$4 at Newsstands and Bookstores SocialistViewpoint

H The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. —Karl Marx H MAY/JUNE 2014 VOL. 14 NO. 3

Pennsylvania has 540 children serving Life-Without-Parole (LWOP) prison sentences. Read Children Don't Matter: The Numbers Don't Lie on page 56. Photo of the author, Kerry Shakaboona Marshall, above.

On the Front Cover: s Auto parts in a factory. Read A Practical Solution to an Urgent Need on page 2.

A Practical Solution to an Urgent Need - Page 2 A conscious, directed effort to save postal services in the United Minorities face nearly 40 percent more exposure to toxic air Life, Death and the Bottom Line - Page 16 pollution. Read Environmental Injustice on page 48. Viewpoints on the Crisis in Ukraine - Page 18 James Connolly Rises Again…In Song - Page 40

17-year-old Dafna Rothstein Landman said, “If necessary, I will go to jail.” In the biggest wave of conscientious objection Israel has seen since 2008. Read Israeli Youth Refuse to Serve on page 37. USA: Bad Jobs Country By Glen Ford

A new study shows that the U.S. working to pass trade treaties that will ants for 20 years. The Democrats were economy has finally produced more further establish the legal structures of in power when the banks were set free jobs than there were before the Great the global race to the bottom—treaties to loot and plunder 15 years ago. Every Recession of 2008. The problem is, so blatantly biased towards corpora- employment study has tracked the they’re mostly bad jobs in fast-food tions and against every principle of steady decline of union membership, restaurants and low-wage retail. The democracy and national sovereignty, which the Democrats have done virtu- National Employment Law Project that the language must be kept secret. ally nothing to reverse. That’s quite found that there are almost two mil- understandable since finance capital lion fewer good paying jobs than there has steadily increased its campaign con- were back in 2008, but also close to two Capital’s global plan tributions to Democrats. None of this million more jobs in the low-wage sec- is to reduce all has been a secret, and no one should be tor of the economy—meaning, most of workers to a state of surprised that, as a result, most new the new jobs have been bad jobs. jobs are bad jobs. As far as Wall Street is Actually, the change in the jobs pic- absolute insecurity, concerned, that’s good news. ture during the Great Recession was so that they will What makes the current era different just a speeded up version of what capi- accept those bad from the past is that neither of the busi- talism has been producing in the United ness parties even bothers to pretend that States for more than 30 years. It is by jobs without com- it has a plan for a good jobs society. design. Every time employers have plaint. That means the people must put for- turned the screws on labor, in terms of ward their own plan, through their own wages, benefits and jobs security, Wall organizations—and learn to avoid the Street has rewarded those companies. However, the main problem for Democrats, whose job is to nip genuine The Lords of Capital have also richly American workers isn’t that Wall people’s movements in the bud, so as rewarded the politicians from both par- Street’s economic and social plans are not to disturb the corporate order. ties for removing the remaining obsta- secret—because, for the most part, —Black Agenda Report, April 30, 2014 cles to the direct rule of the rich. they’re not. Big Capital’s intentions Capital’s global plan is to reduce all have been quite clear for decades. The workers to a state of absolute insecuri- NAFTA trade treaty has been savaging http://blackagendareport.com/con- ty, so that they will accept those bad U.S. factory workers and Mexican peas- tent/usa-bad-jobs-country jobs without complaint. That requires the destruction of what we used to call the social safety net—a term that sounds increasingly quaint in the dog- eat-dog environment engineered into the system by Wall Street. Make no mistake about it: austerity is the common program of both the busi- ness parties. That’s why you will hear no countervailing vision from the Democrats, whose message differs from Republicans only in tone, not in substance. Both answer to the Lords of Capital. Barack Obama, the great actor and political chameleon, pretends to com- miserate with his Democratic minority and working class constituents. Like his mentor, Bill Clinton, Obama claims to feel their pain. Yet, he is feverishly

FC SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 SocialistViewpoint May/June 2014 Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT www.socialistviewpoint.org CONTENTS email: [email protected] (415) 824-8730 U.S. Politics and the Economy James Connolly Rises Again… In Song ...... 40 A Practical Solution to an Urgent Need ...... 2 By Chris Kinder By Gregg Shotwell Environment United Auto Workers Loses at Volkswagen . . . . . 8 Climate Change is Violence ...... 46 By Barry Sheppard By Rebecca Solnit Minimum Wage ...... 10 Mass Scallop Die Off ...... 48 By John Reimann By Jacob Chamberlain School Achievement Gap ...... 13 Environmental Injustice ...... 48 By Glen Ford By Jon Queally Privatization Perverts Education ...... 14 By Paul Buchheit Incarceration Nation Life, Death and the Bottom Line ...... 16 Scapegoating ‘Bad Apples’ ...... 49 By Bonnie Weinstein By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson Documents for Raids on Antiwar Activists Unsealed .17 Parents’ Nightmare: Babysitter’s Secret ...... 53 By Committee to Stop FBI Repression By Bryant Arroyo Criminalizing the Homeless and the Poor . . . . .55 Viewpoints on the Crisis in Ukraine By Josmar Trujillo Ukraine ...... 18 By Zoltán Grossman Children Don’t Matter: The Numbers Don’t Lie . . 56 By Kerry Shakaboona Marshall ‘Polite Intervention’ and the Ukrainian Uprising . .21 By Boris Kagarlitsky, Moscow; translated by Renfrey Clarke Marshall Eddie Conway Released ...... 57 By Susie Day The Coup in Ukraine ...... 24 By Mike Whitney Marissa Alexander’s Sentence Could Triple . . . . 58 By Dr. Sinclair Grey III Corporate Interests Behind Ukraine Putsch . . . .26 By J.P. Sottile Lorenzo Johnson is Waiting! ...... 59 By The Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson Crimea: A Divisive, Dangerous Assault ...... 29 By Gabriel Levy The Case of Shanesha Taylor ...... 60 By Yolanda Spivey International A Prisoner’s Salute to Bobby Sands ...... 61 British Antiwar Movement ...... 31 By Dennis O’Hearn By Mike Marqusee Chelsea Manning Acceptance Statement ...... 62 Spain’s Massive March Against Austerity . . . . . 32 By Chelsea Manning via Aaron Kirkhouse By Common Dreams staff Mumia Abu-Jamal: Innocent and Framed . . . . .64 U.S. in Search for Kony ...... 34 By Rachel Wolkenstein By Glen Ford Three by Mumia Abu-Jamal What’s Really Happening in Venezuela? ...... 35 Greetings to NUMSA ...... 70 By Chris Gilbert Land Grabs ...... 70 Israeli Youth Refuse to Serve ...... 37 Working for Change ...... 71 By Sarah Lazare From Cairo to Suez, Egypt Workers On Strike . . .38 Letter to the Editor By Erin Cunningham Fifteen Dollars an Hour Now! ...... 71

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Vol.Vol.Vol. 14, 14,3, No.No. 233 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 1

U.S. Politics and the Economy U.S. Politics and the Economy A Practical Solution to an Urgent Need By Gregg Shotwell

ply weather reports from before I was and ash. Walnut was the most aro- born. A note unrelated to the task at matic. It was intoxicating like roasting hand made the transcription personal coffee. Sawdust is a fragrance that pro- as if a co-worker from 1914 tapped me vokes memories as ancient and arous- on the shoulder and whispered his liv- ing as tools made by hands deep in the erwurst scented secret in my ear. forest of our collective memory. Wood, The floors of the factory were maple. even kiln-dried wood, feels and looks The windows were wider than my arm alive. I studied the grain of each piece span and taller than a bishop’s hat to a before I cut, shaped, bored, or mitered child on Easter. In the old days facto- it to fit. The work was satisfying and ries needed light in winter and air in the job was integrated. summer. We were stuck in the old By integrated I mean, each worker days. In winter the panes frosted. We understood their personal role in the dressed in moth-eaten wool sweaters finished product and how our roles as Gregg Shotwell and bulky wool shirts, which garnered individual workers were interrelated. wood shavings like dust mops. In the When we looked at a finished piece of This old airport’s got me down—it’s summer, we opened the windows wide furniture we could locate our individual no earthly good to me, ’cause I’m stuck and let warm breezes mingle with task and identify the tasks of our co- here on the ground as cold and drunk as odors of raw lumber and three-in-one workers in the construction of the whole. I can be. You can’t jump a jet plane like oil. We waved at school children plac- We couldn’t afford to buy the furni- you can a freight train. So, I’d best be on ing pennies on railroad tracks and train ture we made but it belonged to us by my way in the early morning rain. engineers blowing their horns. virtue of our labor. The buyer owned —Gordon Lightfoot, “Early Morning During the Great Furniture Strike of the object of his admiration. We owned Rain,” 1966 1911, John Widdicomb Furniture our collective experience. We took My hometown, Grand Rapids, Company was the scene of a riot. The pride in our work. Each of us, whatever Michigan, was once known as the wives and children of workers broke all our role, felt like a craftsman. Whether Furniture Capital of the world. The fur- the windows with stones. By the time I we ran a drill press, hand carved designs niture industry moved south, and then got there in the 1970s, the rancor had in a rail, assembled cabinets, or sanded overseas, but in the 1970s a few stalwarts evaporated. We had a union, but labor and finished a table top until the grain still plied the pretensions of the uppity strife was a thing of the past. Likewise glowed soft and warm as the mystery of class with vestiges of noblesse oblige. We our trade was a thing of the past. The photosynthesis embedded in the seed made reproductions of antiques. antiquity of the place appealed to me. of a tree, we strove for perfection. Why not? We had the blueprints, I was a machine operator, which We were never pressured to hurry. patterns, jigs, fixtures, and most impor- sounds dull, but production was low and Quality wasn’t a slogan, it was a rela- tantly, the experience. I worked at John quality, not quantity, was the goal. Our tionship we had with our labor, our Widdicomb Furniture Co. focus was craftsmanship. No one hur- co-workers, even our supervisors. My I never studied the history of furni- ried. I may have had only one small task, first day on the job at John Widdicomb’s ture design. I couldn’t distinguish for example, a mortise in a table leg, but a foreman told me, “Slow down.” between Louis XV and Louis XVI, but I I only had to cut a mortise in eighty- Perhaps nostalgia has inserted a soft closely examined notes, which old cabi- eight pieces of stock, then I would break focus lens over my recollection. I don’t netmakers scribbled on the jigs and down the set-up, and start a new job. recall the slivers of annoyance, the high fixtures I used for machining. Usually The set-up took longer than production. whine of a rip saw that made my ear they inscribed advice about how to run I loved the feel of wood in my drums cry, the revulsion of my non- the job. At times the jottings were sim- hands. The smell of cherry, mahogany, chalant youth to the regimen of work.

2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 But my recollection isn’t limited to a Saturday, we only worked until noon. When I worked at Widdicomb’s I sentimental veneration of a bygone era At GM ten hours was mandatory. All rolled my own cigarettes—three or in manufacturing. three shifts worked every Saturday. four a day. It was a social habit, some- A lot of my co-workers were over Sixty hours a week on top of a big thing I did with coffee and conversa- sixty-five. They had no desire to retire. hourly raise meant I was in the money. tion. At GM I smoked thirty to forty They enjoyed the work. They were at It also meant that I was paying for the tailor-mades a day. If I had any left in home in the factory. No one com- money with my life. I was grinding the morning, they smelled like coolant. plained about how slow they moved. 660,000 valve lifters a week. I wondered if I should smoke them. They were masters. For them it wasn’t I didn’t like the job. I promised But what the hell did it matter? The a job, it was a hobby. It wasn’t a facto- myself it was temporary, but I didn’t bosses could have squeezed all the ry, it was the club. There was nothing foresee what old timers called, “the blood and juice from my body and they would rather do with their time. golden handcuffs”—overtime, pen- used the tincture for pesticide. How different from the company I sion, benefits—or what pundits called, Then, in the winter of 1981 every- retired from where the pension goal, “the social contract.” Pundits didn’t thing crashed. We didn’t understand understand that our work experience “thirty-and-out,” was pronounced like what happened. We did our job. The was dis-integrated and the so-called a prison sentence. bottom fell out of the auto industry “social contract” bound us to a dehu- and we were left with a dead key fob. In a simpler day and age, I would manized system of labor. It was in The union’s response was to foment have been content to stay at John effect an anti-social contract. hostility against foreign workers, which Widdicomb’s and grow up to be a mas- I defended myself the best way I played right into the bosses’ hands. The ter cabinetmaker, proud of my work and knew. I drugged myself. Japanese built plants in America and my place in life. But it was 1979 and as called the union’s bluff. Gordon Lightfoot sang, “You can’t jump I’m an alcoholic. At Widdicomb’s I a jet plane like you can a freight train.” drank occasionally. At GM I drank day By the time I got laid off—along in and day out. I wasn’t alone. There was with tens-of-thousands of other auto- I needed to move on. I had a young plenty of overtime but little time for workers—I was a mental, physical, family and the times demanded higher family or leisure. Whether it was drugs, emotional wreck. All I was worth was a wages than the furniture industry could alcohol, gambling, or something else paycheck and that was gone. offer. I got a job at General Motors. your mother never taught you, everyone Fortunately, I had a friend who worked The first day I walked through the sought gratification in consumption. in the high-end furniture industry and doors of GM, my body cringed. Every We didn’t derive any satisfaction he got me a job working with him at day for the next thirty years, my body from the work. No one could identify Kindel Furniture Co. cringed when I walked through the the value of their labor in the finished I remember the first day. My nerves doors of GM. My senses felt assaulted by product. Even tradesmen at GM were were shot, but I managed to keep my the noise and toxic vapors. A cloud of oil reduced to routine maintenance, which hands steady as I ground a keen edge on and coolant hung in the air. The concus- diminished their skills and mocked a piece of steel. Then I cut a handle for sion of mechanical clamor penetrated ingenuity. They hated their jobs as my self-styled knife on a bandsaw, my body and hammered my eardrums. much as every grunt humping the line smoothed the grip on a belt sander till it Everyone shouted. Curses were a natural or manning a machine. fit my hand like a shiv, shimmed the response to the environment. At Our reward was the paycheck. blade in the slot with maple sliced on the Widdicomb’s I considered eighty-eight When a paycheck is all you are worth, table saw, and lashed it together with pieces high volume. The production rate you get addicted to spending money masking tape. I used this jailhouse knife on my first job at GM was 88,000 pieces rather than spending time doing things to cut half round pieces of cherry bead for eight hours of work. that enrich your life. molding, which I fitted and glued togeth- Eleven thousand pieces-per-hour is GM pumped out quality slogans er to form a lattice to grace the glass on a 183.33 parts-per-minute, more than faster than a cow passes methane gas. china cabinet, which sold for more three parts-per-second, and we had to We didn’t pay any attention. How money than I would make that year. accelerate the rate if we wanted to take could we? We were up to our necks in The work was tedious but precise. It any breaks. And we did. toxic work ethics and moronic man- required patience and meticulous At Widdicomb’s there was only one agement. When you grind 110,000 attention. I concentrated. The room shift. We never worked more than valve lifters in ten hours you can’t pos- was quiet. I could smell raw lumber. I eight hours a day. If we had to work on sibly give a shit about any one of them. could hear rip and crosscut saws whine

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 3 and sigh in the rough mill. I gazed out quences of disintegration in the work- nity on the shop floor. I became part of the window from time to time and place. We neglect the total cost of the something greater than myself. peered at snowflakes in refracted win- cheapest price at our own expense. Although the prevalence of cancer in ter light. I relaxed. The work was med- Eventually I was called back to GM. my former workplace was shocking, I itative. Time elongated, contracted, I couldn’t resist the money. I had a don’t believe the exposure to toxic chem- and evaporated. Before I knew it, my third child to support and the demands icals is solely responsible for the lower life first day on the new job had passed. of society were growing exponentially. expectancy of blue-collar workers. Thanks to my friend, not only was I It was the 1980s. Every worker with an Stress exacerbates our immune sys- able to put food on the table, I also extra buck was hustled into tax- tem. Employment is precarious because healed—but I wasn’t any wiser about deferred investment plans as a retire- of downsizing, outsourcing, and auto- the disease of capitalism. I thought I was ment option. The future of the mation. On top of that we live under the okay because I quit drinking. I didn’t American Dream was in hock. It was constant threat of termination. Union understand how a job, even a good- the pawnbroker’s paradox. Redemption or non-union, in the United States we paying union job, could devalue a per- was something no one could afford. are all “at will” employees—meaning son and incite a compulsion to com- The new GM plant I worked at was that we can be fired for no reason at any pensate for the loss of dignity with cleaner. The work was lighter and easi- time. It helps to have a union, but in the consumption. I blamed it all on alcohol. er, but we were still exposed to toxic grievance process a worker is guilty I am using alcoholism as a rhetori- chemicals. The chemicals were so per- until proven innocent and the process cal device, a metaphor, which may nicious that the state of Michigan can drag on for years while the worker is enable readers who aren’t addicts to wouldn’t allow GM to vent air from deprived of pay and benefits. understand one must compensate in the factory. We had to trust that GM some way for the disintegration and would filter the toxic fumes so the re- A particular supervisor at our plant degradation we experience at work. I circulated air would be safe to breathe. had a reputation as “The Terminator,” was a factory worker but I believe No one believed GM gave a damn because she liked to fire workers. A few teachers, nurses, social workers, and about our health. weeks before Christmas one year, The other professionals are likewise deval- Terminator fired a co-worker, a single But air quality wasn’t my immediate mother who was particularly vulnera- ued and degraded because the princi- concern. I had the dullest, most stupid ples of lean manufacturing, or “man- ble, for allegedly “making scrap.” That job of my life. I could have been replaced is, she produced parts on the machine agement by stress,” have been imple- by a machine but I was cheaper. I expe- mented in every field of work. she was operating, which were defective rienced an intense need to feel integrat- and had to be thrown away. Then The Perhaps you don’t consume drugs ed with my work and my co-workers. Terminator assigned me the same job. or alcohol. My question then is, how Recovering alcoholics say, “I get Skilled machine operators can dis- do you cope with a job that reduces drunk and we stay sober.” That is, we cretely cause malfunctions and break- your human potential to a cipher, a understand that as individuals we are downs which halt or slow production. I data entry, a hanging chad of a wish to powerless, but collectively we have made damn sure to produce scrap and I be significant? strength and purpose. Solidarity is not shut the machine off. When The One must compensate for the disin- an ideal for us; it’s a practical solution Terminator asked why the machine tegration we experience at work, hope- to an urgent need. wasn’t running, I said, “I am not going fully, in a healthy, constructive man- I was fortunate. I discovered a knack to let you fire me for making scrap.” She ner. But as any old soldier will tell you, for writing. I began to write shop floor told me to keep operating the machine. if you don’t recognize the threat, you flyers, which articulated the core-to- can’t protect yourself. core class conflict that my co-workers I said, “If you want me to keep run- Capitalism demeans labor for profit. confronted every day. What I wrote ning this machine, you will have to give That’s not opinion, it’s bookkeeping. rang true to my fellow workers because me an A.V.O. (Avoid Verbal Orders) so that I have it in writing that you We need to evaluate the cost of I didn’t say anything they didn’t already know in their hearts. know the machine is making scrap and dehumanizing workers. We need to needs repair.” determine how the degradation of I called my flyers Live Bait & Ammo. labor affects our health physically, Bait for the bosses and ammo for my She said, “I don’t give A.V.O.s. I emotionally, mentally, and socially. fellow workers. The work of writing give direct orders.” The glorification of individual con- helped me to integrate with my broth- “That’s better yet,” I replied. “Get sumer choice disguises the conse- ers and sisters in the struggle for dig- my committeeman and my Quality

4 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 Network Rep. I want your order docu- confront two workers. The bosses In order to aid their insight we plant- mented and investigated.” picked up the telephone and called the ed Bullets, which were short versions of Precision standards are exceedingly union to protect them. We let the com- Live Bait & Ammo, all over the plant. The high in the auto industry but the demand mitteeman in and told him to take Bullets accused the bosses of sabotage, of for quantity and on time delivery usu- notes. I may have been the ringleader deliberately making scrap. The plant ally trumps management’s priorities. but I didn’t have to say a word. The manager had some explaining to do. Bosses don’t want to invest the time or rank and file were in command. Our co-worker got her job back money to correct mechanical problems Then we went to a union meeting and before Christmas. The Terminator was because the demand is so urgent. demanded a civil rights investigation. forced to take a week off and go to charm school. She never tried to fire I made sure the machine produced “A white woman fires a white anyone again. Most importantly, we more scrap. My committeeman wrote woman and you claim discrimina- learned a valuable lesson. Solidarity is a grievance and the Quality Network tion?” the Bargaining Chairman asked. Rep started an investigation that could not an ideal. Solidarity is a practical climb the corporate ladder if it wasn’t Damn right. Unequal treatment solution to an urgent need. without reasonable cause is discrimi- settled in house. No plant manager The urgent needs of the working nation. The boss gave us all direct wanted desk jockeys in Detroit to think class have spiked since the advent of orders to make scrap. We had proof. he couldn’t manage local affairs. the Great Recession in 2008, but the The union couldn’t deny or delay our response from the left has been Co-workers followed my example. demand. There were too many of us. They made sure their machines pro- unmoored and bereft as the occupa- duced scrap, and when they were Documentation and witness testi- tion of an unoccupied park. mony is important in the grievance ordered to keep the machines running, Capital restructured fast. The mar- process, but the primary purpose of the they demanded grievances and Quality ket roared back. All debt and penalty civil rights investigation was to rob Network investigations. Job setters were plastered to the backs of the management of their time and cripple conspired with machine operators and working class. Banksters and corporate production. The only way to leverage called out skilled trades who disman- baggers are flush with cash. Yet pork- negotiations with management is to tled the machines. The rebellion spread. bellied politicians bend workers and shut off the profit faucet. As long as Soon, most machines in the depart- retirees over the austerity barrel with profit is flowing smoothly, the bosses ment were broken down. Workers the high-hat aplomb of bishops at don’t care how long a worker stands in stood around and spit on the floor. A Easter mass. the gallows of the grievance process. union rep told us that the plant man- Where’s the fight back? Where’s the ager was angry and had sent him out to The civil rights chairman not only practical solution for working people? tell us to get back to work. I won’t interviewed workers, he interrogated repeat what we said to that sorry s.o.b. engineers and supervisors. He took We’ve been hit with a mega-dose of but in short, we informed him that we high-value salary employees off their Shock Doctrine. Working folk are in didn’t take orders from him. We didn’t jobs and squeezed them through the desperate need of a labor movement, elect him to be the boss’s messenger gut wringer. When one department but Trumpka, the AFL-CIO President, boy, and if the plant manager wanted slows down it impacts production in squatting on his throne, appears coma- to give orders he should come out and all the other departments. We were tose—content to issue press releases and speak for himself. We had some things cutting into profits and the rebellion lobby Congress for reform. Maybe he’s to say to him as well. The plant man- couldn’t be contained. the victim of a dope-shooting drone. ager didn’t show up. The culmination of our campaign Has a drug as potent as a six-figure Since GM had an open door policy arrived when we got wind of a corpo- salary conned him into believing power whereby workers could talk face to face rate tour. The bosses like to shine for can be persuaded by appeals to con- with bosses in the front office, I went to the entourage. The day of the tour science rather than struggle? Or maybe Human Resources and requested an everyone in our department on all we are the ones who’ve been doped interview. I was told that management three shifts wore red and black t-shirts into the inertia of waiting for leaders would meet with two workers from the that said “Stop Harassment” on the while biding our time in line. department. I invited everyone. front and “An Injury to One is an A person who opposes capitalism in Roughly thirty workers jammed into Injury to All” on the back. It was the United States today requires a high the office, closed the door, and blocked apparent to the corporate entourage tolerance for cognitive dissonance— it. There were six managers ready to that all was not right in River City. that screeching metal-on-metal sound

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 5 you encounter when your walk side- implement a viable alternative, an actu- efits. We were separated from our class swipes your talk racing past in the al way of living and working which financially and in the process we opposite direction. One may reject the replaces and surpasses the only practi- embraced an economic system, which dog-eat-dog paradigm but one cannot cable system workers in North America causes global human misery. A misery reject the need for food, shelter, and have ever known, all socialist proclama- which has come back to haunt us like a healthcare. For most of us that means tions are pie in the sky. As Gordon self-inflicted disease, an illness born of scoring a job with a capitalist employer Lightfoot sang, “It’s no earthly good to uncontrolled appetite. Many of my where the dissonance commences like a me, cause I’m stuck here on the ground,” comrades worked excessive overtime, drum roll on a song we’d rather forget. where philosophies don’t bleed. gambled on the stock market, and In most areas of the North American We need a new vision and a practi- invested in extravagant real-estate ven- labor market, gainful employment cal plan to get there. tures. They were buried so deep in debt requires an automobile, which in turn that a strike was unthinkable to them. requires gas and insurance and month- They couldn’t afford to miss a payment ly payments to a dealer. The drummer I was a factory work- to the man. Everything they earned was hits the cymbals and the beat goes on. er but I believe turned over to dealers who already had Once you have acquired employment teachers, nurses, plans for all the money these workers you must choose between a landlord or would ever make in their lifetimes. a mortgage broker. Every deal requires social workers, and Consumption appeared to be an end in a compromise and every compromise other professionals itself. The only difference between is a link in the chain that binds us to a are likewise deval- these good hard workers and junkies concussive cognitive dissonance. was that the capitalist system conferred ued and degraded status on their addiction. If you live in a capitalist society you because the princi- must make provisions for old age— It’s demoralizing to see fellow work- those golden years when a coldblooded ples of lean manu- ers turned into puppets. But why devaluation of monetized human facturing, or “man- should we hesitate to demand more? As Samuel Gompers said, “More worth is measured on a scale of employ- agement by stress,” ability—which requires saving and schoolhouses and less jails; more books investing. For most workers paying the have been imple- and less arsenals; more learning and mortgage on a slice of private property mented in every less vice; more leisure and less greed.” is their only investment, but anyone field of work. We should demand more for all with a modest amount of extra income workers not just the glorified individual will sock it away in a tax-deferred of American myth, or the vaunted mid- investment account. You may not like Anyone living in Detroit—that dle class waved like a pennant above the the game but when it’s the only one in ominous effigy of capitalism—needs to heads of workers by union bureaucrats, town you put your head down and play devise a practical means to survive in as if we should strive to be separated like for all you are worth. an urban setting abandoned by inves- wheat from chaff. If we want more for tors. But reconstructing in the shadow My personal stake in the market is everyone then we may have to limit our of capitalism is like pitching a tent modest, but nonetheless it is my for- consumption, to refine our tastes, and under an elephant’s ass. tune, and it casts a shadow over my to consider our impact upon the ecosys- beliefs and values. I feel like a recover- The bankruptcy of Detroit is tem more important than our economic ing alcoholic with a wine cellar. emblematic of capital’s habit of shit- self-interest. The UAW is notorious for ting on workers and then blaming lobbying against improved CAFE or If you want to call yourself a socialist them for the mess. Coined words like emission standards. The cognitive dis- in the United States, you join a study competitive and globalization are sim- sonance of corporate-dominated unions group because socialism in an advanced ply code for low wages, high deduct- is like thunder in a collapsing mine. capitalist society is ideological, not ibles, zero security, and no pension. workable. You may protest. You may When autoworkers could buy not Austerity isn’t a solution for workers; resist. You may advocate for peace, jus- only a house in the city but a cabin up it’s life without parole. tice, and an environment clean as an north, they retired from class struggle angel’s spit, but your day-to-day life is Yet affluence can be corrupting. and forgot to bookmark their place in bound to an economic system at odds After the Second World War, auto- labor history. Excessive overtime cou- with socialist ideals. Unless we can workers gained higher wages and ben- pled with tax-deferred investments in

6 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 the stock market stuck a needle in the Once upon a time, I worked like an unions. But union leaders don’t suffer arm of ordinary autoworkers. I watched old-fashioned craftsman. I valued my cognitive dissonance, and neither do my comrades succumb to the anesthetic. experience. I felt integrated with my the liberal pundits who support the I saw fellow workers invest their life work and with my co-workers. I was double-jointedness. They don’t have savings in Delphi, a company designed proud of my craft, but I was compelled any problem swinging both ways for bankruptcy. They thought they were to hop the Capital Express by an urgent because it pays six figure salaries. investing in the farm, a place where need for more money. I didn’t go to If there shall ever be a resurgence of they worked and lived. I was stunned by work for GM because of an ideology, but union organizing, it will be led by their trust in capitalism, but they had the experience changed me. I grew to people who aren’t wedded to capital- never witnessed another economic sys- realize that in an advanced capitalist ism. I am convinced they will rise from tem. They didn’t experience cognitive society the only way to feel integrated the ranks. They may not start out to be dissonance. I did. I experienced more rather than alienated, and to have integ- socialists or communists, but I am cer- red lights, alarm bells, and guard rails rity as a working person with social con- tain they won’t promote competition than a railroad crossing. sciousness, is through solidarity actions with other workers. They won’t push with fellow workers in the workplace. I distrusted capitalism. Not because their comrades to work harder and I was educated or understood Marxism Any young person joining a union faster and longer for less. They won’t but because I was raised in a home or working as an organizer in a union confine bargaining to a single craft or where things like furniture and appli- today may feel dismayed by the corpo- industry. They won’t be corralled by ances were confiscated for late pay- rate clones running the union bureau- borders. They will look over their ments. I never trusted the deal. cracy. But if we can’t organize our fel- shoulders at the Treaty of Detroit and low workers to take over their own refuse to relinquish the right to strike But the deal is on the table and we unions, or to organize a new union, or the right to control the workplace. have to play our hand, not some hypo- how can we expect to engage in a mass “You can’t jump a jet plane like you thetical game. If one rejects capitalist struggle of any consequence? values and desires to live without cogni- can a freight train,” but if you look tive dissonance, it’s imperative that he A social movement may take seed in around the tarmac, you’ll notice a or she engage their fellow workers, a classroom but it won’t gain traction whole bunch of folks who look just like organize a union, and confront the until we confront the boss face to face. us—abandoned. We need somewhere bosses directly. Any other option is aca- The practical means of mass struggle to go and something to do and some- demic, by which I mean it’s a nice idea begin in the workplace because unions thing to join besides a study group, the but risk free and ineffective because can directly challenge capital by throt- occupation of a park, or passive partici- power respects power, not ideological tling profit and providing a platform pation in a Roberts Ruled bureaucracy. eloquence. For workers, power in a for participatory democracy. We need to organize a union that uni- capitalist society is at the point of pro- I don’t have a diploma. I am not a fies rather than alienates the rank and duction and the delivery of goods and master of any ism. But I do know that file; a union with a fist connected to an services—not at the tip of a pencil, mine the high point of union struggle in the arm connected to a shoulder connected included. United States was led by communists to a body of people who are willing to fight for economic justice, fight for the Protest is essential. Our dignity and socialists. The low point of unions today, the nadir of organizing, is led by integrity of labor, fight for the dignity demands it. But the truly effective pro- of all working people in that place test in an advanced capitalist society liberals who believe a practical solution to an urgent need means cutting wages where effective class struggle inevitably isn’t the occupation of a park for a begins: the workplace. week, or a street for an afternoon; it’s an and benefits, while spending dues on occupation of the workplace, a strike, a the same political party that gave us Gregg Shotwell is a retired UAW direct confrontation with bosses over NAFTA and is working overtime to member who frequently contributes the control of profit, distribution, and ramrod the Trans-Pacific Partnership poems to the Blue Collar Review, and is the means, methods, and fruits of pro- free-trade agreement before Obama the author of Autoworkers Under the duction. A confrontation, I may add, thumbs his nose at the masses and Gun (Haymarket Press, 2012). which actually threatens one’s liveli- leaves office to collect his bounty. —Monthly Review, April 2014 hood, puts the fundamental reason for Unions from the longshore to the working, one’s family, on the line. Such classroom to the post office and beyond http://monthlyreview. risk separates liberals from radicals and are under attack by an administration, org/2014/04/01/practical-solution- students from revolutionaries. which pocketed donations from urgent-need

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 7 United Auto Workers Loses at Volkswagen By Barry Sheppard

In a closely-watched election, the This was brought home to me when I In a series of contract negotiations United Autoworkers Union (UAW) saw a nationally televised debate between in the 1990s and 2000s, the UAW attempted to break into the anti-union a UAW representative and a far right agreed to two-tier levels of wages. New South to organize a Volkswagen plant opponent of unions before the elections. hires in the Big Three get just under in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I was startled when the rightist $16-an-hour, and go up gradually but The union lost the election in brought up the fact that the UAW lead- stay well below the roughly $28-an- February among the plant’s 1,550 pro- ers were in bed with the company. hour that was the previous norm. duction workers, with 626 votes in Class struggle militants in the UAW Obviously, over time the “new hires” favor and 712 against. have made this observation over the wage becomes the prevailing wage. The negative vote was something of a past decades, so I was taken aback by Also, for new hires, retiree medical surprise, as unlike in other recent orga- this argument. protection plans and defined benefit nizing drives, Volkswagen management Of course the anti-union spokesman pension plans, which were the norm did not threaten workers’ jobs if they was being cynical—he is against all for UAW members, were gutted. voted yes, and was officially neutral. unions. But this argument had weight Financial responsibility for the health- among the workers, according to an care system for all retirees was shifted There has been much discussion in from the company to the union. the labor and left press on why the article by Neil Young in the pro-union What Bob King pledged to protect union lost. In These Times, who spoke with many workers before and after the vote. for Volkswagen was these concessions. Much of this discussion has cen- Indeed, in the “neutrality” agree- A union that negotiates away previ- tered on outside interference by ment with Volkswagen, the UAW ous gains to help the companies “stay Republican politicians and extreme agreed not to bargain for wages above competitive” is not exactly an inspira- right groups who poured money into what was offered by Volkswagen com- tion for workers to join up. the anti-union campaign. This was petitors in the U.S. The UAW and undoubtedly a factor. In addition, the “neutrality” agree- Volkswagen agreed to “maintaining ment the UAW signed with Volkswagen Immediately following the election and where possible enhancing the cost barred the union from making any results, UAW President Bob King said, advantages and other competitive “negative” comments about the com- “We are obviously disappointed. We’re advantages that [Volkswagen] enjoys pany, and prevented the union from also outraged by the outside interfer- relative to its competitors….” holding one-on-one meetings with ence in this election.” This agreement was made by the workers at their homes, a common He was referring to public state- UAW tops—the workers had no say in practice in union organizing drives. ments by the Republican Governor, it, which rankled, according to Young. In These Times’ Neil Young goes on Republican state legislative majority UAW President Bob King defended to report: leader, and U.S. Senator Bob Corker this class-collaborationist position from Tennessee to the effect that if the “Also, pro-union community after the election: “Our philosophy is, activists, who spoke with In These workers voted for the union, the state we want to work in partnership with Times on condition of anonymity would cut back on subsidies to the fac- companies to succeed. Nobody has out of fear of hurting their relation- tory, and that Volkswagen would move more at stake in the long-term success ships with the UAW, spoke of the production of its new SUV elsewhere. of the company than the workers on difficulties in getting the UAW to There were other factors, such as the shop floor, both blue and white help them engage the broader lower-level management violating the collar. With every company that we Chattanooga community. “neutrality” agreement, and mobiliz- work with, we’re concerned about “Many activists I spoke with dur- ing white-collar workers to campaign competitiveness.” ing my two trips to Chattanooga for a No vote, and similar moves. said that when they saw the UAW Young quotes workers who were being continually blasted on local But I want to zero in on the failures repelled by the massive concessions the talk radio, newspapers and bill- of the UAW top leadership as a main UAW has given to the Big Three— boards, they wanted to get involved reason for the defeat. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. to help build community support.

