The Internationalist No. 39 April-May 2015 50¢ Baltimore Rises Up Over Police Murder of Freddie Gray – NationalFor WorkersGuard, State Police Action Impose Emergency to Defeat Rule DefendBarack Obama’s Black Iraq/Syria Baltimore War Cops and Troops Out!

For Labor / Black / Immigrant RT Mobilization Against Police Killings Stamp Out Racist Cop Terror – Fight for Workers Revolution

APRIL 30 – The nationwide outrage over April 27 following the orgy of racist police murders has reached the funeral service for the flashpoint in Baltimore, Maryland. Freddie, black youth Every day last week there were protests were confronted by a over the cop killing of Freddie Gray, with wall of police and the over a thousand marching on the weekend. frustration boiled over. City authorities blamed “outside agitators” As TV screens showed for clashes that evening. Then on Monday, buildings in flames and the media screamed As we go to press, the state’s “riots,” the mayor attorney in Baltimore has announced declared a curfew. The that six police officers have been governor imposed a Riot cops were sent against teenage protesters in Baltimore on April 27. charged with a number of crimes state of emergency, ordering in the state American population already under siege by segregationists. Where were the angry de- including murder in the killing of police, 5,000 cops from other jurisdictions the police. President Barack Obama, Mayor nunciations as the police in this Up South Freddie Gray. Under pressure from and the National Guard to put black Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Attorney city killed at least 127 people from 1992 to the mass protests, the authorities Baltimore under military rule. General Loretta Lynch rail against “rioters” 2012? The population of Baltimore is 64% decided they had to do something to The response of the authorities to as “criminals” and “thugs.” As these black black, last year 100% of the people killed cool things out. However, long expe- protests over the police murder of an un- Democrats enforce racist “law and order” by the cops were black. rience shows that indicting police is armed black man is to bring down the boot against those who rise up against injustice, They wring their hands about the no guarantee that they will be found of massive state repression on the African they repeat the age-old refrains of Southern continued on page 4 guilty of anything at all. And it cer- tainly won’t stop the killer cops from striking again, and again and again. May Day Oakland Port Shutdown One need only recall the case of Amadou Diallo in 1999, where a po- lice hit squad fired 41 shots at him as Against Racist Cop Terror he stood on his doorstep. Four cops On May 1, the interna­tional workers were charged with second-degree day, dock workers of the International Long- murder, but all went free. Or the case of Oscar Grant, in 2009, where the shore and Warehouse Union Local 10 shut killer cop, Johannes Mehserle got down the Port of Oakland and led a march only a slap-on-the-wrist conviction of 2,000 people on City Hall to demand an for involuntary manslaughter. end to the epidemic of police killings. “Stop In this case, the absence of Police Terror!” read the ILWU banner that specifics about the cops’ actions headed up the march along with another other than neglect suggests that the bearing the union’s watchword, “An Injury murder charges are designed to be to One Is an Injury to All.” The historic May dropped or thrown out when protest Day port shutdown has already inspired dies down. Moreover, even though unions in Portland, Oregon to march against the killers have been charged there police killings. is no guarantee they will even be The ruling class has dismissed the mas- prosecuted. The New York Times sive protests that swept the country against (1 May) reports that, “Officials had the cop murder of Eric Garner and Michael cautioned that it could take consid- Brown. For the police it is still open season on erable time for her office to complete black men, Latino workers, youth and people its own investigation and decide of all ages. When their victims rise up, as they whether to prosecute.” did in Ferguson and Baltimore, the rulers’ There is no justice in the capi- response has been to throw military force talist courts. Only revolution can against the protesters. The ILWU’s action bring justice. continued on page 2 Historic May Day port shutdown march by ILWU Local 10 against police killings. back by a police officer in a traffic stop. the killer cops go free. It’s not a matter of a The cold-blooded murder was caught in a few “bad cops,” it’s a whole system of racist bystander’s cellphone video that has been repression. The system is capitalism, and seen by millions. since the days of chattel slavery it has been Working people across the country are based on the brutal exploitation, oppression outraged. Now key unions have decided and repression of black people. they’ve had enough, the time has come Wanton police murder goes hand in to act. In an April 16 statement, the South hand with military repression of demon- Carolina AFL-CIO announced it would strators. The U.S.’ endless “war on terror” “reach out to workers around the country abroad is directly linked to the unending to join with us on May 1st in actions to police killing spree that is terrorizing protest the continuing unjustified killings.” African American, Latino and immigrant The labor federation added, “We want to populations “at home.” Taking action on commend ILWU Local 10 for your coura- the burning question of state repression can geous actions of solidarity.” On May 1 the and must also spur labor to use its muscle to West Coast longshore local will hold a unionize low-wage workers. On April 15, stop-work meeting, shutting down the Port over 60,000 marched in union-sponsored of Oakland and marching on City Hall to protests demanding a $15/hour minimum demand “Stop Police Killings of Black and wage. But even that minimal increase won’t ILWU Local 10 dock workers march in San Francisco on May Day 2008 in the Brown People.” be won by looking to Obama’s Democratic first-ever strike action by U.S. workers against U.S. imperialist war. The work This could be huge, which is why the Party of imperialist war, racist repression stoppage shut down all 29 West Coast ports demanding an end to the war and bosses, bureaucrats and Democrats may and poverty pay. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as support for immigrant rights. try to block it – and why class-conscious Last summer following the choke-hold es, including shutting down Bay Area ports workers and all opponents of racism should killing of Eric Garner we said that the TWU Port Shutdown... in 2010 to protest the murder of Oscar Grant take it up and spread it. There have been should strike to shut down the mass transit continued from page 1 by a BART transit cop and the kid-glove numerous protests against police killings in system which is vital to the world center of was the first to mobilize workers’ economic treatment of the killer cop. Oscar’s “Uncle recent months, but this is the first union ap- finance capital. After the police murder of power, the key force to defeat the capitalist Bobby” spoke at the rally at Oakland City peal specifically for bringing out the power Michael Brown we wrote, “The fight to put war on working people. Hall, pointing to the connection between of working-class action. Organized labor a stop to racist cop terror must mobilize the At a rally at the port before the march, racism and capitalism. Jack Heyman, a re- together with millions of African American, force that has the power to bring the capital- Stacey Rodgers, the Local 10 member who tired Local 10 member, noted how workers Latino, poor and working people and all ist system to a grinding halt: the millions- put forward the resolution calling for the are being blamed for the capitalist economic defenders of democratic rights are the social strong multiracial working class.” Calling union action, said the police killing of Walter crisis, and that workers need their own party. force that can bring the wheels of society to for “Labor/Black/Immigrant Mobilization Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina The Internationalist Group has called a stop in protest against the police murder Now!” we urged: “Mobilize Across U.S. moved longshore workers in the Bay Area to for workers action against police terror, machine. But we must use that power. Against Racist Police Terror in Missouri” action. Scott had several relatives who were joining with the embattled black population We urge workers across the country (The Internationalist, August 2014). members of the Charleston dock union, ILA and all those targeted by the cops. The Bay to mobilize on May 1 against racist police In the face of mass outrage, some Local 1422, with which Local 10 has long Area port shutdown was a small taste of terror! With rallies, marches and strike unions did protest then. In New York City, had close relations. what’s needed. Precisely because capital- action, unions and labor supporters should the United Federation of Teachers, 1199 The Local 10 resolution noted that the ism spawns racism, we need to oust the bring our collective strength to bear, de- hospital workers and 32BJ janitors of 1934 San Francisco General Strike was set bureaucratic misleaders who block work- manding these killings must stop! SEIU, nurses, PSC university faculty and off by the police murder of two striking work- ers’ struggle, break with the Democrats and Police in the U.S. killed 1,100 people staff joined a “March for Justice” on Staten ers on Bloody Thursday, July 5. The march build a revolutionary workers party to lead last year. So far in 2015, from January 1 to Island. Calling to “Mobilize NYC Unions’ and rally also highlighted several of the black the struggle to bring down the dictatorship April 19, at least 350 civilians have been Power Against Racist Police Terror!” and victims of the police in the Bay Area, includ- of capital and replace it with workers rule. killed by cops. And that’s just based on denouncing the Democratic and Republican ing Richard “Pedie” Perez, killed by Rich- We print below, slightly edited, the published accounts. Young and not so young parties of war and repression, the Interna- mond cops; Yvette Henderson, shot down Internationalist article that announced the black men are particularly at risk: in 2012, tionalist Group, CUNY Internationalist by Emeryville police; Raheim Brown, shot ILWU port shutdown in conjunction with once a day a black man was killed by cops Clubs and Class Struggle Education Work- in his car by Oakland school district police; an appeal for workers action by South or vigilantes. Often under-reported, black ers organized a contingent. and Alan Blueford, killed by Oakland cops, Carolina labor. women have also been in the crosshairs of Many unions have issued statements whose case was taken up by the ILWU. police terror, including Rekia Boyd, Mirian against trigger-happy police, but declara- Local 10 has a long history of work Unions to Mobilize on May Day Casey, Aiyana Jones and other black women tions will not stop this deadly plague. It stoppages to protest racial and other injustic- Against Racist Police Killings and girls killed by cops. Immigrants, too, are is high time for labor action. The South APRIL 20 – Police murders of unarmed prime targets, including Mexican workers Carolina AFL-CIO appeal and ILWU Lo- Also On Our Website black and brown people continue without like Antonio Zambrano Montes, killed in cal 10 action in Oakland, California point letup across the United States. Despite February by cops in Pasco, Washington. towards what needs to be done. In Portland, • For a Scottish Workers With or without papers, workers must rely Oregon, Painters Local 10 and IATSE Local Republic in a Socialist the national uproar this fall over the grand jury verdicts letting off the cops who on their own strength and demand full citi- 28 have passed resolutions of solidarity with Federation of the British chokeholded Eric Garner to death in Staten zenship rights for all immigrants! immigrant workers facing police repression Isles Island, New York and shot 17-year-old Union workers and their families have in Pasco, Washington, and have voted to • The Bugbear of “Russian Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the felt the scourge of racist police terror. In march against police killings on May 1. New York City, Eric Garner’s sister, mother Class Struggle Workers Portland and the Imperialism” forces of racist “law and order” are still on a deadly rampage. On April 4 in North and aunt were all transit workers, members Internationalist Group urge other unions and • Wyatt McMinn Not Guilty! Charleston, South Carolina, Walter Scott, of Transport Workers (TWU) Local 100. In all workers to take up this struggle. a black worker, was shot eight times in the South Carolina, the brother of Walter Scott, San Francisco/Oakland dock workers a fork-lift operator, and two other family of ILWU Local 10 have shown the world Visit the League for the Fourth International/ members belong to International Longshore- what labor solidarity action means. Time Internationalist Group on the Internet men’s Association Local 1422. Anti-union and again they have put into practice the terror is rampant in this Lowcountry redoubt union’s slogan, “An Injury to One Is an http://www.internationalist.org of the Old South. Recently the International Injury to All.” They shut down the port Association of Machinists (IAM) called off to demand freedom for class-war prisoner The a vote on union representation at the Boeing Mumia Abu-Jamal. They boycotted ships to Internationalist aircraft plant in North Charleston after orga- protest South African apartheid and Zion- A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the Reforging of the Fourth International nizers were threatened at gunpoint. ist Israel’s wars. On May Day 2008 they And the police kill with impunity: even spearheaded the shutdown of all Pacific Publication of the Internationalist Group, after massive protests, despite calls for spe- Coast ports to stop the U.S. war on Iraq and section of the League for the Fourth International cial prosecutors and federal investigations, Afghanistan, the first strike by U.S. workers EDITORIAL BOARD: Jan Norden (editor), Abram Negrete, Mark Lazarus, Marjorie Salzburg nothing has stopped – or even slowed – the against a U.S. imperialist war. Today they’re The Internationalist (ISSN 1091-2843) is published bimonthly, skipping July-August, by Mundial Publications, P.O. Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. wanton police violence. When a bystander targeting racist police terror. Their action Telephone: (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 E-mail: [email protected] records the cold-blooded murder on a speaks for us all! Subscriptions: US$10 for five issues. cellphone, as Ramsey Orta did on Staten The May 1 action by ILWU port No. 39 1162-M April-May 2015 Island, it is the witness who is jailed, while workers should be taken up by Bay Area

