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No. 615 '1111"""'111)~X.523 27 January 1995 Ca,-italism's Racist Hitmen' Clinton, Gingrich Take Aim at Blacks, Immigrants

. Last month Time mag­ also gores the middle class azine reported Washing­ and will encounter wide­ ton, D.C. audiences' reac­ spread opposition. tion to a play based on Jesse Jackson and other Charles Dickens' novel, A black Democrats are com­ Christmas Carol, set amid plaining about White the poverty of 19th cen­ House "silence" in the face tury London. Scrooge's of this all-sided assault on response to a request for the poor. But Gingrich's alms for the poor-"Are Republicans are imple­ there no prisons? No menting with a vengeance Lehman/SABA workhouses? No orphan­ Democrat Clinton joins forces with Republican Gingrich's contract on black America. "Welfare reform" Clinton's 1992 campaign ages?"-brought gasps means starvation for millions of single mothers and their children. promise to "end welfare as from crowds who were we know it," demanding hearing identical words from the incom­ ing. Congressional Republicans now proposal called the "California Civil that the black poor get jobs "'that don't ing Congress, which is about to throw promise legislation excluding legal im­ Rights Initiative," no lessfOn the federal exist in industries that don't exist. Shortly millions of poor people off welfare and migrants from unemployment insurance level, the Supreme Court is expected to after Gingrich took office as Speaker of onto the streets. and supplementary Social Security bene rule in favor of a "reverse discfll'ilil)ation" the House, he and Clinton declared a Under legislation based on Republican efits, while President Clinton has chimed case challenging federal "set-asides" for "truce" and agreed to explore "com­ leader Newt Gingrich's "Contract With in with a proposal for massive spend­ minority businesses. mon ground," including a constitutional America," two and a half million unwed ing increases to police the Mexican Until recently, no pnlitician would amendment sanctifying prayer in pub­ mothers on welfare, two-thirds of whom border. Reflecting the hypocrisy of the have dared threaten Social Security-the lic schools. Now "liberal" Health and are black, and five million children would Human Services secretary Donna Shalala lose their meager benefit~. In the same tells Congress that poor mothers who spirit of gratuitous cruelty, another bill don't work should "lose their welfare would abolish financial aid for over For a Rev~lutionary Workers Party benefits, and the children could be taken 800,000 children with debilitating dis­ away from the parents ... and placed in eases like cerebral palsy! That Champions the Cause of foster care or group homes or put up for The "Contract With America' is a con­ adoption." tract on black America. In the name of Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. mayor "personal responsibility" and "family All the Oppressed! Marion Barry, not too long ago the vic­ reinforcement," it calls for ripping black tim of a racist government vendetta, has kids out of their mothers' arms and put­ anti-immigrant hysteria, the Republicans centerpiece of Franklin Roosevelt's New joined the chorus condemning black sin­ ting them up for adoption or placing object to Clinton's call for increased Deal reforms (although to keep the alle­ gle mothers, saying they should be them in orphanages. Gingrich's obscene inspection of factories where undocu­ giance of the Dixiecrats, FDR excluded forced to use the Norplant birth control espousal of the merits of orphan'ages mented workers are employed at sub­ black sharecroppers and domestic work­ device or get thrown off the rolls. Only (now known as "congregate care facili­ minimum wages. ers, who formed the large majority of a few years ago, calls for forced steril­ ties") is not really meant to fill their cruel Immigrants account for a tiny portion Southern blacks at that time). Among so­ ization of black welfare mothers were hallways-after all, they cost on the of welfare payments, while they pay a called "entitlement" programs, Social universally condemned as the ravings of order of $50,000 per year per child. full share of taxes. But along with black Security-unlike welfare-accounts for the fringe racist right! . Rather the plan is to "discourage welfare welfare moms, they make a convenIent a significant part of the federal budget. Under the "workfare" scam passed by dependence" by letting children and scapegoat for those whose living stahd­ In fact, Social Security is a separate, self­ the Democratic Congre'ss in 1988, many their mothers starve. ards have fallen drastically thanks to financing program which consistently welfare recipients have to find work or The right wing won the November union-busting and deindustrialization by runs a surplus, which is then ripped off lose their payments. Numerous state and elections on a racist backlash of anti­ the capitalist ruling class. by the government for its budget expen­ city governments are already trying to welfare, "anti-crime" demagogy, coupled ditures. From the right-wing Cato Inst,i­ force people of( the welfare rolls and with nativist frenzy that led to the passage Bipartisan War on the Poor tute, which calls for "privatizing" Social into jobs like highway maintenance and of California's Prop. 187 barring "illegal" We noted at the time that Prop. 187 Security, to a bipartisan commission last food service at minimum wage, as a immigrants from health care and school- "is part of a broader racist offensive summer which proposed drastic cuts in way to· bust government employees' whose main and central target is the hlack benefits, Social Security has now become unions. But at bottom, as we wrote 04 ghetto poor" (WV No. 612, 9 December a target for budget slashers. The current in "Genocide U.S.A," (WV No. 463, 1994). California governor Pete Wilson, attempt to deny benefits to immigrants 21 October 1988): "This is not welfare who won re-election by pushing this and disabled children is a wedge against reform, it's a plan to turn the ghettos immigrant-bashing initiative, has now Social Security as a whole, but because into vast cemeteries-because there are called for dismantling affirmative action it covers the entire employed population, no jobs to get. The aim of this legislation 7 25274t030 7 in education and business-through a any threat to the Social Security system continued on page 12 rulers to keep black and working people down in a local economy which, except ·for tourism, has all but collapsed with New Orleans Cop Death Squad the decline of the port of New Orleans and plummeting oil prices. And contrary to the myth pushed in the movie Missis­ Recently New Orleans has been rocked But this is not a matter of a handful of which helped boost Duke into the state sippi Burning, the feds are enemies of by reports charging the city's police "rogue cops." The NOPD tops the coun­ legislature in the 1980s, even erected a black rights who have a history of setting department (NOPD) with widespread try's police departments in "civil rights" wall aimed at keeping neighboring black up civil rights activists for murder, from corruption, drug dealing, protection rack­ brutality complaints. Asked about stem­ people out. Viola Liuzzo in Alabama in 1965 to the ets-and racist murder. The most explo­ ming the city's rising murder rate, even In the wake of Kim Groves' murder Greensboro massacre in 1979. sive revelation involves the coldblooded the head of the Metropolitan Crime and the latest exposures of the NOPD, The social power to stop racist cop execution of Kim Marie Groves, a young Commission replied, "My smart answer the FBI is being portrayed as a protector terror rests with the integrated ranks of black mother of three children. is to fire more police officers." of black rights. Meanwhile, liberals like New Orleans teachers, transit and south­ Kim Groves was shot through the head The New Orleans police have a record the ACLU call for a "Police Account­ ern Louisiana oil workers. It will take outside 'her home on October 13. Hours of brutal racist murder and cover-up ability Task Force." Any talk of "reform­ socialist revolution to sweep away the earlier, she had filed a brutality com­ which goes back decades. In 1980, four ·ing" the NOPD is dangerously mis­ racist rulers and their hired guns, who plaint against NOPD cops Len Davis and people were gunned down· execution­ guided. The cops are the repressive are responsible for the killing of Kim Sammie Williams after she saw them style in the black ghetto of Algiers after apparatus of the capitalist riding class, Groves and countless other victims of pistol-whipping a son's friend. A few a cop was found dead, while scores of and they are especially needed by the cop death squads .• minutes after Groves was killed, Davis other blacks were dragged into police called Williams on police radio with an headquarters and beaten. In 1990, after "NAT"-necessary action taken. another white cop had been killed, Davis knew almost immediately that Adolph Archie, a black man, was hauled Groves had filed a supposedly confiden­ off to the dead cop's precinct. An autopsy tial complaint against him with NOPD showed that Archie had had every bone Internal Affairs. And the FBI, which had in his head broken. a wiretap on Davis as part of an under­ The racist NOPD death squads put the cover investigation of the NOPD, knew lie to the black Democrats' vacuous talk that the hit had been ordered-they just of "empowerment." New Orleans has let it happen! Davis, who is black, had had a string of black mayors; indeed, the acquired a reputation around the Desire father of current mayor Marc Morial was public housing development he patrolled in office during the 1980 Algiers slaugh­ as the "Desire Terrorist." Davis is now ter. This impoverished, predominantly charged w.ith ordering a contract for black city is surrounded by racist white Groves' murder by "drug~dealing gang­ enclaves which are notorious as a bastion sters," and is facing drug charges along of support for KKKer David Duke. A with eight other NOPD cops. few years ago, the suburb of Metairie,

Capitalism, Fascism and the Holocaust This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Red Army's liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwit::, where two million Jews, as well as Gypsies, Slavs and Communists, were exterminated. When the i(A(HiRS Nazi death camps were revealed to the world APt· in the last months of World War II, the U.S. "'" rot YC jJ, rulin~ class and its propa~andists hypocrit- JAMlS TROTSKY ically denounced the unspeakable atrocities LENIN WV Photo of Hitler's Germany in order to bolster sup- James Frazier addresses transit workers and other supporters at March 1994 port for "democratic" American imperialism. At the time, the then-Trotskyist Socialist rally outside Transit Authority headquarters. Workers Party explained that fascist barbarism was a product of decayin~ capitalism which could only be eradicated throu~h international workers revolution. Jury selection for the trial of black even attacked me in the hospital." He The Lublin death camp murders are simply part of the general Nazi pattern transit worker James Frazier will now thanked those who have turned out in of systematic extermination of "inferior races," primarily Jews. Less publicized, take place on February 8, after being his support at previous court appear­ but even more "effective," are extermination centers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and postponed earlier this month. It was over ances, stressing, "The judge notices that Oswiecim where three and a half million Jews have reportedly been put to death. a year ago, in October 1993, that a cop support in court. I really believe that if These hideous crimes reveal the true face of fascism. Fascism is organized mass shot Frazier in the back of the head as I didn't have that support, I'd have been murder to save the ruling class. Spawned and financially supported by the German he sat in his car on a Brooklyn street. just another ordinary black man driving capitalists, the Nazis took power to prevent a proletarian revolution and to prepare Frazier's left eye was blown out. To a fancy car that was shot." for the next imperialist war. The rich still own Germany. The Nazi party is simply cover up their crimes against James Fraz­ Divisions of Frazier 's union, Transport the tool of the bosses. The complete destruction of the workers' organizations and ier, the D.A. and the cbps, want to put Workers Union Local 100, are calling parties and the imposition of a more terrible oppression, taught the German working him away for up to fifteen years on on transit workers to come out to the class a lesson as to the true nature of fascism. Economic and national oppression, charges of gun possession! trial. The Labor Black League for Socia! now coupled with wholesale physical extermination, has taught the European peoples Speaking at the New York Partisan Defense is mobilizing all opponents of the same lesson .... Defense Committee Holiday Appeal racist cop terror to fill the courtroom at Hitler's approaching defeat by no means signifies the end of Fascism. The Allies benefit in December, Frazier told the the February trial. To help defend brother are not fighting Fascism as a system, bu,t imperialist Germany as a rival. This is no crowd, "The cops didn't expect me to Frazier, call us at (212) 267-1025. All war of ideologies, Churchill admitted. Furthermore, there is nothing specifically survive, the doctors didn't expect me to out to stop the racist persecution of "German" about fascism. It can grow in the United States due. to the same causes survive, and during that time the cops James Frazier! Fill the courtroom! _ that operated in Germany .... The European proletariat will rise in the coming revolution to destroy the Fascist scourge. They will make short shrift of the Lublin murderers. -"Lublin Mass Murders Reveal Rotting Capitalist System," JUST OUT! WomeDaDd~ Militant (16 September 1944) No. 44 Revolution Winter 1994-Spring 1995 .IownIIof"'""",*,·ICommiaionof"'~r...ou. $1 (40 pages) Includes: • Defend Tasllma Nasrinl Women and the Permanent Revolution in Bangladesh !n~!!!!!Y~~'!!~!!..~!! ~ • Interview With DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: George Foster Tasllma Nasrin EDITOR: Jan Norden • Vladimir Lenin EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Carla Wilson by Taslima Nasrin PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller • Poland: The Working Class CIRCULATION MANAGER: Shauna Blythe Must Take Up the Fight for EDITORIAL BOARD: Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Women's Rights! Len Meyers, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth • Japan's Answer to AIDS: Internationalist) . Greed, Racism, Neglect Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276·0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July and • France: Racist Edict August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3·week interval in December, by the Spartacist Targets Schoolgirls Publishing Co .. 41 Wairen Street, New York. NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732·7862 (Editorial). (212) 732·7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377. GPO. New York. NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 • Down With the Anti-Sex issues. Second·class postage paid at New York. NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard. Box 1377. GPO. New York. NY 10116. Witchhunt! Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Women and Revolution is sent -_·-·· .. ·.m.. '.ElAND... ,• .." u..... u." jJJ The closing date for news in this issue is January 24. to all Workers Vanguard subscribers. No. 615 27 January 1995 Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

