, the colonial administration. But since inde­ industry and poor, arid land the region Trotskyists of the iSt have fought for pendence in 1948 the Sinhalese have is ill-prepared to absorb the influx of proletarian internationalist defense of overwhelmingly displaced them in another million or more Tamil refugees. the Tamil people. On several occasions government service and higher educa­ And what is to become of the horribly bourgeois elements have attempted to tional access and the Tamils have downtrodden remnants of the Indian break Tamil militants away from become a savagely oppressed minority. Tamil plantation workers in the uplands cooperation with the communists. But The nationalist "Sinhala only" agitation after the separation? significant numbers of Tamil youth are of the mid-1950s, endorsed by the The formation of an independent rejecting these intimidation efforts, and popular-front left as anti-British coloni­ state in the North out of the ashes of speaking out against the criminal alism, codified anti-Tamil communal­ J.R.'s holocaust would neither ensUre attempts to divide the protest against Sri ism as official state policy. survival nor bring national justice for Lankan strongman J.R. Jayewardene's But if the army-battered North is the masses of oppressed Tamils. What is Cold War terror. overwhelmingly Tamil and neither the needed is a socialist revolution on the In addition, there have been a number government nor the "left" sheds any island and its extension throughout of incidents of chauvinist retaliation tears over the brutal exploitation of the South Asia. We have in the past against Tamils in the West. At a plantation Tamils who are called "Indi­ counseled against separation, under­ demonstration of 200 Tamils in New an Tamils" and deprived of basic standing that a revolutionary policy for York July 29, a Sinhala"photographer" citizenship rights in their native Lanka, Tamil emancipation must include the set upon a Tamil protester. In Los elsewhere and especially in Colombo Tamil estate proletariat, who are inte­ Angeles on August 6, a Spartacist itself, which had no Sinhala majority, grated into key aspects of the economy. League spokesman received anonymous Sinhalese and Tamils and other ethnic These workers are not only central to phone calls threatening bloody revenge groupings have historically been eco­ our perspective of united struggle by the if we dared to demonstrate, and a nomically interpenetrated peoples. In Sinhala and Tamil working people to handful of Jayewardene supporters Colombo, Tamil merchants and traders destroy capitalism and establish a attempted to disrupt the protest. In Spartacist Britain ran fully 70 percent of the retail and workers and peasants government in Sri France, at least one Tamil has been 4,000 mainly Lankan and Indian wholesale trade, including the crucial Lanka, they also represent the basis to killed by Sinhala thugs who operate Tamils march in London, July 30. food distribution businesses. The gut­ forge the living revolutionary link with with no apparent fear of deportation Crowd picked up Spartaclst chant, ting of 17 major Tamil-owned factories, southern India by showing the 60 (and two Sinhalese have also been "Thatcher Arms Lankan Butchers­ mostly textile operations making ready­ million Tamils and the dozens of other killed). The Sinha1a gang terror on an Trade Unions: Stop It Now!" to-wear garments for export,spells the oppressed nationalities of capitalist international scale is reminiscent of the needs a workers state!" "Defend Tamil loss of over 150,000 jobs. The massive India that our internationalist proletari­ Iranian SAVAK network under the areas-Imperialist hands offTrincoma­ scale of the carnage has badly damaged an state has nothing in common with the shah. lee!" A theme repeatedly expressed by prospects for attracting foreign invest­ ultimately genocidal "democratic so­ Tamil demonstrators was an appeal for New York ment and the formerly fast-growing cialism" of J.R./Mrs. B. protection from the Indira Gandhi tourist trade. Andjust what is supposed What is desperately needed is the "Down with Slate terror! For the right regime. One sign captured the spirit, to happen to the tea plantations, the building of an internationalist Trotsky­ of Tamil self-determination!" chanted "Mother India Save Us!" In contrast mainstay of Sri Lanka's agricultural ist party in Sri Lanka, necessarily 100 demonstrators outside the Sri Spartacist placards called for "No Faith export economy, which accounts for substantially based among the exploited Lankan Mission to the United Nations in Indira Gandhi-Remember the Fate Tamil masses. The struggle against the July 28. Among the protesters were two of the Mukti Bahini," referring to the hideous national oppression of the dozen Lankan Tamils. supporters of the guerrilla fighters of Bangladesh slaugh­ NOTICE Tamils and communalism is central to Tamil Eelam Liberation Council. At the tered with Gandhi's blessings. While the forging such a party. Colvin de Silva, a rally, the SLlt'.s. emphasized the SL calls for "patriation to the