2 The Internationalist For Workers Mobilization to Stop Racist Cop Terror Outrage Over Police Murder of Mexican Worker in Washington State

PORTLAND, OR – The racist police killing Latino city councilor, of unarmed victims, particularly from no Latino on the board Joshua Trujillo/APJoshua oppressed population groups, continues of education, although unabated. Last year furious demonstrations 70% of students are broke out nationwide over the wanton cop Hispanic. murders of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Who could miss the Akai Gurley and Tamir Rice, all African parallels? This was the American. Now protesters have flooded Michael Brown killing the streets of Pasco, Washington over in Ferguson, Missouri, the police shooting of Mexican worker only this time with vid- Antonio Zambrano Montes on February eo. Black or Latino pop- 10. Zambrano was killed by multiple shots ulation, white police and from three officers firing on him while the power structure. “Hands unarmed man had his arms raised. This was up, don’t shoot?” Bang, a cold-blooded execution, as millions could you’re dead. The New see in a video circulated on the Internet. York Times (17 Febru- Antonio was a small man, barely five ary) headlined: “Killing feet, one inch tall. Police accused the 35-year- in Washington State Of- old agricultural worker of throwing rocks at fers ‘Ferguson’ Moment them, although he had recently broken both for Hispanics.” And as a wrists after falling off a ladder picking apples. demonstrator cried out The video of the incident shows Montes run- in Ferguson last August, ning in terror as officers chase him across a “Is this the Gaza Strip?” busy intersection, then he turns with his hands (see “Mobilize Across outstretched as they fire on him. Moreover, U.S. Against Racist Po- the shooting took place at around 5 p.m., lice Terror in Missouri,” yet police left Zambrano’s body lying in the The Internationalist No. street all night, as a gruesome warning. His 38, October-November anguished cousin Maria Madrigal said, “To 2014). In Hispanic Pas- Demonstrators march in Pasco, Washington on February 14 to protest police killing of Antonio me, it’s like just leaving a dead animal out co as in Zionist besieged Zambrano Montes (shown in photo with his daughter.) there” (KUOW Seattle, 13 February). Palestine, police take a rock in the hand as is likely closer to two-thirds. The difference “carrot” of dreams of getting ahead through By all accounts, Zambrano was in bad a license to kill. is the large number of undocumented im- hard work and determination no longer shape. His wife had left him, moving with Meanwhile, the Mexican government migrants in Pasco, like Antonio Zambrano, works, the cops supply the stick to keep the their two daughters to California. Injured, he and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto who don’t respond to the census out of fear “wage slaves” in line. In a city where a huge was out of work and seemed disoriented. In have denounced the killing of Mexican of deportation. It’s no accident that Pasco percentage of the population works in the January he was trapped in a house fire and his agricultural worker Zambrano in Pasco as police act as if they are dealing with a popu- fields or in related industries, many of them belongings burned. He stayed for awhile in a a “disproportionate use of lethal force.” lation with no rights. long-time residents, police are empowered homeless shelter. More to the point, the police They call for a thorough investigation and The Tri-Cities area boomed when the to callously use deadly force against im- were out to get Antonio. He had been charged punishment of those responsible for the Hanford Nuclear Site was established during migrants, with little fear of accountability with throwing rocks at cops a year ago, and homicide. Their purpose is to take the heat World War II. Richland was a government- as long as they feel they can keep restless was arrested the week before, apparently for off themselves over the Mexican police mas- owned housing complex for workers there. workers isolated and in check. missing a court date. “He was released on sacre and kidnapping of some 50 students Pasco was home to the agricultural work- So a thousand protesters marching Monday,” the Seattle Times (11 February) from the Ayotzinapa teachers college last force in the Yakima Valley (apples, pears through Pasco, WA must have a sobering reported. The next day the police cut him September. As for the “investigation” of the and wineries) and in the Columbia River affect on the good ol’ boys in the local police down in a volley of bullets. Charge: throwing police murder in Pasco, it is being done by a Basin. Completion of the Grand Coulee department. Yet this is no assurance that the rocks at police. Trial: none. Sentence: death. police agency, just as in Mexico the attorney Dam in 1941 turned a semi-arid region into routine police murder and brutal treatment The cop murder of Antonio Zambrano general “investigated,” in order to cover up one of the richest agricultural areas in the of the Latino population will stop. A mea- was no isolated incident but part of a pat- the role of the state. country, producing just about every major sure of how deeply this has been ingrained tern. Police in Pasco gunned down four The murder of Antonio Zambrano has crop. Family farms were quickly replaced was the gut-wrenching sign carried in the people over the last six months, which is galvanized the area’s working-class Latino by giant agribusiness corporations. Today February 14 protest: “Shoot Me on the Leg, more than in all of Great Britain (popula- population, pushed to their limit by racist the countryside is dotted with crop circles But Don’t Kill Me.” Calls for justice from tion 60 million) over the last three years. police terror. One woman remarked, “It’s irrigated by government-subsidized water the thoroughly unjust capitalist state not None of the Pasco killer cops was indicted like having the badge gives you the right from the Columbia River. only fall on deaf ears, the police, prisons for anything. One of them was the subject to take the life of a Mexican.” Family and Even before this, the Yakima Valley in and politicians who serve the interests of the of a 2012 lawsuit for use of excessive force co-workers called a rally at Pasco City Hall southeastern Washington was a farming and agribusiness bosses make up a machine of against a Latina mother picking up her chil- the following day. As word of the shooting trade hub with a strong labor history. During racist repression which it will take a revolu- dren from child care. The overwhelmingly spread, a rally on Saturday, February 14 the 1930s, the syndicalist Industrial Work- tion to bring down. white police force rides roughshod over the swelled to 1,000. Protesters demand “jus- ers of the World (IWW) organized pickets Calls for a federal investigation will do majority Hispanic population. There is one ticia,” but justice will not be forthcoming demanding better working conditions and nothing, as Ferguson showed. Liberal talk from this racist capitalist system. After the wages, while growers bragged to the local of “police accountability,” civilian review labor and unions across the country. The outcry over police shootings in Ferguson, press of their special relationship with the po- boards and the like are a cruel hoax. Justice Internationalist Group calls upon workers Cleveland and New York, Pasco has become lice who acted as strikebreakers and enforcers for those who toil in the fields can only come everywhere to unite with the African Ameri- a new flashpoint in protests against deadly for their draconian labor practices. In the from the working class itself, through an can, Latino and immigrant population in a cop brutality and impunity. 1940s, the government brought in Mexican all-out war against racism, injustice and the massive show of our strength. We have the Pasco is a segregated Latino city in the agricultural laborers and railroad workers ruling class that creates it. From Ayotzinapa power, the working-class power, to send the Tri-Cities metropolitan area together with under the bracero program. In the 1960s to Ferguson and Pasco, it’s one fight. The bosses and their hired guns packing. Now Kennewick and Richland, WA which are there were a number of strikes by Latino farm Internationalist Group calls for massive is the time to use it! Turn May Day 2015 over 80% white. Most media accounts cite workers, aided by Chicano students. mobilization of the multi-ethnic working into a clarion call for working-class action 2010 census statistics listing Pasco’s popu- Today, growers in Washington push class to stop the killer cops in their tracks. against racist police terror. Join together lation at under 60,000 and 56% Hispanic, for beefed-up “guest worker” programs, For that we need to build a revolutionary to stop the killer cops! Turn the watchword but the 2014 Washington state population in order to obtain an efficient and steady workers party battling every form of op- into reality: Asian, Latin, Black and White estimate lists Pasco’s actual residents at al- stream of low-paid, disposable workers with pression in the fight for a society in which – Workers of the World, Unite! ■ most 68,000, and the percentage of Latinos almost no accessible rights. And when the those who labor rule.■ April-May 2015 3 investigative story, “Undue Force,” about Black Baltimore... the more than 100 cases of people who continued from page 1 have won court judgments or settlements “looting” of a CVS convenience store, be- for police brutality or civil rights violations cause it affected private property. Who are in the city. The article summed up: the criminals here, the residents of West Bal- “Victims include a 15-year-old boy timore who take home basic necessities like riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant a couple of packs of toilet paper, diapers and accountant who had witnessed a beating, bottled water (as photos show), or the multi- a 50-year-old woman selling church billion-dollar corporation that gouges the raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year- black poor with high prices? The president old grandmother aiding her wounded and the media screech about rioters “burning grandson. Those cases detail a frightful down their own neighborhoods,” and blame human toll. Officers have battered dozens it on the population – absent fathers, drugs, of residents who suffered broken bones etc. But where were their laments as the – jaws, noses, arms, legs, ankles – head capitalists and their government destroyed trauma, organ failure, and even death, jobs, disinvested in poor neighborhoods and coming during questionable arrests. Some sent huge numbers of black men to prison residents were beaten while handcuffed; (including Freddie Gray) with their viciously others were thrown to the pavement.” discriminatory drug laws? In addition to those horrific cases, there are That’s the logic of capitalism for you. Robocops impose curfew following May Day protests in Baltimore. many others. In May 2014, police shocked And it is that logic that guarantees that the timore as a result of the police crackdown, days later, Walter Scott, a 50-year-old black a 19-year-old meningitis patient, George ruling class will back the cops to the hilt, for 100 of them held in jail for two full days worker in North Charleston, South Carolina, King, with a Taser five times in ten minutes they understand full well that the police are before being charged. The Internationalist pulled over in a traffic stop (supposedly for a and choked him into unconsciousness, a the armed fist of capital. All the talk about Group calls to drop all charges and free broken tail light) while driving a Mercedes- coma from which he died a week later. No “accountability” and the need to “build com- all those arrested during the upheaval. We Benz, was cut down by eight shots to the charges were filed. munity trust” (Obama’s Task Force on 21st demand cops and National Guard out of back as he tried to escape the murderous cop. Freddie Gray was not the first person Century Policing) is nothing but PR hype. black Baltimore. And across the U.S. we Then came the murder of Freddie Gray to suffer a spinal cord injury in a Baltimore Cops are the guard dogs of Wall Street, and call for labor/black/immigrant mobilization in Baltimore, Maryland. Freddie was riding police van: Jeffrey Alston in 2004 and Dondi the would-be masters of the world stand by against racist cop terror! a bike when police for no reason decided Johnson in 2005 were both paralyzed after their snarling Rottweilers. The ruling class to chase him down. Screaming and limp Police Murder Machine being given a “rough ride.” And while many labels anyone who resists “thugs.” That’s as he was tossed into a police van, by the of the victims of police killing in Baltimore what plutocrat NYC mayor Bloomberg Grinds Relentlessly On time they got to the station house Freddie’s have been passed over in silence by the called the transit workers when they went Last summer it was Eric Garner in voice box was crushed, his neck broken media, Freddie Gray’s death was not the on strike in 2005. The real thugs and crimi- Staten Island, New York and Michael Brown and spinal cord nearly severed. Two weeks