2 WORKERS VANGUARD Protest Sinister Government Set-Up of Qubilah Shabazz! In a blatant set-up by the feds, Qubilah account of taped conversations between Shabazz faces up to 90 years in prison Fitzpatrick and Shabazz, reported in the on charges of "conspiring" to arrange Washington Post (19 January), clearly Qubilah Shabazz (second from right) with family at New York City opening of the assassination of Nation of Islam prove that Shabazz was being set up: Spike Lee's film on Malcolm X. (NOI) leader Louis Farrakhan, suppos­ '" She's not pleased. She's coming up with edly in retaliation for the murder of her objections, reasons why he shouldn't do Farrakhan and the NOI hated Malcolm entrapment. The gratuitous torment of father Malcolm X 30 years ago. This it,' one official said, describing the con­ for breaking with their arch-separatist Malcolm X's family thirty years after his tents of the tapes. 'He's talking about the assassination~the culmination of years crude and cynical frame-up has provoked righteous sanctions to have Minister Far­ politics, which led them into grotesque an outcry of denunciation from many rakhan killed. She objects that innocent alliances with the Ku Klux Klan and the of hounding by the U.S. government's black leaders, and is treated with skep­ people could be killed. She's worried that American Nazi party when they thought racist police forces and other enemies of ,ticism even by much of the bourgeois there might be retaliation-by Farra­ it suited theit;, interests (see "Farrakhan black freedom-was immediately met media. As a protest statement (reprinted khan's people against the Jews. ", Is Bad News for Black People," WV No. with disbelief and revulsion, particularly below) by the P~rtisan Defense Commit­ So now this sensitive, intelligent, 600, 13 May~94). Far froin seeking to by black Americans, whose centuries of tee notes, the Shabazz case recalls the soft-spoken woman, who already lived fight against the racist oppression of SUbjugation in this country have imbued FBI's murderous COINTELPRO pro­ through the torment of seeing her father black people, the NOI offer themselves them with a keen sense of recognizing gram of surveillance and'" provocation gunned down when she was four up as cops for the racist ruling class and rats when they smell them. against black militants and civil rights years old, has to go through the torture-' seek to be the spokesmen for a layer of The government informer at the center leaders. At Shabazz's arraignment last of a government frame-up. Even Farra­ aspiring black capitalists out to exploit of this set-up, Michael Fitzpatrick, has week, demonstrators outside the Minne- khan and the Nation of Islam have the ghetto population. a long record of engaging in criminal plots in association with the Jewish Defense League, including the bombing Alrtel tog.c. Alb301 of a pro-Soviet bookstore in New York liE:, COUJ(l'lrnltrrSLL1Gf.IlC£ vrtOGRAIl City in 1977, and of acting as a provoc­ B~ NATIONALIST-nAT!: GRO\JPS ! ateur against the left. One can only sus­ l ot10no activit1. ~nd interested 10 countertntel 1KBO • o coordlnnto118t thl0 procrrua. 'Thio Agont ,,11 1 be rcspon91b pect that federal authorities made a or the peri:>d proCreDs lettors boln, requested. but eDC ," lC deal with Fitzpatrick, who is currently gent" working tbls typo of c.ae should pnrticlpatens io the ---- formulatioo of countorintrlli&cnCe operatlo • facing cocaine-possession charges in Minnesota. Your employment of this certified ,~ For ~xi~un efreett~en.sB of tho counterintelligence ProgT .....od 'to prcyeot "Dsted effort. lOIl!:-raolle go.ls lire right-wing terrorist to entrap Ms. Sha­ bazz recalls the infamous Gary Rowe, telns Bet. 1. Preveot tbo ooa11tloo of .. ilit8nt block who, as the FBI's top "informer" in the Dfttion l groUp". ' 10 unTIy thor.; ls strongthl a trut811 tbat 1sD 1stno les9 yolid for ftll lts trltcncso • An offoctive Alabama Ku Klux Klan, helped carry out co~ltt1on of b1llcl< nationali9t groups lligllt be tbo first the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's 16th etcp to"loTd II rOlll ''V.llU "~'J" io A:terica. tbo beglnDing of Street Baptist Church, where four black 8 truo black re901~tlon. 2. Prevoot tbe rlou'of a ~oDslab" ~ho couldst t girls were killed, and was implicated in unif1. pnd electr1fY. tbO uilitoot blOCK hoU£lonali 'aoveceo • the nightriders' 1965 murder of civil )lalco\J:I It 101ght bovo b~on such. "'I:I05810 ;" ho is tbe ... art,r of tbe ~ovemeDt today. M~rt1n Luthcr Klne. Sto~olY CarMicbaol Robert L. Haggins rights worker Viola Liuzzo. We will also and Elijoh Uuh~aQed 011 aopiro to tbi8 posltion. Elljah Hubnonod 1s le98 of a throot becnuse of ht8 age. Itlnr: could Malcolm X with Louis Farrakhan (far right) in Harlem, never forget Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco be a vory reDl contender for this position sbould I~ Dbandon 1963. When Malcolm broke with the Nation of Islam, and Firearms agent Bernard Butkovich, bl0 supposed "obedioocO·· to ·"hito. 11bor81 doctrin<>s" (nonviolen~o) and e~brnco ,block n~tlonallsn. CDrmlcboel Farrakhan pronounced him "worthy of ~.ath." 1968 FBI who helped set up the Klan/Nazi mur­ h~s tho necessary charisDO to be a rool tbreat in tbis vlY. document outlines COINTELPRO campaign to destroy der of five leftists in Greensboro, North 3. " provent v1010nce 00' tho part of blnck black militants. . Carolina in 1979. notiooali9t i[o~ps. ~f priaory ibpoJl!Reo.an,d ..i.S""",,,.- .. of co _ .. 32' our lOY;'; ,.- • -- '& ebft.-uzn. Your persecution of Qubihlh Shabazz u a is all too reminiscent of the FBI's COINTELPRO campaign of the 1950s and '60s to destroy black militancy, apolis courthouse displayed a banner denounced the government conspiracy Brother Minister also recalls how the represented particularly by Malcolm X, with images of Malcolm, Martin Luther against Shabazz. FBI contributed to fanning the flames of whom we honor as a courageous truth­ King and murdered Chicago Black Pan­ The invidious set-up of Qubilah conflict between Malcolm X and Nation teller for black America. We demand ther leader Fred Hampton reading, "The Shabazz was orchestrated at the highest of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad by that all charges against Qubilah Bahiyah Real Hitmen: The Feds." levels of the Clinton Justice Department. sending bogus letters and circulating Shabazz be dropped. The government's star witness is one Administration officials 'at first tried to false stories. This was but a small part Michael Fitzpatrick, a high-school class­ duck the uproar by claiming that they of the FBI's notorious COINTELPRO Yours truly, mate of Shabazz who lured her to Min­ had not been kept informed of the seven­ program which targeted many black mil­ Paul Cooperstein neapolis with promises of marriage and month "investigation." But Janet Reno itants and leftists, especially the Black cc: U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno now claims that she tried to hire him as herself was forced to admit, "We have Panthers, many of whom were shot down a hitman. Fitzpatrick has a long history been working with the United States or railroaded to prison as part of a cam­ as an FBI provocateur. In the mid-1970s, attorney" in Minneapolis. Not only were paign to "neutralize militant black na­ '''IW'''''''fr_~~~ '10 r;rx,. l.lo\fO) j~'If:~"t=."C:..,-:~= ~""='~.::~~' ::''1:;;'!;;~~'':,':~,~,~,~r.:; who goes from group to group setting rakhan had anything to do with her olution will avenge the murder of "'II'·"' ...... _-~ -,,~, .. ~ '-"''''''''''''''_",",,-00'''''''''_ '~"''''''''''''<_'l>~l'''h~'llk''''' ...~=~r~:: 1oo.,_ ...... _'<>l~1Mor ••~S~:,~~'!~~ - -...... l'd... <,..,. "-..u...ar.d.=':;:S:'i~,r=5 ..p."""'h<1n.,u.~, people up." In the 1980s, he was expelled husband's assassination, replied: "Of Malcolm X. ""''''''''''~Wo!Iu'''''''''''kQ( -....,...rr_b.. __ ItJr_ "' .. j'''''''i.. _ ...... U... ,.... ,.'.Tho ~g:~~fE:1[;~ ;§.::"!;,S;:;~E 2;:~§~E from an anarchist collective after try­ course .... Nobody kept it a secret." Far­ * * * ing to lure other members into bombing rakhan has denied being directly 18 January 1995 . ~;.~!ii~~~~;,~ ~~Et.~~!!~E ;.r~S~:;j~:g::::S government buildings. Several months involved. But Farrakhan did make it clear 7~"1t~~::~~~' ~.'.... :;;~':. ~':: ...-r~7~~ ... ~ ,,""; ::::-:::::::.., .. "''', David Lillihaug, U.S. Attorney [:~:.f€:'S'i;8 lli:uE'~1!~ g§i~;g:t~ before getting,. involved with Qubilah at the time that Malcolm was "worthy ho, ___ ,tIoo.-· ... (>oou ··,·.. ,' ...... •.... m.. • ...... '" "" .. ""'r.,...-I.~I"",~_...... Shabazz, he was busted on a cocaine­ of death." And a recently opened docu­ Minneapolis, MN ~~~:;~:£~"~~~?S: E:.,~:a.':S"~,~?~ ~~.::,~~~,~~~:.S :':.':! ~.. ,,:~ ~~:t~'~=~ ::.~~;.:';!:: :!:! ..~ =: ::'!:.~"'':::~'''':':.~ l~~" ..::.~~..: possession charge, which is due to come mentary, Brother Minister: The Assassi­ Dear Mr. Lillihaug: to trial shortly. nation of Malcolm X, shows Farrakhan The arrest on January 12 of Malcolm Get the truth about Louis Farrakhan. The feds' scheme to entrap Shabazz in a 1993 speech thundering in reference X's daughter, Qubilah Bahiyah Shabazz, Order, Black History and the Class is so transparent that a couple of gov­ to Malcolm X: "And if we dealt with on charges of hiring a hitman to mur­ Struggle No. 11, available for $1 from ernment officials involved in the case him like a nation deals with a traitor, der Louis Farrakhan is a maliciously Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 blew the whistle to the press. Their what the hell business is it of yours?" inspired, transparent case of government GPO, New York, NY 10116. 27 JANUARY 1995 3 Fifty Years Ago - .

T eRe I .

The following declaration, dated 4 li·nist bureaucracy. These "red-browns" January /995, is transfated from Spar­ are the clearest expression of how cap­ takist No. 116 (January-February 1995), italist restoration is permeated with anti­ newspaper of· the Spartakist Workers Ausc wilz! Semitic filth. A revolutionary workers Party (SpAD). It is also being issued in party will place the struggle against Polish and Russian. anti-Semitism and against racist attacks 27 January 1945: The Nazis' "Thou­ on minorities (for example, Chechens, sand Year" Reich, which brought thou­ whose capital city and its population are sandfold agony to the peoples of Europe, today being bombed to smithereens by lay shattered in pieces. Beginning with the Russian Army) in the forefront of its the German defeats at Stalingrad and program-just as Lenin and TrotskY's Kursk in 1943, the Red Army was able Bolsheviks did. Our comrades in Mos­ to smash Hitler's Wehrmacht divisions cow are fighting to build such a party. and SS executioners on a broad front In the Polish capitalist state which stretching from· Poland to Hungary and arose in 1990 as the result of Solidarnosc­ the Balkans. A symbolic climax of the led capitalist counterrevolution, we see Soviet Union's victory was the liberation hypocritical ceremonies "commemorat­ of a site that will forever embody capi­ ing" the victims of the Holocaust and talist bestiality: Auschwitz. those who fought fascism. These cere­ Between 1941 and 1945 millions of monies obscenely include the German people were kilIed in Auschwitz: Sinti Fourth Reich, the bloody Israeli Zionist and Roma (Gypsies), Russians, Poles, state and the Catholic church, which has communists, socialists. But it was Jews placed a crucifix at Auschwitz in order above all from all the countries of to bury the ank-Semitic character of the Europe who died in the gas chambers Holocaust. Joining such ceremonies in and ovens of this extermination factory. the past were representatives of the for­ They were all victims of an imperialist mer Solidarnosc regime which "rehabil­ campaign which, in the name of creating itated" the Polish fascists of the Second a "master race," sought to tum the entire World War. Together with its ex-Stalinist continent into a colony of German cap­ Social Democratic lackeys, the Polish ital. As a result of Hitler's "final solution bourgeoisie raises the slogan of "re­ of the Jewish question," over two million conciliation" as their ticket into the Jews-men, women, children-were Sovloto post-counterrevolutionary "New World murdered in Auschwitz alone. In the Order." This means mass unemployment, years 1942-43 the overfilled cattle cars racist terror and a ban on abortion in rolled ceaselessly, day after day, to the Poland and fratricidal nationalist wars infamous ramp where the "selections" and bloody imperialist interventions else­ began. Those who were not immediately where. In the spirit of the Nazi Third forced into the gas chambers fell into Reich, Roma, Sinti and other "illegal" the hands of sadistic "doctors" like Dr. immigrants in Germany are being im­ Mengele or were forced to slave in sat­ prisoned and then shipped to Poland for ellite camps for huge capitalist concerns. deportation to the countries they fled­ Only by smashing Hitler's Reich could where they are being killed by pogrom­ the Red Army save a handful of these ists. We of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) demand people~a fraction of the millions who lost their lives. It was solely because of Bund and Communists, who viewed it 250,000 people were murdered, 600 Jew­ full citizenship rights for all immigrants this victory that hundreds of thousands as an internationalist struggle. The Trot­ ish prisoners and captured Red Army sol­ and fight for worker/immigrant mobili­ of Hungarian Jews whom Eichmann skyists in the Warsaw Ghetto also stood diers carried out an uprising that forced zations to defend all victims of racist would have sent to Auschwitz were in the front lines of the struggle against the Nazis to close the~amp. Three hun­ terror. spared death by gassing. Nazism. In their newspaper Czerwony dred prisoners fled into the woods and Today, the Fourth Reich is consciously Yet the Jews were not simply victims. Sztandar (Red Flag), they counterposed survived. following in the footsteps of the Third. Thousands from Poland, Russia, Byelo­ their internationalism to the Stalinist Hitler's "Operation Barbarossa," car­ This continuity can be seen in the firm russia, Lithuania, the Ukraine and Yugo­ dogma of "socialism in one country." In ried out under the battle cry of the fight BASF which as part of IG Farben slavia fought in Red Army regular units July 1941 they wrote: "The war of against "Jewish Bolshevism," aimed at exploited Auschwitz slave laborers over and partisan detachments against the the Soviet trnion against Hitler is the destroying the Soviet workers state. 50 years ago, and later became Helmut occupation and thus contributed to the war of the international proletariat; it Indeed, under Lenin and Trotsky this Kohl's patron. The current "Federal hard-won Soviet victory. The heroic is our war. ... Long live the international workers state inscribed on its banner Republic" proclaimed itself the legal Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto . revolution!" from the outset: "Death to the pogrom­ successor to the Third Reich and took stubbornly battled Nazi commandant Uprisings of the tormented erupted in ists-For the emancipation of the Jewish over whole sections of the Nazi regime's Stroop'sSS units. Contrary to the Zionist the extermination camps themselves­ people!" This promise was betrayed by state apparatus, including the longtime falsification of history, the uprising was Treblinka, Auschwitz-which, given the the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Nazi Kiesinger as chancellor. This organized principally by pro-socialist unequal struggle, were largely drowned Union. Under Stalin, the defense against was part of its anti~communist crusade Zionists, members of the socialist Jewish in blood. But in Sobibor, where over the Nazi occupation was conducted not against East Germany (DDR). Following in the name of proletarian international­ capitalist reunification and the counter­ ism but under the nationalist watchword revolution in the DDR, the German bour­ of the "Great Patriotic War." Yet despite geoisie, assisted by the SPD social dem­ the reactionary rule of the bureaucracy ocrats, diligently set to work covering and the resurgence of official anti­ continued on page 7 Semitism and nationalism under Stalin (beginning with his anti-Semitic agita­ tion against the Trotskyist Left Oppo­ Spartacist League sition), the Soviet degenerated workers state saved the lives of milIions of Public Offices Jews during the war through necessary -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ resettlement. Now, in the wake of Yeltsin's coun­ Bay Area terrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) Union, anti-Semitism in all its ugly forms Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 is once again raising its head. But already under Gorbachev sections of the Stalinist Chicago apparatus (for example, Yeltsin) courted Tues.:5:00-9:00p.m., Sat.: 11 :oOa.m.-2:00p.m. 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor the Russian anti-Semitic fascists of Pam­ Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 yat. Today, following the collapse of Sta­ linism, fascists like the Barkashovites New York City Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. (supported by German fascists), Black 41 Warren St. (one block below son Hundreds and monarchists are part of . Chambers St. near Church St.) Ukraine, 1942: Soviet Partisan forces;including Jews, fought against Hitler's the "red-brown coalition" together with New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 Wehrmacht and pro-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists. "patriot" remnants of the nationalist Sta- 4 WORKERS VANGUARD Free-Marl

. Beliczay/NY Times Ozd, Hungary: Four years after German firm took over and then abandoned steel mill, the plant's labor force has fallen from 14,000 to fewer than 2,000.