8 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 “However, they say that the the labor movement, as well as work- The UAW today is about half the UAW was lukewarm in partnering ing hand in glove with the CIA against size it once was. A common misconcep- with them. Indeed, when I attended left-wing unions around the world. tion is that this is because of U.S. auto a forum in December organized by companies moving overseas. But the Chattanooga for Workers, a com- It was also tied into the Democratic Party, which before the civil rights number of autoworkers in the U.S. is munity group designed to build actually about the same as it once was. local support for the organizing upsurge, relied on its Dixiecrat wing in drive, more than 150 community the South. One factor has been the restructur- activists attended—many from dif- The AFL-CIO tops had no stomach to ing of the auto industry, with parts ferent area unions—but I encoun- take on any of these obstacles to union- formerly made in the big plants being tered only three UAW members…. izing the South, and in fact did nothing. outsourced not only to plants in other countries, but within the U.S. “‘There’s no way to win in the With the new upsurge in the Black Increasingly, small parts suppliers feed South without everyone that sup- movement in the South marked by the ports you fighting with you,’ said the assembly plants. Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956, the one Chattanooga community orga- A main reason for the drop in UAW nizer, who preferred to remain year after the AFL-CIO merger, the new membership is the failure of the union anonymous. ‘Because the South is federation failed to get behind it. In the one giant anti-union campaign.’” subsequent explosion of the Black lib- to organize both the parts plants and eration movement across the country, the Southern factories. These failures are not only of the hard- and the rise of the antiwar and youth ened bureaucracy that rules the UAW, The sorry performance of the UAW radicalization in “The Sixties,” the AFL- but the leadership of the labor movement leadership in this organizing effort CIO not only failed to spearhead these as a whole, going back decades. underscores the need to rebuild the movements, which objectively it could labor movement on a class-struggle, When the American Federation of have done, it lagged far behind when it social unionism, and independent Labor and the Congress of Industrial wasn’t downright hostile. political basis. A key element must be Organizations merged in 1955, there In the years since, the South has union democracy, where the rank and was much fanfare about using the been a tough nut to crack, including file is mobilized in its own interests. combined strength of the new AFL- for the UAW. In the past two decades, CIO to unionize the South. The only lesson Bob King has drawn many new auto plants, especially for- is to redouble efforts to support the But this effort never got off the eign owned, such as Toyota, Honda, capitalist Democrats in elections. ground. The main reason was that to and Volkswagen, have been built in the unionize workers in the apartheid South, without being unionized. South would have necessitated fighting against the systematic oppression of African Americans known as Jim Crow. This was a necessity not only to organize Black workers, but to fight against the prejudices of white work- ers, who were instilled by the Dixiecrat ruling class with anti-unionism as well as anti-Black attitudes. Unions and the fight for Black rights were tied together as “communist plots.” In short, the AFL-CIO would have had to lead a social fight against Jim Crow, against anti-communism, and for what unionism would mean in advancing the interests of all workers, Black and white. But the AFL-CIO bureaucracy itself was complicit in the anti-communist witch-hunt, driving socialists of all types as well as union militants out of

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 9 Minimum Wage The Democrats, the Union Leadership and Kshama Sawant By John Reimann

The union leadership is tailing the laws in the U.S. “don’t supersede what gaining agreements.” Democrats once again, this time on the is in the collective bargaining agree- In other words, the union exemp- issue of the minimum wage. In keeping ment.” (Here in the San Francisco Bay tion is a payoff to those employers who with tradition, the Democrats are push- area, that is not true, and the Oakland are willing to sign a union contract, ing the issue in the hopes of winning ballot initiative has no such exclusion thereby allowing the leadership to votes in elections later this year as well as either.) He went on to say, “If a group extract dues money from those employ- in the 2016 presidential election. But of workers votes that it is more impor- ees. At the same time, this exemption they are making sure not to push the tant to put money into a retirement gives the unionized employers a leg up issue too far, so they’re keeping their call program (or sick pay, etc.) than onto in their competition with the non- for slightly over $10 per hour by 2015. wages, that’s their democratic right.” union employers, who will have to pay This amount is so miserly that even Wal Rolf and similar leaders are out of the full $15 per hour wage. Mart is reported to be considering sup- touch at best. All that is required is a porting it! In fact, day laborers in little imagination. Think about a single Team concept Oakland are reported to be refusing to mother of two, desperately struggling This is the team concept of the work for less that $15 per hour already. to make ends meet on, say, $12-per- union leadership carried out in prac- Union leadership hour. Does anybody seriously think tice. Unable to even conceive of any So it is that the AFL-CIO leadership that that worker is happy with that alternative to capitalism, they feel simply calls for this same increase. wage? Rolf, who most assuredly is mak- themselves tied at the hip to the employ- Around the nation, wherever the pres- ing more than $600-per-week ($15 per ers and their political representatives. sure is slightly greater, they are going for hour for a 40 hour week), does not Industrially, they seek to help “their” slightly larger increases and at a faster have to worry about this. employers compete with those who are pace than Obama is advocating. The His explanation also misrepresents non-union. They advance the idea that Democrats in Connecticut just pushed the actual situation. In contract after the workers and their employer are on through a minimum wage increase to contract, the union leadership does the same team, competing with other $10.10 immediately. Berkeley CA’s everything it can to discourage the employers… and their workers. This mayor is calling for an immediate city members from really organizing and means that the union workers have to minimum wage of $10.55 and in fighting for more than what the compete with the non-union for who Oakland a ballot initiative is being employer is willing to grant. Ultimately, can make a greater profit for their boss. planned for a $12.25 minimum wage. the leadership wears down the mem- It’s worker against worker. bers, who feel that there is little pros- Politically, it’s no different, with the Sea Tac pect of winning anything better as long union leadership seeing no alternative The greatest raise was the ballot ini- as the leadership is so conciliatory to to the bosses’ party—the Democrats. tiative just passed last November at Sea management. The recent concessionary As we see with the minimum wage Tac (basically the Seattle airport area) contract at Boeing is a perfect example. campaign, they demand what the for a $15 per hour minimum wage. Democrats are willing to grant. The That initiative, however, had a huge “Olive Branch” to employers problem is that, just as on the job, the flaw in it: It excluded workers working Rolf also commented, “We always Democrats have been willing to grant under a union contract that called for want to offer an olive branch and a less and less, and so the union leaders less than the $15 minimum. According high road approach to employers of have been casting about for a means of to one worker at the airport, this means conscience who prefer to have direct pressuring their “allies.” some 40 percent of the work force and honest relations to unions that there. David Rolf, an officer in SEIU they are facing across the bargaining Kshama Sawant and pressuring 775 explained the reasoning in an table so, yes, we hope that amongst the the Democrats interview with Marie Choi aired on unions that are active at the airport Then along came an attractive KPFA radio last November. that if workers choose to join those upstart—Kshama Sawant—and she First, he claimed that most of the unions we want to facilitate and got the support of a sector of the union some 120 municipal minimum wage encourage productive, bilateral bar- leadership. (The majority of delegates

10 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 to the King County Labor Council resolutions that (1) All non-profits be Predicament voted to endorse her.) They saw Sawant allowed the three-year phase-in for the How did Socialist Alternative and as a means of pressuring the Democrats, minimum wage. This would reportedly Kshama Sawant end up in this predica- not as a step towards breaking with even include “non-profit” hospitals! ment? them. In supporting her, they also And (2) that Kshama Sawant and the The problem is that they started off implicitly supported her call for a leader of Socialist Alternative, Phil with an orientation towards the union $15-per-hour minimum wage, or at Locker, be empowered to allow the leadership more than towards the least they couldn’t openly oppose it. union exemption clause into the ballot membership and non-union, low-wage initiative. Committed to this figure, Sawant workers. What they should have done pressed ahead. Her popularity forced This was done with no open discus- was start with an explanation that while the mayor to include her on his sion in advance. When questioned they are fighting for 15 Now, that that “income inequality” committee. The about this a few days before this deci- figure is not enough, that it is just a problem of Sawant and Socialist sion, a member of the Sawant staff sim- starting point. It also should have been Alternative, however, has been that ply refused to comment. And since linked to a campaign for an immediate they lacked clear perspectives and a then, as of this writing, there has been raise of $5-per-hour for all workers, clear strategy from the start. no official announcement of these deci- union or not. Also, a demand, like sions on the Facebook pages of Kshama “jobs for all” and/or a publicly funded “Working with” the City Sawant or the 15 Now campaign. The jobs creation program (at the $15-per- Councilors union exclusion clause (known as a hour minimum wage) should have Before she even took office, she said “collective bargaining opt-out, or CBO) been raised as well in order to get the she was going to try to “work with” her is especially serious. By adopting it, unemployed involved in the campaign. fellow city council members. This Socialist Alternative and 15 Now are Thus the needs of low-wage workers meant giving the mayor’s committee a accepting the team concept and the would have been tied to those of the chance to come up with something approach of “offering an olive branch to rest of the working class, including the acceptable. But what Sawant and employers of good conscience.” It is unemployed. This would have alienat- Socialist Alternative were calling for exactly this entire strategy that has been ed the union leadership, but consider- ($15-per-hour) was too much for the so devastating to the entire union move- ing the huge gulf that exists between Democrats to accept and therefore also ment and the working class in general. them and their membership, socialists too much for the union leadership to This will inevitably have longer-term must make a choice which side to ori- really fight for. It seems that Sawant consequences. How, for instance, can ent towards. they then turn around and oppose the and Socialist Alternative did not realize They could take their campaign into team concept when they have embraced this would be the case from Day One, the grocery stores, hospitals, hotels, its practical consequence? and therefore did not plan for a ballot coffee-bars—directly to low wage initiative until the last minute. Sawant and her party, Socialist workers and all other workers. They Alternative, have ended up with the Making concessions could explain that the union leadership worst of both worlds. They have to is refusing to support this initiative Predictably, the union leadership in rush at the last minute to decide what because they care more about “offering the main has not supported the $15 they want to do about a ballot initiative an olive branch” (as David Fold put it) Now campaign in any real way. On the because they wanted to show them- to the employers and the Democrats other hand, Sawant and Socialist selves as having faith in the process or than they do about organizing a fight Alternative (who run the 15 Now cam- something of the sort as far as the for the members and for all workers. paign) have reportedly made some mayor’s committee is concerned. The very serious concessions. They have turnout for the March 15 march was Open up 15 Now already announced that they will accept 700 maximum, respectable but not If they did this, Socialist Alternative a three-year phase-in of the minimum overwhelming. It appears this is at least could really open up the 15 Now cam- wage for “small” businesses. Now, it is partly due to her and her staff having paign and build its structures in such a reported that they pushed through a spent so much time and energy debat- way that all workers can get involved resolution in the 15 Now campaign ing with the mayor’s committee instead beyond just being foot soldiers, (rather that “small” business will be defined as of really focusing on campaigning in than having the Socialist Alternative any business with less than 250 employ- the communities and the work places. leadership control it.) One simple step ees. This is not a small business. It is But on the other hand, the union lead- would be to move the 15 Now office also reported that they pushed through ership is still not fully supporting them. out of the office of Socialist Alternative,

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 11 really struggling to build a real rank- and-file workers’ movement; it repre- sents trying to rest on a layer of the union leadership rather than on the membership. And the present course doesn’t even guarantee a victorious ballot initiative this November! How, after all, can we expect the vast major- ity of workers in Seattle, who won’t be directly and immediately affected by this initiative, to campaign for it? After all, for the majority, this is not “15 now” but, rather “15 in three years from now.” As with other serious socialists and working class fighters, this writer was extremely enthusiastic about Sawant’s election victory. As we see just a few where it is largely inaccessible, and into with the exact “more holes than Swiss miles north of Seattle, where Mike a store front in or near a poor commu- cheese” as Sawant herself said in LaPointe is running for congress, there nity. That, in itself, would say a lot. denouncing the mayor’s committee. seems to be a trend of the movement Would this succeed? Win at all costs vs. building turning towards electoral politics. There is no telling whether such a the movement Sawant and Socialist Alternative can and should play a role right at the very campaign would spark off enough Presently, the Sawant campaign is enthusiasm to overcome the resistance lead of this tendency. They can do that taking the approach that “we want to by taking some of the steps along the of the employers, the Democrats and win; we are not purists” as one of their representatives inside the lines of those outlined above. We hope Sawant’s staff said to this writer on they do so. unions—the union leadership. One March 15. What he meant was that he experience of this writer can serve as an was in favor of making principled con- —oaklandsocialist, April 3, 2014 example: In 1999, the leadership of the cessions (such as the ones mentioned http://oaklandsocialist. Carpenters Union in Northern above) in order to gain the support of com/2014/04/03/the-minimum-wage- California signed a sweetheart contract the union leadership or a wing of it. the-democrats-the-union-leadership- with the contractors. This writer orga- This is being done at the expense of and-kshama-sawant/ nized a protest against that contract, but when one carpenter called for a walk off, this writer and others who had been active thought the mood wasn’t there for that. When we found out that there was a mood, we helped lead the way for the San Francisco Bay Area carpenters wildcat strike of 1999 in which some 2,000 carpenters walked off the job. Who knows what is seething beneath the surface in the Seattle working class? Who knows how they would respond to such a campaign? All we can say is that even if a mass response did not happen, at least a fighting example would have been set. Instead, what is being contemplated is a ballot initiative

12 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 School Achievement Gap Stop Blaming Black Parents By Glen Ford

An extensive study by two Black mance. “The idea that parental involve- (and, we believe, adults in general in academics shows there is no positive ment will address one of the most their communities). Therefore, the correlation between student achieve- salient and intractable issues in educa- deficit that must be corrected is in the ment and parental help with home- tion, racial and ethnic achievement arena of demonstrable social and polit- work or involvement in school activi- gaps, is not supported by the evidence,” ical commitment. Just as children will ties. The findings, based on longitudi- the two social scientists maintain. They respond to the perception that their nal surveys over three decades and point out that both President George parents value education, so will they be assessments of 63 different types of W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act shaped by the perception that respon- parental involvement, tend to once and President Obama’s Race to the Top sible adults are motivated by social again confirm that achievement gaps “promote parental engagement as one values, such as belief in the necessity are not the fault of uninvolved Black remedy for persistent socioeconomic for social change. Don’t worry so much parents, but rather, closely hew to pat- and racial achievement gaps”—with no about the kids’ homework, but more terns of poverty and historical racial basis in actual fact. about the social values they are absorb- oppression. Blaming Black parents for the racial ing and the role models they will follow In an article for the April 12 issue of achievement gap is simply another in life. the New York Times, Keith Robinson variation on the theme of Black cul- Worry that their model of Black and Angel L. Harris, professors of soci- tural pathology—a slander deployed adult behavior has a Kill List, like ology at the University of Texas, Austin, by a ghastly spectrum including white Obama, or a spy-on-your-friends and Duke University, respectively, racists, Black opportunists and eco- briefcase, like Al Sharpton—both of conclude that “most forms of parental nomic oligarchs to saddle the victims whom also support the privatization of involvement, like observing a child’s with guilt for the rich man’s historical education and blame Black parents for class, contacting a school about a and contemporary crimes. Racial gaps racial performance gaps. child’s behavior, helping to decide a in school achievement are no more nor —Black Agenda Report, April 16, child’s high school courses, or helping less “intransigent” than the economic 2014 a child with homework, do not improve chasms that reproduce themselves student achievement. In some cases, from generation to generation—and http://blackagendareport.com/con- they actually hinder it.” which are becoming even more calci- tent/stop-blaming-black-parents-school- achievement-gaps Black parents try as hard as whites fied and immutable in the era of neo- and Hispanics to help their children in liberal capitalist austerity. school, to just as little effect, say The solution is not less engagement Robinson and Harris. “Regardless of a in civil and political affairs by Black family’s social class, racial or ethnic and other oppressed people, including background, or a child’s grade level, parents, but more of it, and in much consistent homework help almost broader ways than simply attempting never improved test scores or grades,” to help kids with homework. Robinson they write. In fact, “Even more surpris- and Harris report that the short list of ing to us was that when parents regu- parental activity beneficial to children’s larly helped with homework, kids usu- school performance includes commu- ally performed worse.” nicating “the value of school, a message Robinson and Harris have published that parents should be sending early in their findings in a new book, Broken their children’s lives and that needs to Compass: Parental Involvement with be reinforced over time.” Children’s Education (Harvard) that The young Black sociologists’ find- should shatter the racist notion that ings indicate that children internalize lackadaisical parenting is to blame for the general moral and political com- Black children’s poor school perfor- mitment to the social values of parents

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 13 Privatization Perverts Education Compared to other developed countries, equal education has been a low priority in America By Paul Buchheit

Profit-seeking in the banking and Orleans rely heavily on inexperienced Teachers, on the other hand, are paid healthcare industries has victimized teachers, and even its model charter less, and they have fewer years of expe- Americans. Now it’s beginning to hap- school Sci Academy has experienced a rience and a higher turnover rate. The pen in education, with our children as skyrocketing suspension rate, the sec- patriotic-sounding “Teach for the products. ond highest in the city. More trouble America” charges public school dis- There are good reasons—powerful looms for the over-chartered city in a tricts $3,000 to $5,000 per instructor reasons—to stop the privatization lawsuit filed by families of disabled per year. Teachers don’t get that efforts before the winner-take-all free students contending that equal educa- money, business owners do. market creates a new vehicle for tional access has not been provided for their children. Good business strategy: cut inequality. At the very least we need the employees, use machines to teach good sense to slow it down while we The profit motive perverts the The profit motive also leads to examine the evidence about charters goals of education and vouchers. shortcuts in the educational methods Forbes notes: “The charter school practiced on our children. Like “virtu- Charter schools have not movement began as a grassroots al” instruction. The video-game- improved education attempt to improve public education. named Rocketship Schools have $15/ The recently updated CREDO study It’s quickly becoming a backdoor for hour instructors monitoring up to 130 at Stanford revealed that while charters corporate profit.” A McKinsey report kids at a time as they work on comput- have made progress since 2009, their estimates that education can be a $1.1 ers. In Wisconsin, half the students in performance is about the same as that trillion business in the United States. virtual settings are attending schools of public schools. The differences are, Meanwhile, state educational funding that are not meeting performance in the words of the National Education continues to be cut, and budget imbal- expectations. Only one out of twelve Policy Center, “so small as to be regard- ances are worsened by the transfer of “cyber schools” met state standards in ed, without hyperbole, as trivial.” public tax money to charter schools. Pennsylvania. In Los Angeles public Furthermore, the four-year improve- Education funding continues to be money goes for computers instead of ment demonstrated by charters may cut largely because corporations aren’t needed infrastructure repair. have been due to the closing of schools paying their state taxes. K12 Inc., the largest online, for- that underperformed in the earlier So philanthropists like Bill Gates and profit Educational Management study, and also by a variety of means to Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg and Organization in the U.S., is a good discourage the attendance of lower- Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Bezos and the example of what the Center for Media performing students. Walton family, who have little educa- and Democracy calls “America’s Ample evidence exists beyond tional experience among them, and who Highest Paid Government Workers”— CREDO to question the effectiveness have little accountability to the public, that is, the CEOs of corporations that of charter schools (although they con- are riding the free-market wave and make billions by taking control of pub- tinue to have both supporters and promoting “education reform” with lic services. While over 86 percent of detractors). In Ohio, charters were lots of standardized testing. K12’s profits came from taxpayers, and deemed inferior to traditional schools while the salaries of K12’s eight execu- in all grade/subject combinations. Just like the fast-food industry: tives went from $10 million to over $21 Texas charters had a much lower grad- profits for CEOs, low wages for million in one year, only 27.7 percent uation rate in 2012 than traditional the servers of K12 Inc. online schools met state schools. In Louisiana, where Governor Our nation’s impulsive experiment standards in 2010-2011, compared to Bobby Jindal proudly announced that with privatization is causing our 52 percent of public schools. “we’re doing something about [failing schools to look more like boardrooms It gets worse with the Common schools],” about two-thirds of charters than classrooms. Charter administra- Core Standards, an unproven Gates- received a D or an F from the Louisiana tors make a lot more money than their funded initiative that requires comput- State Department of Education in public school counterparts, and their ers many schools don’t have. The 2013. Furthermore, charters in New numbers are rapidly increasing. Silicon Valley Business Journal reports

14 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 that “Next year, K-12 schools across human communicators. A Columbia average impact of KIPP on student the United States will begin imple- University study found that “failure achievement is positive, statistically sig- menting Common Core State and withdrawal rates were significantly nificant, and educationally substantial.” Standards, an education initiative that higher for online courses than for face- But funding for the Mathematica will drive schools to adopt technology to-face courses.” The University of study was provided by Atlantic in the classroom as never before— Phoenix has a 60 percent dropout rate. Philanthropies, the same organization Apple, Google, Cisco and a swarm of The newest moneymaker is the that provided $10-25 million in fund- startups are elbowing in to secure mar- MOOC (Massively Open Online ing to KIPP. ket share.” States are being hit with Course). Thanks to such sweeping unexpected new costs, partly for cur- According to a 2011 study by high-tech strategies, higher education Western Michigan University, KIPP riculum changes, but also for technol- is increasingly becoming a network of ogy upgrades, testing, and assessment. schools enrolled a lower percentage of diploma processors, with up to a 90 students with disabilities (5.9 percent) Banker’s ethics percent dropout rate, and with the than their local school districts (12.1 in the Principal’s Office largest business operations losing the percent), enrolled a lower percentage most students. For a 2012 bioelectricity of students classified as English Finally, the profit motive leads to class at Duke, for example, 12,725 stu- questionable ethics among school Language Learners (11.5 percent) than dents enrolled, 3,658 attempted a quiz, their local school districts (19.2 per- operators, if not outright fraud. After a and 313 passed. Yet “schools” like edX Los Angeles charter school manager cent), and experienced substantially are charging universities $250,000 per higher levels of attrition than their misused funds, the California Charter course, then $50,000 for each re-offer- Schools Association insisted that char- local school districts. For charters in ing of the course, along with a cut of general, the CREDO study found that ter schools are exempt from criminal any revenue generated by the course. laws because they are private. The same fewer special education students and argument was used in a Chicago case. Lower-performing children fewer English language learners are Charters employ the privatization left behind served than in traditional public defense to justify their generous sala- schools. And charter schools serve The greatest perversion of educa- fewer disabled students. According to a ries while demanding instructional tional principles is the threat to equal space as public entities. States around Center on Education Policy report, 98 opportunity, a mandate that was elo- percent of disabled students are edu- the country are being attracted to the quently expressed by Chief Justice Earl money, as, for example, in Texas and cated in public schools, while only one Warren in the 1954 Supreme Court percent are educated in private schools. Ohio, where charter-affiliated cam- decision, Brown vs. the Board of paign contributions have led to Education: “Education is perhaps the In New York City, special-needs increased funding and licenses for most important function of state and students and English-language learners charter schools. local governments...Such an opportu- are enrolled at a much lower rate in nity...is a right which must be made charter schools than in public schools; Advanced profit-making: and Over the Counter students—those higher education available to all on equal terms.” But we’re turning away from that impor- not participating in the choice pro- At the college level, for-profit schools tant message. The National Education cess—are disproportionately assigned eagerly clamor for low-income students Policy Center notes that “Charter to high schools with higher percentages and military veterans, who convenient- schools...can shape their student of low-performing students. Special ly arrive with public money in the form enrollment in surprising ways,” education students also leave charters of federal financial aid. For-profit col- through practices that often exclude at a much higher rate than special edu- leges get up to 90 percent of their reve- “students with special needs, those cation students in traditional New nue from U.S. taxpayers. Less incentive with low test scores, English learners, York public schools. In Nashville, low- remains for these schools after tuition is or students in poverty.” performing students are leaving KIPP received, as evidenced by the fact that Academy and other charters just in more than half of the students enrolled The Knowledge Is Power Program time for their test scores to be trans- in for-profit colleges in 2008-9 left (KIPP), perhaps the most acclaimed ferred to the public schools. And without a degree or diploma. charter organization, says it doesn’t do Milwaukee’s voucher program, which that. KIPP has its supporters, and it has been praised as a model of privati- As with K-12 education, the driving proudly displays the results of an inde- need for profit directs our students to zation success, has had up to a 75 per- pendent study by Mathematica Policy cent attrition rate. computer screens rather than to skilled Research, which concluded that “The

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 15 Equal access to education? Life, Death and the Bottom Line It’s been 60 years since Chief Justice By Bonnie Weinstein Warren declared education “a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” Belief in the American It is certainly disconcerting to learn turns out to be too expensive, let the Dream means that anyone can move that when you or your loved one is patient die if they can’t afford it, or if it up the ladder. But today only four per- being seen by doctors in capitalism’s cuts into profits. And they rationalize cent of those raised in the bottom command center, the good old USA, this inhumanity by determining that quintile make it all the way to the top that decisions concerning patient care the exorbitant cost for treatment that as adults. Two-thirds of those raised in are based upon the cost of that care, and the patient may have to bear is, in and the bottom of the wealth ladder remain not it’s effectiveness. In other words, in of itself, detrimental to her or his health on the bottom two rungs. medical care too, you get what you pay and, therefore, against the Hippocratic Compared to other developed for, and profits come first. Oath of, fundamentally, “do no harm!” countries, equal education has been a In an April 17, 2014 article in the What hypocrisy! low priority in America, with less New York Times by Andrew Pollack At no point does the article question spending on poor children than rich titled, “Cost of Treatment May the fundamental connection between the ones, and with repeated cutbacks in Influence Doctors,” profit-driven, multi-billion-dollar phar- state funding. But there’s no market- “Saying they can no longer ignore maceutical and healthcare industries and based reform where children are the rising prices of healthcare, some the cost of treatment to the patient. involved. Education can’t be reduced of the most influential medical At no point does the article challenge to a lottery, or a testing app, or a busi- groups in the nation are recom- the gluttony of the CEOs of the phar- ness plan. Equal opportunity in educa- mending that doctors weigh the maceutical and healthcare industries! tion ensures that every child is encour- costs, not just the effectiveness of aged and challenged and nurtured treatments, as they make decisions Just to give one example, Richard from the earliest age, as we expect for about patient care…. M. Bracken, Chairman and Chief our own children. “In practical terms, new guide- Executive Officer of Hospital lines being developed by the medical Corporation of America earned Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, a groups could result in doctors choos- $1,387,474 in salary; a $3,358,320 writer for progressive publications, and ing one drug over another for cost bonus; $21,989,866 in perks; and the founder and developer of social jus- reasons or even deciding that a par- $11,824,290 in options, for a total of a tice and educational websites: ticular treatment—at the end of life, 49.9-million-dollar income in 2012.1 UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, for example—is too expensive. In the At no point does the article demand RappingHistory.org. extreme, some critics have said that that the multi-trillion-dollar oil, gas, —AlterNet.org, February 16, 2013 making treatment decisions based on cost is a form of rationing…. manufacturing, food, tobacco, alcohol, http://www.alternet.org/education/4- pharmaceutical, etc. industries, “do no “A review last year of clinical guide- most-profound-ways-privatization-per- harm!” lines issued by 30 of the largest physi- verts-education?akid=11515.229473. cian specialty societies found that 17 of At no point does the article chal- Nbv-Db&rd=1&src=newsletter959460 them explicitly integrated costs…. lenge the right of industries to make &t=4&paging=off¤t_page=1 “The cardiology societies say that decisions about life and death based the idea that doctors should ignore upon the bottom line of profit above costs is unrealistic because they all else—profits which rightly belong to already have to consider the finan- those who actually do the work. cial burden placed on the patient, if not society. ‘Protecting patients “Good and Evil” from financial ruin is fundamental If there is “good” and “evil,” then to the precept of ‘do no harm,’’ the “good” is the potential to nurture each societies wrote in their paper outlin- other and protect our environment. ing the new policy.” Above all to make democratic and rational decisions based upon need, The “Hypocrite-ic Oath” want and the health of our planet and In simple terms what they are saying not on the accumulation of private is that if the most effective treatment profits for the few.

16 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 “Evil” is the system of capitalism itself, whereby the private ownership Documents for Raids on Antiwar Activists of the means of production, and the Unsealed profits produced by our labor, are owned and ruled by the commanders McCarthyite Attack on Free Speech, Right to Organize Revealed of capital—a tiny minority of individ- By Committee to Stop FBI Repression uals, who are not only constantly at On February 26, the application and right to associate. They in effect crimi- war with one another—but are univer- affidavit used to obtain the search war- nalize those of us who oppose U.S. sally at war against us, in order to get rants for the 2010 raids on homes and wars, and stand in solidarity with the more of the profits we produce. offices of antiwar and international oppressed. From Palestine to Colombia, The common good solidarity activists were unsealed, people want to be free from the domi- I am an optimist. I truly believe that revealing lies and attacks on the consti- nation of Washington. We have said humanity is fundamentally good tutionally-protected rights to speak out this publicly on thousands of occasions because it’s in the best interests of all to and organize. The unsealing of these and will continue to do so. live peacefully and cooperatively on documents came as a result of legal Not unlike countless “anti-terror- this planet. I believe we are naturally, action taken by the antiwar activists. ism” cases against Arabs and Muslims, organically and materially destined to The timeline in the documents show the affidavit contains a collection of lies create a Paradise on Earth. Nothing is what we have always stated. Shortly and out-of-context statements to try to impossible and we have nothing to before the huge protest at the isolate people from their communities lose, and a Paradise to gain. That’s Republican National Convention, and movements. In a McCarthyite socialism in a nutshell. undercover police agent and profes- return to the 1950s, the affidavit shows sional liar, going by the name of Karen an obsession with Freedom Road Sullivan (identified in the affidavit as Socialist Organization. After decades UC1) joined the Antiwar Committee working in the antiwar movement, 1 “Executive Pay by the Numbers” and became active in the efforts to anyone who has worked with us knows http://www.nytimes.com/interac- build the demonstration. She later we are proud to be fighters in the tive/2013/06/30/business/executive-compensa- joined Freedom Road Socialist struggles against war, and for justice tion-tables.html Organization. and economic equality. The docu- The documents demonstrate a cal- ments imply that is something sinister, lous disregard for free speech and the when really, it is commendable. Having just received these docu- ments, we are in the process of consult- ing with attorneys and we will have more to say in coming days. We are glad we forced the government to unseal these documents and we demand that the U.S. Attorney makes a public statement that the investigation is closed and that there will be no indictments of antiwar and interna- tional solidarity activists. Moreover, we demand an end to repression and spy- ing against the people’s movements. —Committee to Stop FBI Repression, February 26, 2014

http://www.stopfbi.net/2014/2/26/ documents-raids-anti-war-activists- unsealed

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 17 VIEWPOINTS ON THE CRISIS IN UKRAINE The authors of the several articles about Ukraine and Russia that we are publishing in this issue of Socialist Viewpoint are not in agreement with each other. We believe that each of the articles in this section has important insights into the very complex situation there. —The editors Ukraine The Enemy of Your Enemy is Not Always Your Friend By Zoltán Grossman

To progressives who have been cel- “anti-Semitic,” and then support a new later oppose it? ebrating the revolution in Ukraine: be government with parties that use Much like Al Assad and Al Qaeda in careful what you wish for. Ukraine World War II-era imagery, such as the Syria, Yanukovych and Ukrainian now has the first European govern- Wolfsangel logo of Svoboda, and the ultraright nationalists fed off each ment in decades in which outright fas- White Power symbol of Odin’s Cross other, and actually needed each other cist parties have gained a significant used by Pravy Sektor (ditto the Aryan to buttress their own legitimacy. role in the executive branch. In other Nations). The phrase “Never Again” Yanukovych’s brutality polarized the European countries, far-right parties takes on a hollow ring when the entry country, and reinforced the farthest have won seats in the parliament, but of real fascists into a government is right-wing factions of the nationalist not secured real power in the cabinet. minimized and excused. opposition. Also like in Syria, moder- Of course, not all Ukrainian revolu- Maidan revolution ate democratic groups were caught in tionaries are fascists or Nazis, as assert- the middle of the polarization, and lost Certainly the majority of protesters ed in recent Russian propaganda. But it significant ground to the better-trained in Kiev’s Independence Square, or is equally wrong and irresponsible to militants. So you’d think that the top- Maidan, were motivated to join by the assert that the presence of fascists and pling of Yanukovych would reduce the massive corruption and oligarchical Nazis in the new government is merely power of the fascists who had gained rule of Viktor Yanukovych, and par- Russian propaganda. support by fighting him. But even ticularly his unleashing of the brutal before Vladimir Putin’s seizure of When the far-right Freedom Party Berkut riot police. The Maidan pro- Crimea gave the ultranationalists new became part of Austria’s cabinet in testers included backers of European grist for the mill, their representatives 2000, the European Union issued sanc- Union integration, leftists (who ques- were named to the new government in tions against Vienna, and the New York tion both Russia and the EU), ecolo- Kiev, led by the U.S.-backed Prime Times was full of exposes of party gists, LGBT activists, and ethnic and Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. leader Jörg Haider. But when the far- religious minorities (including Jews right Latvian National Alliance joined and ethnic Russians). But Anti-Fascist Svoboda a conservative government in 2011, it Action Ukraine estimated that 30 per- Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok is was barely noticed in the Western cent of the protesters in Kiev were far- well known for his comments that media. And because the fascist party right ultranationalists, and that was Ukraine is victimized by a “Muscovite/ Svoboda (Freedom) and the Nazi before the shooting began, when more Jewish mafia,” and references to Jews shock troops of Pravy Sektor (Right of them joined the street battles. as “Zhydam” (Kikes). One of his dep- Sector) played a vanguard role in Although the Maidan protests have uties established a “Joseph Goebbels Ukraine’s anti-Russian revolution, been depicted as “Pro-EU,” Svoboda Political Research Center” in 2005. The their role in the new revolutionary has joined forces with far-right parties Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw government has been glossed over in that are actually Anti-EU. It holds commented in 2011 that “Svoboda’s the Western media, with no serious Observer status in the Alliance of success illustrates the growing demand exposes so far. European National Movements, which of Ukrainian society for a new right- So it may be controversial for far- vehemently opposes the EU (including wing party with anti-democratic, xeno- right parties to join governments in the Jobbik in Hungary and the British phobic, pro-social and pro-family West, but it is permissible in the East if National Party). Pravy Sektor’s key views.” Svoboda won only ten percent they are mainly opposing Russia. These slogan has been “Against the Regime in the October 2012 parliamentary same Western media commentators and [EU] integration.” Perhaps they election, and about 40 percent in parts take any hint of criticisms of Israel as both want to join the EU so they can of the heavily Ukrainian far-west. Yet