first to be the subject of extended protest. nals, who murder people with abandon and in Ferguson, Missouri: unarmed black men later the authorities still say they don’t know Tyrone West was killed in a traffic stop in savagely beat (or shoot) grandmothers, are set upon and murdered by the police as what happened in the van and have given no 2013 and his sister and others have kept up the cops. they were walking along the street. In the reason for the arrest. weekly protests since then. The Baltimore Police Department is fall came the cases of Akai Gurley, gunned After days of saying the BPD was The Baltimore Police Department a terrorist gang that terrorizes the com- down in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing “investigating,” Baltimore police chief has been the subject of endless suits and munities it patrols. Its killer cops are not project; 12-year-old Tamir Rice, shot by a Anthony Batts now says the results will not investigations. In 1980 the NAACP called “out of control,” they are doing their job cop in a playground in Cleveland, Ohio; and be made public. This is just stonewalling. for a federal inquiry into the BPD for for the bosses. lesser-known cases like the father bringing Whatever happened to Freddie in the van brutality. After 1999 under Democratic U.S. rulers would repeat the 1992 home dinner from McDonald’s to his family or during his arrest, an unarmed, hand- former mayor Martin O’Malley, Baltimore military occupation of Los Angeles that in Phoenix, Arizona. All unarmed, all killed cuffed man was killed in police custody. adopted “zero tolerance policing.” This suppressed protest after a court let off the with impunity, no charges brought against Was he tossed around banging his head in was first implemented by New York City’s racist cops who beat motorist Rodney King. the cops. a careening van? Baltimore is the home of racist Republican mayor Rudolph Giuliani Today, black Baltimore must not stand These blatantly racist cop murders the “rough ride.”1 Or was the fatal injury under police chief William Bratton, who is alone! Across the country, police unleash set off a furious reaction. Ferguson rose due to a cop putting his knee on Freddie’s now once again NYC top cop under liberal their pathological violence against the black, up and faced down an army of police and neck during the arrest, as witnesses report? mayor Bill de Blasio. In Baltimore, as in Latino and immigrant poor and working National Guard. Around the country, thou- While the police maintain their “blue wall of New York, this policy led to huge numbers people in order to intimidate. To defeat the sands marched in protest. When the grand silence,” the fact is that all the cops involved of arrests and “a highly militarized ap- forces of repression, we need to bring out a jury verdicts came in and predictably no are guilty of murder. proach to policing residents,” in the words more powerful force, that of the organized cops were charged for the murder of Garner Then there is the absent reason for an of the ACLU. working class leading all the oppressed. or Brown, tens of thousands hit the streets, arrest. The police only say that Gray fled Following the Sun exposé, Baltimore In the protests in Baltimore over the night after night, shutting down highways, after making “eye contact” with an officer. entered into a “collaborative review” by the last week and a half, a number of unions tunnels and city centers. America’s capitalist Why is that significant? Because the cops U.S. Department of Justice over grievances have been present, including UNITE HERE, rulers were worried: all the weaponry they had no probable cause whatsoever to pursue against the police. After Freddie Gray went SEIU32BJ and SEIU1199. What’s needed had been stockpiling to handle domestic and arrest him. They are relying on the case into a coma but before he died, the feds now is to bring out labor’s power to shut “unrest” didn’t work. But the plague of cop of Illinois v. Wardlow (2000), where, as the held a public hearing where hundreds of the city down. In California, the ILWU dock terror goes on. police interpret it, the U.S. Supreme Court furious residents, overwhelmingly black, workers in the Bay Area are stopping work In January there was 17-year-old Jes- ruled that flight after making eye contact “inundated federal officials with their asser- on May 1, shutting down the port of Oak- sica Hernandez shot to death by police with the police in a “high crime area” is tions that city police have been brutalizing land and marching on City Hall to demand in Denver, Colorado as she was driving a grounds to detain someone. This would al- residents with impunity” (Baltimore Sun, 17 “Stop Police Terror!” If the East Coast ILA car with four other teenagers. In February, low cops to arrest anyone in a black neigh- April). One man said that things had gotten likewise shut the port of Baltimore on May Antonio Zambrano, cut down by 17 police borhood for no reason at all. It’s a green light to the point where black residents would Day, the reverberations would be felt around bullets in Pasco, Washington, followed by for racist cop terror. have no choice but to “gather our arms and the country and the world. Ruben Garcia in Grapevine, Texas and Er- And that is precisely what Baltimore has fight back.” On April 29, thousands marched in Bal- nesto Canepa in Santa Ana, California – all lived under for decades. As a black writer The Sun editors fretted over the cost timore in the largest protest yet, demanding Mexican workers, all unarmed. In March, described growing up in the city: “To us, the of the numerous legal actions over police answers about the death of Freddie Gray and two more unarmed black men: Charly Baltimore Police Department is a group of violence, for which Baltimore paid out $5.7 calling to “put killer cops in cell blocks.” In Leundeu Keunang, a homeless African im- terrorists, funded by our tax dollars, who beat million in settlements and judgments since New York over 5,000 demonstrated in solidar- migrant from Cameroon on Skid Row in Los on people in our community daily, almost 2011. Actually, this is peanuts compared to ity with the besieged population of Baltimore, Angeles, and 19-year-old Tony Robinson in never having to explain or pay for their ac- other cities. Dallas paid $6 million since chanting “All night, all day, we will fight for Madison, Wisconsin. tions” (D. Watkins, “In Baltimore, We’re All 2011, Denver $13 million over ten years, Freddie Gray.” Mayor de Blasio’s police On April 2, Ed Harris was chased down Freddie Gray,” New York Times, 29 April). Minneapolis $21 million since 2003 and Los arrested more than 120 people, arbitrarily and executed by a 73-year-old “reserve Freddie was the seventh black man killed by Angeles $20 billion in 2013 alone.2 Then snatching them out of the crowd to charge deputy” sheriff in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who the local police in the 12 months. you get into the big league, with New York them with the “crime” of being in the street. said he mistook his revolver for a Taser. The Last year, the liberal Baltimore Sun City shelling out $428 million in 12,000 In Washington, D.C., Oakland, Minneapolis killer is a wealthy donor and friend of the (28 September 2014) published a detailed 2 See Radley Balko, “U.S. cities pay out mil- and elsewhere there were also large marches. sheriff who in exchange for his bucks gets 1 See “‘Rough Rides’ and the Challenges of Im- lions to settle police lawsuits,” Washington Over 200 people were arrested in Bal- to put on a badge and gun to play cop. Two proving Police Culture,” The Atlantic, 27 April. Post, 1 October 2014. 4 The Internationalist CLASS STRUGGLE EDUCATION WORKERS Mumia Gravely Ill Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now! Don’t Let Them Kill Him in Prison At this moment, the reputation as “the voice of the voice- Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania Governor: 717- Mumia Abu-Jamal is less.” His prison writings, including Live 787-2500 | [email protected] | 508 Main in grave medical con- from Death Row, and hundreds of broad- Capitol Building, Harrisburg PA 17120 dition. It was reported cast articles collected in several books have John Wetzel, PA DOC: 717-728-4109 yesterday evening been read around the world. | 717-728-4178 Fax | ra-contactdoc@ (April 24) that after A medical alert from Noelle Hanrahan poc.gov | 1920 Technology Pkwy, Mumia was earlier of “Prison Radio,” says that Mumia is now Mechanicsburg PA 17050 taken from the hospital barely able to eat and showing symptoms Susan McNaughton, DOC Press over objections from possibly associated with “hyper glucose secretary 717-728-4025. PA his family, and then levels, diabetic shock, diabetic coma, and [email protected] two days ago removed with kidney stress and failure.” from the prison infir- Mumia urgently needs 24-hour medi- Mumia is innocent. The ruling class mary and placed in the cal care. Readers are asked to contact whose crimes he has relentlessly exposed general prison popula- prison authorities and demand that he “be and denounced has tried and failed to ex- tion, his medical con- seen immediately, and not be left to go into ecute him. He was on death row for almost dition is worsening. a diabetic coma.” three decades, but the state was unable For decades the to kill him with lethal injection due to authorities have sought the worldwide campaign of protest. Now Direct calls and e-mails to: to silence the impris- the authorities seem bent on killing him oned radical journal- John Kerestes, Superintendent SCI through deprivation of urgently needed ist and former Black Mahanoy: 570-773-2158 x8102 |570- medical attention. Panther, whose radio 783-2008 Fax | 301 Morea Road, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Wadiya Jamal broadcasts earned him Frackville PA 17932 We demand, Free Mumia Now! NJ Teacher Whose Students Sent Get-Well Cards to Mumia Defend Marylin Zuniga NJ.com By Class Struggle Education Workers the same prison whose medical personnel Faulkner was killed, then railroaded him Class Struggle Education Workers had failed to diagnose or treat him. That’s onto death row. For thirty years, they tried stands in solidarity with Orange, NJ el- when the kids sent their cards. Zuniga told to execute him. In December 2011, Jamal’s ementary school teacher Marylin Zuniga a WABC reporter, “In April, I menti­ oned death sen­tence was overturned in favor of who was suspended after her third grade to my students that Mumia was very ill and “life with no parole. “Now Jamal’s enemies students sent “get well” messages to they told me they would like to write ‘get hope medical neglect and abuse will finish Mumia Abu-Jamal, the re­nowned black well’ letters to Mumia.” the job. For those who are determined to radical journalist who was framed and Zuniga’s victimization was not because silence Mumia, the third-grade class at the convicted in the 1981 shooting death school children sent cards to prisoners Forest Street Elementary School in Orange of Philadelphia police officer Daniel but because the prisoner is Mumia Abu- NJ can’t be allowed to get in the way. Faulkner. Jamal. The suspension is part and parcel There is opposition to Zuniga’s suspen- Despite Mumia’s innocence, he was of a decades-long vendetta against Jamal sion and possible firing. Prominent academics sentenced to death and kept on Death Row spearheaded by the Fraternal Order of including Noam Chomsky and Cornell West for 29 years. He is still imprisoned for life Police (FOP), dutifully whipped up by the signed a letter from Educators for Mumia while the authorities are determined to right-wing media, and supported by both Abu-Jamal and sent it to the superintendant silence this “voice of the voiceless” one Democrats and Republican politicians. John of the Orange public schools calling for her way or another. McNesby, the president of the Philadelphia immediate reinstatement. The letter likens the Zuniga’s suspension by the Orange FOP wasted no time in attacking Zuniga. messages from Zuniga’s class to the letters Marylin Zuniga speaking at Orange, school board stemmed from a lesson “It’s absolutely not teaching them anything written by students worldwide that were sent NJ school board hearing, April 14. she taught on civil rights leaders back in except how to interact with a convicted cop to Nelson Mandela while a prisoner of South February during Black History Month. killer.” (New York Daily News, 11 April). African apartheid and branded a terrorist by her love for her students, their families and She asked her class of black and Hispanic Jamal has been in the crosshairs of the U.S. State Department. Orange community, as well as her desire to students to consider the meaning of a the notoriously corrupt Philadelphia police When the Orange school board met continue teaching at Forest Street Elemen- quote from Jamal: “So long as one just since he was a teenage member of the Black on April 14, a vociferous crowd of Zuniga tary School, the crowd cheered “Let her person is silenced, there is no justice.” Panther Party. His subsequent courageous supporters demanded that the teacher be al- teach!” The school board tabled the issue of On March 30, Jamal went into and eloquent writing and radio broadcasts in lowed to speak. Zuniga stated that she was Zuniga’s fate and will meet again in May. diabetic shock with life-threatening high Philadelphia earned him both the reputation “very proud of my students’ work” while There should be more teachers like blood sugar and was taken from prison as the “voice of the voiceless” and the un- conceding that she believed she had erred in Marylin Zuniga. Class Struggle Education to an outside hospital. Two days later he dying hatred of the Philly PD and the FOP. publicizing the students’ messages online for Workers demands: Full reinstatement for was suddenly returned to SCI Mahanoy, The cops shot and beat Jamal on the night which she apologized. As Zuniga reaffirmed Marylin Zuniga. Let her teach! cases since 2009, and Chicago $521 billion California which paid $74 million to settle protest over the minimal sentence given to (1,100 killed by cops in 2014 alone) is stan- over the last decade, with nearly 500 brutal- at least 417 lawsuits over police brutality. the BART cop who killed Oscar Grant. Oth- dard operating procedure. Paying millions ity cases pending.3 Those include multiple suits against the ers concerned demonstrations by Occupy for beating, maiming and killing people A notable example was Oakland, Oakland police when Baltimore’s current Oakland, including one in January 2012 in is dismissed as a cost of doing business, 3 Chicago’s Homicide Squad was so notorious chief, Anthony Batts, headed the maraud- which over 400 people were arrested. just as Wall Street banks and stock market for coerced confessions that in 2009 the state ing OPD cops. In one case, over 150 people For police departments all over the speculators brush off billion-dollar fines by of Illinois set up a Torture Inquiry and Relief were held on buses for over six hours and U.S., massive violations of the rights and the Securities and Exchange Commission. It Commission to investigate them. never charged during a November 2010 taking the lives of thousands of people doesn’t stop their criminality one bit. These April-May 2015 5 are the “best practices” of capitalist policing. and the homeless people on the MLK. Century Policing report issued last month. You’re not reporting about the poverty