North of Workers Vanguard founder of the Trotskyist movement in connection between the massacre in Sri Tamils now in Sinhala areas, under skips an issue Ceylon, said at the time of the assassina­ Lanka and Reagan's anti-Soviet war protection of the Indian army," we tion of Mahatma Gandhi: in August. drive. Signs read. "J R. Terror Paves the warn against any faith in the bourgeois "Let us remember: communalism is Way for the Bloody USA" and "Hands nationalist regime of Indira Gandhi wrong because it subserves the interests Our next issue will be of the exploiters and oppressors by Off Diego Garcia and Trincomalee!" An which presides over its own prison dated September 9. enabling them to divert the exploited SL spokesman said: house of peoples, from Assam to from their proper struggle and proper "The terror launched against the Tamils Kerala. objective to a false struggle and a false is not just an outbreak of mass chauvin- The question of Indian intervention 14 WORKERS VANGUARD the independence struggle] to strike action in solidarity with the workers and peasants of Vietnam during U.S. BOYCOTT SRI LANKAN CARGO! and Australian imperialisms' dirty losing war in Indochina. Organised MELBOURNE, August 8-Reprint­ Seaman and maritime workers must Australian wharfies [dock workers] labour must again use its power! Don't ed below are excerpts from a leaflet not rely on the manoeuvres of Indian have a perfect opportunity to score a let l.R. Jayewardene destroy the distributed by the Spartacist League/ head of state Indira Gandhi! What's blow against the butcher J.R. On Tamil people! Black all cargo to and Australia and New Zealand (dated necessary is militant labor action, August 7 at Berth 24 Victoria Dock from Sri Lanka! ... August 5) entitled "Stop Anti-Tamil blacking [hot cargoing] goods to Sri and days later in Sydney an Indian Reliance on the Hawke Labor Genocide in Sri Lanka! Black [hot Lanka in ports around the world. A ship, Vishva Kaumudi, will be off­ government to act in defence of the cargo] Sri Lankan Cargo!" This call Dutch ship carrying Lankan cargo is loading and taking on Sri Lankan Tamils is a sure way to seal their fate. for labor action was warmly received, already reported to be arriving in cargo. Waterside workers together Hawke knows who his friends are and in particular by Indian seamen man­ Melbourne in the next week. Such with the ship's Indian seamen should Reagan's anti-Soviet despot Jayewar­ ning the Vishva Kaumudi, an Indian labor action would also greatly aid the see that the cargo on the dock stays dene is one of them. Hawke's anti­ ship carrying Lankan cargo loaded in defence of Tamils in Australia and there. And it would be a splendid act of union government reneged on its Fremantle, Western Australia. The elsewhere now under the gun by working class solidarity if the Sri promise to resume economic aid to following morning the ship's Tamil Sinhalese rightists, as well as the fight Lankan cargo now on board stays Vietnam but gives at least $12 million captain called a meeting of seamen to for asylum for Tamil refugees. right where it is until it finds a resting annual financial aid to subsidise report an urgent directive from the place at the bottom of the Pacific. Jayewardene's genocide. Now Hawke Indian government that Indian ships Australian maritime unions have a has just thrown in an extra $100,000 stop carrying Lankan cargo and that .. ,The international working class long history of such action from the bonus! Waterside workers: it's up to Lankan goods already on board be must act now to save the Tamil people Black Armada of 1945-48 [when you to take action to save the Tamil unloaded at Bombay, bypassing In­ from J.R. Jayewardene's "final Australian dockers refused to handle __ people. You've got the power-use it! donesia and Colombo. solution." Dutch shipping to Indonesia during Don't load the Vishva Kaumudi! came up again at an SL/B forum in demonstration when the TELC leaflet terror is the legacy of the divide-and­ come about, it can only be an isolated London July 27 when a spokesman was distributed by young Tamils only in rule policies of British imperialism bantustan on the barren north coast of from the Tamil United Liberation Front "censored" form. A sentence assuring carried out today by the "independent" Ceylon, dependent for its existence on (TULF) said, "With regard to the call the imperialists that the Tamils were not capitalist leaders. This is reflected in the overlordship of the Indian army. for help from India.... We are massa­ infiltrated by communists was obliterat­ some elements of the Tamil emigre The fate of the Tamil people will depend cred, we are killed there, no food, no ed on every single leaflet before it was leadership whose hostility to united­ on a struggle for a socialist federation of medicine.... We can only go to our handed out! The TLD has been the only front action with socialist groups grows South Asia, which can liberate all the next-door neighbor and ask for help." German organization to take up the out of an appetite to make themselves many oppressed peoples of