18 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 last December, Tyahnybok was one of “young tough” counterparts to the common sights in the Maidan protests. two opposition leaders visited and Ukrainian nationalists. Just as Svoboda On one Nazi’s shield in Maidan could extolled by visiting Senator John uses Putin’s actions to frighten be seen the White Power symbol McCain. Ukrainians, Putin needs Svoboda to “14/88,” standing for the “14 Words” Since the revolution, Svoboda par- frighten Russians, and the polarization by David Lane of the U.S. terrorist liamentarian Oleksandr Sych has been intensifies. group The Order (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for named to the post of Vice Premier for Pravy Sektor Economic Affairs, and Svoboda has white children”), and “88” for “HH” Pravy Sektor is even to the right of (“Heil Hitler”). Like other fascist taken control of the ministries of edu- Svoboda, but that has not stopped its cation, agriculture, and the environ- groups in the region, the Ukrainian leader Dmytro Yarosh from being ultraright has also violently opposed ment. Svoboda co-founder Andriy named as Paruby’s Deputy Secretary of LGBT rights, forcing the cancellation Parubiy was named Secretary of the National Security. Since the revolu- of the 2012 Kiev Gay Pride march. Security and National Defense tion, Pravy Sektor militants have begun Committee, a significant post with tearing down statues of Soviet soldiers In the Pravy Sektor video “The control over police and military forces. who liberated the republic from the Great Ukrainian Reconquista,” Yarosh Playing to a western audience, both Nazis. That’s because they are them- highlights many common Nazi themes, Pravy Sektor and Svoboda have tried to selves Nazis, with a view of the world “against corrupt marginal democracy, reassure the Israeli ambassador that influenced not only by Ukrainian against degeneration and totalitarian they are not anti-Semitic, and defend- nationalism and German national- liberalism, for traditional national ers of the Ukrainian Revolution have socialism, but by the global white morality and family values, for large highlighted the very real anti-Semitism supremacist movement. Ukrainian family, physically and spiri- tually healthy young people, against in Russian nationalist groups. Like Svoboda, Pravy Sektor looks the cult of illicit gain and debauch[ery].” Two years ago, Svoboda led violent back with fondness to the Ukrainian The video counterpoises images of protests in Kiev against a new language Insurgent Army (UPA), led by Stepan masked street fighters (with “Vikings” law in Parliament, which allowed bilin- Bandera, who backed the 1941 German shields), and beautiful heterosexual gualism in regions with more than a invasion of Ukraine. It soon became couples, with Berkut riot police, ten percent non-Ukrainian popula- clear that Germany did not back his Russian civilians, EU bureaucrats, and tion. Its first order of business in the vision of a pro-Nazi Ukrainian puppet multiracial dancers. Another Pravy new revolutionary parliament was to state—because Hitler viewed Slavs as Sektor video shows different far-right roll back the bilingualism law, which subhuman, and coveted their fertile factions marching, training, and fight- gave Putin one of his justifications to land for German settlers—so the UPA ing. These videos aren’t Russian propa- “defend” Crimea, where Russian- had to later defend itself from the ganda about alleged fascists—they are speakers make up a majority. A similar Germans. But somehow you don’t the fascists’ own propaganda. 2003 “democratic” revolution in really count as a resistance movement Georgia installed a strongly nationalist if you wanted to join the Nazis, but the And by “fascist” I don’t loosely government, which five years later other Nazis wouldn’t let you play. mean authoritarian conservatives, such moved militarily against ethnic seces- In the meantime, the UPA was as George W. Bush or the Koch sionist enclaves, provoking a successful involved in massacres of Jews in parts Brothers. They may be right-wingers, Russian invasion. But few such aggres- of Nazi-occupied Poland now within but they uphold a global capitalist sta- sive signs were seen in Crimea before western Ukraine. It also slaughtered at tus quo with the U.S. at its center. Real Putin moved in. least 50,000 Catholic Poles who stood fascists are extreme right-wing populist Putin’s invasion of Crimea has rele- in the way of Bandera’s vision of a revolutionaries who want to overthrow gitimized the ultraright in the eyes of purely Ukrainian state. Far-right the present system, and replace it with many Ukrainian nationalists, and (not groups have recently backed the reburi- a dictatorship guaranteeing absolute insignificantly) prevents about a mil- al (with honors) of members of the rule by their own ethnic, racial, or reli- lion Crimean Russians from voting Galician Division of the Waffen SS, gious group. against Ukrainian nationalist parties in which also used the Wolfsangel symbol Fascists often sound like leftists in the next election. A pro-Putin biker later adopted by Svoboda. their opposition to corporate globaliza- gang that has supported his Crimea Last January, Svoboda led a huge tion and banks, NATO militarism, and invasion, and pro-Russian rioters in Kiev rally marking Bandera’s birthday, environmental destruction, but have eastern Ukraine, play as Russian and his portrait and uniforms were opposite motivations, usually revolving

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 19 As Yugoslavia broke up, all Western wrongs don’t make a right. media attention was on ethnic cleans- The next time you’re influenced by ing by the Serbs, but almost never on a Facebook meme or a heart-wrenching the ethnic cleansing by the (U.S.-allied) YouTube video about human rights Croatians or Kosovar Albanians. In violations by an “enemy” of the West, Afghanistan, the Taliban oppressed think about the atrocities by the pro- Afghan women, but the U.S.-backed Western side that we are not seeing. mujahedin warlords who had earlier Study the history of country, to learn ousted the pro-Soviet government that parts of the so-called “democratic” were the first Afghan government to opposition today might draw their lin- restrict women’s rights. In Libya and eage to militant groups (such as the Syria, revolutions against secular Ukrainian Insurgent Army or Russian-backed dictators have likewise Venezuelan right-wing parties) that strengthened Islamist militias. The have massacred ethnic, religious, or around racist and anti-Semitic con- West’s double standards eventually political minorities in past decades. If spiracy theories. (Some elements of the work against its own interests, by gen- the U.S. continues to back these crazies Tea Party—such as Glenn Beck and erating “blowback” from the very just because of they attack the West’s Rand Paul—do seem to straddle con- monsters it helped to create. enemies, some kind of blowback is servative and fascist ideologies.) Having again going to be inevitable. experienced World War II, Europeans understand better that fascism is a spe- ...not all Ukrainian Dr. Zoltán Grossman is a political- cific political movement, and not just cultural geographer who teaches at another way to say “meanie.” They are revolutionaries are Evergreen State College in Olympia, less likely to ignore a growing fascist fascists or Nazis, as Washington. He earned his Ph.D. at the threat when they see one. University of Wisconsin, focusing on asserted in recent topics of interethnic conflict and cooper- Good Guys vs. Bad Guys? Russian propagan- ation. He has taught courses on Central U.S. media coverage of the da. But it is equally and Eastern Europe, and is a son of Ukrainian Revolution tends to place it Hungarian immigrants. wrong and irrespon- only in a West vs. East context, with the —Information Clearing House, EU and NATO inherently good and sible to assert that March 11, 2014 Russia inherently evil. In this simplistic framing, the Ukrainian far-right is an the presence of fas- http://www.informationclearing- inconvenient reminder that evil can cists and Nazis in house.info/article37908.htm emerge from the West as well, so it has the new government to be minimized as Russian hyperbole. is merely Russian Why is it that Americans of all political stripes—including progres- propaganda. sives—can only see “good guys” and “bad guys” in a conflict, even in a situ- ation that pits “bad guys” against “bad The revolutions in Libya, Syria, and guys?” Maybe it’s our binary good vs. now Ukraine should show us that the evil religious tradition, our “white hat” enemy of your enemy is not always vs. “black hat” Hollywood films, or our your friend. In a contest between two-party electoral system, which sup- Ukrainian and Russian ultranational- presses nuances and ignores other ists, we do not need to pick sides. We third-party alternatives. We want to can defend peace and the democratic view all protesters against oppressive rights of civilians, and all minorities on regimes as “people power” heroes, without understanding that today’s both sides of the divide, without con- oppressed can (and do) become tomor- tributing to the polarization and row’s oppressors. strengthening the rise of fascism. Two

20 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 ‘Polite Intervention’ and the Ukrainian Uprising By Boris Kagarlitsky, Moscow; translated by Renfrey Clarke

March 4, 2014—Why, do you sup- The Ukrainian events merely acceler- of preserving the fugitive Viktor pose, war has not yet broken out ated this process, and helped the finan- Yanukovich as the “real president,” between Russia and Ukraine? The cial authorities carry out their plan while hinting at the possibility of answer is very simple: no one plans to while evading responsibility for deval- restoring him to the Kievan throne. go to war, and no one can. Kiev for uing the savings of our citizens. But this should not be taken too practical purposes does not have an When a certain number of leftists, seriously; as stated earlier, the people army, while the government that has repeating century-old slogans, speak of in the Kremlin are cynical, will not appeared in Kiev has no control over “a war unleashed in the interests of make any serious undertakings to the half of Ukraine, and cannot even exer- large-scale capital,” they once again get Ukrainian fugitive, and if they do, will cise particular control over its own things wrong. Instead of repeating cli- break them. Of course, it is very conve- supporters. If the Ukrainian authori- chés from old textbooks, what is need- nient for the Kremlin authorities to ties make any serious attempt to mobi- ed is a little economic analysis. The have a “lawful president” on hand, but lize their forces, this will merely pro- truth is that large-scale capital, both if an opportunity fails to present itself, voke new protests. Even rumors of private and bureaucratic, has no need the former legitimate ruler will be such a possibility have been enough to at present for a war. transformed in the space of five min- provoke anti-government demonstra- utes into an unwelcome foreigner. tions in Odessa. Human vices often rebound to the advantage of society. If our govern- Crimea Moscow, meanwhile, is rattling its ment and military leadership were In Crimea, Russian forces have sabers, but very cautiously. If the made up of intelligent, principled and restricted themselves to “polite inter- Kremlin were really serious about decisive people, we could indeed expect vention.” Of course, this was a viola- sending troops onto Ukrainian terri- far more unpleasant developments. tion of sovereignty, but let’s be honest: tory, it would not have asked permis- The Russian economy is highly depen- in an analogous situation the French, sion from the Council of the Federation, dent on the gas pipeline that passes Americans and British would have but would simply have issued the through Ukraine. The economies of done the same. When the French held order. Instead of real action we saw PR many European Union countries, not off from intervening in Rwanda and action, with a “unanimous vote by the to speak of Ukraine, also depend on allowed a bloodbath to go ahead, pro- senators.” A war broke out in the vir- this pipeline operating without inter- gressive opinion condemned them tual space of the Internet, backed by ruption. Of course, the investments wrathfully for their inertia. When the hysterical commentaries from liberals made by “our” oligarchs in Ukrainian same French state intervened in Mali and malevolent howls from conserva- enterprises need defending, but mili- and prevented a full-scale civil war, the tive propagandists. In essence, this was tary action would sooner exacerbate same progressive opinion angrily enough to fulfill the tasks faced by the the problems here than solve them. denounced the intervention. An analo- authorities at present. The cynicism and avarice of our pres- gous situation has emerged with ‘Neither peace nor war’ ent-day rulers are the best guarantee Crimea. Both possible decisions were The psychological effect was almost that there will not be a major war. associated with the prospect of serious as if we were waging a serious war The authorities in Kiev are also sat- political and moral losses, with the risk somewhere near Kharkov. Meanwhile, isfied. They are able to employ the of coming under fire from domestic there were no victims and there was no “Russian threat” to consolidate the and international criticism. In Moscow destruction. Unless, that is, we count new regime, to explain away economic the choice was in favor of a local inter- the collapse of the ruble. Here too, difficulties as the result of external vention, but an effort was made to however, things were not so simple; for pressure, and in retrospect, to justify carry it out as cautiously as possible. several months, the Russian govern- their own steps that have brought So far, Russian forces have acted in ment and the Central Bank had been Ukraine to collapse. The present situa- a far more restrained fashion than the seeking a devaluation of the national tion of “neither peace nor war” thus French and Americans in similar situa- currency. At least since September ana- suits both governments perfectly, at tions. Perhaps this is not because of the lysts had been forecasting figures of 37 least for the moment. The only signifi- government but despite it; on both rubles to the dollar and 50 to the euro. cant cause for unease is Moscow’s aim sides, it may simply be that the good

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 21 sense of the lower ranks has prevailed Christine Largarde has declared that Kiev too. In recent times the German in conditions where the hierarchy of Ukraine does not need immediate press has been urging Ukraine to sacri- command has been weakened. financial assistance: fice Crimea for the sake of integration The Russian special forces have not “We do not see anything critical into Europe. The problem, however, is stormed the bases of the Ukrainian that would be worth panicking about that the process is developing sponta- troops, but march around them and at the moment. We definitely hope neously, and that it is no longer con- squabble half-heartedly with the that no-one rushes in with large trolled by a few politicians. Both in Ukrainian commanders trying to per- sums, which would in fact be point- Moscow and in Kiev the governments less if these contributions were not suade the latter to hand over their in the recent period have shown plainly evaluated in the proper manner.” weapons. The Ukrainians refuse, refer- that they are incapable of working out ring not to the oath they have taken any long-term strategy. It is thus quite and to their loyalty to their homeland, obvious that the crisis will grow and but to the fact that the weapons are The class nature of deepen, but not according to the sce- state property, for which the com- nario promised by the people who are manders of the base are responsible. the new regime in terrifying themselves and others with The Russians respond to these argu- Kiev was demon- the specter of a Russo-Ukrainian war. ments with understanding; if they were strated with striking More than likely, the present in the place of their Ukrainian col- authorities in Kiev will not hold out for leagues, they would do the same. clarity when billion- long in any case. Commentators in It is a new form of war, without aire oligarchs were Moscow who are sympathetic to them gunfire or casualties. No one wants to appointed to key remind us constantly that most of the start shooting, and no one particularly ministries in the new government are cares what happens to the obsolete posts in the eastern not held by radicals from Svoboda or armored personnel carriers or to the regions. In exchange the Right Sector, but by more moder- ate politicians. Meanwhile, the com- firearms stored in the barracks. At any for “stabilization,” rate, neither side is prepared to risk life mentators neglect to mention that and limb and this provides cause for they were offered these “moderates” are hostages of the hope. the chance to priva- radicals. As Mao said, power comes from the barrel of a gun. In circum- ‘The sheepskin is not worth tize not only the stances where the army has fallen to dividing up’ economy in the east- pieces, and the organs of law enforce- The Russian elites are mortally ment have either been smashed, or are afraid of seriously angering the West, ern provinces, but demoralized, or have been placed but in the West too people have real- also the functions of under the control of the Right Sector, it ized that they will not achieve their power. is the radical nationalists who control goals in Ukraine without Russian help. the situation. The “moderates” in the The European Union does not need a government are only tolerated because zone of chaos on its eastern frontier, a they have promised to stop the eastern new Somalia or Congo on its very provinces splitting away. Now that doorstep. Nor is it possible for the EU In Brussels and Washington, the they are failing to cope with this task, to send its own troops or police onto decision evidently has already been they will be purged. Either western Ukrainian territory, as in Bosnia or made that the sheepskin, as we Russians Ukraine will move against Kiev as well, Kosovo, or at any rate without Russian say, is not worth dividing up, that with seeking the formation of a more reso- assent. the prospects uncertain the risk is just lute and “national” government as a too great. If anyone has to bear the The U.S. press criticizes Moscow “response to Russian aggression,” or moral, material and financial costs of fiercely, but indicates plainly that the the same impulse will come from with- restoring order, the thinking goes, then U.S. will not help Kiev, since there are in the capital itself. In either case, let it be the Russians. no appropriate treaties and Ukraine is right-wing pressure will result in such a not a member of NATO. Meanwhile, In principle, the strategy of confin- government being formed that Kiev the International Monetary Fund has ing the conflict to Crimea alone suits itself will rise in revolt. already refused money to Kiev, in par- both the Kremlin and the West—and In the east, meanwhile, the disinte- ticularly blunt fashion. IMF head perhaps even the new authorities in gration of the Party of the Regions and

22 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 the collapse of the old administration here: what is involved for the present is Nor will there be a war between Russia have not resulted in the “triumphant cultural differences rather than class and Ukraine. There will probably not progress” of the Maidan movement, positions. Members of the left need to even be a civil war, in the form in but on the contrary, to growing resis- work in the protest movement in the which we imagine it. But there will be tance to the new authorities holding eastern regions, strengthening their something that could prove worse than sway in Kiev. Among leftists, the deep- influence and helping to shape a posi- a civil war—chaos, fraught with arbi- ening economic crisis is sowing hopes tive program. In this case, there is a real trary and mindless violence by all that the demonstrations under “nation- chance that the entire movement can against all. If this occurs, the worst of al slogans” will soon be replaced by be shifted to more progressive posi- the possible scenarios will come to class-based protests both in the east and tions, and that the left can win hege- pass. As in Somalia or the Congo. the west. Developments of this sort, mony within it. This is no more than a The only positive outcome to this however, do not occur automatically. potential opening, but with the Maidan crisis would be a federalization of the Neither Maidan nor the demonstra- movement no such chance existed. state combined with a democratization tions in the east have had the character The conflict unfolding in Ukraine is of rule at the local level (otherwise, of a spontaneous popular revolution. not a contest of unalloyed good versus federalization will simply lead to the In both cases, outside forces have been unambiguous evil. Nor is it even a con- country being divided between oligar- involved. The class nature of the new test between a “Russian” south and chic groups). But this is also a program regime in Kiev was demonstrated with east and a “Ukrainian” west. In both of democratic revolution, which under striking clarity when billionaire oli- cases, economic interests are inter- certain conditions could extend to garchs were appointed to key posts in twined with cultural contradictions, social revolution—especially if changes the eastern regions. In exchange for and the logic of the conflict is leading meanwhile start happening in Russia “stabilization,” they were offered the to the formation of alliances that do itself. chance to privatize not only the econo- not always correspond to declared ide- But even if this does not occur in the my in the eastern provinces, but also ologies. What is occurring is not so near future, we should hope that with- the functions of power. Meanwhile, it much a split within the country as its in Ukraine, forces able to resist the should be noted that the people who fragmentation. logic of disintegration begin to ripen. are now coming to power in the east The world war of which jingoists —Links, March 4, 2014 are not exactly sons and daughters of and liberal Russophobes write with the popular masses either. such anticipation will not take place. http://links.org.au/node/3752 The only cause for optimism is the fact that from the beginning, the ideo- logical vector of the protests in the east has been different from that in the west. Left activists were driven from the Maidan in Kiev and beaten up (that is not to mention what happened to left-wing symbols and monuments.) In Kharkov and Odessa, by contrast, Soviet monuments were defended, and here and there people even raised red flags. But there should be no illusions

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 23 The Coup in Ukraine Obama’s Dumbest Plan Yet By Mike Whitney

“Washington and Brussels … used a potential of the Russian people and try’s Jewish community,” reports on Nazi coup, carried out by insurgents, ter- Russia’s vast natural resources. A the ground are not so encouraging. rorists and politicians of Euromaidan to loosely confederated Russia—com- Here’s an excerpt from a statement by serve the geopolitical interests of the posed of a European Russia, a Natalia Vitrenko, of The Progressive West.”—Natalia Vitrenko, The Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Socialist Party of Ukraine that suggests Republic—would also find it easier Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine the situation is much worse than what to cultivate closer economic rela- The United States helped defeat tions with its neighbors. Each of the is being reported in the news: Nazism in World War II. Obama confederated entitles would be able “Across the country… People are helped bring it back. to tap its local creative potential, being beaten and stoned, while stifled for centuries by Moscow’s undesirable members of the As you probably know by now, heavy bureaucratic hand. In turn, a Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine are sub- Obama and Co. have ousted Ukraine’s decentralized Russia would be less ject to mass intimidation and local democratically-elected president, susceptible to imperial mobiliza- officials see their families and chil- Viktor Yanukovych, with the help of tion.” (Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A dren targeted by death threats if they ultra-right, paramilitary, neo-Nazi Geostrategy for Eurasia”) do not support the installation of gangs who seized and burned govern- this new political power. The new Moscow is keenly aware of ment offices, killed riot police, and Ukrainian authorities are massively Washington’s divide and conquer spread mayhem and terror across the burning the offices of political par- strategy, but has downplayed the issue country. These are America’s new allies ties they do not like, and have pub- in order to avoid a confrontation. The in the Great Game, the grand plan to licly announced the threat of crimi- U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine means “pivot to Asia” by pushing further east- nal prosecution and prohibition of political parties and public organi- ward, toppling peaceful governments, that that option is no longer feasible. Russia will have to respond to a provo- zations that do not share the ideol- securing vital pipeline corridors, ogy and goals of the new regime.” accessing scarce oil and natural gas cation that threatens both its security and vital interests. Early reports sug- (“USA and EU Are Erecting a Nazi reserves and dismantling the Russian Regime on Ukrainian Territory,” gest that Putin has already mobilized Federation consistent with the strategy Natalia Vitrenko) proposed by geopolitical mastermind, troops to the East and, according to Reuters, “put fighter jets along its west- Earlier in the week, Israeli newspa- Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski’s mag- per Haaretz reported that a Ukranian num opus–The Grand Chessboard: ern borders on combat alert.” Here’s more from Reuters: synagogue had been firebombed American Primacy and it’s Geostrategic although the “Molotov cocktails struck “The United States says any Imperatives has become the Mein the synagogue’s exterior stone walls Russian military action would be a Kampf for aspiring western imperial- and caused little damage.” ists. It provides the basic blueprint for grave mistake. But Russia’s foreign establishing U.S. military-political- ministry said in a statement that Another article in Haaretz referred economic hegemony in the century’s Moscow would defend the rights of to recent developments as “the new most promising and prosperous region, its compatriots and react without dilemma for Jews in Ukraine.” Here’s compromise to any violation of Asia. In an article in Foreign Affairs an excerpt from the article: those rights.” (Reuters) Brzezinski laid out his ideas about neu- “The greatest worry now is not the tralizing Russia by splitting the country There’s going to be a confrontation, uptick in anti-Semitic incidents but into smaller parts, thus, allowing the it’s just a matter of whether the fighting the major presence of ultra-national- U.S. to maintain its dominant role in will escalate or not. ist movements, especially the promi- nence of the Svoboda party and Pravy the region without threat of challenge In order to topple Yanukovych, the Sektor (right sector) members among or interference. Here’s an excerpt from U.S. had to tacitly support fanatical the demonstrators. Many of them are the article: groups of neo-Nazi thugs and anti- calling their political opponents “Given (Russia’s) size and diver- Semites. And, even though “Interim “Zhids” and flying flags with neo- sity, a decentralized political system Ukrainian President Oleksander Nazi symbols. There have also been and free-market economics would Tuchynov has pledged to do every- reports, from reliable sources, of these be most likely to unleash the creative thing in his power to protect the coun- movements distributing freshly trans-

24 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 lated editions of Mein Kampf and the He outrageously claimed they plan Naturally, Russia is worried about Protocols of the Elders of Zion in ‘genocide’ against Ukrainians.… developments in Ukraine, but is unsure Independence Square.” (“Anti- “Tyahnybok extremism didn’t how to react. Here’s how Russian PM Semitism, though a real threat, is deter Assistant Secretary of State for Dmitry Medvedev summed it up the being used by the Kremlin as a politi- European and Eurasian Affairs other day: cal football,” Haaretz) Victoria Nuland. On February 6, she “We do not understand what is Then there’s this, from Dr. Inna met openly with him and other anti- going on there. A real threat to our Rogatchi in Arutz Sheva: government leaders. interests (exists) and to the lives and “There is no secret concerning “In early January, 15,000 ultra- health of our citizens. Strictly speak- the real political agenda and pro- nationalists held a torchlight march ing, today there is no one there to grams of ultra-nationalist parties in through Kiev. They did so to honor communicate with … If you think Ukraine—there is nothing close to Nazi-era collaborator/mass murder- that people in black masks waving European values and goals there. er Stepan Bandera. Some wore uni- Kalashnikovs (represent) a govern- One just should open existing docu- forms a Wehrmacht Ukrainian divi- ment, then it will be difficult for us ments and hear what the representa- sion used in WW II. Others chanted to work with such a government.” tives of those parties proclaim daily. ‘Ukraine above all’ and ‘Bandera, come and bring order.’” (Steve Clearly, Moscow is confused and They are sharply anti-European, and worried. No one expects the world’s highly racist. They have nothing to Lendman blog) only superpower to behave this irratio- do with the values and practices of Of course, the U.S. media has down- the civilized world… nally, to hop-scotch across the planet played the fascistic-neo-Nazi “ethnic creating one failed state after another, “Ukrainian Jewry is facing a real purity” element of the Ukrainian coup fomenting revolt, breeding hatred, and and serious threat….To empower in order to focus on—what they spreading misery wherever it goes. At the openly neo-Nazi movements in think—are more “positive themes,” Europe by ignoring the threat they present, the Obama team is operating like the knocking down of statues of at full-throttle trying to topple regimes pose is an utterly risky business. Lenin or banning Communist party People should not have to pay a ter- in Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, and god- members from participating in rible price—again—for the meek- knows where else. At the same time, ness and indifference of their lead- Parliament. As far as the media is con- failed operations in Afghanistan, Iraq ers. As Ukraine today has become cerned, these are all signs of progress. and Libya have left all three countries the tragic show-case for all of Europe Ukraine is gradually succumbing to in dire straights, ruled by regional war- with regards to breeding and allow- the loving embrace of the New World lords and armed militias. Medvedev ing race-hatred to become a violent Order where it will serve as another has every right to be concerned. and uncontrollable force, it is profit-generating cog in Wall Street’s imperative to handle the situation Who wouldn’t be? The U.S. has gone there in accordance with existing wheel. That’s the theory, at least. It off the rails, stark raving mad. The archi- international law and norms of civi- hasn’t occurred to the boneheads at the tecture for global security has collapsed lization.” (“Tea With Neo-Nazis: New York Times or Washington Post while the basic principals of interna- The Violent Nationalism in that Ukraine is rapidly descending into tional law have been jettisoned. The Ukraine,” Arutz Sheva) Mad Max-type anarchy which could rampaging U.S. juggernaut lurches from Here’s a little more background on spill over its borders into neighboring one violent confrontation to the next the topic by progressive analyst Stephen countries triggering violent conflagra- without rhyme or reason, destroying Lendmen from a February 25 post tions, social upheaval, regional insta- everything in its path, forcing millions to titled “New York Times: Supporting bility or—god help us—WWIII. The flee their own countries, and pushing the U.S. Imperial Lawlessness:” MSM [Managed Security Monitoring] world closer to the abyss. Isn’t that rea- sees nothing but silver linings as if “Washington openly backs fas- son enough to be concerned? everything was going according to cist Svoboda party leader Oleh Now Obama has thrown-in with the plan. All of Eurasia, the Middle East Tyahnybok…In 2004, Tyahnybok Nazis. It’s just the icing on the cake. was expelled from former President and beyond are being pacified and Viktor Yushchenko’s parliamentary integrated into one world government Check out this blurb from Max faction. He was condemned for urg- overseen by the unitary executive who Blumenthal’s latest titled “Is the U.S. ing Ukrainians to fight against a defers to no one but the corporations Backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine?:” ‘Muscovite-Jewish mafia.’ and financial institutions who control “Right Sector is a shadowy syndi- “In 2005, he denounced ‘crimi- the levers of power behind imperial cate of self-described ‘autonomous nal activities’ of ‘organized Jewry.’ shoji-screen. What could go wrong? nationalists’ identified by their skin-

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 25 head style of dress, ascetic lifestyle, and fascination with street violence. Corporate Interests Behind Ukraine Putsch Armed with riot shields and clubs, By J.P. Sottile the group’s cadres have manned the front lines of the Euromaidan bat- tles this month, filling the air with On January 12, a reported 50,000 Hill and perplexed policymakers in the their signature chant: ‘Ukraine “pro-Western” Ukrainians descended White House. above all!’ In a recent Right Sector upon Kiev’s Independence Square to It’s even starker when compared to propaganda video the group prom- protest against the government of the anxiety expressed by Morgan ised to fight ‘against degeneration President Viktor Yanukovych. Stoked Williams, President and CEO of and totalitarian liberalism, for tradi- in part by an attack on opposition the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council— tional national morality and family leader Yuriy Lutsenko, the protest which, according to its website, has values.’ marked the beginning of the end of been “Promoting U.S.-Ukraine busi- “With Svoboda linked to a con- Yanukovych’s four-year-long govern- ness relations since 1995.” Williams stellation of international neo-fas- ment. was interviewed by the International cist parties through the Alliance of That same day, the Financial Times Business Times on March 13 and, European National Movements, reported a major deal for U.S. agribusi- despite Cargill’s demonstrated willing- Right Sector is promising to lead its army of aimless, disillusioned young ness titan Cargill. ness to spend, he said, “The instability men on ‘a great European Despite the turmoil within has forced businesses to just go about Reconquest.’” (“Is the U.S. Backing Ukrainian politics after Yanukovych their daily business and not make Neo-Nazis in Ukraine?—Exposing rejected a major trade deal with the future plans for investment, expansion troubling ties in the U.S. to overt European Union just seven weeks ear- and hiring more employees.” Nazi and fascist protesters in lier, Cargill was confident enough In fact, Williams, who does double- Ukraine,” Max Blumenthal, about the future to fork over $200 mil- duty as Director of Government Affairs AlterNet) lion to buy a stake in Ukraine’s at the private equity firm SigmaBleyzer, “Family values” Where have we UkrLandFarming. According to claimed, “Business plans have been at a heard that before? Financial Times, UkrLandFarming is standstill.” It’s clear, that Obama and his brai- the world’s eighth-largest land cultiva- Apparently, he wasn’t aware of niac advisors think they have a handle tor and second biggest egg producer. Cargill’s investment, which is odd on this thing and can train this den of And those aren’t the only eggs in given the fact that he could’ve simply vipers to click their heels and follow Cargill’s increasingly-ample basket. called Van A. Yeutter, Vice President Washington’s directives, but it sounds On December 13, Cargill announced for Corporate Affairs at Cargill, and like a bad bet to me. These are hard- the purchase of a stake in a Black Sea asked him about his company’s quite core, died-in-the-wool, Nazi- port. Cargill’s port at Novorossiysk— active business plan. There is little extremists. They won’t be bought-off, to the east of Russia’s strategically sig- doubt Williams has the phone number co-opted or intimidated. They have an nificant and historically important because Mr. Yuetter serves on the agenda and they aim to pursue that Crimean naval base—gives them a Executive Committee of the selfsame agenda to their last, dying breath. major entry-point to Russian markets U.S.-Ukraine Business Council. It’s Of all the dumb plans Washington and adds them to the list of Big Ag quite a cozy investment club, too. has come up with in the last couple companies investing in ports around According to his SigmaBleyzer pro- years, this is the dumbest. the Black Sea, both in Russia and file, Williams “started his work regard- Ukraine. Mike Whitney lives in Washington ing Ukraine in 1992” and has since State. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Cargill has been in Ukraine for over advised American agribusinesses Barack Obama and the Politics of two decades, investing in grain eleva- “investing in the former Soviet Union.” Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also tors and acquiring a major Ukrainian As an experienced fixer for Big Ag, he available in a Kindle edition. animal feed company in 2011. And, must be fairly friendly with the folks on based on its investment in the Executive Committee. —CounterPunch, Weekend Edition, UkrLandFarming, Cargill was decid- February 28-March 2, 2014 edly confident amidst the post-EU deal Big Ag luminaries chaos. It’s a stark juxtaposition to the And what a committee it is—it’s a http://www.counterpunch. alarm bells ringing out from the U.S. veritable who’s who of Big Ag. Among org/2014/02/28/obamas-dumbest-plan-yet/ media, bellicose politicians on Capitol the luminaries working tirelessly and

26 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 no doubt selflessly for a better, freer as “the breadbasket” of the Soviet spike in “all kinds” of Ukrainian meat Ukraine are: Union. The CIA ranks Soviet-era exports, with an increase of 8.1 percent • Melissa Agustin, Director, Inter- Ukraine second only to Mother Russia overall and staggering 71.4 percent national Government Affairs and as the “most economically important spike in pork exports. No wonder Eli Trade for Monsanto component of the former Soviet Lilly is represented on the U.S.-Ukraine Union.” Business Council’s Executive • Brigitte Dias Ferreira, Counsel, In many ways, the farmland of Committee. Its Elanco Animal Health International Affairs for John unit is a major manufacturer of feed Deere Ukraine was the backbone of the USSR. Its “fertile black soil” generated over a supplements. • Steven Nadherny, Director, Insti- quarter of the USSR’s agriculture. It And it is also notable that tutional Relations for agriculture exported “substantial quantities” of Monsanto’s planned seed plant is non- equipment-maker CNH Indus- food to other republics and its farms GMO, perhaps anticipating an emerg- trial generated four times the output of “the ing GMO-unfriendly European market • Jeff Rowe, Regional Director for next-ranking republic.” and Europe’s growing appetite for DuPont Pioneer Although Ukraine’s agricultural organic foods. When it comes to Big • John F. Steele, Director, Interna- output plummeted in the first decade Ag’s profitable future in Europe, the tional Affairs for Eli Lilly and after the break-up of the Soviet Union, stakes couldn’t be higher. Company the farming sector has been growing For Russia and its hampered farm- And, of course, Cargill’s Van A. spectacularly in recent years. While ing economy, it’s another in a long Yeutter. But Cargill isn’t alone in their Europe struggled to shake-off the Great string of losses to U.S. encroachment— warm feelings toward Ukraine. Recession, Ukraine’s agriculture sector from NATO expansion into Eastern As Reuters reported in May 2013, grew 13.7 percent in 2013. Europe to U.S. military presence to its Monsanto—the largest seed company Ukraine’s agriculture economy is south and onto a major shale gas devel- in the world—plans to build a $140 hot. Russia’s is not. Hampered by the opment deal recently signed by million “non-GM (genetically modi- effects of climate change and 25 mil- Chevron in Ukraine. fied) corn seed plant in Ukraine.” lion hectares of uncultivated agricul- So, why was Big Ag so bullish on And right after the decision on the tural land, Russia lags behind its for- Ukraine, even in the face of so much EU trade deal, Jesus Madrazo, mer breadbasket. uncertainty and the predictable reac- Monsanto’s Vice President for According to the Centre for Eastern tion by Russia? Corporate Engagement, reaffirmed his Studies, Ukraine’s agricultural exports The answer is that the seeds of company’s “commitment to Ukraine” rose from $4.3 billion in 2005 to $17.9 Ukraine’s turn from Russia have been and “the importance of creating a billion in 2012 and, harkening the hey- sown for the last two decades by the favorable environment that encourages day of the USSR, farming currently persistent Cold War alliance between innovation and fosters the continued accounts for 25 percent of its total corporations and foreign policy. It’s a development of agriculture.” exports. Ukraine is also the world’s version of the “Deep State” that is usu- Monsanto’s strategy includes a little third-largest exporter of wheat and of ally associated with the oil and defense “hearts and minds” public relations, corn. And corn is not just food. It is industries, but also exists in America’s too. On the heels of Mr. Madrazo’s also ethanol. other heavily subsidized industry— reaffirmation, Monsanto announced “a agriculture. Feeding Europe social development program titled Morgan Williams is at the nexus of ‘Grain Basket of the Future’ to help But people gotta eat—particularly Big Ag’s alliance with U.S. foreign pol- rural villagers in the country improve in Europe. As Frank Holmes of U.S. icy. To wit, SigmaBleyzer touts Mr. their quality of life.” The initiative will Global Investors assessed in 2011, Williams’ work with “various agencies dole out grants of up to $25,000 to Ukraine is poised to become Europe’s of the U.S. government, members of develop programs providing “educa- butcher. Meat is difficult to ship, but Congress, congressional committees, tional opportunities, community Ukraine is perfectly located to satiate the Embassy of Ukraine to the U.S., empowerment, or small business Europe’s hunger. international financial institutions, development.” Just two days after Cargill bought think tanks and other organizations on The well-crafted moniker “Grain into UkrLandFarming, Global Meat U.S.-Ukraine business, trade, invest- Basket of the Future” is telling because, News (yes, “Global Meat News” is a ment and economic development once upon a time, Ukraine was known thing) reported a huge forecasted issues.”