Freddie Gray’s Baltimore is not an exception AP And its model of “implementing national but the norm. levels up and down North Avenue…. But best practices” was … the Baltimore police you’re here for the ‘black riots.’ You’re under BPD commissioner Batts! So much Media, Authorities not here for the death of Freddie Gray. for that plan. Denounce “Riots” Fox News don’t give a damn about these The capitalist system can permit certain Protests against the police murder of people. This is the real Baltimore. This is reforms on secondary matters and for lim- Freddie Gray have now been officially where people wake up and wonder where ited periods. For a time after World War II they’re going to go to get a meal.” labeled the “Baltimore riots.” The April 29 certain measures of a “welfare state” were Geraldo’s response was to denounce the young Sun led with, “Baltimore descends into chaos, enacted, particularly in Europe in order to man as a “vandal” and to claim that the people violence, looting.” The freebie tabloid Metro stave off the “Communist menace.” But in the crowd, who had been demonstrating headlined, “War in Baltimore.” Capitalist the police are at the heart of the capitalist about police brutality and official cover-up all media and politicians up to the White House state, those “special bodies of armed men” day, just “want to make trouble.” demonize black youth, labeling them “thugs” that the ruling class depends on in order to What made black Baltimore explode and “criminals” and accusing the protesters of rule. And as world capitalism is mired in a in fury is not only the cop killing of Freddie “violence.” But a look at how the supposed A number of unions have protested continuing economic depression since the Gray, it was also the generalized misery in “riots” actually began shows a very different police brutality. It’s high time for action. crash of 2007-08, the bourgeois rulers must this area marked by astronomical levels of story, that they were in response to provoca- But the site is in East Baltimore, miles from rely increasingly on police-state measures. unemployment, disease and physical dev- tion by racists and the police. the West Baltimore area where businesses The current uproar over police killing astation. Manufacturing jobs in Baltimore On April 25, the march of several thou- were trashed and small fires set. At the time, of black and brown people owes much to have fallen by 90% since the late 1960s, sand protesters proceeded without incident city authorities said it was not clear if it was the spread of cellphone cameras, which have so that today in the Sandtown-Winchester as the police stayed away. After the demon- related to the “riot.” And the pastor, Donald brought home the brutal reality of racist neighborhood where Freddie lived 52% of stration ended at City Hall, a group marched Hickman, was well-known for supporting repression to white people in a way never the population aged 16 to 64 is jobless, 49% toward the Camden Yards baseball stadium anti-brutality protesters. Strange. before possible. African Americans, Latinos of high-school students have dropped out, where the Orioles were playing. There they Now the Republican governor is saying and immigrants didn’t need to see YouTube 61% of the adult population has less than a were met by phalanxes of riot police. As that the National Guard should have been videos since they had to deal with it per- high school diploma and 33% of homes are the cops pushed them back, the windows brought in earlier to avoid the “riots,” while sonally every day. The actual numbers of abandoned.4 of a police car were broken. There was also the Democratic mayor counters that they unarmed civilians being killed by the police In the Upton-Druid Heights neigh- a confrontation with drunken fans at a bar didn’t want to use heavy weaponry on 13- may or may not be increasing, but awareness borhood next door, 64% of working-age shouting racial epithets. A second group and 14-year-olds. Presidential candidates of its pervasiveness is heightened. black men are unemployed, average family went to the Inner Harbor tourist area where are also weighing in. Obama may add a little Most importantly, the current evolution income is under $16,000, the mortality rate a journalist reported that he saw whites “jeer, rhetoric about “troubling questions” about of U.S. capitalism has led to a generalization is double the city average for heart disease, spit, and throw things at protestors and try “police officers interacting with individuals, and intensification of repression. With the triple the rate for AIDS, and life expectancy to hit them.” Store windows were broken. primarily African-American, often poor.” middle class hollowing out, the numbers is 68. As an article in the New York Times After Freddie Gray’s funeral on April But the “debate” between the twin capitalist of working poor sharply increasing and (30 April), “Health Problems Take Root in 27, high-school students leaving school in parties is basically over how to better sup- actual unemployment higher than at any a West Baltimore Neighborhood That Is West Baltimore were met by hundreds of riot press the protests. time since World War II,5 U.S. society is Sick of Neglect,” noted: “The fact that 94 cops. A dubious posting was circulating on While the media plays up the “riots,” the looking more like Latin America, and the percent of its population is black is lost on social media calling for a “purge,” referring politicians piously inveigh against “senseless repressive apparatus is being beefed-up to no one.” What exploded in Baltimore is a to a 2013 movie in which crime was made violence” that only “tears the city down” match. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to toxic mixture of racial and class oppression. legal for a night, supposedly to begin at the (as if they had done anything to rebuild wage imperialist war around the world. In Liberals have made much of the fact Mondawmin Mall at 3 p.m. The police also impoverished West Baltimore, where many this situation, the masters of Wall Street and that Baltimore has a black Democratic claimed they had “credible information” that buildings that were burned down during the Washington are not about to turn their cops mayor and a black police chief who sup- gangs were getting together to “‘take-out’ 1968 “riots” following the assassination of into Officer Friendlys. posedly tried to cool things out rather than law enforcement officers’.” Martin Luther King, Jr. are still vacant lots). A real fight against the killer cops immediately escalate the confrontation like “When school let out that afternoon, But the fact is that the Monday unrest got the must be directed against the ruling class, the good ole boys in Ferguson, Missouri police were in the area equipped with full nation’s attention while the days of marches its repressive forces and the capitalist city hall did last August. In fact, Stephanie riot gear. According to eyewitnesses in were ignored. As the young black writer D. system which spawns racist police terror. Rawlings-Blake is Baltimore’s second black the Mondawmin neighborhood, the police Watkins quoted earlier wrote: The Internationalist Group calls to build a were stopping busses and forcing riders, woman mayor, and Anthony Batts is the “We are all starting to believe that holding revolutionary workers party to fight against including many students who were trying seventh black police chief. Moreover, the hands, following pastors and peaceful white liberal Democrats and black capitalist to get home, to disembark. Cops shut police force is roughly half black, and the protests are pointless. The only option politicians who are pushing the militariza- down the local subway stop. They also city council is majority black and entirely is to rise up, and force Mayor Rawlings- tion of the police as hard as reactionary blockaded roads near the Mondawmin Democratic. And they preside over a system Blake to make what should be an easy Republicans. We raise a program to fight Mall and Frederick Douglass High of racist police terror. choice: Stop protecting the livelihoods mass unemployment, through a sliding School, which is across the street from Racism is generally treated, even by of the cops who killed Freddie Gray, or scale of working hours to divide up the the mall, and essentially corralled young many leftists, as a matter of opinions, and watch Baltimore burn to the ground.” available work and create jobs for all. We people in the area. That is, they did not getting rid of it is assumed to be essentially Communists understand and defend call on class-conscious workers to fight for allow the after-school crowd to disperse.” ideological, whether it is white liberals call- black youth lashing out however they can full citizenship rights for all immigrants –“Eyewitnesses: The Baltimore Riots ing to “check your privilege” or more leftist against the all-sided injustice they face, and for workers action to defeat of U.S. Didn’t Start the Way You Think,” Mother variants. For Marxists, racist ideas are an but this in itself is not a strategy. “Getting imperialist war abroad and the capitalist Jones, 28 April expression of the underlying material real- the attention” of the rulers about police war on workers “at home.” This was confirmed by several teachers ity of black (and brown) oppression. Black brutality will do no more to solve or even The police continue to kill with im- who witnessed the events, including one cops can enforce racist “law and order” as alleviate the problem than did Occupy Wall punity because they are doing their job in who wrote: brutally as white cops, just as the repressive Street’s brief success in 2011 in “changing defending capital and keeping the modern- “There were police helicopters flying apparatus of slavery sometimes included the conversation” to talk about inequality. day wage slaves “in their place,” just as overhead. The riot police were already black overseers. To get rid of racism, we By the 2012 election it was back to normal: the slave catchers did prior to the Civil at the bus stop on the other side of the must get rid of racial oppression, the key- money talks. It will take nothing less than War. 6 Just as it took that Second American mall, turning buses that transport the stone of American capitalism. a socialist revolution to put an end to the Revolution to abolish chattel slavery, noth- students away, not allowing students to Moreover, all the various palliatives poverty, racism, cop terror and endless war ing less than a new revolution smashing the board. They were waiting for the kids. As and supposed reforms to attempt to soften of decaying American capitalism. repressive apparatus of capitalist rule – the I sat at the intersection of Gwynns Falls, (or at least disguise) the hard edges of po- I saw several police cars arriving at the bourgeois state – and bringing the workers Only Socialist Revolution lice repression have been tried and failed. scene. I saw the armored police vehicle to power can put a stop to wanton, racist Black police chief? Black mayor? Civilian arrive. Those kids were set up, they were Can Bring Justice police murder. n review board? Federal investigation? Bal- treated like criminals before the first brick As the media vultures flocked to the city timore has had them all, to no avail. What 5 was thrown.” to cover the “Baltimore is burning” story, The government masks this by simply elimi- about admitting “the role of policing in past –Gawker, 28 April one of the most cynical and widely despised nating the long-term unemployed from its sta- and present injustice,” improving training tistics. People who haven’t had a job in over Moreover there’s a curious aspect to at of the lot, Geraldo Rivera of Fox News, was and promoting “community trust”? This is two years are simply disappeared. Actual job- least one of the fires, by far the largest, at a confronted by an eloquent young black man the recipe of Obama’s Task Force on 21st lessness doubled in 2008-09 to around 23% of senior housing project being built next to the who gave him an earful. the workforce and has stayed there. Southern Baptist Church which is sponsor- “I want you and Fox News to get out of 4 Justice Policy Institute, Prison Policy Initia- 6 The first professional police forces in the U.S. ing it. Shots of this fire were looped over Baltimore city. Because you’re not here tive, “Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park, Feb- were the slave patrols that started out precisely and over on TV to show the city burning. reporting about the boarded-up homes, ruary 2015.” in Charleston, South Carolina in the 1830s. 6 The Internationalist Ayotzinapa: To Get Justice, Fight for Socialist Revolution Massacre in Mexico: It Was the Murderous Capitalist State

Constituent Assembly – A Bourgeois Trap Cuartoscuro For a National Strike On the Road to a Workers and Peasants Government! Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party!