Part One of this series, "The Fall society-apd clear oppOSitIOn to of Polish Solidarnosc," was puh­ . capitalist restoration. This was typ­ lished in WV No. 614 (13 January). ified by the call of a workers council Surpassing even their own expec­ in Budapest for "free elections in tations, the Hungarian Socialist which only those parties may par-.. Party won a resounding victory in ticipate that recognize and have last May's elections, swamping their always recognized the Socialist numerous opponents to capture one­ order, based on the principle that third of the popular vote and an absolute parties to join.'Nith the MSZP-despite unless the proletariat overthrows the new means of production belong to society" majority of parliamentary seats. Like the its parliamentary majority-in a coali­ but still fragile bourgeois order in East (see "The Hungarian Workers Uprising election of their Polish counterparts of tion government. The subsequent pact Europe. And proletarian revolutions in of 1956," WV No. 483, 4 August 1989). the Democratic Left Alliance a halfyear signed with the free marketeers of the East Europe cannot long survive unless But the victory of the revolution required earlier, the return to power of the Hun­ Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) they ignite the big battalions of the West the leadership of an internationalist Len­ garian ex-Stalinists turned social demo­ could have been written by Ronald Rea­ European working class, which today inist vanguard party. As we wrote on crats reflects widespread bitterness over gan or Margaret Thatcher-mandating also faces economic immiseration and the tenth anniversary of the Hungarian the devastation wrought by capitalist cuts in government spending, higher political reaction. Revolution: counterrevolution. Two out of every five consumer taxes and lower business "Perhaps. the most serious weakness Hungarian industrial workers have seen taxes, an end to industrial subsidies and From Political Revolution to of the 1956 uprising, however, was its their jobs disappear since 1989, while the privatization or enforced bankruptcy Capitalist Restoration predominantly isolated, nationalist char­ acter. ... The revolution was sparked by, pensioners are forced to scrape by on of remaining state enterprises. This is a More than any other Soviet bloc' coun­ and prepared during the insurgent wave $90 a month, far less than the govern­ program "certain to raise the price of try, the Hungarian People's Republic which traversed the deformed workers ment's own minimum for subsistence. A food and consumer goods and to wipe revealed both the potential for proletar­ states at this time; yet the militant work­ retired engineer commented bitterly, out the jobs of many state sector employ­ ers and radical intellectuals, whose de­ ian political revolution against the Sta­ mands for political and economic re­ "The impoverished people are ,voting ees" (Washington Post, 30 June 1994). linist bureaucracy and the limitations of forms led to the outbreak on 23 October, socialist out of revenge." Having paved the way for the destruc­ a purely national outlook. The relaxation made virtually no effort to extend their These working people saw in the tion of the system they once glorified as of totalitarian terror in the Soviet bloc activities beyond Hungary's boundaries. Socialist Party (MSZP) a link to the eco­ Hence the revolution neither received "real existing socialism," the ex-Stalinist following Stalin's death in 1953 threw succor from nor expanded its thrust into nomic security and social benefits of the apparatchiks today echo the imperialist much of East Europe into profound the other states of Europe-ultimately pre-1989 "Communist" system. During lie that "communism has failed'; and political crisis. In Hungary, given the the sine qua non of victory .... the election campaign, the Socialists trumpet the "magic of the marketpl~ce." especially bloody 'rule of the regime "Thus a revolutionary party in Hun­ promised to lower unemployment and to . This is obviously not what the Hungar­ of Matyas Rakosi, the crisis of "de­ gary would not only have assumed the raise pensions and wages. But this neo­ task of leading the Hungarian workers ian working people voted for. But a Stalinization" led to a genuinely pro­ to state power, but, as a section of a social-democratic party is, in fact, just return to the Stalinist past is no less socialist workers uprising which was disciplined international party, would as committed to enforcing the capitalist possible than is a "humane" capitalism. only suppressed by direct Soviet military have assisted in the vital work of pre­ immiseration dictated by Western bank­ The bureaucratically deformed workers intervention. paring and leading insurrections in other ers as the anti-Communist nationalist European countries."· states of East Europe-originating with The main force in the Hungarian -"Political Revolution in "democrats" they've displaced. Socialist the Soviet Red Army's victory over political revolution of 1956 was the Hungary-Ten Years After," leader Gyula Horn assured international Nazi Germany in World War II-were workers councils, usually led by anti­ Spartacist No.8, capital: "We are a party of experts. We destroyed beyond recall in 1989-90 by Rakosi Communists. Despite illusions in Novenlber-December 1966 have never been, and will never be, the all-sided pressure of Western impe­ Western-type "democracy" and national­ The possibility for implementing such extremists. " rialism on the decomposing Stalinist ist prejudices, there was a strong impulse a perspective was revealed in the extent To underscore that point, Horn imme­ -bureaucracies. There will be no decent among the insurgent workers to construct of fraternization between the insurgents diately appealed to the openly bourgeois future for Hungarian working people an egalitarian and genuinely socialist continued on page 6 27 JANUARY 1995 5 become junior partners of Wall Street East Europe ... - and Frankfurt. In 1988, Kadar was ousted by a more right-wing faction in (continued from page 5) the ruling Communist party. Visiting the and Soviet troops, forcing the Kremlin U.S., "reform" prime minister Karoly to send in a second invasion force. After Grosz told American businessmen that the revolution was crushed by the So­ 25 percent of the Hungarian economy viet Army, the bureaucratic order was could now be foreign-owned. New leg­ restored under the liberal Stalinist Janos islation served as a license for the mas­ Kadar, who himself had been imprisoned sive rip-off of state-owned productive and tortured by the Rakosi regime. Fol­ assets, as managers bought up state lowing an initial period of severe repres­ enterprises through easy loans from their sion, in the early 1960s Kadar moved to colleagues at the state bank. A few years gain the pnpular support or at least tol­ later, the right-wing nationalist prime erance of the Hungarian masses. Intel­ minister Jozsef Antall would bait the lectual and cultural life was relaxed legion of ex-Stalinist entrepreneurs: under the formula "he who is not against "They have forgotten Marx and only us is with us." However, the main thrust remember Das Kapital." of Kadar's program was economic, redi­ A major factor in the Hungarian recting investment so as to rapidly raise bureaucracy's indifference to the loss of, consumption levels, a program approv­ governmental power was that so many ingly dubbed "goulash communism" by of its members were leaving politics any­ Kremlin leader Nikita Khrushchev. way to devote all their time to their new By the late 1960s, the Hungarian Sta­ businesses. In late 1989, the ruling Hun­ General Electric's takeover of Tungsram electrical products company has linists had exhausted their ability to garian Socialist Workers Party dropped brought massive layoffs and ferocious speedup. One-third of Tungsram produce more goulash merely by shift­ the "Worker" from its name and pro­ workers now live at or below official poverty level. ing resources from heavy industry to claimed fealty to bourgeois democracy. light industry and agriculture. At this A small Kadarite split retained the old eat so well, and nobody feels sure about the industrial labor force was slashed point the Kadar regime became the first name, since changed to the Workers the future." even deeper, by 41 percent, resulting in in the Soviet sphere to introduce "market Party. Demoralized, faction-ridden and By May 1994, four years after being a massive intensification of labor for socialism," with the express aim of its cadre preoccupied with personal ousted from power, the venal ex­ those still employed. increasing Hungary's exports to the enrichment, the Socialist Party received Stalinists were able to inflict a humili­ Much of the foreign investment in West, especially the European Commu­ only 11 percent of the vote in the pivotal ating defeat on all the anti-Communist Hungary was expressly intended to re­ nity. The 1968 New Economic Mecha­ elections in the spring of 1990, coming parties, both the right-wing nationalists duce, not augment, production. A num­ nism freed enterprise directors and state in fourth behind three avowedly bour­ and pro-Western neo-liberals. By the ber of Austrian firms, for example, bank officials from tight, centralized geois parties. time of its demise, the MFD regime had bought up wholesale and retail outlets control, giving them wide leeway to The victor was Antall's right-wing not only antagonized the working class in order to market Austrian-made goods, wheel and deal in international markets. nationalist Hungarian Democratic Forum but had also alienated the bourgeois displacing Hungarian products. Even the The move to more closely integrate (MFD), which shaded off toward fas­ intelligentsia with its flagrant corruption much-touted 1990 buyout of Tungsram the economy into the capitalist West had cism. These "democrats" openly glori­ and high-handed authoritarian methods. by General. Electric has only further catastrophic consequences in the mid- fied the fascistic interwar dictatorship of When the government fired 129 radio pauperized Hungarian workers. A giant 1970s. The world capitalist depression Admiral Horthy, which came to power journalists last March in .a blatant manufacturer of electrical products, collapsed Hungary's export markets both by drowning in blood the 1919 Hungar­ attempt to regiment the media, 30,000 Tungsram accounted for 3 percent of in volume and price. At the same time, ian Commune. The MFD pushed blatant derrionstrators poured into the streets of Hungary's gross national product and the Soviet Union increased the price of anti-Semitic and anti-Roma (Gypsy) Budapest to demand that the MFD was quite competitive in. international oil and natural gas to its East European racism, touted "Christian national val­ regime stop "tampering with our brains." markets, supplying a significant share of bloc partners, taking advantage of the ues" and emphasized a policy of chau­ headlights used by German automakers Foreign Investment Fuels oil price boom artificially engineered by vinist irredentism. Thus, in a country of like Mercedes. In the Tungsram venture, Economic Pauperization the Seven Sisters/OPEC cartel. In the 10 million people, Antall was fond of GE was looking for a cheap and easy late I 970s, Hungary experienced a disas­ proclaiming himself prime minister of Since the Budapest Stalinists had long way to break into the German electrh::al trous worsening of its terms of trade, J5 million Hungarians, referring to the engaged in "market socialism," Western products market. wiping out the equivalent of one year's minority populations in neighboring industrialists and bankers viewed Hun­ In the three years after the takeover, gross national product. countries. The MFD's main opponents gary as relatively stable compared to GE cut Tungsram's labor force from Desperately anxious to avoid mass were pro-Western "neo-liberals," divid­ other former Soviet bloc countries where 18,500 to 10,000 while implementing a layoffs or cuts in living standards, Kadar ed between an older layer of anti­ the transition to capitalism appeared ferocious speedup. Even the compliant & Co. mortgaged the country to the loan Communist "dissidents" (the Free Dem­ more conflict-ridden and chaotic. Since trade-union officials complained: "We sharks of Wall Street, the City of London ocrats) and a coterie of self-absorbed 1990 Hungary has received $7 billion in have reached the point where one per­ and Frankfurt. Hungary's hard-currency yuppies (the Young Democrats). Once in foreign..investment, more than an other son is doing the work of several people, debt shot up from $1 billion in 1970 to office, Antall set about trying to recreate East European countries combined. Yet and he can't do it in the normal 8 hours; $9 billiowin 1980. At the same time, the the old Hungarian gentry while carrying Hungary's "success" in attracting West­ he is doing it in 10" (New York Times, lax regime of "market socialism" gener­ out the brutal austerity dictates of the ern capital has not lessened but rather 10 March 1993). Yet even though they ated an indigenous class of capitalist International Monetary Fund. intensified the exploitation and pauperi­ are producing far more per capita and entrepreneurs largely drawn from Stalin­ The reaction of the masses of Hungar­ zation of the working masses. are employed by a wealthy American­ ist apparatchiks. In the mid-1980s, the ian workers to this counterrevolution­ As long as enterprises "remain state­ based multinational, more than a third liberal British historian A.J.P. Taylor, carried out in the name of "democracy" owned, even right-wing 'nationalist of the remaining Tungsram workers live whose wife was Hungarian, estimated was expressed by a middle-aged woman regimes face some political pressure to in families at or below the official Hun­ that there were as many millionaires in struggling to survive by selling fruit limit mass layoffs. Privatization, how­ garian poverty line! Kadar's Hungary as in Thatcher's Brit­ from a street stand after the textile mill ever, subjects the workers to the dictates An even worse fate was suffered by ain, although the former displayed their where she had worked for 25 years went of the world capitalist market in all their the 14,000 steel workers in the city of wealth less conspicuoJ.lsly. . bankrupt: brutality. Hungary is the one country in Ozd 'when a German outfit bought up Gorbachev's perestroika and the re­ the former Soviet sphere where employ­ their mill in 1990. A few years later, "It's all thanks to democracy. For us ordi­ sulting disintegration of the Kremlin nary people, life has .got a lot worse over ment has actually fallen more than out­ the German bosses decided the venture bureaucracy removed the last restraint the past four years. We have become put. Between 1990 and 1993, gross wasn't profitable and pulled out. Today, on the Hungarian Stalinists' appetites to poorer and weaker. Some can no longer industrial output fell 33 percent, while fewer than 2,000 workers are left trying

The "magic of the marketplace": Thousands of homeless families sleep on streets and in train stations of Budapest, while a handful of Hungarian yuppies live it up.