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 27 As President of the U.S.-Ukraine PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan who, does list the Coca-Cola Company, Business Council, Williams has access as coincidence would have it, is mar- ExxonMobil and Raytheon as major to Council cohort—David Kramer, ried to Victoria “F*ck the EU” Nuland, sponsors. And, to close the circle of President of Freedom House. Officially the current Assistant Secretary of State influence, the U.S.-Ukraine Business a non-governmental organization, it for European and Eurasian Affairs. Council is also listed as a supporter. has been linked with overt and covert Interestingly enough, Ms. Nuland Which brings the story back to Big “democracy” efforts in places where spoke to the U.S.-Ukrainian Ag’s fixer—Morgan Williams. the door isn’t open to American inter- Foundation last December 13, extol- ests—a.k.a. U.S. corporations. Although he was glum about the ling the virtues of current state of investment in Ukraine, Freedom House, the National the Euromaidan movement as the he’s gotta wear shades when he looks Endowment for Democracy and embodiment of “the principles and into the future. He told the International National Democratic Institute helped values that are the cornerstones for all Business Times, “The potential here for fund and support the Ukrainian free democracies.” agriculture/agribusiness is amazing … “Orange Revolution” in 2004. Freedom Nuland also told the group that the production here could double. The House is funded directly by the U.S. United States had invested more than world needs the food Ukraine could Government, the National Endowment $5 billion in support of Ukraine’s produce in the future. Ukraine’s agri- for Democracy and the U.S. “European aspirations,” meaning pull- culture could be a real gold mine.” Department of State. ing Ukraine away from Russia. She Of course, his priority is to ensure David Kramer is a former Deputy made her remarks on a dais featuring a that the bread of well-connected busi- Assistant Secretary of State for backdrop emblazoned with a Chevron nesses gets lavishly buttered in Russia’s European and Eurasian Affairs and, logo. former breadbasket. And there is no according to his Freedom House bio Also, her colleague and phone call better-connected group of Ukraine- page, formerly a “Senior Fellow at the buddy U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine interested corporations than American Project for the New American Geoffrey Pyatt helped Chevron cook agribusiness. Century.” up their 50-year shale gas deal right in Given the extent of U.S. official Nuland’s role Russia’s kitchen. involvement in Ukrainian politics— That puts Kramer and, by one Although Chevron sponsored that including the interesting fact that degree of separation, Big Ag fixer event, it is not listed as a supporter of Ambassador Pyatt pledged U.S. assis- Morgan Williams in the company of the Foundation. But the Foundation tance to the new government in inves- tigating and rooting-out corruption— Cargill’s seemingly risky investment strategy probably wasn’t that risky, after all. J.P. Sottile is a freelance journalist, radio co-host, documentary filmmaker and former broadcast news producer in Washington, D.C. —Consortium News, March 16, 2014 http://consortiumnews. com/2014/03/16/corporate-interests- behind-ukraine-putsch/

28 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 Crimea: A Divisive, Dangerous Assault By Gabriel Levy

The Russian military action in The conflict between Russia and referendum on secession in Crimea, Crimea is dividing working people, these powers could deepen, if they feel having dealt with Chechen aspirations socialists in Ukraine are warning. The that Russia’s military aggression threat- to secession by drowning Chechnya in threat of war will exacerbate Ukraine’s ens their hegemony. That would raise a blood. His claim to be a hero of democ- economic crisis—which is already whole host of new problems—but it racy and oppressed minorities must driving the new neo-liberal govern- wouldn’t alter the fact that Putin’s war sound really weird there. ment in Kiev to attack living standards. in Crimea is unilaterally bad for A key turning point in Chechnya’s Struggles over social issues could be Ukrainians and Russians trying to post-Soviet history was the declaration the starting-point for countering the make their lives better and the society of independence by Djokar Dudaev, poisonous effect of pro-Russian sepa- they live in better. the former Soviet general who was ratism on one side and extreme Putin sees war as a way of boosting elected national president, in Ukrainian nationalism on the other. his support among Russians, mobiliz- November 1991. The declaration, born But radical socialists in Kiev and in ing the Russian nationalist right (most out of two centuries or more of rebel- eastern Ukrainian cities emphasize of whom fervently support the attack lions against Russian colonialism, was that, in the immediate future, launch- on Ukraine), and forestalling social certainly supported by the vast major- ing such struggles will not be easy. protest in Russia itself, which reached a ity of Chechens. peak in 2011-12 prior to his return to The response by Russia, first under Putin’s war the presidency, and has since subsided. Boris Yeltsin and then under Putin, Putin is absolutely right on one Putin’s claim that he ordered a was a series of frightful military assaults. point: the western powers’ protests at “humanitarian mission” in Crimea is Thousands of civilians were killed, the Russian action in Crimea are com- laughable. There is no threat to Russian raped and tortured. Yeltsin’s onslaught, pletely hypocritical. Putin said at his speakers or Russian citizens that could culminating in the blitzkrieg of March 4 press conference that, when possibly justify it. True, the Ukrainian December 1994, failed. Putin sent the western leaders told him the action was parliament on March 2 idiotically pro- Russian military back to Chechnya in “illegitimate,” “I have to recall the posed the repeal of a law allowing local 1999, first bombing the towns into action of the USA in Afghanistan, Iraq governments to use Russian as an offi- submission, and then striking fear into and Libya.” cial language where appropriate— villages with hundreds of “disappear- Some on the European left, who although acting president Olexander ances” of young men. view the world primarily as a geopoliti- Turchinov has so far desisted from The hypocrites in the western gov- cal conflict between the U.S.-UK led approving the repeal. ernments were busy perpetrating war alliance and the rest—rather than in But the aggressive actions of an esti- crimes of their own in Iraq, and never terms of social and class dynamics— mated 20,000 Russian troops in Crimea took action over Russian war crimes in focus on this comparison, and suggest have done 100 times more than the Chechnya. In 2001, the British Labor that the removal of former Ukrainian Ukrainian parliament to stoke tension politician turned NATO secretary gen- president Viktor Yanukovich is largely between Russians and Ukrainians who eral, George Robertson, notoriously the work of right-wing actors support- have historically lived together peace- excused these crimes, saying that ed by the USA. fully in eastern Ukraine. Russia’s war on Chechen nationalists “looked different” in the light of the Such a view ignores the complex Warmongering is central to power west’s own “war on terror.” character of the movement that felled in Russia, no less than in the USA. It Yanukovich. It ignores Putin’s real was the murderous onslaught on Putin installed a pro-Russian pup- motives. And it exaggerates the role of Chechnya—which for sheer brutality pet regime in Chechnya. Its current western powers—who are divided, and criminality, if not scale, surely president, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been with the USA putting the emphasis on rivaled the Iraq war—that defined and one of the most vocal supporters of containing Russia’s military ambitions, consolidated Putin’s presidency. Putin’s assault on Crimea. but Germany and others keener to pre- It would be interesting to know how On March 2, the day the Crimea serve economic relationships with people in Chechnya view Putin’s action action began, about 300 protesters Russia. in Crimea. Putin is supporting today’s were arrested in Moscow, protesting

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 29 against the war; on March 15 there was ily not in Svoboda’s government posi- ‘Banderites.’ [A catchall term for an antiwar demonstration of about tions, but in the widespread presence Ukrainian nationalists commonly used 50,000 people in the Russian capital. of self-defense units, some armed, in Russia. Stepan Bandera was a Social and labor movements in Europe some of which are controlled by Ukrainian nationalist leader whose should support such actions. Svoboda and the Right Sector, and armed forces fought the Soviet Red some of which have been operating Army during the Second World War.] The new Ukrainian government joint patrols with the police. Svoboda “Let me explain about my own The new government in Kiev is neo- deputies have proposed a law legalizing case,” K wrote. “I am not a nationalist, liberal, but not fascist, as some these units, and leftists fear that they I speak Russian [not Ukrainian], I European leftists claim. Ukraine’s will have access to information on served in the Soviet and Russian armed economy is in crisis, its state finances labor activists collected by the police. forces, I do not see Bandera as a are in trouble, and the new prime min- The European left should work in soli- Ukrainian hero, I did not support ister, neo-liberal economist Arseniy darity with our Ukrainian friends Maidan, I have a negative view of a Yatseniuk, is set to negotiate a loan against such dangers. whole lot of decisions taken by the package with the IMF. Voices of the Ukrainian left Ukrainian parliament [since the oust- An earlier package, arranged in ing of Yanukovich], and I have many “Putin’s war is directed first of all at 2008, had conditions attached—slash- friends in Russia. But, all the same, I the Russian population. It is designed ing the public sector wage bill, reform- am a citizen of Ukraine, and I will to bolster Putin’s popularity and to ing the pension system and raising tar- defend Ukraine’s independence in a weaken the Russian opposition,” iffs for gas, electricity and municipal struggle with the whip-cracking Volodymyr Ishchenko of the Commons services—that all previous govern- Putinites and defend all the nationali- journal, based in Kiev, said in an inter- ments failed to meet. Yatseniuk has said ties in my country.” he will implement whatever the Fund view. “What other conceivable reason —People and Nature, March 16, demands, although such an attempt can there be for attacking Crimea?” 2014 could easily bring down his weak coali- Ishchenko said: “My impression is tion. Government assaults on living that, while in western and central http://peopleandnature.wordpress. standards, and on welfare, education Ukraine, the Russian invasion con- com/2014/03/16/crimea-a-divisive-dan- and social provision carried over from firmed in people’s minds what they gerous-assault/ Soviet times, will present a challenge to always suspected about Russia’s impe- social and labor movements. rialist intentions, in the south and east Batkivshchina (Fatherland), the the population is really polarized. party led by Yatseniuk and former “The ‘pro-Russian’ rallies are not Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, is demanding that Yanukovich returns. partnered in the coalition by Svoboda, He is politically dead. Some of the the right-wing nationalist, Populist demonstrations are separatist; some Party, whose leadership is full of anti- simply want more autonomy for the Semites. Svoboda has a deputy Prime regions. My hope is that actions around Minister-ship, three Ministries and social issues can gain support from control of the general prosecutor’s both sides, but this will not happen office. Some other Ministers are for- easily or soon.” mer radical rightists now in the parlia- Activists in eastern Ukraine who I mentary right. contacted by email underlined the com- The Right Sector coalition—which plexity of local people’s attitudes. Hostility during the Maidan demonstrations to the new government in Kiev does not brought together groups to the right of automatically translate into support for Svoboda, including fascists and neo- Putin’s invasion, K., a university research- Nazis—has stayed out of the govern- er from Zaporozhia, wrote. ment. Its leader Dmitry Yarosh was “If war starts in Ukraine, the limited offered the post of deputy head of the contingent of Russian armed forces national Security Council but declined. will come up against paradoxes that The immediate danger from the can hardly have been considered in right wing and fascists consists primar- Putin’s strategy of getting ready to fight

30 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3

International INTERNATIONAL British Antiwar Movement and Russian Antiwar Protesters The argument against Western imperialism can only be strengthened by a firm opposition to other imperialisms By Mike Marqusee It really should be easy enough to opment. It solves nothing and gener- ior. But will evading or exonerating the condemn Russia’s action in Ukraine ates only further problems. Russian action really enhance unity in while at the same time rejecting and opposition to U.S.-EU warmaking? It’s campaigning against U.S.-EU military The main enemy? an approach that many are bound to intervention. Sadly, there are some in Those who want the antiwar move- find objectionable. the antiwar movement who see this as ment in Britain to condemn Russia’s Western military intervention in an awkward proposition. actions have been reminded that “the Ukraine seems unlikely, but the rhe- Russian imperialism is as unaccept- main enemy is at home.” The assump- torical indignation of Western leaders able as U.S.-EU imperialism. In this tion seems to be that condemning plays an insidious role: part of a long- region it has a long and brutal history. Russia’s crime will undermine opposi- term effort to repair an imperial ideol- The British antiwar movement should tion to war. But what will undermine ogy discredited by Afghanistan and be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with us far more are unreal descriptions of Iraq. When liberals lament the “impo- antiwar protesters in Russia, who face events, evasive positions and “special tence” of the West, they’re setting the serious dangers, not equivocating pleading.” If people are led to believe stage for a reassertion of Western about Putin. by our own behavior that we are not “masculinity”—as and when conve- really an antiwar movement but The Maidan movement cannot be nient. Mirroring Western rationales, Russian apologists, “the main enemy” Moscow characterizes its military reduced to an imperialist plot. There will be strengthened. were more than enough good reasons intervention as a humanitarian mis- for people to be angry at the Yanukovich It is perfectly possible to challenge sion of protection. At this moment, in government; it didn’t need “outside Western imperialism without justify- relation to Ukraine, imperial hypocri- agitators” of any kind. There were and ing the Russian variety. Making your sies, Western and Russian, seem are various elements within the Maidan own government the immediate focus boundless. movement, including, but certainly of campaigning does not entail ignor- We won’t be able to offer an alter- not restricted to, far-right nationalists. ing the rest of the picture. Yes, Western native to this hall of mirrors by match- Their actions in recent weeks have imperialism poses more dangers to ing one double standard with another. been frightening and their role in the more people, globally, but that does It’s always a corrupting practice, as a new government does indeed make a not make Russian imperialism any left wing version of realpolitik takes the mockery of Western claims to be more acceptable or Ukraine’s right to place of a politics of solidarity. self-determination any less urgent. defending human rights. The argument against Western Nonetheless, the demand of the We will be asked in public, by the pub- imperialism can only be strengthened Maidan for an end to corrupt oligarchic lic: “What about Russia?” In this context, by a firm opposition to other imperial- government was just and necessary. to answer simply that “the main enemy is isms. This is a common human cause, That claim is not vitiated by the fact at home” will be seen as stonewalling. isn’t it? that at the moment a particular branch There’s a patronizing notion that we Mike Marqusee writes a regular col- of the ruling class (as venal as those can’t do “two things at the same time,” umn for Red Pepper, “Contending for they have replaced) has reaped the that we can’t handle complexity, that the Living,” and is the author of a num- spoils. Like other protest movements in there must be a hierarchy of identifi- ber of books on the politics of culture, on recent years, the Maidan’s politics and able good guys and bad guys. The anti- topics ranging from cricket to Bob Dylan. ideology were and are ambiguous and war movement is seen as a fragile inevitably still in formation. ensemble. Actually, it’s more robust —redpepper.org, March 5, 2014 Outside interference, from either and more sophisticated than that. Russia or the West, blocks or distorts The need for unity is cited as a rea- http://www.redpepper.org.uk/ this necessary process of political devel- son not to dwell on Russian misbehav- ukraine-russia-antiwar-movement/

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 31 Spain’s Massive March Against Austerity ‘Bread, A Roof, Rights and Dignity for All Workers!’ By Common Dreams staff

March 22, 2014—Hundreds-of- an unprecedented capitalist crisis and nesses with impunity, destroying most thousands of people have trekked across without any measures on the part of the real productive fabric, both indus- Spain to protest austerity they claim is this illegitimate government other than trial and agricultural, which could give destroying their country. Under the ban- misery, precariousness and repression, work to the majority of the population. ner of “No More Cuts!” the protesters are rulers who act as real representatives of In this context women have long had calling for an end to the Spanish govern- big banks, employers and big business, fewer rights: the right to live without ment’s “empty promises.” of capitalism, under the order of the male violence or to decide over our own Six columns of protesters, some walk- Troika (the European Commission, bodies the right to family planning. the Central European Bank and the ing; others in trains, cars and buses— In our country if you were born International Monetary Fund). each from a different region of Spain— somewhere else in the world, if your arrived at the outskirts of the city early We’re living in a situation in which skin’s a different color or you have Saturday before heading for Colon every minute we’re being pushed to another religion, they take away your square, carrying banners bearing the brink, a situation against which we fundamental rights (healthcare, educa- slogan M22 or ‘‘Marches for Dignity.’’ must all start to give a real, collective, tion, etc.) and can even shut you up in By late Saturday afternoon, Madrid’s mass answer, by fighting from the an Internment Center, even though main boulevard, Paseo del Prado, was grassroots, from our different territo- you’ve committed no crime. completely packed with loud chants ries but with one voice. Because with Simply for speaking our own minority against austerity policies and cuts to every day that goes by, the situation is language, simply for wanting to live in social programs. getting more agonizing, more difficult. accordance with the culture of our land, Reuters reports: In the Spanish State there are hun- we can be fined or even thrown into dreds-of-thousands of us who have lost prison like during Franco’s fascist dicta- “I’m here to fight for my children’s our homes or who don’t receive bene- torship, but now they call it democracy. future,” said Michael Nadeau, a 44-year-old entrepreneur, among the fits for dependents. There are more Fines and criminal penalties, throng of protesters. than six million of us without paid imposed just for exercising the right of work and unemployed. We’ve got tens- freedom of speech or the right to dis- “For those who are in power we’re of-thousands of working people with- just numbers. They value money more obey unjust laws, are heavy, but the cor- than they value people,” he said, shout- out any unemployment benefits at all. rupt élite never go to prison and never ing to be heard above the din of chant- There are more than a million of us have to pay for the damage they cause. ing, singing, whistling and drumming... who are living below the poverty line— While the Government continues to and all that’s going down while the “Bread, jobs and housing for hand out cash to big building firms, to everyone,” read one banner, “Popular Party” continues with its the energy companies, to bankers and “Corruption and robbery, Spain’s cuts, destroying and robbing the health to corrupt businessmen, etc., they’re trademark,” said another. system, education, culture, pensions, leaving us with no work, no house, no closing down local television stations “(I’m here because) I’m sick of this healthcare, no pensions, no university system they call democracy,” said Jose that are essential to the survival of grants, no schools, no education, no Luis Arteaga, a 58-year-old teacher minority languages and other public future: in a word no life. services. And they go on privatizing whose wage has been cut 20 percent. They’re raising taxes, the price of anything that’s profitable and giving “I want things to change.” energy and basic products for the poor- tax benefits to the rich (bankers, big This is the text of the Marches for est of us, while they’re reducing to a business, the Church, etc.) bare minimum employers’ social secu- Dignity’s manifesto: There are more than 500,000 of us, rity contributions, to “create” work, No to pay the debt; No more cuts; young and not so young people, who they cynically say, and they turn a blind Out governments Troika; Bread, have been forced to emigrate in order eye to massive fraud, corruption and work and shelter for all! to try to eke out our living in one way capital flight. And without money We’re starting 2014 with no or another. And despite this, they go on we’re left with no house, no job and no improvement for the workers, sunk in shutting down small and medium busi- wherewithal to survive.

32 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 Both the so-called Popular Party social expenditure is guaranteed the Spanish State! (PP) and the so-called Spanish Socialist above everything else. We want to live and work with dig- Workers’ Party (PSOE) are the culprits. • A guarantee of the right to decide, nity in our land with our people! To reduce us to this situation they in all spheres, as persons, work- made the constitutional reform in 2011, To defend all that is and should be ers, peoples. Because we demand ours, struggle is the only way! a Treaty with the European Union and real democracy. an Organic Law to guarantee payment Bread, a roof, rights and dignity for of the debt and, if need be, to suppress In order to advance in the construc- all workers. tion of unity and people’s power … we any public institution (like the Statute —Common Dreams, March 22, 2014 of Autonomy of the Valencian Country) must advance in the Marches for http://www.commondreams.org/ if it doesn’t reduce its debt (and so its Dignity so we can arrive in Madrid on headline/2014/03/22-1 provision of public services) whenever March 22 from all cardinal points of and however they want. We fought with great sacrifice to gain our social rights and we’re just not pre- pared to lose them. We demand from politics the transformation of our econ- omy to make it an economy at the ser- vice of humanity and to guarantee that these rights can be universally exercised. That’s why we demand: • The abrogation of all the coun- ter-reforms that have been forced down our throats (labor laws, laws affecting pensions, educa- tion, the right to safe legal abor- tion, the 15/97 act which com- moditizes healthcare, the law of civil repression, etc.) • A realistic plan against unem- ployment and a law establishing a basic income. • Stoppage of all evictions, the guarantee of the fundamental right to housing and to the basic utilities of water and energy. • Universal, free and high-quality public services. • Realistic and effective policies to ensure equal opportunities, regardless of a person’s origin, sexual orientation, gender iden- tity, diversities or age. • A guarantee of the reimburse- ment of the loans made to banks and their nationalization along with the nationalization of all strategic companies and sectors. • A fiscal policy whereby those that have more, pay more, and public

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 33 U.S. in Search for Kony By Glen Ford

The tempo of U.S. military occupa- AFRICOM has molded its public per- other bases throughout the region. tion of Africa quickens by the day. sona around the bogus doctrine of (U.S. military doctrine requires such Seizing every real and manufactured humanitarian military intervention, or air mobility between bases.) Uganda crisis as an opportunity, Washington Responsibility to Protect (R2P). says the Osprey deployment is tempo- has created a continental infrastructure AFRICOM has usurped much of the rary. However, it appears that Joseph that has already reduced most African U.S. State Department’s food aid dis- Kony has a few more good years left as armies to appendages of U.S. foreign tribution duties on the continent, and Africa’s bin Laden, the search for policy, dependencies of the Pentagon. provides medical care to hundreds-of- whom requires the movement of American armed forces operate across thousands of African military families, mountains of men, machines, money the length and breadth of Africa and thus cementing a bond between the and weapons—all, of course, to save exercise effective control over the Pentagon and virtually all the conti- little children from capture by the armies of nearly all of the continent’s nent’s armies—none of which can boogeyman of central Africa. A constituent states. move effectively through Africa’s humanitarian military intervention. undeveloped terrain without U.S. According to a study by Nick Turse, The Ospreys and Special Forces logistical support. The African Union AFRICOM, the U.S. military com- troops are a small part of AFRICOM’s seeks legitimacy through “peacekeep- mand, last year carried out “activities” continental theater of war. The largest ing” missions that it is wholly incapa- in every country on the continent U.S. unit on permanent duty in Africa, ble of executing without financing, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the except Western Sahara, Guinea Bissau, equipment, training and every other Eritrea, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Madagascar 1st Infantry Division, “carried out 128 conceivable support from AFRICOM separate ‘activities’ in 28 African coun- and Somalia. Somalia doesn’t show up or the U.S. clandestine services. in AFRICOM’s 2013 mission schedule tries” during 2013, according to Nick because the country is nominally under President Obama orchestrated the Turse. Those nations include Niger, the auspices of African Union “peace- Joseph Kony hysteria of 2011 as an Uganda, Ghana, Malawi, Burundi, keeping” forces. However, the U.S. and excuse to send at least 100 U.S. Special Mauritania, Niger, South Africa, the Europe pay for every African soldier Forces troops to the Democratic Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, and weapon engaged in the occupation Republic of Congo, Uganda, the Chad, Togo, São Tomé and Príncipe, of Somalia, while the overall operation Central African Republic and the new Sierra Leone, Guinea, Lesotho, is run by the CIA. (Egypt is considered state of South Sudan. Kony had been in Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Sudan, and part of the Middle East, for U.S. mili- hiding for years, maybe dead, his Lord’s Cameroon. In previous military exer- tary purposes.) Resistance Army decimated and no cises, up to 36 African nations have danger to Uganda, which has felt safe participated—all of them outfitted Especially in recent years, the U.S. enough to send many thousands of its with U.S. command-and-control com- often acts in concert with France, troops on (well-paid) “peacekeeping” munications equipment, requiring whose national ideology is white missions around the continent, at U.S. American trainers and maintenance. supremacy—no matter whether social- request. The Green Berets have not yet To the extent that AFRICOM ists or conservatives control the gov- found the elusive Kony-monster— ensnares the militaries of the continent ernment—and which has never accept- although they have been busy dealing in dependence on the Pentagon, ed decolonization in principle or prac- with South Sudan’s civil war between African sovereignty becomes a very tice. The Tuareg and, later, jihadist U.S.-allied generals. bad joke. Many millions are at risk rebellion in Mali, and the destabiliza- Late last month, Obama used the from the very presence of a military tion of the Central African Republic— failure to find Kony as the rationale for command who’s reason-for-being is both French semi-colonies—brought sending a unit of Osprey troop-carry- instability and war—and which must France and AFRICOM into intimate ing aircraft to Uganda, including 150 create such conditions to ensure its operational contact, with the U.S. act- Air Force Special Operations troops to continued existence on the continent. ing as airlift for French forces in Africa. service and guard them. No matter Six million have already died in the Born in the last year of George W. what the Pentagon calls it, the deploy- Democratic Republic of Congo, the Bush’s presidency but thoroughly a ment constitutes a Special Operations eastern regions of which were militarily creature of the Obama administration, base, and no doubt a precursor to seized by AFRICOM’s most reliable

34 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 partners, Rwanda and Uganda. More What’s Really Happening in Venezuela? than a million have died in Somalia, and who knows how many in the Shadows of the Weimar Republic Somali-populated Ogaden region of By Chris Gilbert Ethiopia, since the U.S.-backed 2006 Ethiopian invasion, the aftermath of Caracas, February 16, 2014— hesitant to abandon them on short which has made the Horn of Africa a Venezuela’s traditional “Youth Day” notice. Then, at around 8:00 P.M., he bastion of AFRICOM and its proxies. fell on Wednesday of last week, and addressed the nation on television—as AFRICOM brass are most proud of President Nicolás Maduro’s 10-month- he would do on the following days— their role in the 2011 bombing and old government had planned a sizable indicating that those responsible for regime change in Libya, a disaster that celebration in the city of La Victoria the violent acts were small fascist has destabilized not only Libya but the (Aragua State) where exactly 200 years groups; that there was a coup attempt entire tier of the continent to the ago to the day the national hero José in process; adding later that the intel- south—justifying renewed French Félix Ribas led a youth militia against lectual authors of the violence were the intervention and the ensuing Franco- the royalist army. The celebration ex-mayor Leopoldo López and to a American alliance as “humanitarian” included new monuments, military lesser degree the congresswoman María co-protectors of Africa. marches, a special light show, and per- Corina Machado. Maduro also tried to As BAR editors Ajamu Baraka1 and formances by the youth orchestra—all associate the state’s response to this Margaret Kimberley2 both point out in in a triumphalist spirit that was under- situation with a new government-orga- this issue of Black Agenda Report, impe- standable given the electoral victories nized pacification movement, Por La rialism in fatal decline manufactures a of last year. These victories establish Vida y Por La Paz, which is direct- quickening cascade of global confron- what one analyst calls “an electoral pla- ed against criminal violence. tation and wars in an attempt to impose teau” during the upcoming two years: a The incongruent elements in the a military brake on the system’s unrav- period in which, without being dis- President’s message were readily appar- eling. AFRICOM’s mission is to lock tracted by campaigns, the new President ent. If the responsible parties are really the continent in a cage of steel, to and cabinet can concentrate on gov- isolated fascist groups, how can they imprison it in the imperial orbit, and erning until late 2015. hope to carry out a successful coup to patrol the continental prison with Yet on that day Maduro made a d’état? Again, since the events of dependent African armies. The sce- serious error of judgment. Celebrating Wednesday constitute political vio- nario is well-advanced, and obvious to in Aragua, he had left his rearguard lence, why respond to it with a move- anyone whose vision is not deformed exposed in Caracas, while at the same ment that is specifically directed by a white supremacist worldview—a time underestimating the opposition’s against criminal violence? In fact, it is deformity that is not limited to people desperation and willingness to resort to unlikely that there could be of European descent. violence. In the capital city, the opposi- a coup under way in Venezuela in the —Black Agenda Report, April 2, tion had organized its own youth near future, because the violent groups 2014 march, composed largely of white, are too small and do not have the sup- middle-class students, drawn from the port of the military (as http://blackagendareport.com/con- private universities. Near the end of the even the Washington Post article of the tent/us-deploys-more-special-forces- day a group of these protesters turned following day begrudgingly admitted). search-kony-africa%E2%80%99s- violent, attacking the Attorney This raises the question of what the stand-osama-bin-laden General’s offices in the city center with opposition groups, who continued to stones, bricks, and Molotov cocktails. create disturbances over the weekend, 1 “Left-right White Solidarity? A comment When night had fallen, three people lay are really trying to achieve. on the New Face of 21st Century Neo-Fas- dead and a great many more were cism—Part 1,” by Ajamu Baraka To answer this question one must wounded, among the latter a signifi- attempt to understand both the general http://blackagendareport.com/content/left- cant number of the new human-rights- right-white-solidarity-comment-new-face-21st- situation of the country at the begin- century-neo-fascism-%E2%80%93-part-one trained police. ning of this new year and that of the 2 “Obama’s Imperialism,” by Margaret Kim- President Maduro’s response to opposition in particular. Following its berley these events could be called “multilev- electoral defeat last December, the http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/ el,” but perhaps is more accurately Venezuelan right-wing is more divided freedom-rider-obama%E2%80%99s-imperialism described as shotgun-style. He contin- and weaker in numbers than it has ued with the ceremonies in La Victoria, been for some time. On the other

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 35 hand, within the Bolivarian movement the media magnate Gustavo Cisneros) the chief fascist instigator López, but there is considerable discontent due to to his side brings with it two very seri- he needs to go further and actually the dire economic situation (a com- ous dangers. detain him (the international mass bined result of the global crisis and a The first of these is that—along with media will Satanize his government local economic sabotage orchestrated Maduro’s pet project of cultivating regardless). Since losing power in the by the bourgeoisie.) This means that celebrity allies—this new move is likely short run is not really a possibility, the the opposition is surely thinking about to confuse his political bases. Second real question for this still green leader the middle and long run: How to and just as important, “democratic of the Bolivarian process is: After two maintain itself as a reference during the imperialisms” and “democratic right- or three years of brushing elbows with upcoming two-year plateau? Who will wingers” are extremely treacherous celebrities, praising democratic busi- be its key leaders? Is it possible to allies in the struggle against fascism. nessmen, and looking for right-wing attract disgruntled Chavistas into History has shown that the democratic allies in the struggle against criminal its flagging ranks? bourgeoisie is as effective as a curse in and political violence, what will be left From this emerges the strategy of the fight against the violent members of the firm political base that Chávez Leopoldo López and María Corina of its own class; a curse can deal veri- bequeathed him, a base that is instinc- Machado, whom Maduro is correct in table death blows—Voltaire reminds tively anti-fascist and believes in social- pointing to as masterminding the vio- us—when accompanied by a sufficient ism? Maduro has correctly named his lence. These two are seasoned politi- amount of arsenic (i.e. working class enemy: fascism. For that very reason he cians, closely advised by the White effort.) It is clear that Maduro wants to must avoid at all costs the vacillating House, and cannot be so foolish as to be a “normal” president: a president attitudes of the left during the Weimar suppose that the televised image of who inaugurates monuments, attends Republic, which long ago showed their white university students attacking the religious services, and appears with the tragic ineffectiveness. police and burning public property will First Lady Cilia Flores. Similarly, he Chris Gilbert is professor of Political become a reference for any significant wants to imitate Chávez in his last Science in the Universidad Bolivariana part of the Chavist majority—a major- years when after many hard-won bat- de Venezuela. ity that, however unhappy it may be tles the initiator of the Bolivarian pro- —Counter Punch, February 18, 2014 about waiting in lines to buy milk, is cess had the opposition thoroughly in endowed with considerable political check. All this is understandable. But consciousness. Yet these right-wing having the opposition under control is http://www.counterpunch. ringleaders are not mistaken in think- not inherited with the Presidential org/2014/02/18/whats-really-happen- ing that, through violent street actions, sash, and Maduro’s wish to be a “nor- ing-in-venezuela/ they could salvage the opposition as mal” president some kind of political reference, indicates a nationally and internationally, and grave misun- perhaps enhance their own leadership derstanding of within its files. his historical They are playing a dirty and danger- moment. ous game. If the term fascism is All evidence abstracted from the accidental features points to how of its historical manifestations and the unpopular used more broadly to identify a move- opposition, ment that captures sectors of the mid- though fight- dle and working class for a pro-imperi- ing from the alist project—a movement that is often ropes, is in fact racist and always willing to disregard thinking about democratic results—then President the middle and Maduro is correct in calling the key long run. actors on Wednesday fascists. Yet for Maduro needs this very reason the President is himself to do the same. embarking on a dangerous game. His He has public- idea of attracting right-wing but more ly called for the democratically-inclined forces (such as detention of Dafna Rothstein Landman, Israeli draft resister

36 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 Israeli Youth Refuse to Serve By Sarah Lazare