The following article from Febru- people murdered and ary 2015 is translated from Revolución more than 20,000 disap- Permanente, the newspaper of the Grupo peared since 2006 in the Internacionalista of Mexico. “war on drugs.” MEXICO CITY – For the last four months, “What of it?” is the the streets of Mexico have resounded response of the federal with hundreds of thousands of anguished government, expressing voices exclaiming, “They took them from its haughty disdain for us alive, we want them back alive!” They the unwashed masses by are demanding the return of the 43 students shelving the case of the of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College dead and disappeared of kidnapped last September 26. They demand Ayotzinapa. Just as the “Justice!” But how to get it? For sure not Argentine government by begging the murderers, among whom tried to hide its dirty war we count the rulers at all levels, as well as of the 1970s behind an those who profit from the oppression of the “official story,” the ar- working masses. rogant Mexican regime Students march in Mexico City on 2 October 2014 to commemorate the martyrs of the 1968 “It was the state!” they cry out, hoarse proclaims its unappeal- Tlatelolco massacre and to demand that the 43 teachers college students from Ayotzinapa from repetition, rightly rejecting the claims able “historical truth”: be returned alive. published an in-depth article on Ayotzinapa of the authorities who want to wash their “it was the narcos” (drug traffickers) who more than 30 city halls have been taken over and the rural teachers colleges. Meanwhile, hands of the affair by blaming a two-bit kidnapped and massacred the students, it by the Guerrero People’s Movement (MPG), the geostrategic consulting firm Stratfor has drug trafficking cartel. “Down with [En- decrees. “It was not a state crime,” the crimi- whose participants include the Ayotzinapa distributed analyses of the events in which rique] Peña Nieto!” they demand, making nal state insists. And it continues to follow teachers college students, peasants and dis- it argues that “Normalista Unrest Highlights it clear that the Mexican president and his its bloody path: a “shootout” on January 6 sident teachers of the CETEG.1 Mexico’s Geographic Challenge” (October PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), in Apatzingán (Michoacán) left a toll of 13 Mayors are on the run, after being 2014) and “Mexico’s Normalista Protests like the PRD (Revolutionary Democratic dead; teachers college students who protest expelled from the municipalities for cor- Threaten to Spread” (November 2014). Party) governor of the state of Guerrero bear on the Autopista del Sol (Highway to the ruption. They roam the state like nomads; They warn that: personal and institutional responsibility for Sun) superhighway to obtain justice for their in Acapulco, the government pretends to “Despite President Enrique Pena Nieto’s the killing in Iguala. But only them? Behind comrades are kidnapped by the federales. operate out of meeting rooms in the luxury efforts to surmount the country’s security hotels of the port city (“Twilight of the this atrocious crime there is a whole, bloody In spite of their disdain and feigned problems through economic reforms and system: capitalism. calm, “those on top” are quite worried about Mayors,” Milenio, 3 February). In several increased coordination of security forces, For the massacre of the teachers college the unrest among “those on the bottom.” The places, “popular municipal councils” have the federal government is struggling to students is no anomaly, above all in this Tierra Caliente (hot land) of Michoacán is arisen, and in the regions of La Montaña and maintain its authority. Mexico is see- country [Mexico] that in recent years has still aflame, despite the arrests of dozens of Costa Chica, the rival community police of ing rising unrest among an increasingly seemed like a horror film that never ends. “autodefensas” (self-defense forces) who the CRAC, UPOEG and now the FUSDEG disillusioned population, especially in Recall the hideous massacre of 45 Indians, had become uniformed “rural guards.” Now proliferate. Everywhere in Guerrero, walls southwestern states.” members of the Las Abejas Collective in the the state is a battlefield between the cartel are painted with the slogan, “There Will Be The Grupo Internacionalista has insisted municipality of Chenalhó (Chiapas) in 1997. of the Caballeros Templarios (Templar No Elections on June 7” until the 43 students from the outset that the massacre was due Or the spine-chilling discovery of the bodies Knights), which was favored by the previous are returned. to the onslaught against the Ayotzinapa of 72 undocumented migrants in an empty PRI state government, and another gang, The bloodbath and mass kidnapping of students and the rural teachers colleges in field in San Fernando, Tamaulipas in 2010, Los Viagras (linked to the Jalisco Nueva Iguala have thrown the life of the country general, which in turn is the product of an or after that the second massacre of San Generación cartel) which currently enjoys into turmoil, plunging the government into offensive aimed at privatizing education Fernando when another 193 people were the approval of the federal government’s the worst crisis of bourgeois “governabil- instigated by Washington and the imperialist killed in 2011. Or the recent execution of 22 “commissioner,” who is now a top-level ity” in half a century. Vast sectors of the financial institutions.2 In particular, as our “suspects” by the Army in Tlatlaya (Mexico military officer. population feel outraged and shaken. The comrades in the United States have stressed, State) last June. And above all, the 100,000 For its part, the state of Guerrero is imperialist masters are worried as well: the it is the product of a policy of “Militarization a “bonfire” (as Luis main focus of Peña Nieto’s recent interview in Mexico, Made in U.S.A.”.3 Hernández Navarro in the White House was “security” and the The federal government has opted to wrote in La Jornada, kidnapped normalistas, as the teachers col- wait to let the protests run down and then 3 February), with an lege students are known. President Obama crush the rebels, exhausted by so much interim governor and offers to send American “aid.” In short, the mobilization, with overwhelming force. state office buildings “Ayotzinapa case” is far from being a merely That is exactly what president Vicente burned down in Octo- local, or even national affair. Fox of the clerical-rightist National Action ber. On January 12, par- Thus the Mexican edition of Forbes Party (PAN) did in Oaxaca in 2006. Now, ents and students from (January 2015), the American business mag- Pedro Valtierra/La Jornada Pedro Valtierra/La Ayotzinapa searching azine that calls itself the “capitalist tool,” 2 See “Mexico: Massacre in Iguala Calls for for their children and Mobilization and Workers Revolution,” The 1 fellow students clashed State Coordinating Committee of Education Internationalist No. 38, October-November Workers of Guerrero, affiliated with the na- 2014, some 15,000 copies of which have been with hundreds of mili- tional CNTE, which is predominant in the state distributed in the many demonstrations for Ayo- tary police inside the against the “institutional” corporatist pseudo- tzinapa. grounds of the 27th union, the SNTE. See our article, “Defend the 3 See “Huge Outrage Over Guerrero Massacre,” Tzotzil indigenous women confront the Mexican army Infantry Battalion in Independent Teachers of Guerrero!”The Inter- The Internationalist No. 38, October-November after the massacre of Acteal, Chiapas, December 1997. Iguala. Meanwhile, nationalist No. 35, Summer 2013 2014. April-May 2015 7 The IG emphasized that tion. After the uproar in the social media from Ferguson, Mis- over #YaMeCansé (I’m tired of it) picking souri, where the black up on the insulting words of the attorney AFP youth Michael Brown general Murillo Karam, now there was an was the victim of a rac- explosion of fury with the hashtag #YaSu- ist police murder last pérenlo (Get over it already). August, to Ayotzinapa, What the highest authorities in the it is one struggle. Our country want is for everyone to accept the Brazilian comrades of bloody M.O. (modus operandi, or method of the Liga Quarta-Inter- operation) of Mexican capitalism. And if the nacionalista do Brasil easy way doesn’t work, the government is (LQB) put forward a mo- waving its big stick. The job of threatening a tion of solidarity with the crackdown was given to the secretary of the teachers college students Navy, Vidal Soberón Sanz, who claimed that which was passed by the the parents of the are being “manipulated” combative teachers and by groups that are “profiting” from their health workers unions pain (La Jornada, 10 December 2014). In of the state of Rio de the same vein, the big business groups of Janeiro, and they held a the National Business Council (CCE) are protest outside the Mexi- calling to “enforce the law against acts of can consulate in Rio last vandalism” (Milenio, 11 November 2014). October 17. In Oaxaca, the businessmen’s associa- In Mexico, the tions have organized shock troops to block struggle for Ayotzinapa the teachers’ demonstrations. On January has convulsed the coun- 10, tourist operators led by the mayor of Guerrero state government offices in flame after being besieged by hundreds of students and try. There have been at Huatulco broke up the blockade of the local teachers furious over the Iguala massacre and the role of the government, 13 October 2014. least four national days airport by the Section 22 teachers. It won’t following the announcement of the “histori- other region of the country, demonstrates of work stoppages of be long before in Oaxaca such white guards cal truth” decreed by the attorney general that the Mexican government will never 24, 48 and 72 hours in schools at different surface, bringing together drug traffickers Murillo Karam, the minister of the interior tolerate a “Red Guerrero,” any more than levels. In Oaxaca, the militant teachers of and “legitimate” businessmen to back up (gobernación) Osorio Chong commented in 2006 it permitted a “Oaxaca Commune,” Section 22 of the CNTE stopped work and the official repressive apparatus against the to PRI senators in a closed session that despite the fantasies of some starry-eyed blocked the airports of Oaxaca and Huatul- radical students and educators. the federal government had sent “as many leftists. The dream of “heading into the co, along with the refinery of Salina Cruz. As on earlier occasions – the Zapatista forces of the Army, Navy and Federal Police hills” to launch a new guerrilla war is a In Guerrero, the teachers of the CETEG set uprising in Chiapas in 1994, the 2006 re- as imaginable” to Guerrero (La Jornada, policy of defeat. Mexico has had more up a tent city in the center of Chilpancingo bellion in Oaxaca – the fact that struggles 30 January). rural armed struggles than any other Latin and have directed their anger at buildings have arisen in outlying and economically The repressor-in-chief of Bucareli (the American country, yet all failed in the face symbolizing the rotten bourgeois institu- backward peasant regions has limited their street where the Secretariat of Gobernación of the vicious repression by the Mexican tions: the governor’s residence (October 29), impact. As the imperialist geostrategists of is located) announced that he will not toler- government and Yankee imperialism. the state congress (November 12 and Janu- Stratfor indicated in their November 2014 ate that groups “which have for a long time The repression of the Ayotzinapa stu- ary 5), various government office buildings commentary, “If the normalista and teach- been recognized as radicals in Guerrero take dents is not the result of local corruption throughout the last four months, and the 27th ers’ groups are able to cooperate with the advantage of the tragedy of Ayotzinapa in nor of purely national policies. The assault Infantry Battalion in Iguala on January 12. Mexico City organizers and significantly order to mobilize and commit excesses.” The on the rural teachers colleges is part of the The bourgeoisie is desperately trying to escalate the demonstrations, the Mexican murder of “radicals” has already begun. On plans of the imperialist financial agencies turn the page and get past the issue. Speak- government will find it difficult to manage February 4, the decapitated body of Gustavo to regiment and privatize public education. ing at the Imperial World Forum in Acapulco prolonged unrest in multiple areas using Salgado Delgado, leader of the Revolutionary It goes hand in hand with the “free trade” during a December 4 visit to Guerrero (in non-violent means.” For that very reason, Popular Front (FPR) in the state of Morelos policies which have devastated Mexican which he didn’t go to Ayotzinapa, Iguala the Grupo Internacionalista has struggled, and an important organizer of the protests agriculture. In short, the hunting down of or even Chilpancingo), Mexican president both over Oaxaca in 2006 and Guerrero for Ayotzinapa, was found. The FPR rightly the radical normalistas is the product of Peña Nieto called on the parents and school- today, to mobilize the “heavy battalions” insisted that “this crime is part of a policy of international capitalism, and to defeat it mates of the disappeared students to “get of the Mexican proletariat. terror carried out by the state.” requires working-class mobilization in an over [superar] this moment of pain.” (He Education workers unions in Mexico Despite the escalating repression, international revolutionary struggle. promised hotel executives concerned about City and elsewhere in the country have rather than concentrating on extending highway blockages that he would “protect joined the mobilizations, and have even the rebellion to the workers of the entire Workers Mobilization on the free movement” on the superhighway with stopped work or have announced that they country, the Guerrero rebels have retreated Road to Socialist Revolution beefed-up police.) But the chief executive will participate in general work stoppages. to their base. Currently there is a strike by What’s needed is a counteroffensive of only managed to fan the flames of indigna- In the nationwide mobilization of November teachers throughout the state over unpaid the proletariat, at the head of the oppressed, salaries (due to the educational “reform”), against the bourgeois regime of hunger and

