The Internationalist No. 41
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The Internationalist No. 41 September-October 2015 50¢ Trump, Sanders, Clinton – Immigrant-Bashing, Populism andFor Warmongering Workers Action to Defeat BarackCapitalism’s Obama’s Iraq/Syria Racist War Electoral Circus Is Back Break with the Democrats, Republicans Ferguson One Year Later and All Capitalist Parties! Whitney Curtis for the New York Times York Whitney Curtis for the New Build a Revolutionary Workers Party! They’re back. Once again the politi- ington announced that cians of the partner parties of American no charges would be capitalism are polluting the airwaves with filed against the police their election pitches. The Republican de- who murdered Mexican bates are an orgy of racist reaction, a com- agricultural worker An- petition to see who is the most hateful boss tonio Zambrano Montes of all. Donald Trump says he would build last February. And liber- a border wall and put hs name on it, while al Democratic president Carly Fiorina’s claim to fame is that she Barack Obama has by fired 30,000 employees of Hewlett-Packard now deported over 2.5 during her stint as chief executive. million immigrants, far The Democrats, meanwhile, are en- more than conservative gaged in a non-debate between “Hillary” Republican George W. (Clinton) and “Bernie” Sanders posing as Bush. When you include “progressives” even as they gear up for the “removals” from the next escalation by the U.S. war machine in border area, Obama has response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Sand- expelled over 800,000 ers wants to contract out the fighting while people a year, while Clinton wants to drop U.S. bombs on Assad keeping tens of thou- if not put boots on the ground. sands (including many In fact they are all defenders of capital children) locked up in and enemies of poor and working people concentration camps. Protests on the one-year anniversary of the police murder of Michael Brown were again met who produce the profits, of the African Over the summer, with a massive display of police force in Ferguson, Missouri. All the capitalist candidates American, Latino, Asian and immigrant Donald Trump grabbed support the racist killer cops, for the police are the first line of defense of capital, against us. population that bear the brunt of the repres- the headlines with his threat to deport all 11 figure in U.S. capitalism. pandering to the racist vote, in a July 23 sion. And so long as workers are chained to million undocumented immigrants. Actu- The Wall Street bankers, industrial speech she said “the sight of a young black the politicians and parties of the ruling class, ally, when you include family members the magnates and technology tycoons who man in a hoodie” causes fear “for a lot of particularly the Democrats who act as the number of those who daily face the threat of constitute the decisive sectors of capital open-minded, well-meaning white people.” “people’s party” of American capitalism, being kicked out of the country and having will not tolerate a loose cannon like Trump Hillary and her handlers believe she can get things will keep going from bad to worse. their lives destroyed, the total is over 15 for long. For one thing, he joins liberal away with it, since the overwhelming major- Despite months of massive protests million. Trump gives voice to the unalloyed economists like Paul Krugman in opposing ity of African Americans who vote cast their coast to coast, racist murder by police racism that other politicians won’t say out the tax exemption for hedge fund operators ballot for Democratic candidates. continues unabated. We’re now up to 890 loud. He outrageously labels Mexican im- (no skin off his back, he makes his money Husband Bill Clinton has for years civilians killed by cops in 2015 and count- migrants criminals, drug dealers and rapists, from gambling and construction). If Jeb basked in an ill-gotten image as somehow ing. That’s on track to match or surpass the when in fact he has been accused of raping Bush appears to be a cipher, the big money favorable to black people, despite the vi- 1,100 gunned down, choked and beaten to his former wife Ivana. may ultimately go to Fiorina or someone cious impact of his presidential policies, death last year. After Sandra Bland’s life The spectacle offered by the Repub- else deemed both sufficiently ruthless and from the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill and was taken by lynch-law terror when she was lican debates is somewhere between a TV reliable to be CEO of U.S. capitalism. the 1996 Effective Death Penalty Act to arrested for the “crime” of “driving while reality show (“Who Wants to Be President”) skyrocketing inequality during his adminis- black” in July, tennis star James Black was and a WWE Friday Night Smackdown. Democrats Squirm