“If necessary, I will go to jail.” years old when she began questioning conscientious objectors, since compul- Those are the words of 17-year-old her military service—a process she says sory service was imposed on Druze Dafna Rothstein Landman, one of 60 was catalyzed when she reflected on the men in 1956, approximately 5,000 have and counting Israeli youth who signed imprint of Israeli militarism on her been imprisoned for refusing to serve an open letter sent to Israeli Prime own schooling experience. “I realized in the Army. Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the to what extent the education system is “We stand in solidarity with the weekend declaring their refusal of geared towards the Army and not ultra-orthodox youth and the Arab compulsory service in the Israeli mili- towards further education, the job youth—Christian and Druze, some of tary—the biggest wave of conscien- market, personal interests, etcetera,” whom are currently in an army pris- tious objection the country has seen she said. on,” said Roni Lax, a 20-year-old sig- since 2008. Soon after, she began traveling from natory from Bnei Brak, in a state- Under the banner of Shministim— her home in Tel Aviv to the West Bank, ment about the letter emailed to Hebrew for 12th graders—the group of where she participated in Palestinian Common Dreams. conscientious objectors condemns the demonstrations against Israeli occupa- The Israeli military makes it near- dehumanization of Palestinians living tion. Here, she witnessed the “violence impossible to declare conscientious under occupation. In the Palestinian of the Army” first-hand. “I met people objector status, and refusers are often territories, “human rights are violated, from those Palestinian villages,” she jailed for multiple consecutive terms and acts defined under international said. “That meant that instead of names for refusing an order. Meanwhile, law as war-crimes are perpetuated on a in a newspaper they became people, many Druze resisters face horrific con- daily basis,” their letter states. “These with faces and personalities.” ditions in prison, including religious include assassinations (extrajudicial She added that she became aware of and ethnic discrimination. Several killings), the construction of settle- the way “the Army perpetuates an ideal Palestinian citizens of Israel from the ments on occupied lands, administra- of male violence,” within Israeli society. Druze community are currently incar- tive detentions, torture, collective pun- When she and her friends began cerated for refusing the draft. ishment and the unequal allocation of receiving letters about their Army draft “The Army serves the people in resources such as electricity and water.” around last summer, they became power and not the civilians, who are Entitled “We Refuse to Serve in the “worried” and began taking steps only a tool,” said Shaked Harari, a Occupation Army,” the letter charges towards their joint refusal. 17-year-old signatory from Bat Yam. that this dehumanization hurts Israelis This year’s crop of public resisters “My friends and I refuse to be cannon as well. “The problem with the army follows a history of joint draft refusal fodder.” does not begin or end with the damage in Israel, which has been waged since “My refusal is a way of expressing it inflicts on Palestinian society. It infil- 1970, when a group of students my opposition to the wrongs done trates everyday life in Israeli society too: declared their refusal of the draft in an daily in our name and through us,” it shapes the educational system, our open letter to then-Prime Minister said Mandy Cartner, a 16-year-old sig- workforce opportunities, while foster- Golda Meir. The term Shministim natory from Tel Aviv. ing racism, violence and ethnic, nation- caught on in 2008 when 100 young al and gender-based discrimination.” Says Dafna, “In a society where people signed an open letter refusing Army service is taken for granted, we “We refuse to forsake our principles the draft, and the years since have seen wanted to shake this concept and make as a condition to being accepted in our waves of conscientious objection. people think about the implications of society,” reads the joint letter, penned This includes resisters from the serving in the Army.” by people aged 16 to 20 who are eligible Druze religious community—a consci- —Common Dreams, March 10, 2014 for compulsory service in the Army. entious objection movement that is “We have thought about our refusal reportedly growing, as well as ultra- deeply and we stand by our decisions.” orthodox draft refusers. According to Dafna, who helped write the letter, the Committee for the Druze Initiative, http://www.commondreams.org/ told Common Dreams she was only 15 a Druze organization that supports headline/2014/03/10-5

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 37 From Cairo to Suez, Egypt Workers On Strike By Erin Cunningham

SUEZ, Egypt—Strikes staged by the week before for leading strikes for According to Hesham Sallam, co- thousands of Egyptian workers for better pay. editor of the Jadaliyya Web site pub- higher wages and better working con- “But our movement will spread in lished by the Washington-based Arab ditions in recent months are setting the face of this government,” he said. Studies Institute, workers’ needs have the stage for a possible confrontation long been thwarted by regime-friendly between the impoverished laborers Not all of Egypt’s striking workers opposition parties that claimed to and a new president after elections this are as quick to link their bread-and- speak for labor but “who sought spring. butter issues in the workplace to a wider to keep the workers quiet.” political struggle—or even to the shared The rallies and sit-ins that have pains of their fellow laborers. Just 3.8 million of Egypt’s total work- crippled the postal service, textile fac- force of 27 million people belong to the tories and even public hospitals are still Scattered strikes led by textile work- state-run unions, which this week fragmented, largely uncoordinated and ers in the Nile Delta in the late 2000s endorsed Sissi’s candidacy as “a lifeline lack unified demands. But as the cash- laid the groundwork for the anti-regime for workers.” As a result, “there are still strapped government moves to quash activism that eventually toppled large sections of the working class that labor unrest in places such as Suez, the Mubarak in 2011. Later, sustained labor are not unionized,” Hamalawy said. strikes underscore a social discontent demonstrations across several industri- that is still festering among Egypt’s al sectors also destabilized Morsi’s Demands for higher pay already embattled administration. working class and could evolve into a Both public- and private-sector more solid opposition to the military- strikers have so far focused their backed administration. demands on higher salaries, increased “Businessmen in this country have “Sissi will try to hazard pay and, in some cases, imple- sucked the blood of the people—and repress the workers, mentation of a national minimum the one who is responsible is Abdel but that means there wage. In January, the government led Fatah al-Sissi,” Ahmed Mahmoud, by then-Prime Minister Hazem el-Beb- who heads the Cairo branch of the will be another revo- lawi failed to make good on its promise Independent Union for Public lution,” she said. to grant all government workers a min- Transport Workers, said of the power- “They want democ- imum monthly salary of about $172— ful former defense minister and now up from $100. Instead, one-third of presidential hopeful. racy, but they also civil servants received a pay bump. Sissi, who spearheaded the coup want their economic More than a quarter of Egyptians against Islamist President Mohamed rights.” live under the national poverty line of Morsi last summer and recently about $570 in annual income, accord- resigned as military commander to run ing to the government’s Central Agency for the presidency, oversaw in February But decades of state control over for Public Mobilization and Statistics. the mobilization of scores of army bus workers’ unions and political parties Over the past three years of political drivers to thwart a strike led by with a weak grass-roots presence have turmoil, prices of basic goods have sky- Mahmoud’s union. Sissi’s allies have hobbled the labor movement’s ability rocketed because of inflation, a sinking included some of the corrupt business- to organize effectively on a national Egyptian currency and the depletion of men and politicians who grew rich level, activists and experts say. the country’s foreign currency reserves. under former autocrat Hosni Mubarak. The state-run Egyptian Federation “We can’t survive through the “The army and police are stronger of Trade Unions, founded in 1957, has month,” said Osama Rashed, a 38-year than us,” Mahmoud, 49, said at a rally “always worked as the regime’s arm in veteran of the postal service who said held by government postal workers suppressing labor strikes” by routinely he receives a monthly salary of $143. outside the cabinet building in Cairo siding with the government over the Rashed and his colleagues, who last month. Police had arrested and workers, said Hossam el-Hamalawy, a were demonstrating outside the cabi- detained five postal employees in prominent activist with Egypt’s net building on the same day as the Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city, Revolutionary Socialists movement. transport workers, say the government

38 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 eats into their paychecks with fees for them for terrorism if they did not sign for the Egyptian armed forces did not such things as uniforms, chairs and resignation letters and leave the com- respond to requests for comment. ceiling fans in the summer—goods pany, Cleopatra workers and labor “They kept saying that if we did not that never materialize. activists said. sign, we would go to prison,” said Arrests of workers, while sporadic, Factory owner Mohamed Aboul Ayman Nofal, one of the union mem- have sent some labor leaders under- Enein—and former Mubarak heavy- bers who was pushed out. The move ground and have angered their col- weight ally—had been locked in a has paralyzed worker organizing there, leagues on the outside. years-long struggle with workers over a current employees said. “The arrests scare the workers, but 2012 agreement for better salaries, “Like any entity in power, the mili- they also make them more defiant,” overtime pay and food allowances. In a tary does not want strikes,” Ramadan Fatma Ramadan, an independent labor telephone interview, Enein said he was said. activist, said. forced to sign the contract under duress, after employees barricaded him If he becomes president, “Sissi will Military involvement inside the factory overnight. try to repress the workers, but that means there will be another revolu- In Suez province, a critical indus- “These people belong to the Muslim tion,” she said. “They want democracy, trial center and strategic hub of global Brotherhood,” Enein said of the workers. but they also want their economic maritime trade, the military has been The Egyptian government has banned rights.” particularly involved in suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood and declared factory workers’ strikes, labor rights the group a terrorist organization. But Sharaf Al-Hourani and Lara activists say. Those actions could indi- there is no evidence the union was acting El-Gibaly contributed to this report. cate how a military-supported Sissi on behalf of the Islamist group. —Washington Post, April 10, 2014 presidency would deal with the ongo- “They always ask for money,” Enein ing labor unrest. said of the workers. “They are criminals.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/ In August, military police stormed a But company labor leaders said world/middle_east/from-cairo-to-suez- worker sit-in at the privately owned Shams’s and Enein’s close advisers egypt-workers-defy-government-with- Suez Steel Company. The workers threatened to bring the leaders’ wives labor-strikes/2014/04/11/674171d0- accused management of failing to honor and children to the military base until a713-494d-a76b-b33f5d4bc505_story. an agreement that granted them hazard they promised to leave. A spokesman html pay, healthcare and a share of the com- pany’s profits. Last month, a senior army com- mander in Suez helped eliminate the union leadership at a local factory belong- ing to international ceramics and porce- lain producer Cleopatra Ceramics, according to workers. On March 3, Maj. Gen. Mohamed Shams summoned 23 of the union’s first- and second-tier leaders to the area’s army headquarters and threatened to have Egypt’s secret police investigate

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 39 James Connolly Rises Again… In Song “No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression” —James Connolly By Chris Kinder

James Connolly, the renowned Irish Callahan has found and produced side, ‘the joyous, defiant singing of revolutionary socialist who was execut- much of Connolly’s poetic and musical revolutionary songs’ could be heard ed by the British for his leadership in works, and put them together into coming from the building.’”1 the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin, both a booklet, Songs of Freedom, and a was also a poet and a songwriter. He CD of the same title. The CD contains A third source lived in an age of mass labor upsurge songs by and about Connolly, as well as A third source of the newly recov- throughout Europe, which was also an other classics from the era, performed ered material, also suggested by Jim age in which working people loved a by numerous musicians including Lane, was the 1919 “Connolly Souvenir” good, militant song to create camara- Callahan, and vocalist Yvonne Moore. program for the memorial described derie and liven up their struggles. With The Songs of Freedom, book and above, another document which had a lyrical turn of phrase and great wit, CD, is both a collection of stirring been unavailable for almost a century. imagination, and revolutionary fervor, revolutionary songs, and a vital histor- The program is reprinted in the 2013 Connolly—when his organizing work ic document. For the first time in a Songs of Freedom. Songs to be sung (at permitted—turned out some of the hundred years, the original Songs of the 1919 event) included Connolly’s “A best heart-pumping songs of the era. Freedom, edited by James Connolly Rebel Song,” “The Watchword of Much of this material was published in and published in the U.S. in 1907, Labor,” “For Labor’s Right,” and “The newspapers of the time, or in pam- appears in this collection. (Connolly Call of Erin.” Also included in the pro- phlets, which were buried in archives. lived in the U.S., from 1903 to 1910, gram were the singing of “The For most of a century, this priceless where he joined the Socialist Labor International” and “The Red Flag.” cultural history was threatening to Party of Daniel DeLeon, and the The Connolly Souvenir reprint con- become lost forever. Industrial Workers of the World.) tains numerous ads and notices by local The writings of Connolly fared a little Callahan found the only known copy businesses, and different branches of bit better. For a long time, access to of the original Songs of Freedom in the the Irish Transport and General much of his voluminous output was National Library in Dublin. Workers Union (ITGWU), which was spotty; but following an upsurge of Prior to that discovery. Callahan formed on the one big union idea. Each interest in Connolly in the 1970s, par- had turned up another almost-lost branch of the union lists two or three dozen trades that it covers, from dock- ticularly in Ireland, things began to hap- treasure, The James Connolly Songbook, ers and canal workers to saw mill work- pen. The Communist Party of Ireland which included material from various ers and gravediggers. Also advertised published a two-volume Collected Works pamphlets and newspapers by Jim was “The Storehouse of Knowledge,” a in 1987, and more recently, a new fac- Lane of the Cork Workers Club in listing of revolutionary socialist litera- simile reprint of Connolly’s Labor In Ireland. This more recently published ture that could be ordered by mail, Irish History, originally published in booklet (1972 and 1980 editions) including numerous entries by Marx, Dublin in 1910 and republished in 1923, included in its introduction a descrip- Lenin and Trotsky, as well as Clara perhaps his major analytical work, is tion of the events surrounding the Zetkin and the German “Spartacus available in paperback. Also, a complete commemorative concert of Connolly’s Union Declaration,” among others. Internet archive of Connolly’s writings birth, held on the 5th of June 1919, is available on Marxist.org. three years after his execution. The Callahan and Moore have been tour- event was scheduled to be held in the ing internationally, including in the Bay The songs uncovered Mansion House, Dublin, but it was Area and New York. Their vigorous Now the songs of Connolly have banned by the British occupiers. Street performances of the songs of Connolly caught up, so to speak. Mat Callahan, fighting erupted, and the concert was and others have included some lyrics is a musician and leftist from the San soon moved to the Trades Hall, where for which there was no available musi- Francisco Bay Area, and founder of the the event took place despite more cal notation. In these cases, Callahan world beat band the Looters, who lives fighting in the street. “While the police wrote music for the pieces, trying to now in Switzerland. Together with an and the ‘Red Guard of the workers’ keep true to the traditional musical international group of collaborators, faced one another in the streets out- styles of the time. All have been greeted

40 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 by enthusiastic audiences, including at while polishing his spelling and gram- effect in curtailing British military the Starry Plough pub in Berkeley, mar with the help of his wife. By 1896 recruitment in Ireland. California. (The Starry Plough was the his articles had become well-known, Within the Social Democracy (the symbol and flag of the Irish Citizen and he was offered a full time job as an 2nd International), Connolly’s influ- Army, originally organized by Connolly organizer for the Dublin Socialist Club. ence was felt when two delegates from to protect workers from the police in Having just lost his job in Edinburgh, the ISRP attended the 1900 the 1913 Dublin lockout.) and now having three children to feed, International Socialist Congress in “We Only Want the Earth,” Connolly quickly accepted. Paris. This was the first international Connolly In Song Within days of arriving in Ireland, meeting to recognize Irish nationhood. From O SLAVES OF TOIL: Connolly formed the Irish Socialist But the main focus at the Congress was Republican Party (ISRP), the object of on a heated debate between reform or When man shall stand erect at last, which was: “Establishment of AN revolution. French socialist deputy And drink at wisdom’s fountain. IRISH SOCIALIST REPUBLIC based Millerand had entered the French gov- And to the earth in scorn shall cast upon the public ownership by the Irish ernment, insisting he could achieve people of the land, and instruments of reforms thereby. But reforms were pre- The chains his limbs are bound in; production, distribution and exchange. dictably illusory. Furthermore, the Then from his loins a race shall spring, Agriculture to be administered as a government included General Galliffet, Fit peer of gods and heroes, public function, under boards of man- known as the butcher of the Commune, agement elected by the agricultural for his violent role in suppressing the O, blest be they whose efforts bring population and responsible to them Paris Commune—called by Marx the That day and hour more near us and to the nation at large. All other first expression of the dictatorship of Chorus forms of labor necessary to the well- the proletariat. British, German and O, slaves of toil, no craven fear, being of the community to be con- Austrian delegations—anticipating ducted on the same principles.” their later betrayals in 1914—favored Nor dread of fell disasters The program included nationaliza- reformism; the Italian, Polish and Need daunt ye now, then up, and clear tion of railways, banks, and canals (a American delegations were divided, The earth of lords and masters major form of transportation and and only the Bulgarians and the Irish commerce in the 19th Century); with unanimously condemned Millerand’s “gradual extension” of public owner- action and proclaimed for revolution. From BE MODERATE: ship to other industries. Also included The National Question in the 2nd Some men, faint-hearted, ever seek was a 48-hour workweek, free mainte- International Our programme to retouch, nance of children, free public educa- tion through the highest levels, a grad- Connolly had another important And will insist, when’er they speak uated income tax and universal suf- difference with reformist social-demo- That we demand too much. frage. (The complete ten-point pro- crats—the national question. Connolly is well known for the emphasis on both ‘Tis passing strange, yet I declare gram is reprinted in Callahan’s intro- duction to Songs of Freedom.) socialism and national liberation, which Such statements give me mirth, pervade his work. What is less well For our demands most moderate are, War and antiwar, reform or revo- known is that much of official Social Democracy was against working class We only want THE EARTH. lution Connolly’s attitude toward imperi- participation in national struggles, on The life of James Connolly alist war took firm shape through the grounds that the struggle was for Best known for his heroic leadership events in this period. In 1899 Connolly, international socialism, and was there- role in the Easter Rising and execution through the ISRP, organized the first fore above all national struggles. But to at the age of 48, Connolly’s life prior to public protest against the Boer War, a Connolly, and Lenin, “international 1916 was a full one. Born and raised of British imperialist excursion into South socialism” was a fraud unless it recog- Irish parents in Edinburgh Scotland, Africa. Connolly said this was a war nized the right of colonial and oppressed and after a stint in an Irish battalion of “enabling an unscrupulous gang of peoples to national liberation. the British Army, Connolly became an capitalists to get into their hands the To the argument that “self-determi- active socialist by the age of 24. He immense riches of the diamond fields.” nation is not applicable to socialist joined the Social Democratic Federation, The war ground on, but the campaign society” because “socialism will abolish and wrote for its paper, Justice, all the Connolly organized had considerable every kind of national oppression,”

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 41 Lenin countered that “it would be a control, even of the limp “home rule” Ulster district organizer of the Irish betrayal of socialism to refuse to imple- sort. Belfast was the industrial heart of Transport and General Workers Union ment the self-determination of nations Ireland, while the South had remained (ITGWU), “one big union” which had under socialism.”2 The Russian mostly agricultural. Belfast was also been founded by Larkin, who had Revolution carried out Lenin’s pro- important because of close ties to become disgusted with the English- gram by offering the oppressed nation- Liverpool and Glasgow, which were based trade unions. Connolly led alities freedom from the Tsar’s “prison built up during the 19th Century. numerous struggles, including a mill house of nations,” while at the same girls’ strike in Belfast. He also worked Echoes of the “United Irishmen” time pursuing workers’ revolution as to recruit members from the British- the only solution to national as well as Connolly and his close friends and based Independent Labor Party, which economic oppression. comrades of course always organized was reformist and pseudo-internation- workers without regard to sectarian alist, to the ISRP. “Home Rule” schemes identity. Like most conscious Irish work- ers, Connolly held Wolfe Tone and the The struggle to save Irish work- For Connolly, the national question other heroes of the 1789 United Irishmen in Ireland was closely tied to a working ing-class unity rebellion in high regard. Inspired by the class and peasant opposition to capital- A capitalist priority remained pre- French Revolution, and despite being ism and landlords. Connolly and oth- venting the development of Irish work- weakened by government spies and ers like him condemned bourgeois ing-class unity such as that represented arrests of key leaders, the United Irish schemes of “home rule,” which were by Connolly’s and Larkin’s work. They rising had spread across several counties being raised by Liberals in Parliament set Protestant and Catholic workers north and south, issuing a clarion call for in the years prior to World War I, and against each other by using Catholics, united peasant and workers’ struggle which would maintain both capitalism many of whom were desperate after against imperial and social oppression, and private ownership of the land. being forced off their land by famine or and for the “Rights of Man.” “Home rule” was a scheme for contin- eviction, as low-wage workers who ued imperial domination, since home Belfast workers were crucial for uni- thus became a threat to the better-off rule bills would have merely granted a fying the working class of Ireland in Protestant workers of Belfast. The “domestic legislature” which would union, anti-imperialist or revolution- Belfast rulers corrupted Protestant possess only marginal power, while ary struggle, as well as for joint strug- workers with “home rule means Rome allowing the continued control by gles with workers in Liverpool and rule” propaganda; and in 1913 they British capital over the Irish economy. Glasgow. James Larkin, an Irish union formed the Ulster Volunteers, a While Connolly had some illusions in organizer who hailed from Liverpool Protestant militia to defend Ulster’s the inevitable development of social- and who was perhaps Connolly’s clos- union with Britain, and resist the six ism out of Irish nationalism, he never- est comrade, had great success in orga- counties’ inclusion in any home rule theless was clear that national “libera- nizing dockers in Belfast in 1907. scheme. Nationalists soon countered tion” without overthrowing capitalism Protestant and Catholic workers by forming the Irish Volunteers, asso- was worthless: remained united behind Larkin’s ban- ciated with the Irish Republican ner despite frantic efforts by the Brotherhood, IRB (i.e., Fenians, a “If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag employers to divide them along sectar- secret, oath-bound organization dating over Dublin Castle [the seat of gov- ian lines, as well as the traitorous inac- to 1857 and calling for an independent ernment in Ireland], unless you set tion of the union tops, who were head- democratic Ireland). about the organization of the Socialist quartered in London (as with most Labor fakers, in both the North and Republic your efforts would be in Irish unions). South did their part to promote home 3 vain.... England would still rule you.” After returning from several years rule, even on the basis of partition. The Liberal “home rule” schemes living and organizing in the U.S. (where Connolly took the lead in debating one also came to involve partition of Labor In Irish History was written, and William Walker, formerly of the Belfast Ireland, in which the predominantly Songs of Freedom was first published), Independent Labor Party, who left Protestant counties around industrial- Connolly waged a successful campaign Labor to promote an openly anti-Cath- ized Belfast (Ulster) remained with to free Larkin, who had been arrested olic, pro-union (i.e., of Ulster with Britain. This was important to British on trumped up charges stemming from Britain) and Protestant ascendancy. capital, which had invested in Belfast to his leadership role in the Belfast dock- Connolly used the debate to educate promote exports for the British empire, ers’ struggle. In 1911 Connolly took up the majority of English socialists who, and which opposed any loosening of its residence in Belfast, becoming the with the slogan of “international social-

42 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 ism,” were opposed to working-class to be looked after by supportive work- meeting in London’s Albert Hall, participation in national liberation and ing-class families, so they wouldn’t together with George Bernard Shaw, anti-imperialist struggles. starve in Dublin during the lockout. Delia Larkin (Jim Larkin’s sister), and Apparently the Church thought they suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst (later to “A carnival of reaction” should starve rather than be exposed to become an antiwar activist and left Connolly rightly saw the prospect of Protestantism or atheism!5 communist), to support the unionists partition of Ireland as a great disaster After months of attacks by the union of Dublin and demand Larkin’s release. for united class struggle. Partition, in busters, Connolly and Jack White, a Soon tens-of-thousands of British his words, would sink “all hopes of Protestant Ulsterman, formed the Irish workers took up the call for a general uniting the workers, irrespective of Citizen Army, an armed unit to defend strike to free Larkin. religion or old political battle cries.” the union workers. Connolly saw this Partition, Connolly said, “would mean “Still waters run deep” as a first step toward the overthrow of a carnival of reaction both North and According Sylvia Pankhurst in her British imperialism in Ireland and the South, would set back the wheels of book, The Suffragette Movement, (1931, establishment of a workers republic: progress, would destroy the oncoming reprinted 1977), the Albert Hall meet- unity of the Irish labor movement and “Hitherto the workers of Ireland ing was attended by 10,000 Laborists, paralyze all advanced movements while have fought as parts of the armies led Socialists, Suffragettes, “and reformers it endured. ....To it Labor should give by their masters, never as a member of of every school.” Of Connolly, she said the bitterest opposition, against it any army officered, trained and he was “a thick set, quiet mannered, Labor in Ulster should fight even to the inspired by men of their own class. serious-looking man,” who “gave a death, if necessary, as our fathers Now, with arms in their hands, they temperate, informative address, in fought before us.”4 propose to steer their own course, to striking contrast to the excitability of ... carve their own future.”6 the other speakers.” She saw his speech The Dublin lockout, 1913 as “an evidence of the old adage, ‘still Solidarity from English workers The Dublin Lockout was a massive waters run deep.’” struggle in 1913-14, in which 25,000 axed by labor traitors The widespread support for the workers were locked out by a cabal of Solidarity from the English working Irish workers forced the hand of the 400 employers in an attempt to break class was what was needed most to beat Labor traitors. The British Trades the transport union. Connolly had the lockout, especially solidarity strikes, Union Congress (TUC) called a special helped lead a strike in 1911-12 in and wildcat actions were quickly forth- meeting to crush the solidarity, in which the ITGWU had emerged victo- coming in significant sections of the which Ben Tillet, a key former ally who rious, and the bosses were out for rank and file workers. Railwaymen in had spoken on the same platforms with vengeful union-busting. The lockout Liverpool led the way by immediately both Larkin and Connolly, switched struggle pitted the working class of blocking all Dublin traffic. Larkin con- sides and supported the conservative Dublin not directly against the British ducted a speaking tour of Britain, say- TUC leaders in banning solidarity overlords, but against both the Irish ing, “I am out for revolution!” Soon strikes. Still the Dublin workers held bourgeoisie and the labor lieutenants between 13 and 14,000 workers were firm, despite scabbing from some of capital, both in Ireland and Britain. locked out or on sympathy strikes British workers, especially in the across Britain, and thousands of The repression against the workers Seamen’s and Firemen’s Unions. By pounds in aid was also raised. But the was massive and vicious, with attacks early in 1914, however, the workers reformist union officials worked to by cops and armed scabs, who fired were starved out (despite token food quell the wildcat strikes, and stood in pistols with impunity while workers donations from the TUC) and the the way of official union actions. were arrested on phony charges. Several ITGWU was defeated. picketers were shot, including a Both Connolly and Larkin were 16-year-old girl. The state threw every arrested during the struggle. Connolly Onset of the “Great War” weapon they had against the unionists, refused to recognize the court, denying At the start of World War I, Connolly even using the Catholic Church for the right of England to rule in Ireland. was outraged at the capitulation to impe- intimidation and harassment. Police Sentenced to prison for three months, rialist war by the major social-democrat- backed up mobs of priests and other he was released after an eight-day hun- ic parties, including the German Social reactionary scum such as the Ancient ger strike. Larkin got seven months, Democrats, French Socialist Party, and Order of Hibernians, who were mobi- and Connolly took leadership of the the British Labor Party, which threw lized to physically prevent women union struggle. He travelled to Britain their antiwar resolutions out the window from sending their children to Britain to raise support, and spoke at a gigantic when it came to “defense of the father-

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 43 land.” Connolly watched the same Labor tion now was a desperate desire to save which was supposed to arrive on a traitors who had betrayed the Dublin the working masses from slaughter in German ship got headed off by the workers come out for the war, along the trenches, and this led him into a British Navy, and over a hundred revo- with the same socialists who had bloc with insurrectionary nationalists. lutionary leaders around Ireland got denounced his demands for national A Rising prepared arrested. But most importantly, a lead- liberation as “chauvinism,” in the name er of the IRB and founder of the Irish of “international socialism.” On the Connolly immediately saw the war Volunteers, Eoin MacNeill, having dis- national front, all talk of home rule was as an opportunity for an uprising of covered that the “parades” were really shelved. Not surprisingly, the Ulster workers against the war and imperial- the start of an insurrection, promptly Volunteers immediately signed up to go ism, which would be a spark for similar called the whole thing off in an article fight for the British Empire. But Connolly national liberation and workers’ move- published in a major employers’ also saw the nationalists do the same, as ments around the world, and a major mouthpiece, the Sunday Independent! John Redmond, a leader on the Irish blow against British imperialism. To bring this about, he oriented toward an As a result, most members of the Volunteers’ ruling council, made a simi- Volunteers stayed home, and the uprising lar pledge, which trusted in the British to alliance with the left wing of the bour- geois nationalists. While it is possible was almost entirely limited to a small implement Home Rule after their pre- force in Dublin. Connolly and the other sumed victory. Connolly commented: that a certain demoralization following the Dublin lockout and wholesale courageous leaders pressed ahead, but Full steam ahead John Redmond said defection of labor leaders to the war faced with overwhelming odds and that everything was well chum; effort may have played a role in immense destruction of the city wrought by the British Army, the uprising was Home Rule will come when we are dead Connolly’s thinking regarding working with nationalists, his focus on bringing crushed in less than a week. Fourteen and buried out in Belgium7 about a working-class rising against the leaders were executed immediately, which This little poem had an uncanny war hardly seems defeatist. And, there was thought to be the end. But Labor trai- ring of truth, as very soon thousands of was an opening to the left coming up tor Arthur Henderson, then in govern- Ulster Volunteers lay dead on the within the nationalists’ ranks. ment in Britain, screamed for Connolly’s German wire or on the ground follow- blood. Severely wounded and unable to Following John Redmond’s declara- ing their offensive in the battle of the walk, Connolly was tied to a chair, where tion for the war, the Irish Volunteers Somme, in which, typical for World he was shot by a British soldier. had undergone a split. The majority War I, no ground was gained. Like went with Redmond, with many volun- Politics and legacy of the Rising Lenin, Connolly was determined to teering for the slaughter, enticed by Marxists defended the Easter Rising oppose the class traitors of the TUC British recruitment posters proclaim- as a revolutionary antiwar national lib- and 2nd International, and saw a work- ing defense of “gallant little Catholic eration struggle. Lenin was particularly ers’ uprising as the only possible solu- Belgium.” Those opposing the war, and clear in his polemics against socialists tion to the imperialist war: the conscription which threatened to who had denied the right of oppressed “A great continental uprising of the come with it, sought to defend Ireland nations to rise against imperialist dom- working class would stop the war; a and its right to self-determination. ination, and who, such as Polish Social- universal protest at public meetings Connolly wound up being the chief Democrat and later Communist Karl would not save a single life from being military organizer of the Easter Rising. Radek, had called the Rising a “putsch.” wantonly slaughtered.”8 Pointing to the centuries’ long history The Easter Rising In October of 1914, Larkin, exhaust- of Irish struggle for independence, ed by the Dublin struggle, set off for The Easter Rising was planned to Lenin said that, “Whoever calls such an America to raise funds for the Irish include not just an uprising in Dublin, uprising a ‘putsch’ is either a hardened labor movement, and Connolly became but also support in the provinces which reactionary or a doctrinaire hopelessly the key leader of the ITGWU as it were to prevent troops from advancing incapable of picturing a social revolu- struggled to rebuild itself after the lock- on the city. The rising was supposed to tion as a living thing.” Lenin also said out, and as many of its members suc- be based on the forces of the Irish that, “It is the misfortune of the Irish cumbed to the war fever and signed up Citizen Army and the entire Volunteer that they rose prematurely, before the for the British Army. He also headed movement, which were to go on maneu- European revolt of the proletariat had 9 the Citizen’s Army and edited the Irish vers, or “parades,” as a signal to rise up. time to mature.” Worker, a paper Larkin had founded in However, things started to go wrong Trotsky also criticized those who 1911. But Connolly’s main preoccupa- right before the rising was to begin. Aid had denounced the Rising as a “putsch,”

44 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 and sternly denounced the aging Social tasks of revolution in the colonial world there’s little doubt he would have been Democrat Plekhanov (the founder or in the modern era. Only working-class a part of the great upsurge of working Russian Marxism) for calling the Rising struggle for socialist aims can accom- class struggle which that Revolution “harmful.”10 plish this. But would Connolly, had he engendered, which swelled to a peak in lived, have allowed the Easter Rising’s 1919. Any doubts about that will be A political compromise? legacy to be so strictly nationalist? assuaged, as you relive a piece of his An argument can be made that the While there is no mathematical cer- struggles in the Songs of Freedom. Easter Rising was something of a politi- tainty, it is hard to imagine that a man Surely, he would have been beside cal compromise for Connolly. Most of like Connolly, who had dedicated his Lenin and Trotsky as a key organizer the Rising’s planned provisional gov- whole life to working class struggle, and for the world revolution that we still ernment were nationalists, and who always said that political national- work for today. Connolly was to be vice president, next ism could achieve nothing without a to Patrick Pearse of the Volunteers as revolutionary social overturn, would president. The flag hoisted by the insur- have abandoned all that. 1 From the introduction to the original rectionists over their headquarters in James Connolly Songbook, reprinted in Mat Most importantly, Connolly, in Callahan, ed. Songs of Freedom, the James Con- the General Post Office was the green organizing and leading the Easter nolly Songbook, PM Press, 2013, page 56. flag of the nationalists, not the red flag Rising, was carrying out a revolution- 2 Lenin, “The Discussion on Self-Determina- or even the Citizen Army’s famous ary defeatist strategy of opposition to tion Summed Up,” July 1916, Collected Works “Starry Plough.” And the Proclamation imperialist war, by opposing his “own” vol. 22, p. 321. issued by the uprising’s leaders, signed government, and trying to light a 3 Connolly, Nationalism and Imperialism, 1897. by Connolly and six others, was a bour- “spark,” to turn the imperialist war 4 Quotes from “The Exclusion of Ulster” and geois-democratic document, which “Labor and the Proposed Partition of Ireland,” into a civil war. The revolutionary left both from early 1914. proclaimed an “Irish Republic,” and needs to promote this kind of class- began, “In the name of God.” 5 James Connolly, a Marxist Appreciation, consciousness within antiwar move- Workers Hammer No. 195, 2006. Connolly’s socialist influence was ments (and other generally reformist 6 Workers’ Republic, October 30, 1915, quot- reflected, if weakly, in the Proclamation milieus) today. ed in the Introduction, P. Berreford Ellis, ed., when it declared, “the right of the The somewhat ambiguous James Connolly Selected Writings, 1973, p. 23 people of Ireland to the ownership of “socialist”-sounding line in the 7 Connolly, quoted without source, Introduc- tion, James Connolly Selected Writings, 1973. p. 25 Ireland, and to the unfettered control Proclamation did not stop the nation- of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and 8 Connolly, quoted without source, Introduc- alist (Sinn Fein) dominated govern- tion, James Connolly Selected Writings, 1973. p. 25 indefeasible.” But the proclamation ment of the Irish Free State from focused mainly on democratic 9 Lenin, “The Discussion on Self-Determina- adopting the Proclamation by unani- tion Summed Up,” CW vol. 22. demands, such as “religious and civil mous vote in the First Dial (Irish par- 10 Leon Trotsky, On the Events In Dub- liberty and equal rights and equal liament) in Dublin in 1919, in the lin, July 1916 opportunities to all its citizens,” and attempt to tie labor to the nationalist 11 Liam de Paor, Divided Ulster, Pelican promised a national government cause—a fraud which was soon forgot- Books, 1971, p 98. And see p. 97 for the refer- “elected by the suffrages of all ten. Despite the setting up of soviets in ence to the setting up of rural soviets. [Ireland’s] men and women.” (This some rural areas during the rebellion last point reflected the left split in the against the 1921 treaty and partition, nationalists, which had taken place “By the middle 1920’s, in social terms, before the Rising, as most nationalists, counter-revolution was triumphant in including John Redmond, opposed Ireland, north and south.”11 women’s suffrage. Women’s suffrage was eventually granted by the Irish Connolly stands tall in Free State in 1922.) working-class history James Connolly was a towering fig- A revolutionary against ure, one of the great revolutionary imperialist war socialist and working class leaders, As Trotsky explained in his theory of upon whose shoulders revolutionists permanent revolution, petty-bourgeois are proud to stand today. Had he not nationalism and anti-imperialism is fallen prematurely in 1916, just one incapable of completing the democratic year before the Russian Revolution, James Connolly