6 WORKERS VANGUARD to survive by processing scrap steel.­ ity, on the two occasions when the Such bitter experiences produced a rapid MSZOSZ threatened general strikes over popular disillusionment with the new economic policy, the right-wing nation­ "democratic," i.e.;' capitalist, order. alist government was compelled to nego­ To the extent that the Western media tiate a compromise. For all their rabid covered Hungarian politics in the first anti-Communism, Antall, Csurka & Co. phase of the counterrevolution, they had no stomach for a confrontation with focused on the rantings of the fascistic the organized working class. wing of Antall's MFD represented by MSZOSZ union head Sandor Nagy is Istvan Csurka, one of the party's six vice perceived as representing the left wing presidents. Csurka attacked Hungary's of the Socialist Party, with Bekesi on the liberal president Arpad Goncz as a puppet right and Hom occupying the center of the "Paris-New York-Tel Aviv mafia" position. But no less than 'his social­ and raved that the former 'Communists democratic comrades, Nagy insists: "No­ "never admitted being Jewish while run­ body wants to bring back the former sys­ ning the country." After this fascist dem­ tem; that's ridiculous and impossible" agogue broke from the MFD in 1993 and (Washington Post, 9 May 1994). How­ went into opposition, the London Finan­ ever, the growing mass support for the cial Times (17 November 1993) wrote: Socialists was based precisely on a "Mr. Hom and Mr. Csurka are competing desire to restore at least a modicum of for the anti-government vote, including economic and social benefits from the the votes of those who believe that four old system. The single most important years of painful changes have merely cre~ reason voters gave for supporting the ated a new wealthy class." Socialists was the belief that "things Budapest workers topple statue of Stalin during 1956 proletarian political But there turned out to be no compe­ were better in the old days, when there revolution. tition at all. Hom's Socialists won a were jobs and a secure existence." And sweeping electoral victory while the fas­ right after the May elections, the direc- working-class base, especially the trade as mass frustration with "free market" cist blowhard Csurka got about 2 percent 'tor of Hungarian Gallup reported that unions. The Socialist tops can now claim immiseration is channeled into a chau­ of the vote. In their own way, the Hun­ the typical Socialist voter is "much more anti-working-class and other unpopular vinist frenzy scapegoating Jews, Roma garian masses understood that Csurka anti-market, anti-privatization, more for measures are "necessary" to placate their and other minorities. Even a Socialist was only offering a more extreme egalitarian values and social redistri­ coalition partners. " / spokesman has warned: "If we don't suc­ version of the nationalist and anti­ bution. They are traditional, old-time A half year after the Polish ex-Stalinist ceed, the pendulum will go to the right Communist demagogy which since 1990 socialist supporters" (Washington Post, Social Democrats ousted the Solidarnosc again and that is very scary." But the has served as the ideological cover for 31 May 1994). gang, Western imperialist opinion had cravenly pro-capitalist social democrats economic immiseration. An 80-year-old The right-wing nationalist regime become somewhat more I open to the cannot "succeed," either in piecing off pensioner explained rather plaintively itself sought to tum the election into a change in political regimes in East a restive working class or in creating a why he supported the Socialists: "They referendum on the Communist era. Its Europe. An editorial in the New York fully fledged capitalist economy. To have always been on our side. They want main campaign tactic was to vilify Horn Times (10 May 1994) remarked: "Former break the spine of a restive workers what we want. Peace and quiet and that for participating in one of the Stalinist Communists might not be the ideal agents movement, capitalist counterrevolution of market reforms in Eastern Europe. But will drive toward the establishment of a CD bonapartist or fascist dictatorship. In the ~ they can-with help-get the job done." 0" N The job the ex-Stalinists are carrying out absence of cohered capitalist relations, Ql ~ On behalf of international finance capital virulent national chauvinism serves as a Z -< is the privatization or closure of wide battering ram for consolidating capitalist -I 3' , swathes of Hungary's industry, leading rule (see "East Europe: Nationalism and CD en to even more massive layoffs. Counterrevolution," WV Nos. 547 and It is indicative of the lack of proletar­ 548, 20 March and 3 April 1992). , September 1993: ian leadership in East Europe that the To prevent its further immiseration, if Right-wing Hungarian masses could tum nowhere not wholesale destruction, the working nationalists class needs a party armed with an inter­ commemorate but to this "Socialist" party of capitalist Admiral Horthy, austerity in their desperate desire to nationalist program of socialist revolu­ butcher of 1919 reverse the effects of capitalist counter­ tion to sweep away the nascent bourgeois Soviet Republic revolution. The lack of a revolutionary order. Such a party would rally behind and fascistic alternative was manifest in a conference the proletariat all layers of the oppressed, dictator of held in Budapest last September, which fighting chauvinist and fascist attacks on interwar Hungary. drew some 60 leftists frofu East Europe Hungary's sizable minorities of Jews and and elsewhere to discuss "The Left at Roma, defending the rights of women the Dawn of the 21 st Century" (Labour and reaching out to the working masses Focus on Eastern Europe, Autumn throughout Europe, East and West. The the price of bread doesn't go up every militias which suppressed the 1956 Rev­ 1994). But while bemoaning the plight Hungarian proletariat needs to resurrect day. And of course doubling pensions." olution. All accounts agree that the red­ of mass unemployment aJ)d the failure the workers councils created in the 1956 baiting of Hom totally backfired. It con­ of Stalinism and mainstream social Revolution, smashing the nascent capi­ Popular Front of "Free vinced people that the ruling Democratic . democracy, the participants PVt forward talist state and thereby layingthe basis Market" Immiseration Forum was simply out for revenge and little but stale New Left nostrums, about for a democratically organized planned Far from being on the workers' side, longed for a return to the Horthyite past. defending "ecological and cultural struc­ economy. Above all, for the egalitarian Hom & Co. are assertive advocates of Indeed, shortly before his own death in tures," not even hinting at the need to and socialist aspirations of Hungarian "free market" economics whose slogan late 1993, Antall presided over the spec­ sweep away the capitalist system. working people to be realized requires is "private property and social responsi­ tacular official reburial of the fascistic The inevitable disillusionment with the leadership of a genuinely commu­ bility"! One Western business analystin dictator. Meanwhile, the bourgeois oppo­ the Socialist/Free Democratic regime in nist, Leninist-Trotskyist party with an Budapest described the party's econom­ sit~on parties-the Free Democrats and Budapest could well produce strikes, big internationalist perspective aimed at ics expert, Laszlo Bekesi, as the most Young Democrats-attacked the govern­ protests and a further leftward motion in extending socialist. revolution particu­ right-wing socialist he had ever met. Try­ ment's economic policies from the neo­ Hungarian society. But in the absence of larly to the imperialist heartland of West ing to live up to that billing, Bekesi liberal right, for not pursuing privati­ a revolutionary leadership, it could also Europe. denounces any concession to economic zation and marketization aggressively lead to a resurgence of the fascistic right, [TO BE CONTINUED] populism: "We don't promise spending enough. or fast improvements. We will bring As a result, the Socialists won an elec­ in capital through privatisation and toral victory of a far greater magnitude bring down state expenditure" (London than anyone had expected, winning 209 Germany and all the lands of the former Guardian, 3 February 1994). Bekesi is out of 386 seats in the parliament. But Auschwitz ... Soviet Union. It was in this same spirit the representative par excellence of that far from welcoming this landslide, Hom (continued from page 4) that the Internationalist Communists of layer of former Stalinist apparatchiks & Co. feared that they would now come up its gruesome history. Now we are Buchenwald-Austrian, French, Belgian turned capitalist entrepreneurs who form under massive pressure to meet the told that infamous concentration camps and German Trotskyists-fought in that a major component of the Socialist Par­ demands of their working-class and ple­ like Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald concentration camp for their revolution­ ty's constituency. beian base. So they quickly agreed to were sites not of Nazi crimes but of ary program. In their declaration of April However, the core ofthe party's social a coalition government with the anti­ "Stalinist dictatorship"! And recently, 1945 (reprinted in Spartacist No. 26, base is the organized working class. To Communist neo-liberals of the Free Dem­ this "revisionist" campaign, which is Winter 1979), shortly after the liberation an even greater degree than in' Poland, ocrats. The motive for this bloc between rewriting history, went a step further of Buchenwald, they wrote: the former official Stalinist union group­ a party of former Stalinist apparatchiks when a court in Mannheim, Germany "To prevent the restabilization of ing, the National Federation of Hun­ and a party of former anti-Communist alibied current Nazi leader Deckert, the German bourgeoisie, facilitated by imperialist antagonisms, and to estab­ garian Trade Unions (MSZOSZ), has "dissidents" was cynically explained by describing his bloody anti-Semitic de­ lish workers power, the revolutionary transformed itself into the hegemonic Free Democratic leader Laszlo Rajk: "the nial of the Holocaust-under the code struggle of the: working class of each economic organization of the working Socialists don't want to be the only ones word "Auschwitz lie"-as strengthening country against its own bourgeoisie is class. Feeble attempts to launch rival around to be blamed next time." the "power of resistance of the German necessary .... anti-Communist nationalist or liberal The present coalition in Hungary dem­ people against Jewish claims stemming "The proletariat can fulfill its historic task only under the leadership of a new unions never got off the ground. When onstrates in a very clear way the nature from the Holocaust." world revolutionary party. The creation the right-wing government held elec­ of popular-frontism since there was no Rosa Luxemburg emphasized that of this party is the most pressing task of tions for union representation to the obstacle whatsoever to forming a purely humanity stands before the alternatives: the most advanced sections of the work­ national health insurance and pension Socialist government. The sole and obvi­ socialism or barbarism. Auschwitz epit­ ing class. International revolutionary cadres have already come together to funds in 1993, the ex-Stalinists won ous reason for this coalition with a bour­ omized capitalist barbarism. We stand, construct this world party in the struggle hands down. While the country has not geois party was to provide Hom & Co. like this great revolutionary fighter, for against capitalism and its reformist and experienced a high level of strike activ- with a counterweight to their party's the unity of the proletariats of Poland, Stalinist agents.". 27 JANUARY 1995 7 WhiteHouse Pushes School Prayer

The American ruling class is trying to South, religion is increasingly integrated per" by' classmates because he refused schools. In Merrimack, New Hampshire, reintroduce a "moment of silence" and into the school day. to participate in Bible class in Ecru, Mis­ the school board is debating whether to "voluntary" prayer in public schools as In August of last year, Brian Bown, a sissippi, His mother Lisa, a Lutheran teach "creationism" in science class, but part of their reactionary "family values" high-school teacher in Snellville, Geor­ who doesn't want her kids to be told doesn't want to spend the money for a campaign. Make no mistake-the "mo­ gia, was fired for continuing to teach his what to pray, is courageously suing the phone line for a computer network! ment of silence" mandate is but a prelude .,;l\t. The separation of church and state to an organized school prayer amendment remains one of the most basic gains of to the Constitution. ~",t\,~ the first American Revolution. The right Led from the White House by Baptist to bear arms is being chipped away, the Bill Clinton and in Congress by Georgia's ~t'~ .. ~~~, right to citizenship faces an all-sided Newt Gingrich, this attack is pushed by ~~l~i ~~'. attack, and the right to be free from an army of ultrarightists whose program unreasonable search and seizure is nearly is to liquidate public education, .abolish ~~~ a dead letter. We need a socialist revo­ abortion, introduce creationism and elim­ '. \',~~~~." t lution! As we said in our "To Hell with inate all mention of AIDS prevention, School Prayer" article: sex education and homosexuality in the "The Moral Majority bigots' vision of classroom. In July 1994, the Senate the "perfect" American society is one passed a bill to cut dwin~ling federal that is completely segregated=-put blacks in one school, Jewish kids in funds to public schools that don't kow­ another, and the WASPs will be able to tow to court-ordered "constitutionally pray together happily ever after. In spite protected" school prayer. Such all-sided of its religious and ethnic diversity, social regimentation is designed to groom though, the United States is a white Prot­ another generation of youth as cannon estant country, the prayers will be white Protestant prayers, and those children fodder in the next imperialist war. who don't mouth along'will be branded Despite the 1962 Supreme Court rul­ as un-American." ing against organized prayer and Bible -Young Spartacus No. 117, readings as violations of the First April 1984 Amendment, the blight of school prayer Ten years later, with racism against has been quietly infecting school dis­ immigrants and minorities being tricts across the nation. According to a whipped up to new heights through Prop­ WVPhoto report in the Boston Globe (4 Decem­ Birmingham, Alabama: Spartacists join in defense of abortion clinic last spring osition 187, the danger posed for all types ber 1994), already Massachusetts, the against relig.i,g.us bigots. Particularly in the Deep South, prayer is creeping into of minorities is even more palpable. What District of Columbia and six Southern the school aay. will happen to Spanish-speaking Cath­ states have either proposed or enacted olic children when it's their "turn" to moment-of-silence measures, or "volun­ class during the state-mandated moment state. As an indication of the level lead prayers? Or to French-speaking tary" prayer before sports or graduation of silence. After Mississippi passed a law of hysterical absurdity this campaign black Haitians, Muslims or Jews? It will events, in the last year. There are an earlier this year allowing "voluntary" has reached, Surgeon General Joycelyn be the likes of Gingrich and North Car­ estimated 12,000 Bible groups holding student-led prayer in the public schools, Elders was recently fired for mentioning olina Senator Jesse Helms who will prayer sessions before classes in schools eleven-year-old David Herdahl was the dreaded "m" word (masturbation) at decide which prayers are acceptable. around the country. Particularly in the branded an "atheist" and "devil worship- a conference on sex edll:cation in public continued on page J0

Coyoacan, a southern suburb of Mexico City where Leon Trotsky was murdered by a Stalinist agent in 1940. They painted "Hitler was right," "Jews Out," and Mexico City: Youth Spike "Communist Pigs" on the walls sur­ rounding the building. Trotsky founded the Red Army, which not only smashed the bloody perpetrators of anti-Jewish pogroms during the Bolshevik Revolu­ Fascist Provocation tion, but later crushed Hitler's Holocaust machine. On January 12, a march of 30,000 or exterminate all Indian and dark-skinned cos!" (the Zapatistas' subcomandante in Last year, our comrades dealt these more people poured into the Z6calo, people. Chiapas) to show that as nationalists fascists another blow when they tried Mexico City's huge central plaza, on the After the march arrived at the Z6calo, they're "with" the insurgents. They were to desecrate the memory of the martyrs first anniversary of the huge 1994 march members of the Grupo Espartaquista de shouted down by the chant of "Fascists! of Tlatelolco, the hundreds of student against the government's bloody assault Mexico (GEM) took swift action to see Fascists!" by the emboldened crowd. demonstrators massacred by the Mexican on the Zapatista insurgents in Chiapas. that the fascists' grotesque provocation This was an important victory. These army during the 1968 Summer Olym­ The demonstration was organized by was soundly spiked. Upon seeing the fas­ scum have been polluting the Z6calo pics in Mexico City. When the fascists various popular~frontist and pacifist cists, a handful of Spartacists organized too long, and they're feeding off strong marched with a large swastika at a organizations whose main demand was an on-the-spot united front with an anar­ undercurrents of anti-Semitism in Mex­ 2 October 1994 demonstration to com­ for "peace" in Mexico's poorest and chist youth group. About 20 of the young ico today, despite the country's tiny memorate the massacre, our comrades southernmost state. But on their arri­ anarchists joined us in agitati;ng more Jewish population. The fascists' scape­ led enraged protesiers in destroying and val, a sinister group of fascists had set than a hundred of the assembled dem­ goating of Jews for the economic anguish burning this symbol of genocide. As the up shop in front of the Metropolitan onstrators, while together we ripped the caused by decaying capitalism, recently GEM wrote afterward in a press state­ Cathedral with a swastika banner. fascists' banners to shreds and scared the intensified by the Mexican stock mar­ ment, the fascists' provocations are: These disgusting vermin have gath­ living daylights out of the Hitler-loving ket crash and the plunge of the peso, is "a deadly threat against every leftist, ered on and off for months in the Z6calo, scum. deadly poison to Mexican workers and trade-uriion or student activist; against pasting up quotations from the Proto­ While the crowd enthusiastically ap­ peasants. Unfortunately, it is also on the every Indian, black person, Asian, gay or lesbian, Jew or other minority mem­ cols of the Elders of Zion, spewing anti­ plauded this act of sanitation, the fas­ rise. ber. Mobilizing the power of the work­ Semitic filth and waving swastikas. In a cists screamed that the anti-fascist youth A major publishing house just put ing class, there must be a firm response grotesque attempt to appeal to Mexican were "dopers" and "troublemakers," and out a deluxe book on the "Judeo­ that drives back the Hitler-lovers, who nationalism, they carried a sign claiming yelled slurs at us. They tried to phys­ Masonic conspiracy," an anti-Semitic, want to whip up racist massacres, when they crawl out of their holes with that the swastika was an "Aztec symbol." ically attack one of our comrades, but anti-communist screed. At the end of their deadly racist poison. Down with The fascists seek to obscure the fact thaf were effectively repulsed. The fascists December, fascists painted slogans on the racism! We must put a stop to these racist their hero Hitler would have liked to even started to chant "Marcos! Mar- outside walls of the Trotsky Museum in provocations!" • 8 WORKERS VANGUARD A Review