the region, SL/B spokesman David Strachan fo­ cause of the Tamil people, a fact that "acceptable" not only to the Indian including the almost 60 million Tamils cused on a strategy to "seek to win not even the anti-communist leadership has bourgeoisie, but as quislings for Jaye­ in India. This perspective was raised in the Indian bourgeoisie, but the Indian had to recognize. On the back of their wardene himself and his American Paris July 29 at the demonstration masses" in powerful workers' action to leaflet, they had reprinted excerpts from imperialist sponsors. For Tamil mili­ organized by the Ligue Trotskyste de stay the hand of the Lankan butchers: the TLD's leaflet. tants, the question is now posed: nation­ France joined by 400 supporters of the "For instance, this general strike which In West Berlin on August 7, the TLD alist isolation or a revolutionaryinterna­ TELC and the Tamil People's Libera­ was called in Madras by the opposition held a united-front rally which drew tionalist perspective. As the statementof tion Organization. The LTF spokesman parties-that's something you genuine­ ly want to look to, as something to build 150, about half Tamils mobilized by the the German TLD read: concluded: on. And international working-class TLD and the Tamil Eelam Welfare "So what disturbs the TELC leaders "Comrades and friends, we want to end support elsewhere; trade-union bans on Association. A call for the action was about our militant working-class de­ the demonstration with the singing of military goods, for instance, in this endorsed by an impressive list of leftists fense of the Tamils? Bala [TELC the Internationale. Tsarist Russia was official] wants no red flags, no calls for another country which suffered bloody country, because the British imperialists and defense organizations, individual have had a role ~~ training the [Lankan] the defense of the Soviet Union, no pogroms. What put an end once and for commandos.... trade unionists, political and cultural criticism of imperialism and the Kohl all to these tsarist pogroms was when figures. government and does not even want to the Russian working class led by Lenin Middle Eastern Spartacist comrades at mention the Tamils facing deportation and Trotsky's Bolshevik Party took the meeting spoke powerfully of the in West German prisons. This cynical power. This is the same perspective we experiences of communalist terror and For International Protest answer is true to the politics of this want to bring you today. For the Against Anti-Tamil Terror popular frontist in exile following in the socialist revolution, for the socialist retribution in Cyprus and Armenia. tracks of bloody Mrs. B who paved the federation of South Asia!". way for Jayewardene." Germany From Bangladesh to Assam to Sri Lanka-the cycle of intercommunalist Even should a Tamil Eelam state In West Germany the anti-Tamil massacre in Sri Lanka has been brought to the fore by actions of the government in deporting a number of Tamils to certain death at the hands ofthe Sinhala chauvinists. Last week in Berlin five Tamils were deported. On August 4, the Trotzkistische Liga Deutschlands dem­ onstrated outside the detention center in West Berlin's Kruppstrasse protesting this "Deportation to Death." A TLD leaflet denounced the West German government for sending millions of 0­ In Paris, marks to the butcher Jayewardene while July 29, denying political asylum to Tamil 400 Tamils refugees from the massacre. The TLD joined protest demanded "No Deportations of Tam­ Initiated ils!" as well as the release of Cemal by Llgue Kemal Altun, a Turkish left-wing Trotskyste de prisoner in Germany. France. On August 4, supporters of the TELC invited and welcomed a TLD contingent at a demonstration in Grevenbroich. But in Bonn the next day, Tamil bourgeois leaders mounted a crude Le Bolchevik attempt to exclude lIS, even calling on o ., o the capitalist cops. As the demonstra­ .s= 'u c.. ~'" tion began the TLD, the only German > a. 3: (/) organization present, began to chant, 200 Tamils c: "Arms to the Tamil people!" "U.S. march in New "iii'" Imperialism-Hands off Trincomalee!" York City., ~'" and "Defend Vietnam and Soviet July 29 (left). ., Union!" A TELC leader arrived with a «" police officer and demanded that our sign, "No Trust in Indira Gandhi, Australian Butcher of Assam and Mukti Bahini" be Spartaclst League taken down, threatening to confiscate it. campaigns for an The TLD, under protest, dissolved the International contingent and then distributed a leaflet labor boycott of to the demonstrators, informing them of Sri Lanka to save the cowardly betrayal by their leader­ Tamils. Protest In ship and calling on them to protest. Sydney on July 23 Tamil demonstrators were outraged (right). at the anti-communist exclusion by their leadership. This polarization was made especially clear at the beginning of the 12 AUGUST 1983 15 WfJliNEIiS ,,INtil/lIlil) • • assacre In rl anKa "

AP Photos In Colombo, Jayewardene's army and Sinhalese mobs unleash hideous terror against Tamil minority. Body of Tamil victim lies burning in street (right).