and on February 5 there were protests in repression. The combativeness of the nor- Revolución Permanente Ayotzinapa in Guerrero, along with some malista students and teachers of Guerrero marches in Chiapas and Michoacán, but has been exemplary, but it is necessary to not in the national capital. As combative extend it to the entire country, and above as it is, an uprising limited to a few states all to key sectors of the working class. The in southwestern Mexico will not be able to Grupo Internacionalista has agitated in nu- resist the federal government’s onslaught. merous student and union assemblies, with Meanwhile, appeals are being made to student and worker brigades and distributing the United Nations Committee on Enforced Marxist literature in the mass mobilizations, Disappearances in Geneva and to the Inter- calling for a national strike against the American Court of Human Rights in San murderous government, beginning with José, Costa Rica. These bodies, completely a strike of the education sector, in a fight subordinated to the orders of U.S. impe- for “a workers and peasants government to rialism, will never require the Mexican resolve the democratic tasks in the course government to do anything that doesn’t have of initiating and extending international Washington’s stamp of approval. The same socialist revolution.” goes for human rights organizations like Around the world there have been soli- Amnesty International and Human Rights darity protests in several dozen countries of Watch, whose job is to denounce regimes the Americas and in Europe. Our comrades that are on the U.S.’ black list, like Cuba, of the Internationalist Group in the United Russia or Syria. States organized the first emergency pick- The history of the “dirty war” in the ets at the beginning of October outside the Contingent of the Grupo Internacionalista in the march to Mexico City’s state (see box, page 9) which unleashed a Mexican consulate in New York, which Zócalo, 22 October 2014. Banner says: “For Ayotzinapa – For a National reign of terror there exceeding that in any were highlighted by the press in Guerrero. Strike Against the Murderous Government.” 8 The Internationalist he fact that the crime of Iguala is no anomaly but one more link in Tthe chain of deadly violence that In Guerrero, the Dirty War characterizes bourgeois politics in this country can be confirmed by casting a brief glance at the history of the state of Guerrero over the last half century. Never Ended Already in the late 1950s, Guer- rero was experiencing a reign of terror test meeting in Atoyac. For his part, Genaro unleashed by the tyrannical governor, Vázquez, after being liberated by a guerrilla Lenin Ocampo/Jornada General Raúl Caballero Aburto, of the commando in 1968, undertook guerrilla Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), struggle in the regions of Las Montaña and who was charged with having murdered the Costa Chica under the name of the Na- more than 30 people, and tortured many tional Revolutionary Civic Association. He more. In order to fight him, a Guerrero died in a traffic accident in February 1972 Civic Association (ACG) was formed, in obscure circumstances. According to the which included members of the Mexican report/novel of the always well-informed Communist Party and of the Popular So- Carlos Montemayor, Genaro was finished cialist Party. A number of the dead were off by a military man. thrown into the Pozo Meléndez sinkhole During the 1970s and ’80s, Guerrero (also known as the Devil’s Mouth) near was the scene of one of the bloodiest epi- Taxco, which is where many of those sodes of the dirty war against the guerrillas. persecuted during the Dirty War of the The state was literally subjected to a state of 1960s and ’70s ended up. It’s also very military siege. The 27th Military Zone, with close to where the Aytozinapa students headquarters in Acapulco, was outfitted with were disappeared last September 26. the most modern military equipment of the Caballero Aburto was ultimately time. The Federal Security Directorate and removed following the murder by army the Army carried out massacres of entire peasant settlements, applying brutal coun- The dirty war never ended: students from Ayotzinapa protest the massacre soldiers of 19 students in Chilpancingo, of their compañeros by state and federal police in December 2011. on 30 December 1960. Later, protests terinsurgency techniques in order to sweep against the electoral fraud orchestrated away popular support for the guerrillas. As might give them cover, PRI governor Rubén as a violation of individual liberties. As by the PRI ended with a massacre of 31 Laura Castellanos, author of México armado Figueroa Jr. undertook the massacre of 17 we have underlined, the “war on drugs” December 1962, in Iguala. The ACG, led (2007), commented: members of the Peasant Organization of the is a dispute between sectors of the bour- by the teacher Genaro Vázquez Rojas, a “Guerrero also has the infamous honor Southern Sierra (OCSS) in Aguas Blancas, geoisie for the purpose of maintaining a graduate of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers of being the first place in the Americas on 28 June 1995. A year later the formation pervasive military and police presence in where so-called ‘flights of death’ were College and a member of the Revolu- of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) the impoverished areas of the countryside inaugurated, even before they were tionary Movement of Teachers (MRM), was announced. and in working-class neighborhoods in used by South American dictatorships; organized a “civic work stoppage” in front dozens, perhaps hundreds of civilians Due to the uproar over the Aguas the cities. It also reflects the subordina- of the municipal building. With the sup- were transported in military airplanes Blancas massacre, the governor was forced tion of Mexican bourgeois governments port of police and the army, white guards and then dumped, alive in the high seas. to request a leave and was replaced by Án- to Yankee imperialism in its pernicious (private armies of gun thugs hired by local Others were incinerated or thrown into gel Aguirre Rivero. But the killings didn’t counterinsurgency wars in Latin America bosses) attacked the demonstration, leav- mass graves.” stop. On 7 June 1998, in the community since the 1960s. ing eight dead and 280 arrested. Following –“Before and After Iguala” [in Spanish] of El Charco, municipality of Ayutla de Even so, the dirty war in Guerrero this massacre there was a “scorched earth” in Milenio, 20 November 2014 los Libres, soldiers of the Mexican army never ended. The murder of two students operation to take back the municipalities The final report of the Truth Commission for threw fragmentation grenades into a primary from Ayotzinapa by state police in the which been won by the Civic Association. Guerrero, published last fall, recounts that school, killing five Indians sleeping there. Autopista del Sol superhighway on 12 After several years as a rural school between 1974 and 1981 around 1,500 people This was followed by the devastating effects December 2011 was the most notable teacher, Genaro Vázquez was captured by were tossed into the sea, some of them alive of [Mexican president Felipe] Calderón’s event of the first year of Ángel Aguirre the Guerrero police in 1966. On 18 May (La Jornada, 18 October 2014). war on drug trafficking from 2007 to 2013 Rivero’s second term as governor of 1967, judicial police carried out another Military control of the state strength- in which more than 100,000 people were the state (this time for the Party of the massacre, this time against protesting teach- ened the caciques (local bosses) and their killed, 8 percent of them in Guerrero (Ale- Democratic Revolution [PRD]). And now ers in Atoyac de Álvarez, in the Costa paramilitary gangs. In various areas, the jandro Poiré in Nexos, 11 February). Some he has ended by requesting a leave over Grande region. The judicial police fired on army permitted large-scale planting of mari- 8,000 Guerrero residents lost their lives in the massacre of Iguala of 26 September the crowd from the rooftops of houses, leav- juana and poppies, which generated a kind this war ordered by the White House, the 2014, the worst of all, but not the first … ing a toll of between five and nine people of “social base” for the counterinsurgency Pentagon and their puppets in Los Pinos nor the last. The drums of the dirty war dead and various wounded. See the vivid de- linked to drug trafficking. Despite the exter- [Mexico’s White House]. will continue beating out their deadly scription of the slaughter in the magnificent mination policy, some groups dating back As staunch defenders of democratic cadence, and the church bells will keep book of Carlos Montemayor, Guerra en el to the guerrilla groups of Lucio Cabañas rights, revolutionary Marxists oppose all tolling their chimes of mourning, until paraíso [War in Paradise] (1991). and Genaro Vázquez managed to survive laws against the production, selling or a socialist revolution puts an end, once This set off the guerrilla uprising of into the 1990s. In order to revive repres- consumption of drugs, as well as laws and for all, to this diabolical capitalist Lucio Cabañas, who was leading the pro- sion against peasant communities which concerning the use of alcohol or tobacco, machinery of death. n