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 45

Environment ENVIRONMENT Climate Change is Violence No species, place or beings will be spared in the coming catastrophes wrought by carbon barons. By Rebecca Solnit

If you’re poor, the only way you’re ers—the U.S. and Russia—still hold The message is that ordinary people likely to injure someone is the old tra- the option of destroying quite a lot of will behave badly in an era of intensi- ditional way: artisanal violence, we life on Earth. fied climate change. could call it—by hands, by knife, by So do the carbon barons. But when All this makes sense, unless you go club, or maybe modern hands-on vio- we talk about violence, we almost back to the premise and note that cli- lence, by gun or by car. always talk about violence from below, mate change is itself violence. Extreme, But if you’re tremendously wealthy, not above. horrific, long-term, widespread violence. you can practice industrial-scale vio- Or so I thought when I received a Climate change is anthropogenic— lence without any manual labor on press release last week from a climate caused by human beings, some much your own part. You can, say, build a group announcing that “scientists say more than others. We know the conse- sweatshop factory that will collapse in there is a direct link between changing quences of that change: the acidifica- Bangladesh and kill more people than climate and an increase in violence.” tion of oceans and decline of many any hands-on mass murderer ever did, What the scientists actually said, in a species in them, the slow disappearance or you can calculate risk and benefit not-so-newsworthy article in of island nations such as the Maldives, about putting poisons or unsafe Nature two-and-a-half years ago, is increased flooding, drought, crop fail- machines into the world, as manufac- that there is higher conflict in the trop- ure leading to food-price increases and turers do every day. If you’re the leader ics in El Nino years, and that perhaps famine, increasingly turbulent weather. of a country, you can declare war and this will scale up to make our age of (Think Hurricane Sandy and the recent kill by the hundreds-of-thousands or climate change also an era of civil and typhoon in the Philippines, and heat millions. And the nuclear superpow- international conflict. waves that kill elderly people by the tens-of-thousands.) Climate change is violence So if we want to talk about violence and climate change—and we are talk- ing about it, after last week’s horrifying report from the world’s top climate scientists—then let’s talk about climate change as violence. Rather than worry- ing about whether ordinary human beings will react turbulently to the destruction of the very means of their survival, let’s worry about that destruc- tion—and their survival. Of course water failure, crop failure, flooding and more will lead to mass migration and climate refugees—they already have— and this will lead to conflict. Those conflicts are being set in motion now. You can regard the Arab Spring, in part, as a climate conflict: the increase in wheat prices was one of the trig- gers for that series of revolts that changed the face of northernmost

46 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 Africa and the Middle East. On the one French Revolution was the failure of and burned in the near future. Because hand, you can say, how nice if those the 1788 wheat crop, which made scientists say that we need to leave people had not been hungry in the first bread prices skyrocket and the poor go most of the world’s known carbon place. On the other, how can you not hungry. The insurance against such reserves in the ground if we are to go say, how great is it that those people events is often thought to be more for the milder rather than the more stood up against being deprived of sus- authoritarianism and more threats extreme versions of climate change. tenance and hope? And then you have against the poor, but that’s only an Under the milder version, countless to look at the systems that created that more people—species, places—will hunger—the enormous economic survive. In the best-case scenario, we inequalities in places such as Egypt and Exxon has decided damage the Earth less. We are cur- the brutality used to keep down the to bet that we can’t rently wrangling about how much to people at the lower levels of the social devastate the Earth. make the corpora- system, as well as the weather. In every arena, we need to look at People revolt when their lives are tion keep its reserves industrial-scale and systemic violence, unbearable. Sometimes material reality in the ground, and not just the hands-on violence of the less powerful. When it comes to cli- creates that unbearableness: droughts, the company is reas- plagues, storms, floods. But food and mate change, this is particularly true. medical care, health and well-being, suring its investors Exxon has decided to bet that we can’t access to housing and education— that it will continue make the corporation keep its reserves in the ground, and the company is these things are also governed by eco- to profit off the nomic means and government policy. reassuring its investors that it will con- tinue to profit off the rapid, violent and That’s what the revolt called Occupy rapid, violent and intentional destruction of the Earth. Wall Street was against. intentional destruc- That’s a tired phrase, the destruc- Climate change will increase hunger tion of the Earth. tion of the Earth, but translate it into as food prices rise and food production the face of a starving child and a barren falters, but we already have widespread field—and then multiply that a few hunger on Earth, and much of it is due attempt to keep a lid on what’s boiling million times. Or just picture the tiny not to the failures of nature and farm- over; the other way to go is to turn bivalves: scallops, oysters, Arctic sea ers, but to systems of distribution. down the heat. snails that can’t form shells in acidify- Almost 16 million children in the The same week during which I ing oceans right now. Or another United States now live with hunger, received that ill-thought-out press superstorm tearing apart another city. according to the U.S. Department of release about climate and violence, Climate change is global-scale violence, Agriculture, and that is not because the Exxon Mobil Corporation issued a pol- against places and species as well as vast, agriculturally rich United States icy report. It makes for boring reading, against human beings. Once we call it cannot produce enough to feed all of unless you can make the dry language by name, we can start having a real us. We are a country whose distribu- of business into pictures of the conse- conversation about our priorities and tion system is itself a kind of violence. quences of those acts undertaken for values. Because the revolt against bru- Climate change is not suddenly profit. Exxon says: tality begins with a revolt against the bringing about an era of equitable dis- “We are confident that none of language that hides that brutality. tribution. I suspect people will be our hydrocarbon reserves are now Rebecca Solnit’s latest book is The revolting in the coming future against or will become ‘stranded.’ We Faraway Nearby, published in June. what they revolted against in the past: believe producing these assets is the injustices of the system. They essential to meeting growing energy —AlterNet, April 7, 2014 should revolt, and we should be glad demand worldwide.” they do, if not that they need to (though Stranded assets that mean carbon http://www.alternet.org/lets-call-cli- hope they will recognize that violence assets—coal, oil, gas still under- mate-change-what-it-really-violence?ak is not necessarily where their power ground—would become worthless if id=11692.229473.4a5T5b&rd=1&src= lies.) One of the events prompting the we decided they could not be extracted newsletter979099&t=5

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 47 Mass Scallop Die Off A ‘Red Flag’ for the World’s Oceans By Jacob Chamberlain

An increase of acidity in the Pacific oping rigid shells. Oyster hatcheries A recent study warned that ocean Ocean is quickly killing off one of the along the West Coast are also experienc- acidification is accelerating at a rate world’s most beloved shellfish, the ing a steep decline, CTV News reports. unparalleled in the life of the oceans— scallop, according to a report by the perhaps the fastest rate in the planet’s British Columbia Shellfish Grower’s existence—which is degrading marine Association. ecosystems on a mass scale. “By June of 2013, we lost almost 95 “The current rate of change is likely percent of our crops,” Rob Saunders, to be more than ten times faster than it CEO of Island Scallops in B.C. told has been in any of the evolutionary Canada’s CTV News. crises in the earth’s history,” said The cause of this increase in acidity, German marine biologist Hans scientists say, is the exponential burn- Poertner upon the release of a recent ing of fossil fuels for energy and its study published in the journal Nature. subsequent pollution. Oceans naturally Ocean acidification has been referred absorb carbon dioxide, a byproduct of to as the “evil twin“ of climate change. fossil fuel emissions, which causes “This is a bit of a red flag,” said Harley. Poertner says that if humanity’s acidity to rise. industrial carbon emissions continue An overdose of carbon in the atmo- And this red flag has a much bigger with a “business as usual” attitude, lev- sphere subsequently causes too much impact than one might imagine. els of acidity in the world’s oceans will acidity in the world’s oceans, Chris “Whenever we see an impact at some be catastrophic. level of the food chain, there is a cas- Harley, a marine ecologist from the —Common Dreams, March 17, 2014 University of British Columbia, told cading effect at other levels of the food CTV News. Overly acidic water is bad for chain,” said Peter Ross, an expert in http://www.commondreams.org/ shellfish, as it impairs them from devel- ocean pollution science. headline/2014/03/17-5

Environmental Injustice Minorities Face Nearly 40 percent More Exposure to Toxic Air Pollution By Jon Queally

A new study published this week “The [main] ones are race and According to the study: shows that both race and class are sig- income, and they both matter,” “Breathing NO2 is linked to nificant indicators of how much toxic Marshall said in an interview with asthma symptoms and heart disease. air pollution individuals face in the MinnPost. “In our findings, however, The researchers studied NO2 levels United States with minorities receiving race matters more than income.” in urban areas across the country nearly 40 percent more exposure to Specifically looking at levels of out- and compared specific areas within the cities based on populations door nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a deadly airborne pollutants than whites. defined in the U.S. Census as ‘non- byproduct found in vehicle exhaust The University of Minnesota study, white’ or ‘white.’ and fossil fuel-fired power plants, the according to lead researcher Julian study—titled “National Patterns in “The health impacts from the Marshall, looked closely at the rates of difference in levels between whites Environmental Injustice and pollution exposure by race, income, and nonwhites found in the study Inequality”—found that people of are substantial. For example, education and other key demographics color are exposed to 38 percent more to establish the key predictors of how researchers estimate that if non- of the deadly chemical which experts whites breathed the lower NO2 lev- specific populations are impacted say can be a key driver of heart disease els experienced by whites, it would across the country, state by state. and other health problems. prevent 7,000 deaths from heart dis-

48 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3

Incarceration Nation ease alone among nonwhites each year.” INCARCERATION NATION Though it has been well-document- ed that low-income families and minor- Scapegoating ‘Bad Apples’ ities have long been forced to live in Pages From the “Pig Playbook,” Reading, No. 1 undesirable neighborhoods near coal By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson plants or high-traffic roadways, this study is being called “ground-breaking” What is the Pig Playbook? We find examples of scapegoating for taking a national look at the issue Not many people are familiar with “bad apples” in situations ranging from and using advanced satellite technology the Pig Playbook or PPB. The PPB is a cases arising from the pigs’ imperialist to compare specific geographic areas stock of tactics and schemes the capitalist war practices to their massive prison with advanced pollution data. imperialists use to achieve and maintain slave system. Let’s examine a few of As Emily Badger writes at the power and domination over everyone them. Washington Post: else. It’s like an unwritten dirty tricks Example #1: Mass murders “Studies dating back to the 1970s manual for cowards and sociopaths, con- in Vietnam have pointed to a consistent pattern taining a range of techniques used to in who lives near the kinds of haz- keep masses of oppressed people blind, We take our first example from the ards—toxic waste sites, landfills, deaf and dumb to their own exploitation genocidal U.S. war against Vietnam. congested highways—that few of us and their being manipulated by the pigs Enough time has passed where a lot of would willingly choose as neighbors. to aid in oppressing others. the dirt that was concealed at the time The invariable answer: poor people has surfaced.1 and communities of color. In his Art of War, Sun Tzu keenly observed that one of the most effective In the case of Vietnam, which is of “This pattern of ‘environmental course not exceptional, mass murder injustice’ suggests that minorities ways to defeat an opponent is to stop his plans. Studying and learning the PPB and massacres of unarmed civilians by may contend every day with dispro- U.S. forces were not merely everyday portionate health risks from tailpipe reveals the range of tactics the pigs draw occurrences, but were established mili- exhaust or coal plant emissions. But on devising their plans. With its knowl- these health risks are harder to edge we can recognize and counter those tary strategy set by officials at the high- quantify than, say, the number of tactics and even predict and prevent their est levels of planning and command. power plants in a city. And most of use altogether. Furthermore, we can even However, U.S. officials scapegoated the research that has tried to do this devise a few plans of our own toward Lieutenant William Calley when one has been limited to a single metro- putting them out of biz. such massacre—the infamous My Lai politan area, or to those few places massacre—came to public attention. that happen to have good monitor- To this end we want to give regular Public exposure came only because one ing data on pollution.” readings in the PPB. soldier shaken by his own experiences —Common Dreams, April 16, 2014 In this first reading, the pig tactic of broke ranks and the military code of focus will be the “bad apple” blame-game. silence upon returning to the States, http://www.commondreams.org/ and did everything in his power to headline/2014/04/16-3 The “Bad Apple” blame-game expose the atrocity. This soldier was Often when the dirty workings of Ron Ridenour. the capitalist imperialist system are In that case, on March 16, 1968, exposed to the public, and its legiti- Calley led his Charlie Company in a macy is discredited or brought into raid on My Lai, a village of women, question, the response is to pretend children and old people. The Company that some “bad apple,” acting outside had been specifically instructed the day and against the system’s rules and before by their commanding officer, moral standards, is to blame and not Captain Ernest Medina, to “Kill every- the system itself. thing in the village.” And when specifi- In which case they’ll scapegoat one cally asked for clarification by one of or a few of their own agents or puppets the Company’s artillery gunners if he (usually as low in rank as possible) and meant women and children as well, throw them under the bus. Medina replied, “Kill everything that

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 49 moves.” Even the German Nazis were another soldier involved in the massa- that message. So when reporters seldom so explicit. cre, Paul Meadlo, was interviewed on asked about the events at My Khe, Peers sidestepped the questions, and The soldiers went on a killing spree, CBS by Mike Wallace, confessing the murder of civilians, “and babies.” Pentagon briefers simply lied, saying even pumping bullets into infants at that that massacre had been perpe- point blank range, and shooting up the In an effort at damage control, trated by South Vietnamese troops. village’s livestock. In the middle of this General Westmoreland appointed ‘Westmoreland covered his ass,’ literal orgy of bloodletting and rape of General Williams Peers to lead an Colonel Henry Tufts, the head of women and young girls, the soldiers inquiry into My Lai solely to give the army criminal investigative com- settled down for a quiet lunch break appearance of the military’s taking mand, would observe years later then returned to their grisly task. In the action. Westmoreland explicitly about the chief of staff’s response to end over 500 civilians lay dead. instructed Peers not to investigate any the My Lai affair. ‘He did what he had to do to preserve the system.’” The top ranking U.S. military com- actual murders, but to look only into mander, General William the prior inadequate investigations of Note this insider’s admission that it Westmoreland, commended the mas- the My Lai situation. is the system itself that is fundamen- sacre, which was falsely portrayed as a But Peers went much further and tally to blame and had to be protected. gun battle in which 128 enemy fighters his investigations uncovered massacres Most telling is that after the Peers were killed. like My Lai all over the place, including report, Westmoreland set up an unof- The truth surfaced over a year later one in another village, My Khe, which ficial task force to investigate future when Ridenhour’s efforts managed to occurred on the same day as My Lai atrocities in Vietnam, the Vietnam gain the attention of investigative just a few miles up the road. War Crimes Working Group. But the reporter Seymour Hersh. Hersh uncov- Concerning My Lai, the Peers inves- purpose of the group was not to stop ered the massacre and published an tigation found such “crimes” commit- atrocities nor bring perpetrators to jus- article on his findings including an ted by the soldiers as “individual and tice. It was instead formed to do the Army photograph of dozens of dead group acts of murder, rape, sodomy, exact opposite—to bury such incidents Vietnamese women and children maiming and assault on non-combat- and protect the U.S. military’s public dumped in a ditch. The image even ants,” with numbers killed in excess of image. What’s more the group report- showed a dead infant’s head stuffed 400. Also it found a deliberate cover- ed directly to top U.S. military officials between a dead young female’s legs as up of the massacre by officials “at every and the White House. if to force it back into the womb. command level from company to divi- In fact My Lai style slaughters were Lieutenant Calley, the lowest rank- sion.” Subsequently Westmoreland only a tiny factor in the official U.S. ing officer on whom overall blame had Peers and his report censored so military strategy of systematic mass could be placed, was portrayed by offi- they revealed nothing to the public killings of civilians in Vietnam, result- cials as a mentally unstable “bad apple” beyond the already published official ing in millions dead. This strategy, responsible for the slaughter. For the version. As investigative journalist devised at the highest levels of planning murder of 22 civilians he was perse- Nick Turse observed: and command was based on targeting cuted and sentenced to life in prison, “The Pentagon was especially the civilian population with bombers, but was quickly released by President dismayed that Peers had chronicled gunships, chemical weapons, experi- Richard Nixon and required to serve not only the slaughter at My Lai by mental weapons designed to inflict Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, only 40 months, most of it in his own high casualties, incendiaries and explo- quarters. 20th Infantry, but also the killings carried out on the same day in the sives, etc. The object was to break the The public bought the official story nearby village of My Khe by the men large popular opposition to the U.S. scapegoating Calley. However, the of Bravo Company, 4th Battalion, invasion and division of Vietnam, and Army’s own inside investigation found 3rd Infantry. The whole Pentagon to produce astronomical casualty rates, that 28 ranking officers, including two strategy centered on portraying My which were falsely portrayed as enemy generals, were involved in misconduct Lai as a one-off aberration rather troops, killed so to falsely project U.S. related to the My Lai butchery and the than part of a consistent pattern of military operations in Vietnam as a cover-up that followed. But of course criminality resulting from policies “success.” none were punished and the public set at the top. Having two different massacres carried out within hours This strategy and its incalculable never knew of it. of each other by two entirely differ- cost in human life and suffering, and Hersh’s article exposing My Lai was ent army units in two separate vil- environmental destruction, certainly published in 35 papers, following which lages was hardly compatible with was much larger than a single scape-

50 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 goat in the form of a low-ranking offi- prosecutions of U.S. soldiers during Human Rights First, before the cer could be responsible for. But it all the torture scandal and found they Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. was white washed and covered up by were simply being scapegoated. He House of Representatives on July 21, blaming one incident (which was actu- observed, “the highest profile cases in 2008, to no avail.3 ally part of an overall genocidal strate- which the severest sanctions are sought Only much later (after it could no gy that couldn’t be publicly admitted) consistently involve those soldiers longer be suppressed that the military on a single “bad apple”—Lieutenant who...permitted photographic evi- and CIA were systematically torturing William Calley. dence of the crimes at Abu Ghraib to Arab detainees under the George W. become public knowledge.” He con- Example #2: Torture in Iraq Bush administration, and based on cluded, “…it wasn’t the abuse of pris- established military policy and memo- The same “bad apple” scapegoat oners which was being punished, but randa coming directly out of the White tactic was used when photographs sur- the fact that the military, and particu- House) did President Barack Obama faced in 2004 of U.S. soldiers torturing larly Rumsfeld, has been embarrassed make a public show of denouncing the and sexually degrading Arab detainees by these matters becoming public.” practices. Yet none of the top-level in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. In Also, inside Pentagon investigations officials responsible for the torture response, a handful of low ranking U.S. of detainee torture concluded in 2004 program faced any punishment. soldiers were portrayed as renegades acting on their own. Several of them found detainee torture systematic. Yet when the matter presented the protested, however, that they were act- These investigations were used not to danger of discrediting and affecting ing on directions of the highest-rank- stop torture or to punish its perpetra- U.S. military policy, detainee torture ing officials at Abu Ghraib and accord- tors, but instead to redefine torture so was portrayed as deviant acts of a few ing to their training. the abuses could be “legalized.” One low ranking soldiers who were scape- such investigative report by Major In fact it was later revealed that the goated as “bad apples.” General Antonio Taguba detailed torture and humiliation techniques extensive torture and abuse, although Example #3: Brutality in revealed in those photos were methods no efforts were made to seriously U.S. prisons refined and practiced under direction of inquire into torture-related murders in The same goes for U.S. prisons. One General Geoffrey Miller at Guantanamo U.S. custody. account I can personally give. As a pub- Bay, which the U.S. military and CIA lished statement I sent out on October was using as a torture research labora- Taguba’s report was leaked in May 24, 2013 revealed, I and numerous other tory during 2002. And in response to 2004 to the media. Shortly afterward, prisoners here in the Texas Department widespread resistance to the U.S. inva- Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, of Criminal Justice’s (TDCJ) Bill sion of Iraq, Miller was transferred to Douglas Feith, sent an email to ranking Abu Ghraib in 2003 to implement his U.S. officials warning them not to read Clements Unit (BCU), witnessed the techniques on captured Iraqis.2 the Taguba report, claiming the leak murder/wrongful death of another pris- was being investigated for “criminal oner, Christopher Woolverton, at the Furthermore, as of 2006, in studies hands of BCU officials. conducted by New York University, prosecution” (which is another Pig Human Rights First and Human Rights Playbook tactic; namely, discouraging Woolverton, a known asthmatic, Watch, based on government docu- and silencing whistleblowers from had been left for several days without mentation, hundreds of cases of tor- exposing official crimes to the public help, lying unresponsive on his cell ture of detainees by U.S. forces were by persecuting and prosecuting them floor in obvious medical distress. He found. Among them were over 100 instead of the criminal acts they expose, was left in this condition, not accepting who’d died in U.S. custody, including and denouncing the public exposures meals or his medications, and lying in 34 that the Defense Department (sic!) as endangering “national security,” his own body waste (including bloody admitted were homicides, many of (which is being done today to WikiLeaks stool) for over four days. whom were tortured to death. founder, Julian Assange, Private On October 22, 2013, still lying Long before the 2004 photos sur- Chelsea [Bradley] Manning, Edward unresponsive on the floor and posing faced or the 2006 reports, Pentagon Snowden, and various U.S. intelligence no threat to anyone, Woolverton was officials and then Secretary of Defense agency whistleblowers). repeatedly sprayed directly in the head Donald Rumsfeld knew of and The matter of systematic tortures of and face with large quantities of OC approved what was happening. Scott detainees by U.S. forces was testified to gas by Sergeant Andrew Gratz. Gratz is Morton of the New York Bar by Deborah Pearlstein, former Director an extremely abusive and cocky guard Association investigated the targeted of the Law and Security Program at almost unanimously disliked by BCU

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 51 prisoners because of his abusive impu- breathe.” They ignored him. I spoke to conduct an impartial investiga- nity. The quantity of gas used by him out as well stating he was in obvious tion, and the involved staff’s word is on Woolverton far exceeded that medical distress and in need of help. I simply taken as true. If this isn’t cor- authorized by policy. And both policy was also ignored by them. ruption and creating an environ- and law forbid the use of caustic gas ment detrimental to our safety and I and several other prisoner wit- lives, my name is Santa Claus.” both on asthmatic prisoners and non- nesses filed grievances inside the insti- In response to my appeal a TDCJ disruptives. tution about Woolverton’s treatment administrator, Jason Henton wrote, The assault on Woolverton was and the abuse of OC gas. I also sent “You were correctly advised in your supervised by lieutenant Matthew word to the outside about it, which step one answer.” Seymour and nurse Debra Killian, with resulted in wide exposure via reports clearance from the BCU Warden and and an article written and circulated by A genuine investigation had to be Major, who personally observed one of my publishers based largely on avoided since responsibility for Woolverton on the floor and were my description of the incident.4 Woolverton’s abuse would go too far up the TDCJ chain of command, and briefed on his situation only minutes Following this exposure and pro- could not avoid the conclusion that his before he was gassed. tests, the nurse Killian was scapegoated death was the result of widespread, Following the gassing he was sub- and lost her job. Nothing was done to long standing, systemic abuses of force jected to further use of excessive and those who’d left Woolverton in distress in general, and OC gas in particular, in needless force by guards dressed in full for days, nor who’d assaulted him, the TDCJ and at BCU especially. body riot armor raiding the cell. He supervised or authorized it. In fact, a Texas Tribune article pub- was then taken out of the cellblock by Instead, all of us who grieved it were lished just a month before Woolverton’s them for about three minutes unable told in responses by BCU Assistant death, reported that BCU has the high- to walk, then brought back in and left Warden James Beach that what hap- est number of uses of force and OC gas lying unresponsive on the floor of pened to Woolverton was none of our another cell with no property or his on prisoners in the entire TDCJ. With business and they had no interest in over 1,500 incidents of uses of chemi- asthma inhalers, and still drenched in our statements as witnesses. Here’s gas—where he died a few hours later. cal agents and over 3,400 uses of what Beach wrote in response to my “major” force on BCU prisoners just He was never given any fresh air nor own grievance #2014033040 in rele- between 2006 and 2012, numbers, was he decontaminated, as the law vant part: which the article reports experts as requires whenever a prisoner is con- “The situation that you described finding “overwhelming.”5 What really taminated with gas. Upon being has nothing to do with you and you puts such numbers into perspective is brought back into the cellblock by the were not involved in this incident the findings of Texas federal courts armored group of guards, he had dis- concerning offender Woolverton. that the TDCJ has a culture of mali- tinctly told them and Gratz, “I can’t The incident investigation [and] the cious and sadistic violence and abuse result of that investigation will not of chemical agents by guards on pris- be discussed with you.” oners that is worse than in any other In my appeal of Beach’s response I U.S. prison system.6 pointed out: This situation and Woolverton’s “Curious . . . that in many other death occurring in the context of such professional investigations of a conditions is clearly the result of offi- potentially illegal situation, witnesses cial policy and not the acts of a few are considered to have something to do with such incidents and are con- “bad apples,” and certainly not the sulted in the process of conducting fault of a single nurse. any competent investigation. Conclusion However, in this notoriously corrupt Fruit never falls far from its tree. If TDCJ (Texas Department of everywhere we see atrocities occurring Criminal Justice), even vocal wit- at government hands that are passed nesses who present actual complaints of witnessing foul play concerning a off as the acts of “bad apples,” but prisoner’s death are told they have upon closer inspection are revealed to noting to do with such incidents and be chronic, systemic and widespread, are not questioned to even pretend we must begin to recognize that the

52 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 tree this bad fruit is falling from is itself Parents’ Nightmare: Babysitter’s Secret thoroughly rotten, and the source and cause of their decay. By Bryant Arroyo This tree has a name. It’s called capitalist-imperialism—the most The saga that I have endured putrid, and environmentally and throughout the past twenty years is a socially destructive political-economic good example of all that is wrong with system history has known, a decadent our legal system and the people who system that V. I. Lenin characterized as are charged with carrying it out. “rotten ripe for revolution.” Settling On Saturday evening, September for any “solution” short of revolution 24, 1994, as was customary, I returned will see us all go extinct. We must wake home from work on my 2-10:00 P.M. up to its designs and stop it cold. shift at the Grinnell Corporation in Hopefully, these reflections on the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I PPB will help remove our blinders and relieved the babysitter and assumed fortify our resolve. that all was well. I’d had a long day at Dare to Struggle Dare to Win! work so I dozed off on the sofa with my stepson, Kyle. At about 1:00 A.M. my All Power to the People! girlfriend, Pamela, returned home

from an outing with her mother, Bryant Arroyo 1 An extensive and thoroughly documented Bonnie, and some friends. I woke up expose on the Vietnam War, which includes and decided to check on my other step- administer CPR. Unfortunately, Baby source references to much of my discussion in son, 8-month-old baby Jordan. Jordan remained unresponsive to all this section, can be found in Nick Turse, Kill attempts to revive him. Anything That Moves: The Real American War I thought it odd that the baby was in In Vietnam (Henry Holt, New York, 2013). the upstairs room because he was usu- Baby Jordan was transported via 2 On General Miller’s torture program devel- ally in the downstairs playpen. Maybe ambulance to Lancaster General oped at Guantanamo Bay and transferred to the babysitter took him upstairs before Hospital where unfortunately all fur- Abu Ghraib, see Alfred McCoy, A Question of ther attempts to revive him were Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War she left, I thought. I ascended the 13 to the War on Terror (Henry Holt, New York, steps leading to the second floor of our unsuccessful and he was pronounced 2006) pp., 126-30, 133-34, 137, 153-56. apartment. I was stunned to find baby dead at 3:40 A.M. It appeared to be a 3 See Deborah Pearlstein’s testimonial Jordan unconscious and blue. In a case of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome account of the 2006 torture reports and official frantic response, I brought baby Jordan (SIDS) and the cause of death recorded efforts to hide the Taguba report, before the downstairs and yelled for Pamela, was “cardiac arrest.” Committee on the Judiciary at http://judiciary. house.gov/hearings/pdf/Pearlstein080715.pdf Jordan’s mother, to call 9-1-1. Pamela and I were questioned close- 4 Karl Kersplebedeb, “Asthmatic Prisoner Untrained as I was, I still attempted to ly by detectives. This was the result of Doused With Pepper Spray, Refused Medical administer CPR on Jordan. Pamela was the physicians at Lancaster General Care, Dies: Just Another Day in the Texas Pris- standing next to me with the phone. Hospital having notified the coroner on System,” November 8, 2013, at rashidmod. She waited several minutes and rushed and stating that the baby’s death was com and Socialist Viewpoint, Vol. 14, No. 1 outside to see if she could spot any sign suspicious due to certain bruise-marks http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/janfeb_14/ of an ambulance. She came to my aid, on the baby’s lower chest and abdo- janfeb_14_20.html put the phone to my ear so that I could men. Baby Jordan had a mark on his 5 Brandi Grissom, “Violence Behind Bars— A Tie to Mental Illness,” The Texas Tribune, speak with the operator about baby face, which was the result of his bump- September 22, 2013. Jordan’s condition. ing his head against a hot iron that was 6 See Ruiz v. Johnson, 37 F. Supp. 2d 855 (S. The first to arrive at the apartment thoughtlessly placed on the floor of a D. Tex. 1999); Ruiz v. Johnson, 154 F. Supp. 2d were two police officers from Manheim friend’s house during a visit, but other 976 (S.D. Tex. 2001); also my article on the Township Police Department. Officer than that, all reports about baby extensively documented abusive nature of Jordan’s care were positive. Texas prisons, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, “U.S. John Wettlaufer took over the admin- Prison Practices Would Disgrace a Nation of istration of CPR by first removing baby The police would later write in their Savages: Texas—A Case on Record,” at rashid- Jordan from the seat of the chair where report that the home was well kept and mod.com and Socialist Viewpoint, Vol. 14, No. 1 I, in my untrained condition, had neat; the refrigerator and cupboards http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/janfeb_14/ placed him on the floor to continue to were well stocked with food. janfeb_14_19.html

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 53 After agreeing to go to the police sta- Lancaster General Hospital to examine beating as was the state’s theory. This tion, Pamela and I were separated and baby Jordan, it’s worth noting, that he begs the question—why? Why would intensely interviewed by detectives. did not speak with me or Pamela or the Coroner make such a determina- Particularly, I was subjected to hours of any of our friends and family whom tion of facts without speaking with the interrogation. I had little to eat. arrived at the hospital to offer support parents about the baby’s condition I was devastated about baby Jordan’s to us, the grieving parents. prior to his death? Why would Dr. unforeseen death. I was emotionally He noticed some small marks on Ross first say the bruises on baby drained. After hours of intense ques- baby Jordan’s lower chest and abdo- Jordan were healing and then at the tioning, the lead detective in the case, men. The LGH report indicates that preliminary hearing say they were Detective Raymond E. Solt, typed up a there were 11 in number and appeared fresh? Why, if I beat the baby repeat- version of what he purported that I “brownish/purplish” in color. Walp edly with my fist while the baby hung stated had happened. In my experience said to police investigators. “The bruis- from one arm wasn’t there any evi- with legal matter, and trusting that this ing were not from tonight, but from dence at all of broken bones, swelling was a police officer, I signed the docu- possibly a couple of days ago.” In other or dislocation of the infant’s shoulder? ment without first reading its content. words, they were in the stages of heal- Which one would expect if the state’s I signed in the manner that Detective ing and could not have been caused by theory is to be believed. Solt indicated, not knowing that I had CPR being performed the night that At some point Dr. Ross testified that just signed a confession detective to baby Jordan died. In Detective Leed’s baby Jordan received a beating equal to first degree murder. report, he was told by the medical being hit by a truck traveling at 30 miles- Detective Raymond E. Solt is well examiner, Dr. Ross, “There are 16 heal- per-hour. How can it be possible that a known for his role in the investigation ing bruise marks on (Jordan’ s) chest 235 pound man supposedly grabbed an of the Lisa M. Lambert case. Lambert is and abdomen... The injuries could 8-month-old baby, held him by one arm the young teen who was accused of have occurred within three to 24 hours and beat him with a closed fist in a state killing Laurie Show, a sixteen-year-old of death.” Yet, conveniently for the of rage, then switched him to the other who lived in Lampeter Township, prosecution’s case, at my preliminary arm and continued to beat him as was Lancaster County. The case received hearing Dr. Ross testified that the the state’s theory, and all you can find is national attention when a federal judge bruises on the child’s abdomen were a few small bruises? This is humanly ordered Lisa M. Lambert released in “fresh” and he described their color as impossible and a clear work of fiction by April 1997 after finding her trial was being “reddish-brown. He went on to the state with the help of Dr. Ross and infected with numerous instances of state that the child’s death was due to aided by the incompetence of my defense prosecutorial misconduct. Of Raymond “blunt chest and abdominal trauma.” counsel. The facts in this case do not sup- E. Solt, the federal Judge, Stewart J. Based on Dr. Ross’s testimony, which port a conviction of first-degree murder Dalzell, found his testimony “fantas- was not challenged by any expert for or any murder period. This case must be tic.” The judge further believed that he the defense because there weren’t any, reversed and justice must prevail. (Raymond E. Solt) made alterations to I was convicted of first-degree murder Finally, and most importantly, Lisa M. Lambert’s alleged confession. and sentenced to life imprisonment. twenty years later, even though we There were some interesting similari- As stated at the start, my case repre- aren’t together, I still have the full sup- ties between the Lambert case and sents all that is wrong with our legal port of Pamela, Jordan’s mother, and mine. Some of the same principals system—particularly, when it comes to Bonnie, the grandmother of baby were involved in both prosecutions. a defendant with little to no financial Jordon, who champion my innocence. Detective Solt took both the state- means by which to hire powerful attor- I remain suffering this horrible ments which he later went on to label neys and experts to rebut the state’s case. “miscarriage of Justice” every waking as “confessions,” in both cases he made It is very important to note that at day and night, wrongly convicted of a them sign each page of the type-written trial Dr. Ross testified that baby Jordan crime I didn’t commit; especially, as a manuscript in bold cursive writing. died of blunt force trauma. However, parent, I know I made every effort to The case had many irregularities the autopsy report did not reveal any save my son’s life. from the start and it followed through indication of child abuse by way of If this is not the most vicious form during the entire case from the investi- fractures, healing or fresh, there was no of cruel and unusual punishment, I gation part to the prosecution. For tearing or lacerations of the baby’s don’t know what is. I wait for the sup- example, Dr. Barry Walp, the County skin. There was no obvious swelling or port I need to prove my innocence Coroner who was summoned to edema associated with a repetitive once and for all. Continued on page 55

54 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 Criminalizing the Homeless and the Poor By Josmar Trujillo