The film begins with the two youths Arthur's freshman year, when his father full of optimism after a black scout of is laid off his job, the family falls schoolyards and grammar schools taps behind in its bills and the school quickly them for the prestigious St. Joseph's sum­ dumps him because the tuition isn't paid. mer recruitment camp. Over the years, After six weeks out of school, Arthur their spirits are eroded.by bitter race and starts over at unranked Marshall High, class oppression. At St. Joseph, a pre­ a typically substandard, predominantly dominantly white, suburban powerhouse black public school on Chicago's eco­ in Chicago's rigorous basketball Catholic nomically depressed West Side. Ironi­ League, William wins a starting position cally, Pingatore later watches Arthur lead on the varsity squad. Arthur is slotted Marshall 'in the state playoffs. for the starting guard spot on the junior Arthur's'difficulties are a mirror of varsity. Both students' reading level: the his life at home. His family begins a fourth grade. slow descent-the lights are turned off, The youths' treatment at St. Joseph's the gas cut off, the welfare payments spawns a sense of cynicism and crashes stalled. But for his eighteenth birthday,

their illusions in the game as "sport." his mother prepares pies, cakes and fried ·· ...:;i.1fi!!!,?~rf;'f!i!Nj!P;;p,'ii,' ... ", ...... ~g;,\\'?'. Their lengthy commute from the ghetto chicken for a party. She notes with pride Biever to posh suburbia makes palpable the the fact that her son is still alive while Patrick Murphy-Racey William Gates plays at Marquette gross inequality and stresses how en­ many of his peers are already dead. Weeks Arthur Agee is an Arkansas State senior. University. forced racist segregation widens the gap later, public assistance also recognizes between whites and blacks in everyday Arthur's birthday. Welfare is reduced to wo 14-year-old black basketball life. At St. Joseph's they can taste oppor­ $268 a month for a family offive because "end welfare as we know it" would mean players dream of making it to the tunity daily, but only if their jump shots Arthur-though still in school-is no for the Agees: instead of fried bread, hot pros and out of the ghetto. Off fall. (Angered by what is revealed in longer eligible for welfare, payments, dogs and ketchup as a vegetable, com­ court, their days and nights are Hoop Dreams, the coach and school based on the racist presumption that a plete starvation. T recently filed suit against the filmmakers black male who is 18 years old has prob­ spent pla.ying or watching the game and The effects of a system that values, struggling against the poverty and pains and the distributor, Fine Line.) ably already dropped,out. For many youth black life only to the extent that a profit of everyday life. One, Arthur Agee, plans William advances on the court and on welfare, the state works to enforce can be made off of it is reflected in Arthur to buy his mother a house and move makes leaps in school. Because he is the necessity of leaving school for dead­ and William's careers and the lives of out of a neighborhood plagued by drugs considered a "blue chip" player who end, low-wage jobs or worse. many like them. City streets, welfare and gang violence. The other, William will lead the team to the state playoffs, One of Hoop Dreams' most moving offices, drug rehab centers and school­ Gates, wants to realize the hopes of his he is treated to tutors, summer jobs scenes takes place in a tiny auditorium yard courts are filled with former high­ mother and of his brother, who failed and a financial "sponsor" who covers devoid of fans and cheers. Arthur's school stars who were a step too slow. to make the pros. These are their sim­ his tuition. Branded "the next Isiah," mother receives her nursing aide's cer­ In 1983, Harry Edwards, the black soci­ ple "Hoop Dreams." Today, they are in when William suffers a knee injury tificate and wins top rank in her class ologist who helped organize the "black their last year of college ball, Arthur at and endures two operations, St. Joseph's after months of struggling. Her'husband, power" protests at the 1968 Olympics in Arkansas State and William at Mar-' insurance foots the bill. laid off from two industrial jobs in a Mexico, estimated that there were about quette University. Meanwhile, Arthur is constantly asked row, has fallen into a desperate cycle of 1,400 professional black athletes and The filmmakers-Steve James, Fred­ by St. Joseph's coach Gene Pingatore drug abuse and crime. She views her only 2,400 black people who make a erick Marx and Peter Gilbert-set out in when he's "going to grow" taller and he graduation as a real chance to lift her living through sports-related entertain­ 1986 to document what happens to two doesn't meet expectations. Says Pinga­ family from the welfare rolls. Anyone ment. The Center for the Study of Sport high-school ball players' aspirations for tore: "I can see playground and talent who doesn't already knowjt can easily and Society at Northeastern University a college scholarship and a shot at NBA but no confidence." Midway through figure out what Bill Clinton'~'pledge to continued on page 10 fame. Most documentaries never make it off the art-house circuit, but Hoop Dreams has been shown widely for minded prudery and hypocritical mor­ months. At the New York Film !Festival alism. Columbia believes it is above in October, when the audience realized the laws that nominally accord demo-, the filmmakers were in the theater with cratic rights-rights won through hard the Gates and Agee families, the crowd struggles by working people against the erupted in a IO-minute standing ovation. arrogant ruling class. The film and the families deserve it. The attack on CV is but the latest in The idea of basketball as a ticket out the sordid history of witchhunting at of the ghetto is neither particularly ex­ Columbia Witchhunts Earl Hall. Last fall, our group, the ceptional nor new. Isiah Thomas and Friends of the Spartacus Youth Club, Mark Aguirre-two pros who climbed defeated the SGB's attempt at censor­ out of Chicago's West Side ghettos­ ing the political views that Columbia could easily be the ones traced in the S&M Discussion Club students could have access to. The documentary that follows Arthur and FOSYC was singled out for harassment William for five years, from the,school­ The following letter was submitted "practices deemed too different by a few' and suppression for our insistence that yard through college recruitment to grad­ for publication to the Columbia Daily haughty, patrician bureaucrats of the revolutionary Marxists have the right uation. What stands out is not hoops and Spectator by a member of the Friends SGB. Perversion, it has been noted, is to openly advocate their views on hoopla, but the gnawing pressures of of the Spartacus Youth Club. not what you do, it's what someone else campus. ghetto life in racist capitalist America likes. Some SGB members apparently The fight to reinstate CV is an act To the Editor: under Reagan/Bush and the Democrats. hope to enforce Bill Clinton and Newt of elementary self-defense for the dem­ The bourgeoisie's program of "Gen­ We protest Earl Hall's vici04S ouster Gingrich's anti-woman, anti-gay, anti­ ocratic rights of Columbia students, ocide U.S.A."-homelessness, welfare of Conversio Viriurri (CV), a group that sex "family values" at Columbia., faculty and workers. People ought to cuts, mass layoffs and racism-is seen discusses sadomasochism and consen­ What's next? Will Earl Hall issue an be able to read, eat, drink, smoke, and whenever the camera wanders from the sual practices of sexual bondage. The edict insisting on the missionary posi­ , enjoy whatever consensual activities basketball courts. No matter how diligent move by the Earl Hall Student Govern­ tion for all registered clubs? they choose, without the SGB's dicta­ and determined these youths are to make ing Board smacks of the Spanish Inqui­ At the "open" meeting of Earl Hall torial interference. If CV members it out of the ghetto, they are increasingly sition, when priests and religious bigots clubs on December 1, 1994, opponents want to discuss, (or, GAS}>!) even try, held back by thousands of negative pres­ ruled the day. This modern-day assault of CV raised /bogus concerns about S&M, ,it's nobody's business. on individual freedom dovetails with "safety" and "responsibility" as well as sures. Hoop Dreams is a window nQt Sincerely, only on the young ballplayers' careers, the right-wing sweep in the November the anti-sex feminists' false claim that but also on the lives of families headed midterm elections. S&M pornography leads to violence David Yourman, by black women who find a way to sustain Students in CV are under attack for against women. In fact, the real reason for the Friends of the self-respect and sanity when the system ~ merely discussing a variety of sexual for the frenzied assault on CV is close- Spartacus Youth Club tells them they are less than nothing. 27 JANUARY 1995 9 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~['j"!';t7~·E';Eta!~I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Political Exclusion Defeated at Clinic Across the country, Spartacus Youth and also had to defend carrying another Club members have been part of abor­ sign: "Save Mumia Abu-Jamal! Racist tion clinic defense against escalating Death Penalty = Legal Lynching!" "right-to-life" terror, fighting for mass Several of these "peacekeepers," in­ mobilizations to protect the clinics. The cluding Socialist Action members t could following Washington, D:C. report tells not stomach linking the defense of the how we p'Olitically defeated liberals at­ clinics and the defense of a black political tempting to exclude this strategy on the prisoner on death row in Pennsylvania. clinic front lines. They said it had nothing to do with abor­ JANUARY 22-Yesterday was the an­ tion. The point is simple: "pro-life" big­ nual mobilization by anti-abortion bigots ots are also pro-death-penalty racists. seeking to shut down the clinics on the Our comrades confronted and de­ anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision feated this exclusion attempt politically. legalizing abortion. Seven Spartacists in The clinic defenders who were gathered Washington arrived at 5 a.m. at the listened attentively to our arguments Washington Area Clinic Defense Task about how capitalist counterrevolution Force's staging area for dispatch.ing in Poland crushed women's rights, defenders. About 150 people came to the including the right to abortion, and site, the lObby of an office building. pointed to "Socialist" Action's role as When we began to distribute our paper, U.S. cheerleaders for the anti-woman we started getting harassed immediately program of Solidarnosc. inside the building by people wearing The "peacekeepers" threatened to call sashes saying "Peacekeeper"! They told , the cops to get us off sacred "private us not to distribute our paper, followed Washington, D.C., 21 January: Spartaclst clinic defenders oppose -Uk ...... property." A couple of them actually did us around and even told one member reliance on cops and federal troops to "protect" women. go running to the cops, while others that he couldn't talk to anyone! This simply huddled. We held up our signs, brought to mind a Peter Tosh song one We arrived at the Hillcrest clinic in violent and avoid any chants or signs argued lOUdly for our views and showed of our members began to sing: "Everyone southeast Washington at around 7:30 that weren't "in good taste." our paper, which featured our pro­ is crying out for peace, yes/No one is a.m. We joined a line of about 60 people, They were particularly incensed by gram for defense of the clinics through crying out for justice/I don't want no including 20 escorts at the front of the one sign: "For the right of armed self­ mass mobilizations. A few minutes later, peace. I want equal rights and justice!" building and the rest around the back defense! No to gun control!" In the wake one "peacekeeper" bought an issue of The "peacekeepers" certainly didri't with arms linked. When we took out our of the anti-abortion bloodbath in Boston, Workers Vanguard. A couple of others care for that! But a group ,of anar­ signs, the "peacekeepers" came over and this would seem an elementary point of then told us we could stay, urging one chists agreed with what we had to say said we weren't allowed because we agreement for all clinic defenders. But among their ranks to "cool it." It was about no reliance on the cops, the state, didn't have "identifier" yellow/green in this instance, the liberal ladies of smooth sailing after that. Later that day, and about the BA TF and Bill Clinton and ribbons. Of course, in order to get one, Washington-with Socialist Action as a young black woman who was there Janet Reno's slaughter in Waco, Texas. we'd have to sign a ludicrous statement their attack dogs--couldn't stand it. We with us applied for membership in the They defended our comrade. . vowing to obey the police, remain non- argued forcefully to keep our signs up, youth club! _

reactionaries seeking to enslave women teenth centuries. Notably, even Thomas Prayer ... in the veil (see "'Third Camp' Social Jefferson, John Adams and many other Democrats Pander to Islamic Funda­ signers of the Declaration of Inde­ (continued from page 8) mentalism," WV No. 613, 30 December pendence polemicized at great length SOCialisfllilb Any interference by the government in 1994). As communists, we in the Spar­ against Christianity, knowing full well religious matters is inherently coercive tacus Youth Club and Spartacist League the historical lessons of the brutal relig­ Worlrer111- ==__._. s:.!" and an outright move toward the estab­ assert that organized religion has time ious wars in Europe. lishment of a state religion. and time again played a prominent role During the days of the Paris Commune And unlike the so-called "socialists" in supporting reaction-from the Vati­ in 1871 (the first attempt by the working JaaQ,.;s, of the International Socialist Organiza­ can's support to the fascists in World class to take power), one of the revolu­ tion (ISO) who ran a full-page article in War II, to Khomeini's enslavement of tionaries' first acts was to abolish all spe­ JU~ -.;;:_ ~~t'(l "SUPER-IEB? their December 1993 issue of Socialist women in Iran in the name of Islamic cial privileges held by the church, con­ Worker, "Jesus Christ SUPER-RED?", fundamentalism, to religious bigots fuel­ fiscating wealth and property. Russia's real Marxists don't capitulate to relig­ ing anti-abortion terror in this country. Bolsheviks learned from the experience ious reaction. Citing not Marx or Lenin, It is indicative of the depths of capi­ of the Communards and wiped out relig­ but the Bible, the Socialist Worker talism's degeneration that the present ious obscurantism through the workers' claims: "The revolutionary message, odd ruling class can so embrace the revival seizure of power in 1917. Today, it is no fragments of which survive, embedded of state-sponsored religion, spitting on less true than it was in Karl Marx's time in the New Testament is the real starting the old bourgeois ideals of free speech that it is the communists who fight point of what became Christianity.:' Lest and freedom of (and from) religion won for the separation of church and state. Socialist Worker panders to back­ anyone think the ISO partial to' Christ in the bourgeois-democratic revolutions Keep god out of it! Religion out of the ward religious obscurantism. We say: only, they've also capitulated to Islamic of the seventeenth, eighteentry and nine- classroom! _ Keep god out of it!

because they can play ball. Involvement in sports allows a fleeting back against a racist provocation. Liberal Hoop Dreams ... Throughout the film, it's clear that connection-however hopeful and illu­ columnists at the Village Voice now slan­ (continued from page 9) school is merely a holding pen at Mar­ sory-to those talented few who do make derously taint his career with the label shall; pricier programs and facilities it to the big league and big money. Even "jailbird." in Boston estimates that 545,000 high­ grace St. Joseph. But neither school really the drug dealers in Arthur's neighbor­ Over two decades ago, basketball leg­ school seniors are playing varsity bas­ cares whether the kids can read or write. hood are eager to offer. him and other end Kareem Abdul-Jabbar told Sports ketball but no more than 50 will make The summer before his senior year, Wil­ ballplayers pocket money for sought­ Illustrated writer Jack Olsen: it to the pros. liam attends an invitation-only recruit­ after sneakers, playing small investor "Yes, I was just like the rest of those Fewer than 10 percent of all athletic ment camp at Princeton University where on the ground floor of a big capitalist black athletes you've read about, the scholarships go to blacks and even that one scout remarks that the camp is a enterprise. The hope that these school­ ones that put all their waking energies small number is under attack. Beginning mates can make it to the pros is a powerful into learning the moves. That might be "meat market" but that he does his job a sad commentary on America in general, in 1996-97, stricter standards for college well in delivering "professionai meat." "opium of the people." The cruel reality but that's the way it's going to be until athletes will require that prospective For those athletes who do get into col­ for most of the young players and their black people can flow without prejudice freshman varsity players attain a higher lege, often the only education they get neighborhood fans is that there is no into any occupation they can master. For minimum grade point average in required is reading a playbook or learning to com­ way out. now it's still pretty much music and sports for us." courses, linked to the notoriously biased prehend defense patterns on a chalk­ Sports is about the only profession "standardized" national test scores, to get board. As an answer to the grossly inad­ where, for a few short, grueling years, Hoop Dreams shows that virtually noth­ scholarships. equate miseducation dealt out under black people can earn six- and seven­ ing has changed and that the fantasy The segregation which maintains capitalism, the Spartacus Youth Clubs figure incomes. But even for the lucky of making it big in the sports world is blacks as a race-color caste at the bot­ demand open admissions and no tuition ones, the "American Dream" is a bru­ still the hope many inner-city youth cling tom of society is replicated in the world at all colleges and universities, remedial tal nightmare. In 1993, the "Hampton to. The way out of such all-sided oppres­ of sports. When Arthur makes it to programs for those who have suffered Four," including prep school star Allen sion is through a sharp fight against Mineral Area Junior College in Flat from an inadequate education and a living Iverson (now a starter at Georgetown) the racist profit system and its ruling River, Missouri, he is housed with other stipend paid by the state for all students. became an example of how the closed class. We need a revolutionary party that basketball players in an isolated, tiny For many minority youth, who find sports world is no escape from brutal will. mobilize the power of the working brick shack far froni the school. Of ..doors of opportunity slammed shut else­ racist oppression. Iverson spent a year class and all the oppressed to struggle the seven black students at the school, where, sports often provide an escape in jail after being sentenced to five years for a future where anyone can afford six live in the house. They are there only from grinding poverty and oppression. behind bars for the "crime" of fighting their dreams. _ 10 WORKERS VANGUARD Philly .Cops' Bloody Racist Record