tration. Hillary was particularly responsible brutally tackled outside a Midtown Manhat- Trump brags that he has made billions, but Over Black Lives Matter for the “reform,” intended to “end welfare tan hotel for “standing while black.” And his leadership style and business acumen Over on the Democratic side of the as we know it,” that threw millions of poor, on September 24, Jeremy McDole was cut seem to consist of screaming “you’re fired.” bourgeois political spectrum, Hillary Clin- overwhelmingly black women into poverty. down in a hail of at least ten bullets by police While he has oodles of cash, and the capi- ton staked out her terrain as a “tough-guy” A new Clinton presidency will ramp up the in Wilmington, Delaware for “sitting while talist ruling class does exercise its rule by militarist hawk during her term as Secretary war on the oppressed that has escalated dur- black” ... in a wheelchair! throwing around money sweated from the of State. As a candidate she is pro-war, ing the Obama years. Meanwhle, prosecutors in Pasco, Wash- toil of workers, Trump is actually a marginal pro-cop and pro-death penalty. Blatantly continued on page 2 Dossier: What Road for Greece: Perpetual Debt Corbynmania Sweeps Peonage or Workers Revolution? . pp. 8-19 Britain. p. 6 a new model police training program that issued a plat- Electoral Circus... reorients the way we do law enforcement form along continued from page 1 in this country. With input from a broad very similar For his part, Bernie Sanders is cam- segment of the community including ac- lines calling paigning as a standard-issue economic pop- tivists and leaders from organizations like for body cams, ulist. His program boils down to capitalism Black Lives Matter we will reinvent how demilitariza- with a slightly higher social welfare budget. we police America” (berniesanders.com). tion, training, Many on the left see him as the reincarnation Candidate Clinton was already well “community of the Occupy movement, with support for along this path, hiring former Congressional representa- a sub-minimal $15 per hour minimum wage Black Caucus executive director LaDavia tion,” etc. replacing populist rhetoric about the 99% Drane as her “black outreach director.” In – plus “fair (which always made the “1%” a little ner- late July, Drane attended the Movement police union vous). Repeatedly elected to the Senate by for Black Lives convention in Cleveland [sic] con- one of the “least diverse” states in the U.S., to hold one-on-one meetings with activists tracts” to “re- Sanders made few efforts to even pretend as part of a push to “engage a wide array move barriers he cared about black people. of stakeholders, including members of the to effective Enter Black Lives Matter. An August black lives matter movement,” a campaign misconduct 8 rally in Seattle – a Democratic campaign official stated (“Clinton Campaign Starts investigations event commemorating the establishment of Black Lives Matter Outreach,” BuzzFeed- and civilian Social Security (by FDR) and Medicare (by News, 26 July). oversight.” LBJ) – was addressed by a local congress- But things went awry when a group It is note- man and “socialist” Seattle city council of Black Lives Matter activists was barred worthy that Break with the Democrats and Republicans, parties of member Kshama Sawant, who called for “a from an August 11 forum on “substance a prominent racist repression and imperialist war. We need to build a political revolution, as Bernie Sanders has abuse” that Hillary Clinton held in New member of revolutionary workers party. said.” As Sanders stepped forward to give Hampshire. Afterwards, the candidate Campaign Zero’s planning team, Brittany seek to reform the system, to eliminate the the keynote address, two activists from the spoke with three BLM activists, who held Packnett, is the head of Teach For America worst excesses. They want the police to re- local BLM group took over the microphone her “personally and politically responsible in St. Louis. TFA is a union-busting outfit spect black lives, they want to restore social to demand that Sanders be held “account- for policies that have caused health and that recruits Ivy League students to spend services and reduce mass unemployment. able” for downplaying issues of racial human services disasters in impoverished a couple years in inner-city schools while Yet they have been uniformly unsuccessful. communities of color through the domestic equality. Part of the overwhelmingly white blaming teachers unions for the failures of The fundamental fact is that they are and international war on drugs that you crowd chanted “Shame on you” against the the public school system which TFA and its coming up against the capitalist system championed as first lady, senator and sec- protestors, while Sanders stood by scowling Wall Street backers want to milk for private itself.