April 11, 2014—The recent death of heavily invested in enforcement by way some knuckleheads, I thought. Not my homeless veteran Jerome Murdough in of zero-tolerance policing and criminal problem. I was a 27-year-old student a Rikers Island cell should be more than justice system. It’s an approach that is with a full time job and two kids. Just get a temporary debate in a blink-and- neither humane nor sustainable. But as this train moving already, the New you’ll-miss-it New York media cycle some debate over what stop-gap Yorker in me demanded. that often desensitizes us to tragedies. I reforms or long term legislation might Then they asked me to step out of know it hit close to home for myself— be crafted takes place, let’s not lose the train. Mr. Murdough sought refuge the night sight of how Murdough arrived at the of his arrest in an East Harlem public cell he would die in: the NYPD and the In all my years growing up I knew housing staircase three blocks from my low-level crime-focused Broken cops were sometimes trouble but I for- home and across the street from my Windows theory that guides it. tunately didn’t have much first-hand where my kids go to school. When experience. As the son of a working- This Thursday marks the 100th day class Colombian mother who had kept sleeping in a staircase lands you in a of Bill Bratton’s second stint as NYPD Rikers cell I thought something is wrong. me out of trouble growing up, I was Commissioner. Bratton famously helped always reminded to not embarrass her Murdough’s death laid bare some of to introduce and popularize Broken or gain the attention of police. And I our collective disregard for the poor as Windows policing theory—which seeks knew what cops were capable of. If well as an aggressive police department to crack down on small, low-level crimes you’re a young man of color, you know. with an obsession for law and order as a means to fighting crime overall— That’s what made me shoot up onto my rivaled only by military dictatorships into one of the most dominant policing feet and step out as quickly and as and science fiction characters (i.e., philosophies across the country. A politely as possible, even as small part RoboCop, Judge Dredd). Is it enough country with a prison population that of me was incensed that my train was to have roundtable discussions lament- many recognize as untenable. going to leave and that I’d have to ing the case of Mr. Murdough as one of My own brushes with the law give spend eons waiting for the next one. someone slipping through the cracks? me insight. I look back to a late night A cop asked me to show him ID. I What happened to him is the not-so coming come on the A train when I unpredictable outcome of a society didn’t have it with me. I had left my would spend the night in jail after hav- bag—with my wallet and phone Continued from page 54 ing my foot up on empty seat in front inside—in my friend’s car earlier that of me. Another man recently filed a Website Addresses: night. I knew that it wasn’t against the lawsuit against the NYPD after an inci- law not to have ID, so I didn’t think Dr.Rima@NaturalSolutionsFoundation. dent where he was charged with also much of it. As my train left, my polite- com having his foot on a subway seat. I ness gave way to me asking questions www.GDS-Syndrome.com (Free didn’t know it then, but this was my about why I was being detained. The E-book Download) first encounter with Broken Windows initial response was that that I had my www.DrRimaTruthReports.com/ policing and how the theory actually foot up on the seat. Then I was told Delta-Project-Signup.com plays out in the lives of everyday peo- that I “fit the descript” of someone. ple—not just hardened criminals or www.MedicalVeritas.com Since I didn’t have ID and I was being the homeless. I also got a sense of how detained then they’d have to confirm The Voice and Face of the Nation of easy it is to end up in jail. my identity by calling a family mem- Prisoners, I am Bryant Arroyo, at SCI- After a night of hanging out with ber, they told me. It was about 4:30 Mahanoy friends in 2010, I peered through the A.M. and without my phone the only Copyright: 2014 Bryant Arroyo scratchy subway windows to see how number I knew offhand was my moth- —PrisonRadio.org, March 7, 2014 much longer my ride home to the er’s. No. I refused to put my nervous Rockaways would be. The train had been mother through hell by having a cop Write to: held in the station for a while, it seemed. call her at 4:30 in the morning about Bryant Arroyo #CU-1126 Out of the corner of a sleepy, blurry eye her son. Consequently I soon found SCI Frackville I saw two cops poking their heads in and my head being pushed down into a cop 1111 Altamont Blvd. out of the train. They were looking for car for the first time in my life. The Frackville, PA 17931

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 55 moment was now dawning on me and Children Don’t Matter: The Numbers Don’t Lie tears of rage filled my eyes, which were fully awake now. By Kerry Shakaboona Marshall I ended up spending that night and the next morning in a transit jail effi- Pennsylvania don’t care about the • In PA, children serving LWOP ciently located in the back of a subway human rights of children. There, I’ve imprisonment are calling LWOP station in Rockaway Park. It was a tiny, said it. Many people are fearful of mak- sentences “Death by Incarcera- brightly lit cell where it seemed no one ing such a straightforward yet truthful tion,” which is the new death could hear you scream. After confirming statement. But the numbers don’t lie: penalty. my identity (which I still haven’t figured • PA has 540 children serving Life- • PA spends $2 billion a year main- out how), the cop told me that I was get- Without-Parole (LWOP) prison taining its Department of Correc- ting a summons for having my foot up sentences. tions, with annual increases of on the subway seat. He handed me the • PA has the most children serving $100 million to cover contractual summons along with my shoelaces as I LWOP sentences in the nation increases in costs. walked out wondering how many people and in the world. • In two years, the Philadelphia had passed through these doors. • In PA, about 70 percent of chil- school district has stripped $400 While I was lucky enough to walk dren serving LWOP prison terms million out of its annual budget, out and pay a fine, Jerome Murdough’s are African-American and 10 closed 30 schools, eliminated night didn’t end so easily. The same percent are Latino. 7,000 jobs of mostly teachers, and might be said of Kalief Browder, the suffers from a $304 million defi- then 16-year-old teen who spent 33 • In PA, of the 540 children serving cit. At the same time, PA is con- months in Rikers without a conviction LWOP prison terms, about 350 structing three new prisons at a or trial. So while horror stories like are from the city of Philadelphia. cost of $800 million. those of Murdough and Browder force • In PA, LWOP is a mandatory • In PA, a devastating public some of us to snap to attention, it’s prison sentence for First and Sec- school-to-prison pipeline has clear that any restructuring of a broken ond degree murder offenses. been quietly thriving over the criminal justice system must also Post-SB 850, there is now a differ- past few decades, resulting in include a restructuring of policing. ent sentencing scheme for child children of color being treated as Our court system convicts masses of offenders, which does not retro- undesirables and thrown away people—most of them poor and from actively apply to the 540 child like disposable diapers in social communities of color—and our jails offenders already serving LWOP. trash bins we call prison. are teeming with mentally ill New • PA is one of only six states that Yorkers. Sweeping up people for the Children don’t matter. The num- has LWOP imprisonment as the bers don’t lie. smallest of crimes will only add water only life sentencing option. A Life References: to a sinking ship. prison sentence is a Death sen- Josmar Trujillo is an activist and The Patriot News, article, “Reform Continues tence in PA. to Elude Corbett,” February 2014. organizer with New Yorkers Against • In PA, about a third of child Sentencing Project Report, “Life Goes On: Bratton. offenders serving LWOP prison The Historic Rise of Life Sentences in America,” —AlterNet, April 11, 2014 sentences have second degree http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/ http://www.alternet.org/hard-times- murder convictions, which is a incLife percent20Goes percentOn percent202013pdf usa/homeless-veteran-murdoughs- felony-murder charge which says Decarcerate PA, Life Sentences Report, Janu- ary 2014. death-rikers-reveals-our-collective-dis- that legally the child did not mur- —PrisonRadio.org regard-poor?akid=11712.229473.Lby3R der anyone but was involved in 9&rd=1&src=newsletter981068&t=27 some way. • In PA, due to a post-1977 state Write to: statute that changed the Board of Kerry Shakaboona Marshall #BE7826 Pardons, commutation of LWOP SCI Rockview, Box-A sentences are no longer possible Bellefonte, PA 16823 for children serving LWOP.

56 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 Marshall Eddie Conway Released Political Prisoner for 44 Years By Susie Day

A small hearing March 4, 2014, in agreed not to litigate his case based on Marshall Eddie Conway, a prominent an obscure courtroom at the Circuit the Unger ruling. Panther activist in the community. Court for Baltimore City ended with As he walked away from the court- “There was a de facto war being the release of former Black Panther house, Boyle said: “It’s a big day for waged between the police and the black Marshall Edward Conway, who has Black political prisoners that one of them community,” Robert Boyle explained. spent nearly 44 of his 67 years in maxi- has finally gotten out. I feel that [the late “Eddie Conway was a well-known per- mum security prisons. Eddie, as he is mayor of Jackson, Mississippi] Chokwe son in the Baltimore Black Panthers. If known to his thousands of supporters, Lumumba was speaking into the judge’s it wasn’t Eddie, it was going to be entered the courtroom wearing a ear, to urge him to let this happen.” someone else from the Party.” Department of Corrections sweatshirt, The day after the shooting, Conway in handcuffs and leg chains, and walked Scores of former Black Panthers are was arrested at work in the Baltimore out of the courthouse about an hour serving virtual life sentences in prison, post office. later in civilian clothes to greet a host largely the result of the efforts of J. of family, supporters and old friends: Edgar Hoover, who ordered his FBI in Mr. Conway’s trial, complex and the 1960s and ’70s to target the Black tumultuous, lasted several months. Jack “I am filled with a lot of different Panther Party—as revealed by the 1977 Johnson had, at one point during police emotions after nearly 44 years in pris- Church Committee Senate hear- interrogations, named Powell and Conway on. I want to thank my family, my ings. The first Panther chapter was as the shooters but later refused to testify friends, my lawyers and my supporters; started in 1966 in Oakland, California, to this in court, saying that police had many have suffered along with me.” but by the time a chapter was formed in beaten him until he told this story. Conway Despite Eddie Conway’s insistence Baltimore in 1968, the FBI had had chose not to attend much of his trial, pro- on his innocence, it took years for ample time to insert more than its usual testing the fact that he had been given a Conway and his attorneys to find a way share of informants into the fledgling court-appointed attorney in lieu of his to overturn his conviction. Finally, in organization. The FBI, moreover, often choice, William Kunstler, who needed May 2012, the Maryland Court of worked in league with various munici- more time before he could join this case. Appeals ruled in the case of Unger v. pal police departments. As Conway Adding to the mix was a jailhouse State that a Maryland jury, to comply wrote in his political memoir, “The informant, Charles Reynolds, who was with due process as stated in the U.S. alleged murder of police officers would not charged in the case but testified that Constitution, must be convinced soon take the place of the mythological the Baltimore Panther Party required beyond a reasonable doubt that some- rape of white women as the basis for the aspiring members to shoot a police offi- one charged with a crime is guilty before legal lynching of black men.” cer and that Paul Coates—now head of that jury can convict the defendant. On the night of April 21, 1970, two the Black Classics Press—had ordered What made this decision momentous Baltimore police officers, Donald Sager Conway to carry out the shooting. for many people in prison, including and Stanley Sierakowski, were shot as However, Coates refuted this in court, Conway, is that it applied retroactively. they responded to a domestic distur- testifying that Eddie was, in fact, already Robert Boyle and Phillip G. Dantes, bance call. Sierakowski was wounded a party member, higher in party rank attorneys for Conway, filed a motion seriously, and Sager died of his wounds. than himself. Despite, or possibly on his behalf based on this ruling, Two members of the Black Panther because of these and many more compli- arguing that the judge in Conway’s Party, Jack Ivory Johnson and Jackie cations, a jury finally convicted all three trial had not properly instructed the Powell, were apprehended close to the men of the murder of Sager. Conway was jury that this “beyond a reasonable scene soon after the shooting. Other sentenced to life without parole. doubt” proviso was mandatory for police officers spotted a third African- Powell died in prison in the 1980s. conviction. Based on this motion, they American man and chased him for Johnson was released in 2009, having negotiated an agreement whereby several blocks as the man fired back at served his full term after he was resen- Conway would be resentenced to time them, finally escaping. A police officer tenced. But Conway served until served and be released from prison. In later testified that the man he chased Tuesday in various Maryland prisons, exchange, Conway and his lawyers and who shot at him as he fled was an “exemplary prisoner.”

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 57 While continuing to maintain his Marissa Alexander’s Sentence Could Triple innocence, Conway identified himself as a political prisoner. During his decades By Dr. Sinclair Grey III of incarceration, he earned three college degrees and organized a literacy pro- You remember Marissa Alexander Alexander’s case drew national gram. He has also started other human don’t you? She’s the Jacksonville, attention because of the Stand Your rights groups, such as Friend of a Friend, Florida woman who fired warning Ground law in Florida. Unlike the case which is affiliated with the American shots in the direction of her estranged of Trayvon Martin whereby George Friends Service Committee and helps husband. She’s also the woman who Zimmerman was acquitted of killing young men, often gang members, was sentenced to 20 years in prison Martin, Alexander didn’t kill anyone. resolve conflicts. Because 78 percent of because of her actions. She is facing life in prison for a warning the Maryland prison population is Alexander, 33 was previously con- shot that she says was in self-defense. African-American, Friend of a Friend victed in 2012 for three counts of aggra- Her case has brought about anger as also teaches these young men about vated assault with a deadly weapon and well as confusion in the state of Florida their heritage and culture. was sentenced to 20 years in prison by and everywhere for that matter. So it was no accident that, in the Circuit Judge James Daniel under the Alexander’s case of the “warning- courtroom and outside the courthouse, state’s 10-20-life law. Daniel actually shot” has sparked a bill in Florida that several young men whose lives had imposed three separate 20-year sentenc- will be brought up in the legislative ses- been changed were waiting to welcome es on Alexander but ordered that they be sion on Tuesday [March 4, 2014]. Under Conway to the outside world. “He served concurrently, which meant this bill, there will not be a 20-year helped me when I was incarcerated at Alexander could get out in 20 years. prison sentence for warning shots. 15 years old,” said DJ, one of the young The 1st District Court of Appeals in This case will definitely spark con- men who met Eddie in prison as a kid. Tallahassee threw out her conviction, troversy. If Alexander gets 20 years or The Friend of a Friend program helped stating that Daniels forced Alexander 60 years, no one wins. Alexander’s him a lot; DJ said he owes who he is to prove that she was battered by her attorney is seeking an acquittal and in now to Conway. “Eddie took a chance estranged husband rather than acting the process will be arguing against the on me, and changed my life.” in self-defense. 10-20 life law. Also there to hug Conway for the The Appeals courts in sending the Source: Jacksonville.com first time in some 43 years was his old case back, said that under the 10-20 life friend Coates. Dr. Sinclair Grey III is a speaker, law, three separate sentences must be activist, published author of five books. Ronald Conway, Eddie’s son, blink- served consecutively and cannot be ing back tears, talked about how his imposed concurrently. Now, the Office —Naturally Moi, March 3, 2014 father had held back from getting to of State Attorney Angela Corey is seek- http://naturallymoi.com/2014/03/ know Ronald’s two sons because he ing to sentence Alexander for 60 years. news/marissa-alexanders-sentence- didn’t want them to see him in prison; Her trial is scheduled for July 28. could-triple/ and now, they all had a chance to really be together. Boyle said: “I am absolutely thrilled for Eddie. Finally, what we wanted has happened: to see this innocent man out of jail.” In April 2011 Conway’s political memoir, Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther, was released by AK Press. —Truthout, March 5, 2014 http://truth-out.org/news/ item/22260-political-prisoner-marshall- eddie-conway-released-from-prison- after-44-years Marissa Alexander

58 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 Lorenzo Johnson is Waiting! Where’s the Justice, Attorney General Kathleen Kane? By The Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson

Eighteen years ago the Pennsylvania prosecution witness, demanded by Wrongful Conviction press conference Attorney General’s (AG) office prose- Johnson repeatedly since his trial took place on the steps of the New cuted Lorenzo Johnson for a murder almost two decades ago, have been York City Hall, called by victims of he did not commit. He was in NYC at released by the Attorney General’s former Brooklyn Detective Louis the time of the Harrisburg, PA murder. office. Based on the new evidence Scarcella and joined by family mem- The AG’s office is responsible for obtained, these reports likely include bers of others who are innocent and Johnson being re-incarcerated after his proof that the prosecution’s key wit- imprisoned, including Lorenzo conviction was overturned and he was ness was coerced by police to lie against Johnson. released from prison two years ago. Johnson. The message should be loud and Lorenzo Johnson continues the fight As recounted by veteran journalist clear, as Lorenzo Johnson has stated: for his exoneration and freedom. Linn Washington in an article on pros- “A second is too long to be in prison On December 18, 2013, Johnson’s ecutorial prejudices and misconduct, when you are innocent, so years impris- supporters delivered over 1000 petition “[PA Attorney General] Kathleen oned … is intolerable.” His statement signatories to PA Attorney General Kane’s office, perpetuating an outra- to these protests: “We (Innocent Kathleen Kane and held a press confer- geous injustice, is battling to sustain Prisoners) ask everyone to speak out ence demanding Johnson’s immediate the life sentence of Lorenzo ‘Cat’ against Injustice. It’s going to take ALL release from prison and dismissal of Johnson, convicted of being at the of us to combat this Machine of the charges. The response was, scene of a 1995 murder but having Injustice.” no role in that shotgun slaying. “Attorney General Kane is always Hold the date: A protest is being interested, in every case, in justice. If “The federal 3rd Circuit Court of planned to Demand Freedom for there is new evidence or information, Appeals, in October 2011, freed Lorenzo Johnson and Against Johnson from prison, after nearly 16 we are interested in that.” Wrongful Convictions. Place: years. That appellate court found But Lorenzo Johnson is still waiting. ‘insufficient evidence’ to support Harrisburg, PA on May 29, 2014—the two-year anniversary since the U.S. A Petition for Post Conviction Relief Johnson’s conviction. But the PA Supreme Court reinstated Lorenzo (PCRA) was filed in August 2013 with Attorney General’s Office appealed Johnson’s conviction. new evidence of Johnson’s innocence, Johnson’s release. The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated Johnson’s convic- police and prosecutorial misconduct Sign Lorenzo Johnson’s Freedom tion forcing his return to prison in Petition: and information on the identity of the June 2012. One issue in this long actual killer. A similar petition was filed legal battle is misconduct by police http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/ in the U.S. federal courts. In its response and prosecutors (from the AG’s sign-the-petition.html to the federal petition, the AG’s office office) who withheld evidence of Contribute to help Lorenzo argued that Johnson’s new evidence Johnson’s innocence at trial and Johnson’s wife and family members should be rejected, without even hold- during a string of appeals.” (“Pa continue to visit and for the cost of this Prosecutors Parry on Prejudice,” ing an evidentiary hearing. campaign to free him: OpEd News, March 29, 2014.) Johnson’s lawyers had a meeting http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/ The Campaign to Free Lorenzo with reps of the AG’s office on January how-can-i-help.html 29, 2014, who again promised to “inves- Johnson will not stop until Lorenzo is www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org tigate” the new evidence in Johnson’s exonerated and free. The fight for petitions. Another supplemental PCRA Lorenzo Johnson is part of the fight for Write to: was filed March 3, 2014 with yet more the tens-of-thousands of innocent men Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 evidence of state misconduct. and women who have been falsely con- victed. On March 14, 2014 the Sixth SCI Mahanoy But Lorenzo Johnson is still waiting. Annual Freedom March for the 301 Morea Rd. Not even the first eight pages of Wrongfully Convicted, organized by Frackville, PA 17932 suppressed police reports, or the state- Mary Ann Lubas, was held in EMAIL: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com ments made to police by the main Washington, PA. On April 9, 2014 a code: Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 59 The Case of Shanesha Taylor Why are we sending mothers to jail for being unable to afford daycare? By Yolanda Spivey

The case of Shanesha Taylor received helping out with childcare. If they er in America. Not only has she lost her national attention. If you’ll recall, she’s weren’t available, there was always a children, she has also lost her freedom the 35-year-old homeless woman from neighborhood lady, (I’ll call her Ms. and now has a bigger battle to fight. Arizona who was arrested after leaving Rosemary), who would watch all the Maybe Shanesha Taylor saw that job her two young children in her Dodge neighborhood children while mothers interview as a way out of that Dodge Durango while she went to a job inter- went out to work or run errands. Durango—so she took a chance and view. As a mother, this case struck me Today, families live further away made a decision that would change her to the core, because I have a confes- from each other or are simply just not life forever. sion: I am Shanesha Taylor. there. Also, there are no more Ms. It makes me think of the privileged No, I’ve never left my child in a car Rosemarys, and if there are any left, mothers like the CEO of Yahoo! while I went to a job interview, but I you have to be careful that they don’t Marissa Mayer, who was fortunate have done some things out of despera- have someone in their home that could enough to not only have a well paying tion that will leave some to question potentially harm your child. job, but was able to build a nursery my parenting skills. For instance, when Our society has grown quite alien- right next to her cushy office at Yahoo’s my child was first born, I couldn’t ated from one another—it’s no won- headquarters. afford childcare, so I would sneak him der why Shanesha Taylor had no one to into my office and sit him under my The Shanesha Taylors of the world care for her young ones. It’s also no go to jail while the Marissa Mayers of desk for the full seven hours while I wonder why she was homeless, living was at work. I did that for a week until the world build nurseries. I ask you: Is in her Dodge Durango. Sometimes, this the America that we want to create? I was able to get enough money to put help isn’t there. a deposit down on a place for him at a Yolanda Spivey writes on a variety of I know I’m going to face a lot of local childcare facility. And when he topics and is the founder of Black criticism in writing this article. Some turned three, he spent the last semester Insurance News. would say, “well if you can’t take care with me at college. That’s right, I took of your children, then why have them —Naturally Moi, April 3, 2014 him to virtually every class that I had to at all.” But that’s not the question that http://naturallymoi.com/2014/04/ take in order to graduate. should be asked. The question we news/yolanda-spivey-why-are-we-send- The fortunate thing about my situa- should ask is, should Shanesha Taylor ing-mothers-to-jail-for-being-unable- tion was my kid was a well-behaved and other women who are put in des- to-afford-daycare/ child and hardly cried. So it was easy perate situations be thrown in jail for for me to sneak him into the office. My making the only decision they saw fit at boss was hardly ever there. When at the time? Should they lose their chil- school, my classmates were so enam- dren in the process too? ored by his presence, they welcomed What’s even more disparaging are him. My professors seemed not to the comments I’ve read on my Facebook mind—I guess they knew my situation page from friends and acquaintances. and never questioned my actions. While some sympathized with Like Shanesha Taylor, there was no vil- Shanesha Taylor, others berated her for lage for me, so I had to what I had to do. her decision. People are so quick to The village has left millions of judge until they are faced with the very women to fend for themselves. Back in same situation. the day, grandparents, aunts and cous- In my opinion, all Shanesha Taylor ins all lent a hand when it came to is guilty of is being a poor single moth-

60 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 A Prisoner’s Salute to Bobby Sands The Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation By Denis O’Hearn

I attended a birthday party last week. fabricated evidence of guilt and with- Together we celebrated Bobby’s life It was in Ohio State Penitentiary, on the held evidence of their innocence and and his ongoing contribution to free- 60th birthday of Bobby Sands, the Irish stage-managed a series of trials that dom everywhere. political prisoner who died after 66 resulted in death penalties. The five After the victorious hunger strike in days on hunger strike back in 1981. He men remain steadfast friends and com- Ohio, other prisoners around the was 27 then and he was followed to his rades. Two are white, two black, one United States read about Bobby and death by nine of his comrades. Sunni Muslim. the Irish hunger strikers. Last year Younger people won’t remember it They lived the past twenty years in 30,000 men in California’s prisons but anyone over fifty should remember supermax confinement: 23-hours-a- went on hunger strike against solitary how the name Bobby Sands went day, seven-days-a-week, in an 8x10- confinement. They organized the strike round the world. The New York Times foot cell. One hour they spend alone in from a small area of isolated confine- editorialized how Bobby “bested” a bigger cell, exercising. That is, until ment called the short corridor that British Prime Minister Maggie recently. resembles nothing so much as the Thatcher because he and his comrades In January 2011, after reading H-Blocks at their height of inhumani- showed real moral courage as they ty, although these men do not even fought for their rights as political pris- accounts of the Irish hunger strikes of 1980-81 and of the life of Bobby Sands, have windows in their cells. The men oners with nothing but their bodies, who organized the strike are African- while she just showed vengeance and three of the men went on hunger strike to demand contact with each other and American, Latino, and white. spite. When Bobby Sands ran and won According to one recent report, the election to British parliament, while open visits, where they could touch men held all kinds of lively debates in dying on hunger strike, he won 30,493 their friends and family and break their “pod” in Pelican Bay State Prison, votes. The most Thatcher ever got was bread together with them. This we but whenever the subject of Bobby 29,697. Bobby spent the last five years have been doing since the victorious Sands and the Irish hunger strikes of his life in supermax confinement: 24 end of their hunger strike, although came up, the talk changed. “Every time hours a day, seven days a week, in an Bomani and Jason remain chained to we’d start talking about it, we’d notice 8x10-foot cell. When I tell young Irish separate picnic tables during the visits. Americans about this they are shocked the pod going quiet—we knew people Yesterday, we bought a small cake were listening.” The state says that they that an Irishman would be treated so from the vending machine in the visit- cruelly by British jailers. are leaders of gangs that are at war with ing room. Jason, who is an accom- each other yet they have shown the Last week I was visiting my brothers plished artist, used the crayons and deepest comradeship. The hunger Bomani Shakur and Jason Robb. paper from the children’s play area of strike lasted some 60 days and it may Bomani and Jason, along with three the visiting room to make birthday others, are awaiting execution for their cards read- parts in a prison uprising in Lucasville, ing “Happy Ohio in 1993. There is no evidence that Birthday any of the five was involved in any kill- Bobby” and ings that took place during the uprising “Always but they led a movement to convince Remember.” prisoners not to inform on other pris- He con- oners regarding any events that took structed a place during the uprising. Bomani and birthday Jason were offered deals by the state of candle from Ohio to get very reduced sentences if paper, with a they testified against other prisoners “flame” on but they refused to do so and chose to the top, to save their souls at the possible cost of decorate the their lives. As punishment, the state cake.

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 61 resume again if rights are not granted. Chelsea Manning Acceptance Statement of Last month, dozens of prisoners in Menard “administrative segregation” Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence (solitary) unit in the state of Illinois By Chelsea Manning via Aaron Kirkhouse went on a hunger and then thirst strike for their rights. Again, they cited the The founders of America—fresh government accuses an American of example of Bobby Sands who, among from a war of independence from King such crimes, it has prosecuted them in others, has been responsible not only George III—were particularly fearful of a federal criminal court. for politicizing large segments of the concentrating power. James Madison In a recent Freedom of Information U.S. prison population but for showing wrote that “the accumulation of all Act case2—a seemingly Orwellian them a way that they can fight for their powers, legislative, executive, and judi- “newspeak” name for a statute that rights through nonviolent resistance. ciary, in the same hands, whether of actually exempts categories of docu- Soon, I believe, there will be a one, a few, or many, and whether ments from release to the public—a nation-wide hunger strike in the pris- hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, federal district court judge ruled against ons here to protest against the inhu- may justly be pronounced the very the New York Times and the American 1 mane policy of long-term solitary iso- definition of tyranny.” Civil Liberties Union. The Times and lation, which since 1983 has put tens- To address these concerns, the the ACLU argued that documents of-thousands of men into total solitary founders of America actively took steps regarding the practice of “targeted kill- isolation, some of them unable to when drafting the Constitution and ing” of American citizens, such as the touch another human being for ratifying a Bill of Rights—including radical Sunni cleric Anwar Nasser al- decades. protections echoing the Libertarianism Aulaqi were in the public’s interest and Now we hear that hundreds of of John Locke—to ensure that no per- were being withheld improperly. undocumented migrants who are being son be “deprived of life, liberty, or The government first refused to detained in Tacoma in the state of property, without due process of law.” acknowledge the existence of the docu- Washington launched a hunger More recently, though, since the rise ments, but later argued that their strike—on Bobby’s 60th birthday! of the national security apparatus— release could harm national security All of the Irish hunger strikers and after a brief hiatus between the fall of and were therefore exempt from dis- their families, those still with us and the Soviet Union and the attacks on the closure. The court, however, felt con- those who have passed from us, can Pentagon and World Trade Center— strained by the law and “conclud[ed] take great pride in the fact that their the American government has been that the Government [had] not violat- struggle continues and that their exam- pursuing an unprecedented amount of ed the FOIA by refusing to turn over ple has given hope to tens-of-thou- secrecy and power consolidation in the the documents sought in the FOIA sands of men who are still being held in Executive branch, under the President requests, and [could not] be compelled “concrete tombs” in the richest nation and the Cabinet. . . . to explain in detail the reasons why in the world. When drafting Article III of the [the Government’s] actions do not vio- HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOBBY! American Constitution, the founders late the Constitution and laws of the ALWAYS REMEMBER! were rather leery of accusations of trea- United States.” Denis O’Hearn is author of Nothing son, and accorded special protections However, the judge also wrote can- But an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, for those accused of such a capital didly about her frustration with her the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a offense, providing that “[n]o person sense that the request “implicate[d] Generation (Nation Books). shall be convicted of Treason unless on serious issues about the limits on the the Testimony of two Witnesses to the power of the Executive Branch under —CounterPunch, March 19, 2014 same overt Act, or on Confession in the Constitution and laws of the United open Court.” States,” and that the Presidential http://www.counterpunch. For those of you familiar with the “Administration ha[d] engaged in org/2014/03/19/a-prisoners-salute-to- American Constitution, you may public discussion of the legality of tar- bobby-sands/ notice that this provision is under the geted killing, even of [American] citi- Article concerning the Judiciary, zens, but in cryptic and imprecise Article III, and not the Legislative or ways.” In other words, it wasn’t that Executive Articles, I and II respectively. she didn’t think that the public didn’t And, historically, when the American have a right to know—it was that she

62 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 didn’t feel that she had the “legal” and former small business partner, the state. In essence, this is the differ- authority to compel disclosure. Aaron, for the release of a video and ence between tyranny and freedom. To This case, like too many others, documents that “sparked a worldwide echo a maxim from Milton and Foes presents a critical problem that can dialogue about the importance of gov- Friedman: a society that puts secrecy— also be seen in several recent cases, ernment accountability for human in the sense of state secrecy—ahead of including my court-martial. For rights abuses,” it is becoming increas- transparency and accountability will instance, I was accused by the Executive ingly clear to me that the dangers of end up neither secure nor free. branch, and particularly the withholding documents, legal interpre- Thank you, tations, and court jurisprudence from Department of Defense, of aiding the Chelsea E. Manning enemy—a treasonable offense covered the public that pertain to the right to under Article III of the Constitution. “life, liberty, and property” of a state’s —Private Manning Support Network, citizens is as fundamental and impor- February 19, 2014 Granted, I received due process. I tant to protecting against such human http://www.privatemanning.org/fea- received charges, was arraigned before rights abuses. a military judge for trial, and eventu- tured/chelsea-manning-acceptance- ally acquitted. But, the al-Aulaqi case When the public lacks the ability to statement-of-sam-adams-award-for- raises a fundamental question: did the access what its government is doing, it integrity-in-intelligence American government, and particular- ceases to be involved in the governing ly the same President and Department, process. There is a distinct difference have the power to unilaterally deter- between citizens, in which people are mine my guilt of such an offense, and entitled to rights and privileges pro- 1 Federalist Papers, No. 47 (1788). execute me at the will of the pilot of an tected by and from the state, and sub- 2 New York Times v. United States Depart- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle? jects, in which people are placed under ment of Justice, 915 F. Supp.2d 5O8, the absolute authority and control of (S.D.N.Y.,2013.01.03). Until documents held by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel were released after significant political pressure in mid-2013, I could not tell you. And, very likely, I do not believe I could speak intelligently of the Administration’s policy on “targeted killing” today either. There is a problem with this level of secrecy, obfuscation, and classification or protective marking, in that they supposedly protect citizens of their nation; yet, it also breeds a unilateral- ism that the founders feared, and delib- erately tried to prevent when drafting the American Constitution. Now, we have a “disposition matrix,” classified military commissions, and foreign intelligence and surveillance courts— modern Star Chamber equivalents. I am now accepting this award, through my friend, former school peer,

EXPOSING CRIMES IS NOT A CRIME

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 63 Mumia Abu-Jamal: Innocent and Framed The Fraternal Order of Police Campaign to Defeat the Adegbile Nomination By Rachel Wolkenstein

The controversy surrounding presi- of Philadelphia police officer Daniel ers (the .001 percent backed by both dent Barack Obama’s nomination of Faulkner. parties of American capital) is his con- Debo Adegbile to head the Civil Rights The Debo Adegbile nomination con- tinuing opposition to the policies of the Division of the U.S. Justice Department troversy was and is squarely about the American imperialist state, at home and and the Fraternal Order of Police’s meaning and import of the case of abroad: political repression, racial (FOP) successful campaign against Mumia Abu-Jamal. Examining his case oppression and class exploitation, impe- him was not, in fact, an abstract consti- is akin to opening Pandora’s box—it rialist war and slaughter in the name of tutional dispute over the Sixth explodes the myth of American “justice.” “democracy.” For this, he is known as a Amendment right to counsel. For the “long distance revolutionary.” The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is the FOP any defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal From solitary confinement on death is grounds for a rabid attack. extraordinary political persecution of an innocent man, a former Black Panther row to the “slow death row” of life In response, Adegbile and the Party (BPP) spokesman, defender of the imprisonment without parole, Mumia NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and MOVE organization and radical jour- Abu-Jamal, using his voice and pen, most supporters of the nomination, nalist, known as the “voice of the voice- inspires and educates millions around from the Obama administration though less,” who was sentenced to death the globe who identify with his fight the liberal left, distanced the LDF and because of his political beliefs and affili- against “the system” and for justice for the nominee from Abu-Jamal’s legal ations. It is about racist legal lynching in all of humanity. He has written seven defense. They discounted the very idea the United States, the legacy of slavery. It books and recorded over 3000 com- that either the LDF or he had, or could is the every day workings of an inher- mentaries. Despite the hatred and con- have, challenged Abu-Jamal’s convic- ently class-biased, racist and politically certed effort of the American bourgeois tion for the murder of police officer driven criminal injustice system. state, Mumia Abu-Jamal has not been Daniel Faulkner. This, despite the fact silenced. that Christina Swarns, Director of the Every element of the constitutional right to a “fair trial,” to due process, It is for these reasons that defense of LDF Criminal Justice Project, has been Mumia Abu-Jamal is considered strict- co-counsel of record for Mumia Abu- was violated in convicting and sentenc- ing Mumia Abu-Jamal to death. ly forbidden. And for these reasons we Jamal since February 2011, following must defend him insisting on the fact some twenty years of LDF defense But the most fundamental violation that he is innocent and his guilt was efforts on behalf of Abu-Jamal. of due process is being framed for a manufactured by a corrupt system. The Executive Director of the LDF, crime you did not commit. Sherilyn Ifill, described the FOP-led From moments after the shootings, A political and racist frame-up campaign as a “smear campaign” the Philadelphia police and prosecu- It is undeniable that the prosecution against Debo Adegbile, accepting the tion, with the complicity of the U.S. and conviction and death sentence of premise that legal representation of Attorney General’s office, manufac- Mumia Abu-Jamal for a crime he did Mumia Abu-Jamal is a “smear” instead tured Abu-Jamal’s guilt and actively not commit was politically motivated of insisting that as a lawyer this is a suppressed his innocence—evidence and racially biased. point of pride, responsibility, and a cor- that someone else shot and killed offi- From the age of 15, Abu-Jamal was nerstone of American jurisprudence. cer Faulkner. Every part of the police under FBI surveillance and targeted as But the smears—the lies—propa- and prosecution’s case—witness testi- a security threat by the Philadelphia gated by the FOP are against Mumia mony, Abu-Jamal’s supposed confes- police and the FBI under Abu-Jamal, that he is an unrepentant, sion and ballistics—is a lie. COINTELPRO—a program of disrup- vicious cop-killer who should have Mumia Abu-Jamal’s only “crime” tion, frame-up and extermination— been executed. on December 9, 1981 was that he sur- for simply being a spokesman for the Black Panther Party. There is an unambiguous and vived being shot and then brutally unequivocal answer to this attack: beaten by police officers. The message to the BPP by FBI Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent and Mumia Abu-Jamal’s on-going Director J. Edgar Hoover was “The framed for the December 1981 murder “crime” in the eyes of the American rul- Negro youth and moderates must be