Mumia Abu-Jamal is today battling for officer a report of a missing child at a and in Klan robes. By the 1920s, Penn­ his life on Pennsylvania's death row after North Philadelphia house shortly after sylvania had become the state with the being frame~ up for the 1.981 killing of midnight. While Cureton went upstairs, fourth-largest Ku Klux Klanconcentra­ a Philadelphia cop. Even the most cursory the other policeman scuffled with a tion, and Philly was the state's eastern look at the sordid racist record of Philly 's woman resident, then radioed for help. center for the KKK, with 30,000 mem­ cops and courts demonstrates why this Unaware of the "assist officer" call, bers in 1922. courageous fighter for black rights did Cureton came back downstairs and was During World War II, while black sol­ not have and could not have had a fair standing with her back to the door when diers were supposedly fighting for trial in that indecent injustice system. as many as 20 uniformed cops swarmed "democracy" overseas-in segregated The 13 May 1985 police/FBI bombing into the house swinging clubs and metal units-black workers in Philly were sub­ which killed eleven members of the Phil­ flashlights. jected to a racist onslaught. When the adelphia MOVE commune, five of them Cureton was, grabbed by the hair, CIO moved to organize workers at the children, was a defining moment in the dragged outside to the front porch and Philadelphia Transportation Company racist government's war on "trouble­ severely beaten with flashlights, billy against a company "union" (whose slo­ some" black people, representing "the clubs and fists by the frenzied mob of gan was "a vote for the CIO is a vote Adrienne Cureton, victim of vicious signature of the Reagan years," as we cops. Despite her and her partner's for n-----s on the" job"), the transit beating by her fellow cops. wrote at the time. The fiery mass murder, screams that she was a police officer, bosses organized a six-day "work stop­ which also destroyed the entire black "they just beat the living hell out of me," page" against the federally ordered hiring leaders. "The way to treat criminals is neighborhood which had complained recalled Cureton. "I personally believe of eight black workers. spacco il capo [break their heads]," about their MOVE neighbors, was the they saw black, they grabbed me, and The cops and city officials played Rizzo often said. Thereafter, the promo­ culmination of a decade-long vendetta they did what they had the opportunity along, claimipg they were "helpless" to tions came fast and furious for the waged by the Philadelphia police de­ to do." Although Cureton still suffers stop the racist mobilization, until Roo­ "Cisco Kid," and by 1964, Rizzo was partment against the black commune. dizziness, nausea and headaches from sevelt ordered the army to move in to deputy commissioner, cracking heads in In 1978, 600 cops brutally assaulted the flashlight blows to her head, she has enforce the wartime n,o-strike laws. the ghettos as thousands protested MOVE's earlier Powelton Village home; been ordered to return to work by the Some Southern soldiers took the oppor­ against police brutality. It was at this when one cop was killed in the crossfire, Philadelphia police department, which tunity to try to impose Jim Crow segre­ time that Rizzo put together the special twelve MOVE members were framed up refuses to comment on the incident. gation on the city's buses, provoking team of sharpshooters which later drove fleeing MOVE members back into their burning house in 1985. In 1966, as the civil rights movement raised the hopes of Philly's beleaguered black population, Rizzo mobilized a bat­ talion of 80 riot cops backed up by a thousand reserves to raid four SNCC meetings, and was appointed police com­ missioner for his thuggery. The next year, Rizzo unleashed his goons against 3,500 black high-school students protesting the lousy education in Philly's rundown, seg­ regated schools. Rizzo also carried out a vendetta against the Black Panthers" whose anti-racist militancy made them a target for cop attack around the country. He organized a system of mobile arsenals that patrolled designated areas in black neighborhoods, to be used by busloads of riot cops. Rizzo, who once boasted, ''I'm gonna make Attila the Hun look like a faggot," became a national icon UPI photos for the racist "law and order" crowd, and Racist vendetta against MOVE: murderous bombing of Osage Avenue commune by FBI/cops in May 1985. Right, 600 cops assaulted MOVE home in August 1978, brutally beating Delbert Africa. remains so for the gangsters in blue who carryon his legacy. and thrown in prison for years. Cureton has likened herself to "Rod­ mass resistance from outraged black rid­ This is the city in which Mumia Abu­ The bombing of MOVE was an atroc­ ney King-only I'm a cop." Cops, in­ ers. The Trotskyists of the Socialist Jamal was "tried" and sentenced to die. ity unequaled until Clinton and Reno's cluding black cops, are used to doling Workers Party reported: "At the height Philadelphia's racist history makes any 1993 Waco holocaust, but the Philadel­ out vicious brutality. They aren't usually of the strike, a colored worker rang the idea of justice a bad joke, especially for phia political establishment and bour­ on the receiving end of the billy club-­ famous Liberty Bell and shouted, 'Oh black people. There cannot be an unbi­ geois press approved it as a successful unless they are among the few who hap­ Liberty Bell, where is your liberty?' The ased judicial process because the people conclusion to the "MOVE problem." pen to be the wrong color. capitalist court sent him to a mental insti­ charged with carrying it out want exactly MOVE had been vilified for years in the " Philadelphia brings its own pro­ tution for asking such a question" (Mil­ the opposite of justice. In the fight to media, and one of the only voices raised nounced racist pathology to how it deals itant, 19 August 1944). save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, we in their defense had been black radio with black people. The race question has The year before, the man who was to place no faith in the capitalist courts, but journalist and former Black Panther always been intense in this city, which leave an indelible racist imprint on the rather seek a massive mobilization tap­ leader Mumia Abu-Jama\. For a long was historically dominated by Italian city, Philly's own godfather of repres­ ping the social power of the proletariat. time, the Philadelphia cops had regarded and Irish immigrants, and the growing sion, Frank Rizzo, joined the police Ultimately, it will take a socialist revo­ Jamal as a thorn in their side and targeted population of potential black voters has department. As a rookie, Rizzo gained lution to mete out justice to the ruling­ him for elimination. In 1981, they made done nothing to alleviate that. It's no the notice of the Democratic Party ma­ class perpetrators of racist terror and their move, and ever since the Fraternal surprise to most black people in the "City chine for beating up Republican ward their hired guns .• Order of Police has waged a ceaseless of Brotherly Love" that Philly's cops act vendetta for Jamal's execution. like a gang of deranged ethnics, meting The Philadelphia police department out less justice than you'd get from the has a long, bloody tradition of racist Mafia. In the 1950s, the huge North terror, operating like a gang of white eth­ Philly ghetto was grotesquely labeled nic toughs defending their turf through "The Jungle~' by the local press, while murderous violence against "uppity" the cops repeatedly subjected it to "anti­ Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League darker-skinned people. This was made crime" campaigns. Former mayor'Wil­ crystal' clear by the late, unlamented son Goode, black front man for the 1985 o $10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal (includes English-language Spartacist, Women and Revolution police-chief-cum-mayor Frank Rizzo, cop/FBI massacre of MOVE, recently and Black History and the Class Struggle) who railed, "Nobody is going to take the revealed in his memoir, In Goode Faith, international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-5eamail streets away from the cops." To these that he stayed away from Osage Avenue o $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes EngHsh-language Spartacist) thugs in blue, all blacks and minori­ that day because he feared the police ties are "perps" to be brutalized, as planned to assassinate him. o $214 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist)

unfortunate black policewoman Adri­ BlaCK and labor historian Philip Foner Name ______~------enne Cureton found out when she was described Philadelphia as "the most anti­ Address ______~ ______~ ______jumped, choked and beaten by a gang of Negro city in the North and the most "Ph\ladelphia's finest" while on duty segregated metropolis above the Mason­ ______Apt.# Phone ( __) _____ January 2. Dixon line." With the mass migration of City State ' Zip ______----,= Cureton, a 26-year-old Juvenile Aid ~black people North during World War I 615 plainclothes officer with six years on the came forcible segregation into ghettos, Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 force, was investigating with another enforced by racist thugs both in uniform 27 JANUARY 1995 11 Racist Hitmen •.. l , t (continued from page J)