make him President for Life. to carriage of a speeding train between The outcome was the gruesome Colombo and Kandy until he dropped Arms to the Tamil People! picture above of a body burning in the dead. His mutilated body was tossed street, which only gives a glimpse of the from the train. ABC correspondent bloody massacres incited and executed John Mills reported, "I was told that U.S. Out of the Indian Ocean! by the government. A returning Norwe­ Tamils in shops or houses during the gian tourist reported that she and her riots were given the choice ofburning to daughter witnessed a Sinhalese mob death inside or coming out and being AUGUST 9-Would-be strongman popular front of left Sinhalese national­ halt a bus in front of them on the road, beaten or axed to death. Most, I'm told, President J.R. Jayewardene found ists with the revisionist Communist block all exits, pour gasoline over it and chose to burn to death inside." Tamil himself at the head of mass, bloody, Party and LSSP; (2) the attempt to set it aflame while "hundreds of specta­ houses were systematically marked for burning butchery of Tamil families, placate the oppressed Tamil masses with tors" stood watching the twenty Tamils arson attack by men carrying voters lists youth, defenseless prisoners and pathet­ too little, too late and lying promises; inside incinerate. "Hundreds, maybe in their hands (Hindustan Times, 30 ic plantation laborers as his "strength and (3) his real base politically among thousands must have been killed al­ July). Over 100,000 have fled their through Third World capitalism" the Sinhalese upper classes, militarily ready.... Women, children and old burned-out homes in desperate fear and schemes fell apart last week. J.R.'s based upon the Sinhalese officer corps, people were slaughtered. Police and are still huddling in concentration dictatorship sought to rest on (I) the soldiers and police, and upon foreign soldiers did nothing to stop the geno­ camps. In the upland interior, a Times hostility and bitter disappointment imperialist economic penetration to­ cide" she reported (Phi/adelphia Inquir­ (London) reporter told of "gangs of among the Sinhala masses in the gether with collaboration with the aims er, 29 July). On July 28 a Tamil was young men [stopping] vehicles in every miserable experience of Mrs. B's former of U.S. foreign policy. All this was to beaten and chased naked from carriage continued on page 12 Emergency Demonstrations Protest Anti·Tamil Terror

As the smoke rises over burning Spartacist League/U.S. (SL/U.S.) to Colombo, as the Tamil people are picket the Sri Lankan Mission to the murdered and driven into concentration UN. In Paris on July 29, 400 Tamils camps, and now with the mass roundup joined a demonstration initiated by the of leftists, the international Spartacist Ligue Trotskyste de France (LTF); on tendency (iSt) has mounted an emergen­ the same day in Toronto over 100 cy campaign of protest to "Stop Anti­ answered the call of the Trotskyist Tamil Massacre in Sri Lanka!" For the League of Canada. In London. July 30, past two weeks there have been more a contingent from the Spartacist than a score of such demonstrations in League! Britain (SL/ B) participated in a six countries. mass march of some 4,000. mainly In Melbourne, July 27. the Spartacist Lankan and Indian Tamils. And in Ber­ League of Australia and New Zealand lin on August 7, 150 militants came out (SL/ANZ) and some 60 supporters of to the call of the Trotzkistische Liga the Tamil Association of Victoria Deutschlands (TLD). Other demonstra­ demonstrated outside the Ceylon Tea tions sponsored by or with contingents Centre. In New York, July 28, 100 from the iSt have been held in Boston, New York City, July 28-Demonstrators In protest called by SL/U.S. at Sri protesters came out to the call of the continued on page 14 Lankan mission to UN, part of an International campaign. .

16 12 AUGUST 1983