64 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 made to understand that if they suc- years earlier when he was 16-years-old case, including that neither Abu-Jamal cumb to revolutionary teachings, they was the basis for the prosecution’s nor his brother William Cook have will be dead revolutionaries.” argument that Mumia Abu-Jamal declared Abu-Jamal’s innocence, are Abu-Jamal remained a target of the should be executed. Neither of these still, even today, perpetrated by the FOP state and was under daily surveillance violations of fundamental constitu- and its ilk, in the mainstream press. over the next ten years, as he became an tional rights—the right to a jury of Federal complicity in Mumia award-winning radio journalist, known one’s peers and the right of free speech as “the voice of the voiceless.” He and association—was held to be appli- Abu-Jamal’s conviction exposed police corruption and brutali- cable to Mumia Abu-Jamal. Every The U.S. Justice Department had a ty, telling the truth about the govern- court, from the Pennsylvania state direct role in the manufactured trial evi- ment’s persecution of the MOVE orga- court to the United States Supreme dence against Mumia Abu-Jamal at trial, nization, a largely Black radical back- Court, upheld the prosecution. and suppressed evidence of his innocence. to-nature organization. For this he was None of the evidence of Abu-Jamal’s The U.S. Justice Department’s singled out and threatened by the innocence or the police and prosecu- uncensored files surely contain infor- Philadelphia police and by Philadelphia tion fabrication of evidence of guilt mation on its collusion with then District Attorney Edward Rendell. presented at trial was credited, includ- Philadelphia District Attorney Edward Mumia’s conviction and death sen- ing the following: (1) the manufacture Rendell to suppress information that tence were the continuation of the gov- by the District Attorney and police of could exculpate Mumia Abu-Jamal: ernment vendetta against the Black the “hospital confession;” (2) the (1) the corruption investigation of the Panther Party that led to the murder of 38 absence of ballistics or other forensics highest-ranking officer on the scene, Panthers and the frame-up convictions of evidence showing Abu-Jamal had any Inspector Alfonzo Giordano, (2) infor- hundreds, and part of the crescendo of role in the shooting of Daniel Faulkner; mation on Philadelphia police depart- legal frame-ups and outright terror tactics (3) the fact that the shootings could ment officers who were confidential directed at the MOVE organization. not have happened as presented, con- informants in the police corruption firmed by police photographs and cases investigated and prosecuted from Shortly before Mumia Abu-Jamal’s those of an independent photographer; 1982 trial, the notorious Philadelphia 1980-86, including Daniel Faulkner, (4) police threats, coercion and/or and (3) the Justice Department’s own judge, Albert Sabo, “King of Death prosecutorial promises made to wit- Row” and life-long FOP member investigation regarding the murder of nesses that compelled them to lie on Daniel Faulkner. promised, “I’m going to help them fry the witness stand or kept them from Unknown to Abu-Jamal, the likely the nigger.” This determined every taking the witness stand at Mumia architect of the frame-up, Inspector judicial decision he made during the Abu-Jamal’s trial (including, Abu- Alfonzo Giordano, was under federal 1982 trial and the three post-convic- Jamal’s brother William Cook, Arnold investigation for police corruption at tion appeals evidentiary hearings from Howard, William Singletary, Veronica the time of the murder, as was the 1995-1997. Judge Sabo’s admission of Jones, Cynthia White, Robert Chobert). racism and bias was ruled “irrelevant” Commander and Deputy Commander to the fairness of the trial and post- The new evidence established that of the Central Division where the mur- conviction hearings by Philadelphia the prosecution’s case is entirely false, der occurred. In December 1981, when Court of Common Pleas Judge Pamela that Mumia Abu-Jamal did not shoot Daniel Faulkner was murdered, the Dembe and upheld by the Pennsylvania Daniel Faulkner, but other men did so FBI and U.S. Attorney General’s office Supreme Court. and ran away from the scene. This was were running at least three federal known when police beat Abu-Jamal on investigations into Philadelphia police The jury selection process discrimi- the scene and arrested him. nated against Black people sitting on corruption, including police involve- the jury. Exclusion of Black people And all of this evidence of inno- ment with organized crime in gam- from juries was the policy of the cence and state frame-up was brought bling, prostitution and drug dealing. Philadelphia District Attorney, memo- before the courts even before the 1999 One or more Philadelphia police offi- rialized in an official District Attorney confession of Arnold Beverly that he, cers provided confidential information office training videotape. Abu-Jamal not Mumia Abu-Jamal, shot and killed to the FBI. was an award-winning radio journalist, police officer Daniel Faulkner. Not only a “dirty cop,” Giordano an activist with no history of violence Mumia Abu-Jamal’s conviction was was a favorite of the infamous brutal or criminal arrests. But his Black rubber stamped in the state and federal and racist Philadelphia Commissioner Panther Party membership twelve appeals courts. And the lies about his and Mayor Frank Rizzo. Giordano was

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 65 a former commander of the Philadelphia ing police officers and mob connections hearing and judges ruled to prevent Police Department’s stakeout cops, in to the FBI, former Inspector Alfonzo this evidence from being entered as charge of the raids on the Philadelphia Giordano pled guilty to federal corrup- part of the official court record. The chapter of the Black Panther Party in tion charges and was sentenced. only reason given by the courts is that the late ’60s when Abu-Jamal was a Abu-Jamal’s attorneys attempted to this evidence of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s well-known spokesman. Giordano was subpoena Alfonzo Giordano to testify innocence was “too late.” also in charge of the yearlong police during the Pennsylvania state appeals The Beverly confession and its sup- siege of the MOVE organization home hearings in the mid-1990s, but this was pression by the prosecution and the in 1978, which Abu-Jamal regularly denied by Judge Albert Sabo and courts exposes and points to yet other visited and reported about. When upheld on appeal. layers of corruption behind the frame- Giordano arrived on the scene, within up conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal. It four minutes of the first radio call for In 1999, a career criminal and self- described hit man, Arnold Beverly, sheds additional light on the reasons back-up from Faulkner, he found Abu- that the FOP has been the rabid attack Jamal shot and critically wounded, confessed to shooting and killing offi- cer Faulkner. Beverly’s sworn and vid- dog at every juncture of the legal and beaten by police and thrown into a eotaped confession states, in part: political efforts for Abu-Jamal’s free- police wagon. Giordano further assault- dom. The Beverly evidence makes it “I was hired, along with another ed Abu-Jamal, hitting him in the head clear that the injustice to Abu-Jamal guy, and paid to shoot and kill Faulkner. with a police radio while hurling racial was not the action of one rogue cop or I had heard that Faulkner was a prob- slurs. Giordano knew exactly who Abu- prosecutor or judge, but the function- lem for the mob and corrupt police- Jamal was. ing of the entire capitalist legal system. men because he interfered with the Inspector Giordano was the prime graft and payoffs made to allow illegal police witness in pre-trial proceedings The U.S. Justice Department: activity including prostitution, gam- and his account that Abu-Jamal con- Not an ally but an enemy bling, drugs, without prosecution in fessed in the police van was a corner- A political irony of this attack on the center city area. stone. But without explanation Adegbile’s nomination is contained in Giordano was pulled from the case and “Faulkner was shot in the back and the LDF pronouncement when it did not even testify at trial. In the short then in the face before Jamal came on became an official part of Mumia Abu- period before Abu-Jamal’s trial, the scene. Jamal had nothing to do Jamal’s defense team in January 2011. Giordano was removed from his com- with the shooting…. I shot Faulkner in Its intent was that through continuing mand post and transferred to a desk the face at close range.” the legal battles for Abu-Jamal, it would job with the police personnel division. Beverly also described police on the show young people of color that the Inspector Alfonzo Giordano retired scene of Faulkner’s shooting and that criminal justice system in the United from the police force at full pay on the Mumia Abu-Jamal was shot by a police States works, that “Mumia’s conviction first working day after Abu-Jamal was officer, not Daniel Faulkner. Arnold and death sentence are relics of a time convicted and sentenced to death. Beverly’s confession with its descrip- and place that was notorious for police abuse and racial discrimination.” The U.S. Justice Department collud- tion of what happened on the scene and ed with Philadelphia DA Edward Rendell why is supported by substantial evi- The reality today, however, is that and hid the federal investigation of dence, including the affidavit of Donald police abuse and racial discrimination Giordano from Abu-Jamal. To compen- Hersing, the FBI’s confidential infor- continues to be the norm in every city, sate for Giordano’s absence at the trial, mant, whose information and trial tes- every town in this country. This reality the prosecution and police fabricated timony led to the conviction of over is also understood by those who vilify the story of Abu-Jamal’s hospital con- thirty corrupt police officers, including Mumia Abu-Jamal; who know that fession. This hospital confession was Inspector John DeBenedetto, com- Mumia Abu-Jamal is their unbowed invented at a “round-table” meeting mander of the Central Police Division, opponent; and that an uncompromis- between the prosecutor and police, and and Inspector Alfonzo Giordano. ing fight for his freedom is a threat to first reported some two months after the Abu-Jamal and his attorneys made that status quo. confession was supposedly made. It is repeated motions in federal and state There is no way to side-step the fact countered by police reports made the courts for Beverly to testify and sub- that Mumia Abu-Jamal is up against night of the shooting, including, “the mitted the supporting evidence; but the combined forces of the state. That negro male made no comments.” In was opposed by the Philadelphia has been demonstrated over thirty 1986, after providing additional evi- District Attorney, Lynne Abraham. years of legal persecution—from dence of corruption by other high-rank- Neither court granted an evidentiary COINTELPRO, his arrest, prosecution

66 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 and death sentence for a crime he did Abu-Jamal from life imprisonment. This Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin. not commit, through trial and numer- petition doesn’t even identify Abu-Jamal Debo Adegbile defended his nomina- ous appeals, rife with “Mumia Rules” as a Black Panther Party member and tion to head the Civil Rights Division and “Mumia Exceptions.” spokesman, or that this and his defense with assurances that he supports the The FOP has conducted an unprec- of MOVE are key reasons for his perse- police, minimized the LDF role, and edented and singular national cam- cution. Nonetheless and not surprising- wouldn’t state that the LDF became paign against Abu-Jamal and support- ly, these appeals have been simply counsel of record for Mumia Abu-Jamal ers for over 30 years. He has been spe- ignored by the Justice Department. with the commitment to challenge his cifically singled out and attacked in The political content of this petition conviction on evidentiary grounds. Congress—in 1994 Senator Robert campaign is to attempt to “main- In the struggle for Mumia Abu- Dole spoke denouncing National stream” Mumia Abu-Jamal and sup- Jamal’s freedom, there is no room for Public Radio’s contract with Abu- port the political fiction that the U.S. illusions in the neutrality or justice of Jamal for regular commentaries; Justice Department can be moved to the courts—or that Obama and his Congressional resolutions exist against bring a civil rights action to obtain his U.S. Attorney General are anything international support for Abu-Jamal in freedom. But it was the Justice other than the Commander in Chief of the naming of several streets for him; Department that ran COINTELPRO U.S. imperialism and the top cop pro- and most recently the apparent defeat and now maintains the comparable tecting the interests of the ruling class, of Debo Adegbile, Obama nominee for “anti-terror” operations of surveil- defending the profit system against the head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division lance, harassment, false prosecutions working people, against minorities, on the grounds of representation of and indefinite detentions. It was the against immigrants, against any and all Abu-Jamal. Former Philadelphia Justice Department that aided in perceived opponents of this govern- District Attorney Edward Rendell rose bombing of the MOVE commune that ment’s policies. in the Democratic Party on the back of killed 11 of the MOVE family, includ- It is in the context of increasing Mumia Abu-Jamal’s frame-up convic- ing five children. And the U.S. Justice inequality—and the potential for an tion and death sentence to Philadelphia Department collaborated with the upsurge in social struggle—that the mayor, Pennsylvania governor and Philadelphia DA’s office in suppressing state reinforces its arsenal of repres- head of the Democratic National evidence of Abu-Jamal’s innocence sion. Barack Obama has far exceeded Committee. Democratic president Bill and manufacturing his guilt. George W. Bush in the evisceration of Clinton sat on the podium with The latest motivation presented for democratic rights, unrestricted gov- Maureen Faulkner and signed the 1996 ernment spying on the entire populace signing the new RootsAction petition Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death in the U.S. and globally, legalization of for release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, initi- Penalty Act (AEDPA) that gutted torture and “rendition,” murder by ated after the defeat of Debo Adegbile’s habeas corpus on Mumia’s birthday. drone attack, indefinite detention in nomination, is the explicit statement Barack Obama made his public prom- solitary confinement, without attorney that “The FOP fears that if the U.S. ise to stay away from Abu-Jamal’s case or trial. during his 2008 electoral campaign. Department of Justice were given real teeth for change, it would investigate A campaign strategy that puts Yet, increasingly since the election of systematic police abuse and brutality in expectations on Obama and the Justice Barack Obama and following the previ- Department to bring “justice” to ous decade of demands for a “new trial,” many communities across the coun- try.” While it is quite likely the FOP Mumia Abu-Jamal is an obstacle to the “Free Mumia Movement” has obse- building an international campaign quiously appealed directly to the capital- believes that to be the case, it is politi- cal folly and denial of the reality of the that fights for Mumia Abu-Jamal’s ist state to deliver justice to Mumia. freedom. It both disarms and demoral- Petitions have been submitted yearly to role of the Justice Department and the meaning and import of Mumia Abu- izes those who join the struggle. It has Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct been and is a recipe for defeat. a civil rights investigation of the Jamal’s case for a protest and political Philadelphia police and prosecution. campaign for Abu-Jamal to imply that The way forward to fight for More recently, the “Bring Mumia Adegbile’s nomination would lead to Mumia Abu-Jamal’s freedom Home” petition campaign appeals to Justice Department action on behalf of In March 1989 the Pennsylvania Obama, Holder and the U.S. Justice Abu-Jamal. Supreme Court ruled against Mumia Department to request the Pennsylvania To make this concrete: Eric Holder Abu-Jamal in his first direct appeal. governor Tom Corbett and Philadelphia as Attorney General wouldn’t even The ruling was strikingly, even shock- District Attorney Seth Williams to release bring civil rights charges against George ingly vicious; containing lies and denial

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 67 of every single one of Mumia Abu- lenge every type of government restric- civil rights that the Supreme Court Jamal’s claims, ignoring clear tion or regulation, in addition to open- unanimously held that an indigent per- Pennsylvania precedent on due process ing the floodgates of corporate money son accused of a serious crime was violations in the prosecutor’s summa- to a particular political candidate. entitled to defense counsel at state tion argument. Abu-Jamal’s conviction And in the United States, the legal expense (Gideon v. Wainwright). should have been reversed. In writing system is imbued with the legacy of But this right to counsel is today still about this, Abu-Jamal stated, “Law is slavery; that it is fundamentally racially only a right on paper. A hundred years politics by another name.” As one legal biased is indisputable. The United ago, Mark Twain said, “The law is a challenge after another was denied in States Supreme Court acknowledged system that protects everybody who state and federal court, Mumia Abu- this in the 1987 decision in McClesky v. can afford to hire a good lawyer.” That Jamal repeated this basic truth about Kemp, which challenged the racist dis- is no less true today. The vast majority the legal system. In April 2009, he told parity in the application of the death of the populace, the poor, the immi- Free Speech Radio News, “The law is the penalty. The Court ruled that although grant, are not provided counsel, let tool of those in power, so how they use this racial bias was proven by statistical alone effective counsel and the finan- it doesn’t depend on the law; it depends evidence, it had to be considered irrel- cial means to investigate and challenge on power.” evant. Otherwise, “taken to its logical the prosecution, at trial or on appeal. The power is that of the capitalist conclusion, this position would throw At this time, the penultimate state class supported by the state repressive into serious question the principles that attack on the right to counsel was the apparatus, including the cops, the underlie our criminal justice system.” prosecution and conviction of attorney prosecution, the courts and prisons. To overturn death sentences because Lynne Stewart on the bogus charge of The politics is that of the two parties of the system is racially biased would, “providing material aid to terrorism” capital. The law is the rules governing “taken to its logical conclusion,” in a “war on terror” show trial. Her the defense of private property and the require a further declaration that the “crime” was representation of and social relations in the private profit entire U.S. criminal justice system is advocating for her client. With the system of capitalism. The courts pri- based on inequality—and “logically” authorization of the Obama adminis- marily adjudicate disputes between require judicial invalidation. But tration her prison sentence was and among the corporate and govern- because this racial disparity is funda- increased from 22 months to ten ment interests and are not neutral mental to the American legal system, years—a virtual death sentence— enforcers of “justice.” the Supreme Court would not—and because she did not show “remorse” The relationship of class bias and could not—overturn McClesky’s death and continued her public support to law is succinctly stated as, “The law in sentence. The Supreme Court ruled Mumia Abu-Jamal, other long-impris- its majestic equality forbids the rich as racial disparity wasn’t relevant, pre- oned political prisoners and Muslim well as the poor to sleep under the cisely because it is absolutely too rele- prisoners, innocent victims of the “war bridges, to beg in the streets and to vant. Warren McClesky was executed on terror.” steal bread.” (Anatole France, a staunch on September 25, 1991. Lynne Stewart, terminally ill with defender of Alfred Dreyfus and 1921 Every acknowledgement of demo- cancer, was released from federal pris- Noble Prize winner.) cratic rights in law and court rulings on after an international campaign for A striking example is current legal has been the result of social struggle. “compassionate release” that drew on jurisprudence on the application of the And whether a democratic right exists support from a wide range of political First Amendment, that cornerstone of in reality for all of society, and not only and other organizations and 40,000 bourgeois democracy, to provide on paper, consider the Sixth petitioners. A critical, and not only renewed expansive rights to corpora- Amendment constitutional right to symbolic, campaign component was tions, recognized as persons with the counsel. It took the mass defense cam- the several months of protests in front rights of individuals to “free paign in the Scottsboro Case in the of Obama’s White House by her spouse, speech.” (See, most recently, Citizens early ’30s to save the lives of nine Black Ralph Poynter, demanding Lynne United v. Federal Election Comm’n, 558 youth falsely accused of raping two Stewart’s release, all the while also pro- U.S. 310 (2010) and McCutcheon v. white women for the U.S. Supreme testing for freedom for Mumia Abu- Federal Election Comm’n, 572 U.S. ____ Court to first rule that counsel is Jamal and other political prisoners. (2014)) This right of corporate “free required in all state capital cases (Powell As with all struggles against social speech” has already provided the legal v. Alabama). It was not until the 1960s oppression and deprivation, the fight ammunition for corporations to chal- in the context of the social struggle for to free Mumia Abu-Jamal requires a clear understanding of the class forces

68 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 involved, of its enemies and obstacles, The second film, Manufacturing irreparably class and race biased and going forward. We can fight to win Guilt, is a short film that documents that total change is necessary. He freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal how the Philadelphia Police speaks for all those victims of imperial- through social struggle, without illu- Department and District Attorney’s ist war and depredation; for people of sion in, or reliance on courts, politi- office not only manufactured Abu- all colors who are homeless, jobless, cians or government agencies. That Jamal’s guilt beginning in the early impoverished; for workers, the immi- means organizing on a mass interna- morning hours of December 9, 1981, grant, those fighting for their lives tional basis, based on support from but also how these same forces moved from death row and in solitary con- organizations of the multi-racial work- heaven and earth to conceal his inno- finement; and those caught in the ing class, in alliance with minorities, cence. Taken together, these two films monstrous mass incarceration system. immigrants, and all opponents of this strongly document the political machi- He speaks not for himself, but fights racist, repressive, exploitative system. nations that condemned this innocent for true justice and the freedom of all At the same time we need to seek out man to spend thirty years in solitary those others. all possible challenges and utilize all confinement on death row, and now Some fifteen years ago, after Mumia possible legal proceedings. A winning face life imprisonment without parole. fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal requires Abu-Jamal’s second state appeal was this class-struggle strategy. denied, he declared: “Even after their legal legerdemain, I remain innocent. A We can and must renew the strug- court cannot make an innocent man gle and wrest Mumia Abu-Jamal from There is an guilty. Any ruling founded on injustice the slow death row of life imprison- is not justice. The righteous fight for ment. Mumia Abu-Jamal’s family has unambiguous and life, liberty, and for justice... can only issued a Freedom Petition that says straight-out, “Mumia Abu-Jamal is unequivocal continue.” Innocent! Free Mumia, Now!” As such, Mumia Abu-Jamal cannot Organizations and individuals from answer to this and will not be “mainstreamed” or around the globe can unite under the made “respectable” to the establish- demands of “Free Mumia Now! Release attack: Mumia ment. But there are millions around Mumia Abu-Jamal Immediately from the globe who have embraced Mumia the Hellhole of Prison!” (Go to: www. Abu-Jamal is inno- Abu-Jamal’s struggle as their own Freedom4Mumia.org) because they see in his case the state’s In 2013, two major films were cent and framed persecution of an innocent man, of released worldwide that capture racism and political persecution. These Mumia Abu-Jamal’s character and for the December millions are also moved and inspired demonstrate the state’s vendetta by his unyielding opposition to injus- against him. Mumia: Long Distance 1981 murder of tice and corruption. These millions are Revolutionary is an internationally strengthened in their own battles for acclaimed and widely distributed fea- Philadelphia police freedom and human liberation. These ture documentary that chronicles Abu- are the allies in the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Jamal’s life from his early years as a officer Daniel member of the Black Panther Party Rachel Wolkenstein, political activist, battling the draconian actions of the Faulkner. attorney and friend of Mumia Abu- Philadelphia Police Department as well Jamal since 1987. Co-counsel during as the FBI’s COINTELPRO. The film post-conviction proceedings and eviden- also chronicles Abu-Jamal’s life as a These are weapons in our arsenal to tiary hearings from 1995-June 1999, in Black, radical journalist both prior to organize to fight for Abu-Jamal’s freedom. charge of the defense investigation. Most and after incarceration. A chorus of recently, Wolkenstein was legal consul- potent voices support the narrative We can turn the tide. But make no tant for Manufacturing Guilt, produced that Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent mistake: We need to fight for Mumia by Stephen Vittoria and Prison Radio. man, that he has refused to allow the Abu-Jamal on the basis of who he is — March 13, 2014 state to silence him, and that his work and what he himself has fought for. continues, ensuring his significant Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent and impact on political and social discourse framed by this state. He speaks out the world over. with the recognition that this system is

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 69 Greetings to NUMSA By Mumia Abu-Jamal

To National Union of Metal Workers This was indeed a turning point, Remember Texas? It was part of of South Africa, May Day Meeting but not for South Africa alone. This Mexico, until the Americans rebelled. sponsored by the ILWU and Transport was a global turning point. We hope For almost ten years it was its own Workers Solidarity Committee that this puts a stake into the vampire country (The Republic of Texas), until Sisters and Brothers of the of neo-liberalism. For when events 1845, when the U.S. annexed it. International Longshoremen and such as this happen, it shows us the Nevada? New Mexico? Arizona? Warehouse Union and, of your true face of neo-liberalism—that of Utah? Colorado? California? All of it guests—the National Union of Metal conservatism and capitalism with a was part of Mexico, until the U.S. Workers of South Africa (NUMSA), I smile. started a war to justify a land grab. By greet you all as militant, historic labor Welcome NUMSA. May you grow 1848, it was over, and over half-a-mil- unions who have in the past, the pres- in numbers and militancy. lion square miles became part of the ent, and I’m sure in the future, con- From imprisoned Nation, this is United States. tinue the noble struggle for the work- Mumia Abu-Jamal I’m not a scholar of Crimea nor of ing class in both countries. —Recorded by Prison Radio, for Russia for that matter. As I write these words, I’m mindful May Day 2014 But I do know that it was originally of the horrors brought to us by the annexed by Russia in 1783. It remained unholy alliance between capital and the Russian until 1991, when it was ceded state exhibited in all its ugliness in the to Ukraine. Marikana massacre of August 16, 2012. Seen from this perspective, Russia NUMSA has rightly called this event Land Grabs had a better claim to Crimea, than the a turning point in history, which finds U.S. had on northwestern Mexico. its echo in the shameful Sharpeville By Mumia Abu-Jamal Shall the U.S. return the land it stole massacre of 1960 and the Soweto mas- With the annexation of Crimea to from Mexico? sacre of school children in 1976. There, the Russian Federation, U.S. politicians school kids took to the streets in pro- have gone coo-coo, raising Cain about Shall it then return the millions of test of new rules forcing the teaching of it, likening it to Hitler’s seizure of square miles it swindled from indige- Afrikaans, the language of white, Dutch Poland, with Americans snarling about nous nations by violating international descendant settlers in South Africa, to violations of International Law, and treaty law? Black students. They knew that such a “land grabs.” The very question seems rather silly language would be of little use any- Almost immediately, Americans to us, doesn’t it? where else in the world other than and Europeans, citing threats of And yet, in 1999, our neighbor to South Africa. “regional destabilization,” announced the North, Canada, carved out a vast Here in Marikana, Black minework- sanctions on Russia. swath of its Northwest Territory and ers were protesting for a few measly For American to crow about “land returned it to the descendants of the dollars from a foreign mining concern, grabs,” is above all, an assault on U.S. indigenous, traditional people, the Lonmin mining. Living at virtually history. Inuit. It’s called Nunavut—and it’s starvation wages, workers fought for a roughly the size of the so-called For how did America come to be, if living wage from a consortium making Louisiana Purchase, when France sold not for vast land grabs from the so- millions off of their labor. land to the U.S.—doubling it over- called Indians, and later, Mexicans? The owners gave orders to South night. Was it illegal? Yep. Did it violate African police to answer their demands The very idea is crazy in America— International Law? You betcha! with death. The ANC government, in giving back land. many ways put in power by memories of Treaties are pacts between nations. events like Sharpeville, passed the orders The U.S. violated so many treaties with In Canada, it’s history. down, and 34 miners and metal workers Native nations that it’s almost embar- were executed in defense of capital. rassing to recount. —PrisonRadio.org

70 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3

Letter to the Editor Working for Change Such a viewpoint denigrates unions, Imagine the social power they would despite their immense social contribu- possess! Speech written for Local 372 DC-37 tions to the working class. Unions can’t stand aside, like kneel- New York City Schools Division repre- Over a century ago, a vast labor move- ing priests while Rome burns; they senting 26,221 members who work in ment swept American cities, by the must live and struggle in the world— elementary, middle, junior high, and high International Workers of the World, or this world—for social justice. schools, Committee on Special Education IWW (called the Wobblies). The IWW schools and parochial schools, 78 NYPD They must protest the incarceral wanted all workers united in one big union. precincts and hotels for the homeless. state, which consumes your children’s The capitalists, joined by its corpo- futures. By Mumia Abu-Jamal rate press, waged a war of words against That is our struggle –thank you! them, which set the stage for a cam- Dear Sisters and Brothers; paign of legalized state repression that —March 19, 2014 Dear Members of DC-37, Local 372; drove them from the stage of history. Dear fellow workers! Today, they are largely forgotten, Write to Mumia at: just as your kids and grandkids have Mumia Abu-Jamal AM-8335 As I thought about what to say to you, forgotten your efforts. SCI-Mahanoy a thousand thoughts flooded my mind. But imagine the world they could’ve 301 Morea Road I wondered about your children, built—where people are united across Frackville, PA 17932 and for some of you, your grandchil- false lines of social division. dren. What do they know about Mama’s work, or Grand pop’s union? Do they know, even by broad strokes, LETTER TO THE EDITOR the history of how workers suffered, and struggled for a 40-hour workweek? For Fifteen Dollars an Hour Now! decent pay? For collective bargaining? February 18, 2014 We cannot wait to see how the capi- For healthcare? For pensions? Dear Editor, talists resolve their method differences. Sadly, I’d bet most, if not all of A hammer blow we can deliver now is to them, educated in the public schools, When you are the anvil bear; when fight for a $15 dollar an hour minimum know nothing of these things. you are the hammer strike. The work- wage for all. Thousands of workers are ing class is now the hammer and it How could they? Drowned as they ready to fight for this now. It has the needs to strike; it needs not to bear any are in meaningless and punitive test- potential of moving hundreds-of-thou- longer the hammer blows of the capi- ing, how could they? sands into the streets soon. The hammer talists. We are at the tipping point, now blows for the $15 minimum needs to There’s no time for that. is the time for us to act or be defeated. continue and to become stronger. This isn’t ancient history, yet it’s a The consciousness of the working class Today I saw an odd saying, “We lot like asking about the Trojan War. is such that they are starting to move. The protests, strikes and marches have deserve better, workers assembly.” Yes, Mostly, your kids don’t know moved from the tens to the hundreds yes, we do and that is how we will get because it’s simply not taught; it’s not and now to the thousands. What just a solidarity and unity by having better considered important enough to learn, few years ago was a reform is now a workers assemblages. We can do it and for workers don’t have the social power transitional demand that needs a do it now. We can have assemblies to make it so. change in the social system to be grant- from many groups, from many back- Yet, the Lords of Capital make sure ed. The ruling class is divided; one sec- grounds, with different programs and this important message isn’t transmit- tion says the new bigger blows need be agendas; but all who are willing to ted to youth, for it strengthens work- given to the workers immediately, their unite and work to strike out against the ing-class consciousness. wages cut more, their unions destroyed, capitalists and defend themselves, are More distressingly, kids acquire a their force reduced; another section those who will use the hammer. false consciousness, inculcated by the says, yes, but not right now and not in With warmest comradely greetings, corporate media, which centers their big blows, but rather in time and soft- we shall win! minds on things, instead of people. (You er. Their division is not in what, but can call this “bling consciousness.”) how and when. —Joe Johnson

Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 71 S o c i a l i s t V i e w p o i n t Where to find us: www.socialistviewpoint.org [email protected] (415) 824-8730

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72 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 The Price Of Human Life, According To GM By Michael Moore I am opposed to the death penalty, thing else, including—and especially— I hope someone in the Obama but to every rule there is usually an human life. GM has a legal and fiduciary administration will get out the hand- exception, and in this case I hope the responsibility to its shareholders to cuffs, the SWAT teams, or the U.S. criminals at General Motors will be make the biggest profits that it can. And army if need be, march into GM head- arrested and made to pay for their pre- if their top people crunch the numbers quarters in downtown Detroit and meditated decision to take human lives and can show that they will save more haul away anyone who is there who for a lousy ten bucks. The executives at money by NOT fixing or replacing the had anything to do with this. And if GM knew for 13 years that their cars part, then that is what they are going to they already left town, hunt them down had a defective ignition switch that goddamn well do. F*** you, f*** me, and bring them in to face justice. would, well, kill people. But they did a and f*** everybody they sent to their —Huffington Post, April 1, 2014 “cost-benefit analysis” and concluded deaths. That pretty much sums up their that paying off the deceased’s relatives “culture.” They knew they wouldn’t get http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ was going to be cheaper than having to caught, and if they did, no one would michael-moore/gm-recall_b_5070492. install a $10 part per-car. They then ever serve any time. html covered up their findings and contin- ued to let millions drive around with the defective part in their cars. There would be no recalls. There would only be parents and the decapitated body parts of their dead children. See the USA in your Chevrolet. In 2007 a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration official recommended a formal investigation but was over- ruled by others in Bush’s “business- friendly” Transportation Department. Only now, under the newly-config- ured GM—owned, essentially, by you and me from 2009 through last year— The Hurricane: Rubin Carter has the truth come out. And my guess By Mumia Abu-Jamal is that it has to do with the fact that a mother now runs General Motors. A He was born in New Jersey 76 years Carter carried a laminated copy of few months ago, Marry Barra, a former ago as Rubin Carter, but most people the case in his inside jacket pocket for resident of Flint, the daughter of GM knew him as “The Hurricane,” his ring the rest of his life—calling it his “free- union autoworker, was named its CEO. name earned after a dizzying career as dom papers.” And it looks like she isn’t one of the a ferocious middleweight boxer, with a He had a sweet sense of humor, and good ol’ boys. She stepped forward, mean left hook. was, inside and out, a beautiful man. announced the truth of what GM did, Rubin’s hardest fight was not in a After his freedom, he left the U.S to ordered one massive recall after anoth- boxing ring, but in a Patterson, New live and work in Canada, fighting er, and now is showing up to face Jersey courtroom, where prosecutors against corrupt convictions from coast Congress in a few hours. twice tried—and twice convicted— to coast. Carter and his co-defendant, John The Washington Post, in an other- He once met former President Bill wise good article, blames the whole sad Artis, of a triple murder of three whites in 1966 in a Jersey bar. Clinton, and told him that if his 1996 affair on the “corporate culture” at GM. revision of habeas corpus law had been What a user-friendly term! To even Rubin served 19 years in Trenton in effect when he went to court, he have to read the words “culture” and State Prison before a federal judge in would never have been freed. “General Motors” in the same sentence Camden, Lee Sarokin, tossed the three is enough to make anyone gag. No, the convictions in 1985, ruling that the Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was a man cause of this tragedy is an economic state’s case rested upon “racial stereo- of gentleness, joy, light and strength. system that places profit above every- types, fears and prejudice”—not facts. —PrisonRadio.org, April 21, 2014

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H The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. —Karl Marx H MAY/JUNE 2014 VOL. 14 NO. 3

Pennsylvania has 540 children serving Life-Without-Parole (LWOP) prison sentences. Read Children Don't Matter: The Numbers Don't Lie on page 56. Photo of the author, Kerry Shakaboona Marshall, above.

On the Front Cover: s Auto parts in a factory. Read A Practical Solution to an Urgent Need on page 2.

A Practical Solution to an Urgent Need - Page 2 A conscious, directed effort to save postal services in the United Minorities face nearly 40 percent more exposure to toxic air Life, Death and the Bottom Line - Page 16 pollution. Read Environmental Injustice on page 48. Viewpoints on the Crisis in Ukraine - Page 18 James Connolly Rises Again…In Song - Page 40

17-year-old Dafna Rothstein Landman said, “If necessary, I will go to jail.” In the biggest wave of conscientious objection Israel has seen since 2008. Read Israeli Youth Refuse to Serve on page 37.