is to see to it that layers of the minority population die, because this decrepit capitalist system no longer needs them." Clinton's 1992 pledge to raise the min­ imum wage, which keeps a family of four $2,000 below the poverty line, never materialized. Now Republicans on Cap­ itol Hill vow to reject any increase, while House majority leader Dick Armey has announced he wants to do away with the minirnum wage altogether. For the poor, sick, old and unemployed in today's America, the only thing you're "entitled" to is to starve. But there's plenty of wel- . fare for the rich, like the 50 percent cut in the capital gains tax promised in the JB Pictures1 Black youth face permanent unemployment, increasing "Contract With America." imprisonment. Over fifty percent of state and federal prison To grasp how wide the gap has grown population today is black. between the haves and have-nots in the U.S. today, look at New York City, the center of finance capital, where nearly tion in and leadership of the convulsive live in the Near East whether they want in a crazed, scary column for Newsweek two million people try to exist on wel­ social struggles that will erupt in this to or not. (12 December 1994) titled "The Name fare. By the end of the "greed decade" country and internationally. This racist, anti-Semitic trash is not of the Game is Shame." Raving about of the 1980s, the top fifth of Manhattan far removed from the views of the reac­ the "scourge" of teen pregnancy, Alter households made 32 times as much as tionary politicians Robertson worked to seconds White House aide Bruce Reed's the bottom fifth. The income disparity Right-Wing Reaction Against Blacks, Women, Immigrants elect. Gingrich's Congressional district "solution" to "try shame first" by "beef­ there is second in the U.S. only to a part comprises the white enclaves north of ing up enforcement of the often-ignored of Hawaii where a handful of houses lies The elections marked the "revenge of black ~Ianta like Cobb County, where requirement that every birth certificate near a former leper colony! The destruc­ the suburbs,"as right-wing forces mo­ 130 years ago the slaveholders' Confed­ tion of New York's diversified manufac­ bilized the "angry white man" vote 'by erate Army made its last stand ·against turing base meant the loss of 600,000 going after blacks and immigrants while General Sherman's march through Geor­ promising "middle class" tax breaks. A gia and where today the timeworn bash­ key actor in the Republican campaign ing of Jewish, black and immigrant New Real Weekly Earnings was the Christian Coalition, founded by York is as holy as the "Good Book." Non-supervisory production workers "televangelist" Pat Robertson after his One of Gingrich's. first acts as Con­ Sept. 1979-Sept. 1994. (in 1994 dollars) run for the 1988 Republican presidential gressional leader was to appoint one nomination. Christina Jeffrey, a fellow teacher from $450 Of late, these fundamentalist fanatics his days at Kennesaw State University 440 have tried to posture as sane spokesmen in Marietta, as House historian. Gingrich for a "balanced budget" and "fiscal was forced to dump her when her record 430 responsibility." But Pat Robertson's new as a Nazi apologist was aired. In 1986, 420 best seller, The New World Order, as a member of an Education Department reveals the full, chillingly reactionary panel, this "historian" helped deny fed­ 410 I ' ... 1.• agenda of the Christian right. The book eral funding for an educational program 400 is a Bible Belt rehash of Hitler's Mein about the Holocaust because it didn't give Kampf, portraying the French and Rus­ "the Nazi point of view" nor "that of the' 390 sian Revolutions as a satanic conspiracy Ku Klux Klan" (see "Reagan's Amerika," 380 1< 'JJ'. 'IT "'1 hatched. by a secret society of "Illumi­ WV No. 437, 2 October 1987). nati" and bankrolled by Jews. He even Another "ideological" force in Clin­ 370 1 I"" ' r .'" paints the Cold War as a plot by Jewish ton/Gingrich's America is Charles Mur­ 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 bankers to enrich themselves by financ­ Source. Bureau of Labor Statistics ray, whose 1984 book, Losing Ground, AFL-CIO Graph ing military spending! Robertson spews is largely responsible for framing the Over the past 15 years, American venom at "liberal, secular Jews" who current move to eliminate welfare for workers have faced enormous fall promote "unrestricted freedom for smut, single mothers. As the co-author of Hamburg/NY Daily News in wages, paralleling decline in pornography and the murder of the The Bell Curve, pseudoscientific gar­ union organization. Sinister police bonapartism on the unborn": bage denouncing blacks as genetically rise: New York cops mobilize outside "The part that Jewish intellectuals and prone to ignorance, and criminal behav­ Bedford Hills state prison on Decem­ media activists have played in the assault jobs since 1969. Today, only 20 per­ ior, Murray is the leading ideologue in ber 28 against clemency for jailed on Christianity may very possibly prove radical Kathy Boudin. cent of white youth in New York City ..to- be a grave mistake .... American Jews legitimizing the genpcidal onslaught invested great energy in attacking these against the black ghetto' masses as a sur- can find jobs; for minorities the rate is contain the social-security number of the very allies. That investment may pay a plus population. . 10 percent. Welfare is in fact, and in terrible dividend." father." intent, a way to keep the poor quiet. ( D&spite Robertson's Nazi-like rantings The assault on "illegitimate" children The corollary to the mU\derous cut­ about an international Jewish bankers' Sex, Shame and the State and their "immoral" moms:-the ideolog­ backs is escalating state terro! against conspiracy, right-wing Zionists like the First on the government hit list is the ica
ratioilalefor eliminating Aid to Fam­ the ghetto masses as part of the "war on Commentary crowd nonetheless defend young, black, single welfare mother. ilies with Dependent Children-is part drugs," from increasingly militarized· him as a "friend of Israel." If he's a "Every threat to the fabric of this coun­ of an attack on all sexual activity outside and expanding. police forces armed with' friend of the Zionist state, it's because try-from poverty to crime to homeless­ of the patriarchal monogamous marriage high-capacity 9mm semiautomatic pis­ his long-term prog'ram is to expel Jews ness-is connected to out-of-wedlock bed. Meanwhile, terrorist attacks against tols to the billions of dollars being from "Christian America" and have them teen pregnancy," wrote Jonathan Alter abortion clinics and murderous attacks spent on new prison construction. The on gays have soared, complemented by elections gave a huge boost to capi­ a rash of frenzied "child abuse" and "kid­ tal punishment, which is about to be die porn" victimizations targeting day­ reintroduced in New York. Earlier this care workers and parents. The Supreme month, the Supreme Court upheld the Court recently refused to hear an appeal execution of a Texas man even after the by a Penn graduate student who has been state claimed someone else had com­ railroaded for having pictures of clothed mitted the murder for which he was children in supposedly "lewd" poses. In sentenced. There is an urgent need for a horrifying recent case in New Jersey, militant protest against the brutalizing a man was arrested for taking nude photos and often racist death penalty. of his six-year-old daughter for a pho­ The right-wing victory registered in tography class assignment. Now he is to last November's elections is palpable be tried in a nightmare of legal hysteria. and pronounced. But, as we noted at the Nor are you safe in the brave new world time, "bourgeois elections are at best a of cyberspace. Late last year a Califor­ distorted reflection of what is going on nia couple was prosecuted for transmit­ in society" (WV No. 611, 25 November ting sexual material which· is perfectly 1994). While the reactionary offensive legal in their state via E-mail. The feds has provoked despair and disorienta­ prosecuted them by retrieving the offend­ tion among liberals and their reformist ing images in Tennessee, with its more hangers-on, among those who are most reactionary "community standards." directly under attack-in the ghettos, the . Clinton demonstrated his "family val­ barrios and the labor force-there will ues" credentials by dumping Surgeon be many who seek to resist. A revolu­ General Joycelyn Elders for daring to tionar), workers party committed to acknowledge that kids actually have sweeping away this bankrupt capitalist Der Spiegel some interest in sex. When asked about system must be forged through interven- La Mlgra terrorizes "Illegal" immigrants crossing over Mexican border. masturbation at a December AIDS con- 12 WORKERS VANGUARD ference, Dr. Elders replied, "That is something that is a part 'of human sex­ and foreign-born. Militant Hispanic' uality and it's a part of something that workers, who have had an energizing perhaps should be taught." The racist effect on labor struggle in the U.S., right has vituperated against Elders as Atlanta Union Tops: would play a leading role in such an the "black condom queen" for such organizing drive. common-sense health proposals as dis­ After the raid, la migra announced tributing condoms in the schools. Clin­ that other Olympic construction sites ton seized on the flap over masturbation Cops for La Migra will be raided. Well-off tourists from to force this outspoken black woman out all over the world will be welcome at of his Cabinet. ATLANTA-Mare than 50 federal immigrant frenzy with their disgusting the Olympics, but not the foreign-born agents and state and local cops swarmed "Georgia Work for Georgia Workers" workers who builCl the venues. And The Racist Offensive and onto the Olympic Village construction campaign rather than fight to unionize under a new law, those workers con­ Union-Busting site here on January 12. As immigrant the workers! The AFL-CIO hasn't even victed of using a false I.D. will never The Republicans' election victory indi­ workers tried to hide in unfinished heat­ organized the Olympic Village con­ be permitted legal residence in the U:S. cates that many white ~orking people ing ducts, sewers and the top floors of struction site. Even as the black Democratic city gov­ still buy the racist lie that throwing blacks the site, 37 of them were grabbed by The AFL-CIO bureaucracy, loyal to ernment and the Coca-Cola interests off welfare will benefit them through a agents of the Immigration and Natural­ the capitalist politicians in the Demo­ carry out racist sweeps against immi­ "middle class" tax cut. The "white back­ ization Service (INS) and thrown onto cratic Party, has never taken on the rac­ grant workers, they are also "renovat­ lash" of the late 1960s and "tax revolt" buses to Brownsville, Texas to be ist bosses to organize the "open shop" ing" a downtown park for the Olympics of the '70s fractured the labor/minority shoved across the border. Another 20 South, including the new industrial in order to drive out the largely black New Deal coalition which had made the workers were seized the next day in la sites that are springing up along the homeless people there. Democrats the dominant party of Amer­ migra's "Operation Roustabout." Interstates from Virginia through the In recent years, the INS has carried ican capitalism since the 1930s. Reagan's Obscenely, it was local union tops Carolinas and Georgia. The Hamlet, out a series of raids in north Georgia, election in 1980 signaled the ascendancy from the Atlanta Labor Council who North Carolina poultry plant inferno in targeting Hispanics in low-wage food of the Republican right as the vanguard were behind the INS raid! Council pres­ 1991, when 25 mostly black women processing plants and carpet mills, of racist reaction against the minimal ident Stewart Acuff rai led that" Atlanta workers died because the company sometimes rounding up over a hundred gains of the civil rights movement. area workers ought to be angry" that padlocked the fire doors, is a direct workers at a time. Last month, restau­ Deep-going racist prejudices to the immigrants were working at the Olym­ result of the failure to organize the rants and bars in Smyrna were raided. contrary, white workers' standard of liv­ pics site. What Atlanta workers ought region. What's needed is a mass organ­ The racist raids and deportations must ing is directly linked to that of the black to be angry about is that labor trai­ izing drive which would link together be stopped! Labor must demand full ghetto poor. One of the first defining tors like Acuff feed the racist anti- workers across the South-black, white citizenship rights for all immigrants! acts of the Reagan presidency was the wholesale destruction of the PATCO air traffic controllers union. Yet here was a union which consisted overwhelmingly taken by a savage new wage-cutting capitalist rule, through the class sU'ug­ construction trades. And the union tops competition. Within firms, multi-tier of white males who considered them­ gles of the multiracial proletariat. are the most vocal in pushing trade pro­ wage concessions, which allow employ­ tectionism by' appealing to flag-waving selves middle-class professionals and ers to pay up to fifty percent less to new At the same time, immigrants from which, moreover, had been one of the hires, are eroding inter-generational sol­ Mexico and elsewheI:e in Latin Amer­ American chauvinism and anti-Asian and few unions to endorse Reagan for pres­ idarity, ensuring, in the guise of protect­ ica-who are now the victims of a racist anti-Hispanic bigotry. ing the privileges of seniority, that older frenzy-have brought with them the The current reactionary offensive de­ ident over Democrat Jimmy Carter. workers are more vulnerable to replace­ The savage attacks on the ghetto poor ment to exactly the same extent that more class-conscious traditions of the mands recognition of the real unity of and on black democratic rights in general younger workers are made more exploit­ Latin American proletariat, especially interests of all of society'S exploited during the Reagan/Bush years went hand able. Meanwhile, on picket lines, work­ the understanding that the cops are noth­ and oppressed against their common in hand with union-busting and the over­ ers in major industries who have chosen, ing more than armed thugs for the enemy on Wall Street and in the corri­ or been forced, to resist the concession­ bosses. Over the past several years, the dors of Washington. But this unity all gutting of the labor movement. Phelps ary tide are confronted, for the first time Dodge, Greyhound, Hormel, Eastern Air­ since the 1930s, with scabs, billy clubs Los Angeles area has been the one con­ requires breaking workers and the op­ lines, Pittston Coal, Ravenswood Alumi­ and the National Guard. Finally, beyond sistent region of labor militancy in the pressed from allegiance to the capitalist num were key strikes involving the heart concessions lies the specter of rapidly U.S.-Justice for Janitors at Century Democratic Party. The urgent task is approaching deunionization." City in 1990, the drywalero construction building a revolutionary workers party, of the unionized industrial working class -Prisoners of the American in this country. All of these hard-fought Dream (1986) workers throughout Southern California in which blacks and Hispanics will play in 1992, the organizing by Latino truck­ a key role, which will mobilize the enor­ battles were defeated through police Today 80 percent of all workers in U.S. scabherding, the arrest of union militailts, ers in the ports. Latino L.A. Teamster mous power of labor on behalf of all of manufacturing have no union protection Jesse Acuna was sentenced to five years the downtrodden, from the unemployed even the murder of workers defending at all. Over the past generation, real in jail for defending his union'5 picket to women seeking abortions, in a struggle the picket lines. Many of the workers wages in this country have fallen by 20 lines against scabs in last year's strike. for workers rule. As we wrote after a involved in these labor struggles were percent, an enormous intensification of white males-termed members of the We call for hisJreedom, now! laborlblack mobilization to spike a KKK the exploitation of the American working provocation in Springfield, Illinois last "middle class" by the bourgeois media class of all races and ethnicities. The American labor bureal,lcracy­ and politicians-whose interests Gin­ closely linked to the Democratic Party­ January ("Stop the Klan! For a Work­ grich and Clinton now demagogically Labor and Blacks: has become so defeatist, so cowardly, ers America!", WV No. 592,"21 January claim to represent at the expense of the Forward Together, or so wretched that it is now overseeing 1994): black poor. Backward Separately the destruction of its own organizations. "The working class has the numbers, the The bosses use the growing reserve Strike after strike has been broken organization and the power to win all The current intensified attacks on army of the unemployed as a battering because the union misleaders play by the those things that the ruling class appro­ black people by the American ruling priates for itself-health care, education, ram against the labor movement. Now bosses' rules, trying to never get in a class-from starving single mothers and jobs, decent housing, abortion rights. strikes of Bridgestone rubber workers situation where they're even faced with What is lacking is the kind of leaderShip taking away their children to locking and Caterpillar workers are in danger of having to violate this country's harsh that ~ecessary to do this-a leadership up young black men for life-can only defeat as a result of massive scabbing. anti-labor laws. They oppose mass pick­ of the unions that doesn't bow to the be combatted through racially integrated bosses' laws, a workers party that doesn't At the midpoint of the Reagan/Bush eting to stop scabs and secondary strike working-class struggle. Despite the respect the property 'rights' of the cap­ "greed decade," left-wing writer·Mike and labor boycotts in defiance of Taft­ widespread deindustrialization of the italist rulers, that understands that there Davis summed up the increasingly Hartley. The AFL-CIO bureaucracy has will be no victories for labor and no free­ East and Midwest and resulting. lum­ desperate state of the American labor been at best indifferent to the oppression dom for blacks without integrated class penization among black youth, union­ movement: of black people and at worst actively struggle which champions black rights. ized black workers still qccupy key stra­ That is the kind of party that we com­ "In industry after industry, the hard-won engages in racist practices, for example, tegic points in the U.S. economy; for munists of the Spartacist League are wage 'patterns' that guaranteed contrac­ continued white job-trusting in many fighting to build.". tual uniformity and preserved effective example, urban transit in many big cities solidarity between workers in different and longshore in Southern Atlantic and forms are being destroyed, their place Gulf Coast ports. More generally, black workers are often in the forefront of SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY labor militancy because they have fewer illusions in the American "way of life" National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 and in the bosses' government, courts Atlanta Chicago Oakland and cops. Box 397 Box 6441, Main PO Box 29497 Furthermore, the seething anger of the Decatur, GA 30031 Chicago, IL 60680 Oakland, CA 94604 ghetto poor can also be tapped and redi­ (404) 521-9338 (312) 663-0715 (510) 839-0851 rected in the service of working-class Boston Los Angeles San Francisco struggle. A union leadership which was Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 77494 militantly anti-racist could call on thou­ Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 San Francisco, CA 94107 sands of black youth in cities like New (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 (415) 777-9367 York, Philadelphia, Cleveland and thi­ cago to help combat police scabherding Champaign-Urbana New York Washington, D.C. of the kind that broke the Greyhound Box 2644 Box 3381, Church St. Sta. Box 75073 strikes, for example. However, given the Champaign, IL 61825 New York, NY 10008 Washington, D.C. 20013 present sellout pro-capitalist AFL-CIO (217) 352-3359 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 bureaucracy, many blacks are open to separatist demagogues like Louis Farra­ khan, who combines anti-Semitic and TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE ,TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA l" anti-Asian bigotry with the pipedream AP Toronto Montreal Vancouver Joycelyn Elders, dumped as surgeon of "black capitalism." It is as workers Box 7198, Station A C.P. Les Atriums Box 2717, Main P.O. general by Clinton because she was that blacks continue to play a strategic Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BC V6S'3X2 an outspoken black woman who pro­ -role in the American economy-and that (416) 593-4138 Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 (604) 687-0353 moted sex education. is where the power is to destroy racist 27 JANUARY 1995 13 Increasingly, the "center" in American politics is a place of repression, fear, dread and death. It is a place that spawns prisons while shutting down schools. It is a place riven by fear of the majority of the peoples of the earth. It is a place in dread of the slightest change that may unshackle the nation from its genocidal histor­ ical impulse towards white nationalism. White Racist Tuesday It is a place that promotes ~death as "the final solu­ tion" to every social problem. It is a place locked in fright of the future; a place "No other group in America has been subject to racism hope nor faith in a better tomorrow. that seeks solace in the flickering images in black i.ll the full sense-to xenophobia, to chauvinism, to Both parties scapegoated, and exploited white fear . ethnic stereotypes, yes; but not to the radical sense of and white that flit across the silver screen-projec­ otherness that racism presents in its full virulence. of, blacks. tions of a false and long dead yesteryear. Blacks have been alien, not only in national or cultural Both segments of the National Party played to or social terms, but in the deepest human sense of pseudo-"nativist" dread of the foreigner-Mexicans, I January 1995 worth that can make intermarriage more a blasphemy Cubans and/or Haitians-the dark other hitting the than a social comedown where blacks-as opposed, © 1995 by Mumia Abu-Jamal say, to those of different religions, or nationalities­ shores or clamoring over the border. are concerned." Several years ago, I wrote, in an article about for­ -Garry Wills, "A Tale of Three Cities" (New mer Klansman-turned-politician David Duke, that Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Philadelphia black journal­ York Review of Books, 28 March 1.991) upcoming elections, lusting after the so-called "cen­ ist, is on death row at Pennsylvania's Greene state Recent U.S. elections are a harbinger of harder trist" white male vote, would pull politicians in a prison. Framed up because of his political views, times for many; a legislative program that amounts more repressive direction. (I suggested 1996, not Jamal faces death for his defiance of the racist, to a War on the Poor. 1994.) capitalist order. His columns appear periodically The underlying program pushed by both segments Who would've believed that national political in Workers Vanguard and other newspapers. of the major Nationalist Party (masquerading as two debate would center on sending children of welfare To get involved in the fight to save Mumia political parties) is white supremacy. moms to orphanages? Abu-Jamal and abolish the death penalty, contact Both parties waged war on those Americans least Or that ancient movies, like "Boystown," would the Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, able to defend themselves-Welfare Mothers. be invoked as documentation in support for such a Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013. If Both parties waged war on the homeless. loony notion? you wish to correspond with Jamal, you can Both parties promised more prisons. The next document-"Gone with the Wind"? write to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene, Both parties ran on both fear and death-not What's next-"Birth of a Nation"? 1040 E. Roy Furman Hwy., Waynesburg, PA 15370.