20, the workers of the National Union of ago: of being the bourgeois pole of a popular the same time, Cárdenas advocated calling of the National University, Pablo González Telephone Workers of Mexico stopped work front to chain the workers, who were in the a new “Constituent Congress” to “draw up Casanova; the poet Javier Sicilia, who in for 24 hours. (The Grupo Internacionalista process of throwing off the yoke of corporat- a new magna carta.” He stressed: “We are 2011 led the No Más Sangre (No More solidarized with this action, taking brigades ism, to a section of the capitalist class. The not trying to get rid of the institutions and Blood) movement; and Father Solalinde, of of striking students to different Telmex aim is to keep the struggles of the working institutional life. By no means. There is a the Casa Hermanos en el Camino (Brothers locations.) This demonstrates that it is not people under control and to divert popular lot that is useful, although a lot that needs on the Road) shelter for migrants. Accord- only necessary but also possible to mobilize discontent into the sterile channels of par- to be fixed.” He only intends, he says, to ing to Sicilia, “now is the time to refound the power of the working class. While the liamentary politics. For its part, the party of “recover” the “essence of constitutionality” the nation” by means of “building a new union bureaucracy seeks to limit the scope Andrés Manuel López Obrador, MORENA, laid down in the constitutions of 1824, 1857 Constituent Assembly” that in turn will “ar- of such actions, we must intervene to forge is focused on the June 7 elections while the and 1917 (La Jornada, 22 November 2014). ticulate a Committee of National Salvation a revolutionary leadership. clamor for an electoral boycott is spreading The same tack was taken by Raúl Vera, which in 2018 will become the government” through Guerrero and Oaxaca. And what the former curate who worked with Samuel (Proceso, 4 January). The Bourgeois Trap of a New about Mexico City? Ruiz in San Cristóbal de las Casas (Chiapas) The perspective of “refounding the na- Constituent Assembly A measure of the generalized loss of at the time of the Zapatista uprising and who tion” by means of a constituent assembly and The bourgeoisie is genuinely worried credibility of the bourgeois political system is now the bishop of Saltillo. Vera issued a a new constitution expresses the outlook of that the situation could spin out of control. is the resignation of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas call for an assembly to “draw up a new Con- bourgeois sectors (and of “moderates” in the This fear is all the more real because the from the PRD. The party founder com- stitution” (Proceso, 28 December 2014). petty-bourgeois left which are tailing after PRD is utterly discredited and unable to play plained of the “myopia, opportunism and His call was joined by various well-known them) who want to carry out reforms without the role assigned to it when it arose 25 years complacency” of the party leadership. At personalities, including the former rector touching the bloody roots of the Mexican April-May 2015 9 Ayotzinapa and the Imperialist The following article from Febru- tred of the bourgeois rulers for radicalized ary 2015 is translated from Revolución students. As with just about everything Permanente, the newspaper of the Grupo having to do with education in Mexico, Internacionalista of Mexico. the government’s actions were in response

From the beginning of the mobiliza- Octavio Gómez/Proceso to the dictates of the imperialist financial tions for Ayotzinapa, we have emphasized institutions. The article on “Fight ‘Maqui- that the real motive behind the horrific lazation’ of the University,”3 in Marxism massacre in Iguala on 26 September 2014 and the Battle Over Education (special goes far beyond the corruption of a mur- supplement to The Internationalist 2d. derous government. Substituting one edition, January 2008) quotes documents bourgeois politician for another changes from the World Bank which advocate a nothing when it is the system that is to “market orientation for tertiary [higher] blame. Today they chant “Down with education,” including imposing tuition, [Mexican president Enrique] Peña Nieto!” reduction in the size of the study body of just as yesterday they were calling in public universities, an increase in private Guerrero for “Down with [state governor universities, weakening unions, as well Ángel] Aguirre Rivero!” and in 2006 in as having “fewer and/or different faculty” Oaxaca they kept repeating that “[state and “the closure of inefficient or ineffec- governor] Ulises [Ruiz Ortiz] has fallen.” tive institutions.” But if a governor or a president is ousted, On the latter, the imperialist ef- who replaces him? Ruiz and Aguirre are ficiency “experts” made very specific gone, and their successors Gabino Cué Students of the Federation of Socialist Peasant Students in front of the recommendations. In September 2002, a and Rogelio Ortega keep hounding stu- campus of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College. World Bank mission prepared a detailed dents and teachers, indigenous people, report, “Program Support for the State of peasants and workers. Nieto regime with regard to the case of lice to take El Mexe by assault and arrest Chiapas” (adorned with the inscriptions As we pointed out four months ago: Ayotzinapa are sworn enemies of the its 900 students. But instead it backfired. “confidential” and “official use only”), “Whatever the immediate cause that rural teachers colleges. Along with the When hundreds of paramilitary police ar- which “recommended” eliminating the res- triggered the bloodbath of Iguala, FECSM, another of their favorite targets rived at the campus and arrested around 170 ervation of teaching positions for graduates the rationale for the slaughter is the is the dissident teachers of the National students, the neighboring community mobi- of the teachers colleges and “the conver- demonization of militant students and Coordinating Committee of Education lized and some 1,500 peasants surrounded sion of state teachers colleges” (quoted in the commitment of the governments of Workers (la CNTE), squared off against them, disarmed the police and held them Proceso, 30 August 2003). Based on this 2 all the parties to close the rural teacher the “institutional” corporatist “National until the arrested students were returned. report, Chiapas governor Pablo Salazar 1 training institutes. This is part of the Union of Education Workers” ( el SNTE). Following the definitive closing and announced his intention to “convert the privatization offensive against public Last year, Carlos Loret de Mola, the anchor violent eviction of the El Mexe students Mactumactzá rural teachers college into education ordered by Washington and of the morning news program on Televisa in 2003, there was the attempt to close a polytechnical university.” This set off the global financial institutions.” (Mexico’s leading TV network), reported down the Mactumactzá teachers college in furious student protests, to which the police –“Mexico: Massacre in Iguala Calls for that in a meeting behind closed doors at Chiapas and the Lázaro Cárdenas teachers responded with deadly gunfire. Mobilization and Workers Revolution!” Los Pinos (the presidential residence), it college in Tenería in Mexico State, as well In recent years, the Organization for The Internationalist No. 38, October- was announced that “we’re going kick the as the kidnapping and torture of students Economic Cooperation and Development November 2014 ass of the CNTE crowd” (El Universal, 12 from the Atequiza teachers college in the We might add that Peña Nieto’s attorney (OECD) has taken the lead in promoting August 2014). The journalist added, “We state of Jalisco, all in 2008. Then in 2012 “market-oriented education reform.” We general, Jesús Murillo Karam, who already know who is going to do it, to whom there was the simultaneous assault by thou- declared himself “tired” of the whole should point out that this educational coun- and when. All that’s left to know is how … sands of police on the teachers colleges in terreform, which was the first undertaking affair, only to later invent “historical they’ll go about it.” So now we know. Tiripetío, Cherán and Arteaga in Michoacán truths” about the crime of Iguala, when of the Pact for Mexico coalition formed Over the last 20 years, if not earlier, in an attempt to break the strike of students by the main bourgeois parties (PRI, PAN he was governor of the state of Hidalgo in there have been constant attempts to close protesting against a curriculum “reform” the 1990s slashed enrollment at the rural and PRD), was based on an Agreement for the rural teachers colleges. In the case of along free-trade lines (replacing the teaching Mexico-OECD Cooperation to Improve the teachers college of El Mexe, and interior El Mexe, there was a particular motive for of indigenous languages used in the commu- minister (secretary of Gobernación) Quality of Education in Mexican Schools the persecution: in February 2000, just days nities with English instruction). The assault (2010 [in Spanish]) to “establish a national Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, during his after the takeover of the National University sparked a march of 50,000 people in the stint as governor of Hidalgo, “finished selection exam and other tools of evalu- of Mexico (UNAM) by the Federal Police state capital Morelia, called by the CNTE. ation” for hiring and firing teachers and the job and closed El Mexe, which for a that put an end to the ten-month strike there, The reason for this crusade against the long time served as headquarters of the professors. It also proposed introducing a the governor of Hidalgo ordered state po- rural teachers colleges is not simply the ha- system of “pay for performance.” Federation of Socialist Peasant Students 1 For a fuller discussion about the nature of cor- 2 See “El Mexe: Rebellion in Hidalgo,” in Mexi- of Mexico (FECSM),” as Arturo Cano poratist pseudo-unions in Mexico, see “SL on co: The UNAM Strike and the Fight for Workers 3 I.e., transforming universities into an edu- noted in La Jornada (8 November 2014). Corporatism in Mexico: Games Centrists Play,” Revolution, special supplement of The Interna- cational version of maquiladoras, the highly Thus the top executives of the Peña The Internationalist, July 2013. tionalist (March 2000). exploitative free trade zone factories. regime: the capitalist system. This slogan of its most “progressive” clauses (Article 3 on a “philanthropic ogre” that bargains away imperialist senior partners and surrounded “refounding” the country has been popular- education, Article 27 on the property of land democratic rights in exchange for a some by huge masses of workers and poor peas- ized in Latin America in recent years above and natural resources, Article 123 on union paltry handouts in terms of social security ants, the weak bourgeoisie is incapable of all by the bourgeois populist Evo Morales in rights) served to undercut, divert and keep of the population. The historian Enrique achieving an agrarian revolution, national Bolivia, and subsequently by Rafael Correa under the control of the capitalist state the Krauze has come out for a “democracy emancipation or democracy. It requires in Ecuador. In fact, Morales launched this struggles for agrarian reform, the expropria- without adjectives” and lambasted “ancient beefed-up measures of control in order to slogan in the middle of the peasant uprising tion of oil, free education and workers’ rights. ideological archetypes” inherited from the maintain the machinery of exploitation. of 2003, and particularly in 2005 precisely in Bourgeois ideologues have spilled riv- colonial regime of New Spain, and even Only by means of a proletarian revolution order to prevent a workers revolution which ers of ink attempting to explain the fact that from the Aztec tlatoanis (leaders) suppos- can the fundamental tasks of the bourgeois was literally on the doorstep. in Mexico the democratic aspirations of the edly favoring centralized states. revolution be accomplished. As for the 1917 Constitution, once masses who fought in the three bourgeois- But the truth is that the present situ- As Marxists we point out that demo- praised as “the most advanced in the world” democratic revolutions that have shaped ation is not derived from inveterate ideas cratic demands in Mexico cannot be satisfied at the time by those (like Adolfo Gilly) who the history of the country have not been derived from tlatoanis, viceroys or caci- in the framework of capitalism. The watch- have now declared it destroyed, this is not achieved. Many refer to the long (70-year) ques (Indian chiefs). As explained by the word of Francisco Madero, titular leader of only the basic law of a capitalist state, its rule of the PRI-government as a “presiden- theory of permanent revolution of Leon the 1910 uprising that set off the truncated promulgation marked the consolidation of the tial” regime, which they attribute to a sup- Trotsky, who together with Lenin led the Mexican Revolution, who called for Sufragio victory of the bourgeois “Constitutionalist” posed “authoritarian” predilection among 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, in efectivo, no reelección (“Effective Votes, army of Venustiano Carranza over the radi- Mexicans. The writer Octavio Paz describes semicolonial countries with a relatively No Reelection”) contrasts with Mexico cal peasant armies of Zapata and Villa. Even the PRI governments as the embodiment of small capitalist class, subordinated to their today, which is the world champion in elec- 10 The Internationalist Assault on Public Education