which was widely covered in Philadel­ phia newspapers. Three weeks later, in Save Mumia January 1970, Jamal was featured in a - front-page article about the Panthers in Abu-Jamal ... the Philadelphia Inquirer. (continued from page 16) In coordination with the FBI and its deadly COINTELPRO operation against saw a third man shoot Faulkner and the black movement which left 38 Black then run from the scene. McGill & Co. Panther Party members dead, Rizzo and produced as a witness a hospital security the Philly police compiled files on guard who claimed to hear Jamal confess 18,000 people and 600 organizations. to the shooting. But the officer who This campaign of police terror culmi­ took Jamal into custody and stayed nated in the infamous August 1970 raid with him reported that Jamal re­ on the Philly Panther office in which mained silent the entire time. His tes­ Black Panther Party members were lined timony was not produced at trial. The up against the wall and forced to strip defense was told he was "on vacation" naked while the press looked on. Rizzo and unavailable. Testimony of other eye­ became an icon to the racist "law and witnesses was not produced at trial. order" crowd. THE SENTENCING: Mumia Abu­ Jamal, the young student activist, co­ Jamal was sentenced to die for his founder of the local Black Panther Party political activities and beliefs. McGill chapter and renowned journalist, could secured the death sentence by telling the not have-and did not-evade Rizzo's nearly all-white jury that Jamal's mem­ deadly eye. Jamal was among the jour­ bership in the Black Panther Party and nalists covering Rizzo's press confer­ use of the slogan "power to the people" ence following the August 8, 1978 siege and the old Maoist dictum "political of the MOVE commune's PoweIton Vil­ power grows out of the barrel of a lage home by hundreds ef heavily armed gun" 12 years earlier "proved" he was Rizzo's killer cops strip search Philadelphia Black Panthers in cops. Rizzo blamed the "new breed of a "cop-killer"! journalism" for the death of one cop THE APPEALS: The Pennsylvania and threatened, "They believe what you Supreme Court ignored its own prece­ rules for Jamal and racked up a mountain and raised. The record of former mayor write, what you say. And it's got to stop. dent to reverse the forbidden "appeal of constitutional violations. The men in -Frank Rizzo's campaign against the And one day, and I hope it's in my career, after appeal" argument and afflimed the black robes want black men's blood. black population of Philly is a tale of sentence of death against Jamal. Months. state-sponsored terror-and at every The Philadelphia Story­ tum, Jamal was there to expose and pro­ later, in another case, Pennsylvania's­ Rizzo Town highest court re-established its earlier test the injustice. Jan:Ull Legal Defense precedent. In 1990 the U.S. Supreme From the vicious 1871 riot by white In 1966 Rizzo led a unit of 80 COps Needs $$$ Court refused to hear Jamal's appeals, gangs which left four blacks dead to the in raids against meetings of the mili­ The filing of Jamal's petition for a new which emphasized that he was sentenced bombing of the MOVE commune on tant civil rights group SNCC. In 1967 trial is only the start of a long and costly to death because of his Black Panther May 13, 1985, Philadelphia has always Rizzo led busloads of baton-wielding process to save Jamal from the execu­ Party membership. Yet two years later been a racist hellhole. Blac~s ghettoized cops in an attack on students protesting tioner. The legal defense needs lots of the same court reversed the death sen­ in dilapidated, overcrowded' housing; the dismal education in Philadelphia's financial help. Jamal is up against the tence of David Dawson, ruling that evi­ segregated run-down schools; black un­ antiquated and segregated schools. Fifty­ vast financial resources of the stl)te. In dence of his membership in the white employment and infant mortality nearly seven students were arrested and 22 seri­ recent years, those cases which have supremacist Aryan Brotherhood preju­ twice that of whites; the status quo bru­ ously injured. Among those students successfully overturned death sentences diced the jury. tally enforced by racist, trigger-happy fighting to rename Benjamin Franklin and freed the innocent defendant have From Philadelphia, PA to Washington, cops led by Frank Rizzo-this is the High School for Malcolm X was the cost at least $1 million in legal fees and D.C., the courts_ have adopted special Philadelphia in which Jamal was born 13-year-old Mumia Abu-Jamal. expenses. Jamal was beaten and arrested by Riz­ To help raise funds, Jamal's legal zo's plainclothes cops for protesting a team initiated the Committee to Save 1968 presidential rally for George "Seg­ Mumia Abu-Jamal, co-chaired by actors regation Forever" Wallace. In September Ossie Davis and Mike Farrell. Advis­ 1969, Rizzo's cops raided Black Panther ers include Whoopi Goldberg, Harry Judge Albert Sabo Party headquarters and tore apart the Belafonte, Ed Asner, E.L. Doctorow and (far left), who office. Fifteen-year-old Minister of Sonia Sanchez. sentenced Mumia Information Mumia Abu-Jamal was Your support is urgently needed. Abu-Jamal, is among those arrested. Later that year, Tax-deductible contributions for the known as "king of armed cops surrounded the Church of defense should be made payable to the death row." Frank o Rizzo, enforcer of the Advocate on December 14, as 1,000 Bill of Rights Foundation, e8l-marked racist cop terror people inside paid their respects to slain "Mumia Abu-Jamal Legal Defense," against black Panther leader Fred Hampton, who was and sent to the Committee to Save Philadelphia. murdered in his bed by the Chicago cops Mumia Abu-Jamal, 163 Amsterdam and FBI ten days earlier. Mumia Abu­ Avenue, No. 115, NY, NY 10023-5001. Jamal was the first speaker at the event, 14 WORKERS VANGUARD that you're going to be held responsible victed of killing a cop speak froni death and accountable for what you do." row. Yet on 8 November, NPR found it The state's opportunity for "settling acceptable to broadcast the murderous accounts" came three years later, on ravings of an anti-abortion bigot who December 9, 1981, when Jamal was shot .- threatened that if Florida gives Paul Hill in the chest by a cop and railroaded to the death penalty for murdering a heroic death row. Pensacola abortion doctor, "blood will run in the streets like nobody has ever Stop Racist Legal Lynchings! seen"! To the brutal reality of rampant job­ The capitalist politicians, media and lessness, impoverishment and the epi­ especially the Philadelphia FOP want to demic of homelessness, the rulers of silence Jamal to make it easier to kill American society have no solution but him. Pennsylvania State Representative increased repression. Schools crumble­ Michael McGeehan, author of a bill to build mor.e prisons. Factories shut speed up executions, said he's ".specif­ down-gut welfare and hire more cops. ically interested in [Jamal's] case. We're Sixty percent unemployment for black' going to see him die." In fighting the male youth-throw them in boot camps. legal lynching of Jamal we will strike Housing shortage-declare.a "war on a blow against the entire apparatus of drugs" and raid public housing, throwing racist, capitalist repression. whole families out on the streets. Mumia Abu-Jamal does not stand With 1.5 million people behind bars, alone. Over 40,000 people have signed the U.S. is far and away the world's big­ petitions or sent letters to the gover­ gest jailer, imprisoning blacks at a rate nor demanding Jamal not be executed. far higher than South Africa's apartheid Unions representing millions of work­ rulers ever dreamed of. Over 25 percent ers-including the French General Con­ of young black men are under the "super­ federation of Labor (CGT); the Metro vision" of the very criminal "injustice" Toronto Labour Council and Vancouver system. WVPhoto Public Employees in Canada; Section 10 Capital punishment is institutional­ Over 250 attended June 1994 speakout for Mumia Abu-Jamal in New York of the Mexican Teachers Union SNTE; ized racist murder. It represents the leg­ chaired by Ossie Davis (right). ILWU Locals 6 and 10 in San Francisco acy of slavery-legal lynching-a con­ and ATU Local 308 in Chicago, as well tinuation of the ideology that proclaims population, compose about forty percent hand with lhe' extralegal terror of the as unions in Britain and Australia-have that black people are not human and can of the Death Row popUlation." Over 80 KKK and summary executions by cops taken upJamal's cause. Harry Belafonte, be killed with impunity. State executions percent of those sent to death row from on the street to keep black people "in Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, Con­ are a social act meant to intimidate and Jamal's Philadelphia are black, some their place." The fight to abolish the gressman Ron Dellums, Danny Glover, brutalize a whole people. The death pen­ one-third of those on the row from Phil­ death penalty is parrof the historic strug­ Whoopi Goldberg, Pennsylvania State alty shackles the ancient tradition of tor­ adelphia sent there by .. Judge Saba. gle for black equality in America. Representative David Richardson; Jr., ture to the ruthless machinery of the In the 1987 case of McCleskey v. Geor­ the Workers Organisation for Socialist modern capitalist state. gia, the U.S. Supreme Court acknow­ Save Mumia Abu-Jamal! Action (South Africa), the Palmares Texas rang in the New Year by exe­ ledged the overwhelming racial bias in The forces of racist "law and order" Cultural Foundation in Brasilia are just cuting Jesse Dewayne Jacobs, a man they the application of the death penalty but have been mobilizing to push through some of the individuals and .organiza­ knew was innocent of the crime he was argued that this didn't matter because, Jamal's execution. After announcing its tions who have joined tens of thousands sentenced to die for! This grotesque mur­ "taken to its logical conclusion [this] plans to air a series of commentaries by who .say: "Mumia Abu-Jamal Must Not der exposes the symbolic value of the throws into serious question the princi­ Jamal, National Public Radio (NPR) DIe.· " death penalty to the ruling class: the all­ ples that underlie our criminal justiee caved in to pressure by the Philadelphia Make the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, powerful state wiIl decide who lives and system." Thus Chief Justice Rehnquist Fraternal Order of Police to cancel the the voice of the voiceless that the police who dies. Truly in the death penalty we & Co. reaffirm the principle set forth by broadcasts. Senate Republican leader want to silence, a rallying cry against see the impulse to genocide. Justice Roger Taney in the infamous Robert Dole threatened on the Senate the racist death penalty. Raise your voice As Jamal wrote in the prestigious Yale }857 Dred Scott case, that blacks "had floor to cut off NPR's federal funding. and organize, in your unions, community, Law Journal, "You wiIl find a blacker no rights which the white man was Evidently NPR's prestigious All Things youth and church groups, to demand that world on Death Row. African Americans, bound to respect." Considered program could not "con­ Jamal must not die. Save Mumia Abu­ a mere twelve percent of the national The racist death penalty goes hand in sider" letting a black man falsely con- Jamal! Abolish the death penalty! _

NEW YORK CITY ATLANTA BAY AREA Hosted by Ossie Davis Thursday, February 16, 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 25, 7:30 p.m. Room 460, University Center ILWU Local 6 Union Hall Co-sponsored by the Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal Georgia State University 99 Hegenberger Road and the Partisan Defense Committee For more information: (404) 659-0251 Oakland For more information: (510) 839-0852 ------Speakers include ------­ Charles Brover, Brenda C. Stokely, President, BOSTON Partisan Defense Committee AFSCME Local 215/DC 1707: New York, NY Thursday, Feb. 16, 7:30 p.m. CHICAGO Wadiya Jamal, wife of Mumia Abu-Jamal James Webb, President, New York Place: to be announced Saturday, March 4, 2 p.m. Chapter, Coalition of Black Trade For more information: (617) 492-3928 United Electrical Hall Kica Matos, Research Director, NAACP Unionists, * New York, NY 37 S. Ashland Legal Defense Fund: New York, NY Leonard Weinglass, For more information: (312) 663-0719 Jan D. Pierce, Vice President, lead counsel for Jamal LOS ANGELES Communication Workers of America District 1,* New York, NY Bruce Wright, author of Saturday, March 4 Black Robes, lt1i17ite Justice Time and place to be announced WASHINGTON, D.C. Henry Schwarzschild, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty • Organization for identification purposes only Saturday, FeJ>ruary 25, 2 p.m. Video Showing: Undergraduate Library Tuesday, February 7, 1 p.m. Lecture Room Saturday, February 11, 3 p.m. P.S. 41 3525 Ackerman, UCLA Howard University 116 W. 11th Street (at 6th Ave.) For more information: (212) 406-4252 For'more information: (202) 872-8240

27 JANUARY 1995 15 ;.; WfJlilllliS """'lil) • ave umla U-Jamal! Mobilize Now!

Jennifer Beach Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, January 17: 350 people, including Partisan Defense Committee contingent, protest at the inauguration of governor Tom Ridge, who vows to speed up executions. Death row political prisoner Jamal (right) is the victim of a racist frame-up.

We reprint below an urgent appeal Police, Sabo is known by defense attor­ just issued by the Partisan Defense neys as "a prosecutor in robes." Sabo Committee. limited cross-examination of prosecu­ We are in a race against time to save tion witnesses, saying at one point, you the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a coura­ "don't have to prove that every witness geous black journalist, fighter for social is a liar on the stand." justice, and a political prisoner on death TilE PROSECUTOR: Joseph McGill row in Pennsylvania. Mumia Abu-Jamal right-wing Congress pushing a devastat­ test, black South African president Nel­ -no stranger to frame-up prosecutions. is the victim of a racist frame-up. As a ing rollback of the gains made by blacks, son Mandela would still be a prisoner One of his victims, Matthew Connor, former Black Panther Party member, a women, gays and the labor movement breaking rocks on Robben Island. Were spent 12 years in prison before his MOVE supporter, and an award-winning through hard-fought struggles. The death it not for mass mobilizations agai'nst Jim release in 1989, when McGill's illegal black journalist known as the "voice·of penalty is the centerpiece of the right­ Crow "justice," the Scottsboro Boys concealment of evidence was 'exposed. wing backlash for racist "law and order." would have died in prison for a crime In Jamal's case, to relieve jurors of any Clinton's new Crime Bill, passed just they did not commit. '., responspbility for the legal lynching, "Mumia is somebody that we need des­ before the midterm elections, mandates The cops and their friends: in high prosecutor McGill told the jury, "You are not asked to kill anybody. You are perately. At a time like this, we cannot the death, penalty for 60 more federal places kno~ that Jamal symbolizes cap­ afford to let them take such a voice offenses, effectively making the death ital punishment in America-you better asked to follow the law ... the same law from us without putting up a struggle penalty the law of the land even in states know it too. Join the campaign to save that will provide for him appeal after of gigantic proportions." that abolished it. Mumia Abu-Jamal! appeal after appeal." In earlier cases -Ossie Davis at the 3 June 1994 In Pennsylvania, Republican Tom tried by McGill, the Pennsylvania New York speakout initiated Ridge won the state house on a pro­ The Frame-Up of Supreme Court ruled that this same by the Committee to Save . death-penalty platform and pledged to Mumia Abu-Jamal argument required automatic reversal Mumia Abu-Jamal and the of the death sentence. Partisan Defense Committee sign death warrants as Soon as he takes In the early morning hours of Decem­ office as governor on January 17. Fore­ ber 9, 1981, Jamal was working as a, cab THE DEFENSE: Jamal was denied most among the over 170 men and driver and saw his brother Billy being the right to represent himself or have the voiceless," Jamal has lived a vibrant women on Pennsylvania's death row is beaten by police officer Daniel Faulkner. the attorney of his choice. He was allo­ life of struggle on behalf of the poor, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was framed up Jamal got out of his cab and took a near­ cated a mere $150 for pretrial investi­ the black and the dispossessed in this in 1982 on charges of killing a Philadel­ fatal bullet in the stomach. Jamal was gation in a case in which the police had country. Even from the hideous condi­ phia police officer. The Philadelphia Fra­ found sitting on the curb and bleeding already interviewed 125 people. Jamal tions of death row, Jamal continues to ternal Order of Police (FOP) openly nearly to death. Faulkner was dead. was removed from the courtroom and speak out for the oppressed in commen­ boasts of its campaign to kill Mumia, Jamal was sent to death row in a clas­ missed most of the prosecution's case. taries which appear regularly in' news­ rallying outside the state house and bom­ sic Southern-style racist frame-up on His court-appointed lawyer was unpre­ papers all over the country. It is precisely barding the television and radio talk charges of killing a police officer. While pared for trial and repeatedly asked to because he is a beacon of hope and shows with bloodcurdling calls to "get critically wounded, Jamal was beaten, be relieved. He was later disbarred. strength in the fight against raCist injus­ on with it." kicked, rammed into a pole and dumped THE JURY: In a city which is over 40 tice that the forces of reaction and repres­ The campaign to save the life ofMumia on a hospital floor by police, where he percent black, all blacks except two sion want to silence Jamal forever by Abu-Jamal is at a critical stage. Jamal's was beaten again. Jamal has always were excluded from the jury. One black execution. This racist legal lynching attorneys, led by Leonard Weinglasfi and maintained his innocence, but was pre­ juror was dismissed by the judge himself must be stopped! including the NAACP Legal Defense sumed guilty by the hanging judge and and replaced with a white juror who The threatened execution of Mumia Fund, are filing an application for a new prevented from presenting a defense in stated that he was not sure he could be Abu-Jamal is not only inherently racist trial in Pennsylvania state court in early a frame-up trial fraught with violations unbiased in this case. Another juror's and barbaric, it is also the first explicitly 1995. While availing ourselves of every of Jamal's constitutional rights, from best friend was' a Philadelphia cop. political execution attempted in this legal resource at our disposal to save jury selection to closing arguments. THE EVIDENCE: Critical evidence country since the government murdered Jamal's life, death penalty abolitionists THE JUDGE: Albert Saba-the demonstrates Jamal's innocence. The Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953. Just cannot expect justice through the capi­ "King of Death Row"-has sentenced prosecution's case claimed that only as the Rosenbergs were murdered in the talist courts. We must rely on and organ­ more men and women to death than any Jamal' and his brother came anywhere McCarthyite climate of Cold War anti­ ize the tremel)dous power of social pro­ other sitting judge in the U.S. A former near Faulkner until the backup cops Communism, the persecution of Mumia test to save Mumia. Were it not for the under-sheriff for 16 years and member arrived. But four witnesses stated they Abu-Jamal takes place in a context of a exposure and power of international pro- of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of , continued on page 14

16 27 JANUARY 1995