Imperialist financial institutions like Reforma the CTM, CROC and SNTE in order to the Organization for Economic Coopera- maintain a corporatist police control of tion and Development (OECD) impose the workers in key sectors. But the highly their dictates on educational policy on the statified capitalist system is gone. Hence Mexican government, pushing to close the a successful defense of the rural teachers teacher training institutes, declaring them colleges is only possible on the basis of a “redundant” (as well as being bastions of revolutionary and internationalist program. radical groups). The combative teachers college stu- It is against this plan to make educa- dents of the FECSM have managed to re- tion conform to the requirements of capi- sist for more than a decade, but in the end tal and destroy educators’ rights that the their marches and occupations are insuf- teachers of Guerrero, Oaxaca and other ficient to defeat Mexican capitalism and sections of the CNTE rebelled, throw- imperialism. The attack on the rights of ing the country into turmoil for months, Mexican students and teachers is the same for which Los Pinos now wants to “kick as that being experienced by educators in their ass.” As for the rural teachers col- the imperialist countries, where govern- leges, a bulletin titled Analysis of Policies ments, industrialists, bankers and stock Concerning Basic Education Teachers in market speculators are also demanding Mexico (OECD, October 2009 [in Span- “pay for performance” according to the ish]) speaks quite openly: “value added” by the teachers, and where “The rural teachers colleges, for their Riot police captured by the population of de El Mexe, 19 February 2000. they seek to eliminate any vestige of trade- part, are often bastions of radical groups, living from planting and harvesting crops, because it is no longer based on the union defense of teachers’ rights, where present a high level of conflictivity and the teachers from the rural teacher colleges peasant and worker masses but on capital, they seek to close “inefficient” schools have a very important mobilizing and a capital which needs technicians.” and to privatize or turn the public schools potential; for the most part, they are are hardly “redundant.” But if the peasant –“The Hour of the Rural Teachers and universities into profit platforms. anachronistic institutions, which no producer disappears from the market, all that Colleges” [in Spanish], Contralínea, longer correspond to the current needs will be left is agribusness – with its techno- To crush the offensive which seeks October 2003 of educating teaching cadres….” logically advanced machinery, genetically to regiment and privatize public educa- Correct, and precisely because the very Its conclusion: “the possibility should be modified seeds, freezing plants – and imports. tion, it is necessary to mobilize the only existence of the rural teacher training schools considered of turning around of some of That’s what we are seeing today as peasant social power capable of defeating the goes against the project of “technifying” the campuses to devote them to fulfilling production falls. Currently 35% of the corn bourgeoisie, that of the working class, on the countryside for the profit of the big mo- other educational needs.” They cite the case consumed in Mexico, the country where this a worldwide level. In this struggle against nopolies, they cannot be defended within the of El Mexe as a “paradigm” for having basic foodstuff originated, is imported, as is the capitalist offensive, battle-hardened framework of Mexican capitalism. The same eliminated its “redundant” student body. more than 50% of the wheat and 75% of the Mexican students and teachers have much is true of the free-market “reform” of public We quote these texts to show that refer- rice. Meanwhile, the countryside is being to contribute, with their steadfast defense education in general. As Aboites remarked: ences to imperialist dictates as being behind depopulated, above all of young people. of the rural teachers colleges, their boycotts “An educational model which offers free the offensive against the rural teachers col- More than a decade ago, Hugo Aboites, of standardized tests, their work stoppages education and which even pays young leges, radical students and militant teachers an educational researcher, currently rector of and occupations. But petty-bourgeois lay- people to study is a model that turns are in no way speculation. As submissive the Autonomous University of Mexico City ers such as students and professors do not and author of the book Viento del Norte: TLC out to be subversive of the very idea of produce value and profits for the capitalists. administrators of a semi-colony, Mexican privatizing education…. 4 y privatización de la educación superior en In order to prevail in this genuine class war, rulers respect and carry out the orders of “Unfortunately, the economic question México (Northwind: NAFTA and the Privati- it is not enough to take over a few turnpike their imperialist overlords. And not only and the globalization of the countryside concerning education. The privatization zation of Higher Education in Mexico), noted are the principal causes of the clash of toll booths and sit down in the central of the oil industry via the recent “energy that the attack on rural teachers colleges: the state governments with the students, plazas of the state capitals. It is necessary reform” is one more example, within the “shows that the future of the Mexican as a result of which the authorities will to shut down key sectors of industry, com- framework of the North American Free countryside no longer goes through be implacable.” merce and transportation. Trade Agreement. With these free-trade peasant communities, nor indigenous Thus one cannot defend the rural teacher For that reason, the Grupo Internacio- groups, nor the ejidos (communally policies, the country has been turned into schools with a nationalist program seeking nalista has called from the outset for a na- owned land), nor cooperatives or rural a giant maquiladora for U.S. industry, in to preserve institutions which, despite their tional strike against the murderous govern- organizations, but through agroindustry, addition to ruining Mexican agriculture. ment to prepare the struggle for a workers through big capital which are turning the rhetoric of “socialist education,” were part of This latter factor directly affects the Mexican countryside into a maquiladora. the corporatist capitalist regime established and peasants government that would begin onslaught against Ayotzinapa. Obviously, “There is a plan for Mexican agriculture by [Mexican presidents] Plutarco Calles the socialist revolution. Only in this way for peasant communities who make their behind the elimination of the rural and Lázaro Cárdenas in the 1930s. The can we sweep away the learned “experts” governments of the misnamed “democratic who seek to “reform” public education by 4 A reference to a classic phrase of Span- teachers colleges. It is the same plan transition” – of the PRI, the PAN and (at the destroying it at gunpoint. Only in this way ish imperial officials in Latin America who that points to eliminating agronomy and can we avenge our comrades of Ayotzinapa would “respect but not carry out” (acato pero veterinary schools. It is a plan in which state level) the PRD – since 2000 have been no cumplo) their instructions from Madrid. these institutions no longer have a place, unable to do without the pseudo-unions of who have fallen in the struggle. ■ toral fraud. Instead of Zapata’s watchword 2000 and the dismantling of the state-owned At the same time, the corporatist system of “Land and Freedom,” we face the reality industrial apparatus, the PAN governments couldn’t be based exclusively on repression. Forge a Leninist-Trotskyist that poor peasants have been forced off their of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón found It set up a system of “social security”(the Party! land to emigrate to the poverty belts around they had to rely on corporatist and semi- Mexican Social Security Institute IMSS, As revolutionary Marxists, we hold – the big cities, or to the United States. The corporatist pseudo-unions in order to impose the Government Employees Social Security together with Lenin and Trotsky – that it can 19th century struggle of the liberal Mexican their austerity measures and carry out their Institute ISSSTE, the Infonavit housing be appropriate to call for a revolutionary bourgeoisie for national independence is privatization programs. projects) which offered some crumbs to constituent assembly in late-developing sharply counterposed to today’s reality of The corporatist system was based on the workers. Yet after a quarter century of capitalist countries where there is a mili- Mexico as a semi-colony of the U.S. the organic integration of the workers brutal cutbacks, a privatizing offensive and tary/police dictatorship and there are not The one-party regime – in which the unions and organizations of the working the domination of the doctrines of free-trade even formal democratic rights for sectors PRI fused with the state apparatus – func- people (peasants, teachers, small busi- capitalism, the threadbare web of social ser- of the population subject to discrimination tioned by means of a system of corporat- nessmen, etc.) and all social sectors into vices is practically in ruins. The bourgeoisie (indigenous peoples, religious minorities, ist control fomented by Washington. The the bourgeois state apparatus. Instead of is not offering more democratic concessions etc.). In such circumstances, the slogan can bonapartist (i.e., military/police) character defending the interests of the exploited – on the contrary, it is bent on eliminating bring together oppressed sectors fighting of the “PRI-government,” that over time and oppressed, the corporatist apparatuses those that remain and increasingly resorts to for full democratic rights against the bour- was downgraded to semi-bonapartist, kept carry out the functions of state control. The blatant repression. The idea that by means geoisie and imperialism, and in support of it in power for seven decades. It could not corporatist “unions” are in reality labor cops of a new constitution and passing new laws the working class fighting to build organs simply be dismantled by decree. Despite the to hold the workers’ struggles at bay and the situation of the mass of the exploited and of proletarian power, such as soviets. In that rhetoric of a “democratic transition” after prevent the rise of genuine workers unions. oppressed can be changed is a fraud. way, as an episodic tactic, it does not imply April-May 2015 11 May Day 2015 in New York and Portland Internationalist photo Internationalist photo

Internationalist contingent in New York City May Day march. Labor Against Racist Police Murder contingent in Portland, OR May Day march. On May 1 in New York City, an In- with the symbol of the Trotskyist Fourth In Portland, Oregon the IG marched was shot down by police in February. A ternationalist contingent of 50 people International and a banner of the CUNY with a contingent of Labor Against Racist delegation from Pasco traveled to Portland marched on the workers day. The con- Internationalist Clubs, marchers high- Police Murder. Members of Class Struggle to participate. The AFT, AAUP and groups of tingent included the Internationalist lighted the call to defend black Baltimore, Workers Portland won several unions, workers from the Laborers and other unions Group the Internationalist Clubs at the demanding cops and National Guard out including IUPAT Local 10, IATSE Local 28 joined in. Toward the end of the march it was City University, Class Struggle Education of the besieged city. Signs and chants also and the IWW to form the contingent. Those brutally attacked by police using flash-bang Workers, the Orquesta Skarroñeros band emphasized the struggle to free Mumia unions also passed a motion of solidarity grenades and tear gas, underlining that the and immigrant workers in the IG’s Marxist Abu-Jamal, threatened with execution by with the immigrants of Pasco, Washington fight against cop terror is an immediate is- study circles. Led by a group of red flags deliberate medical neglect in prison. where Mexican worker Antonio Zambrano sue in Portland as elsewhere.

abandoning, postponing or diminishing the revolution will be socialist.” But in order to Socialista (14 November 2014) proclaims, revolution, or it will not be. struggle for socialist revolution. cover up its real politics, it has provided itself “Peña Get Out! We’re fighting for a free and What’s needed today is to arm the most In Mexico, however, formal demo- an escape clause: the Constituent Assembly. sovereign constituent assembly.” Its program conscious fighters with the theoretical and cratic rights for the population already exist. In an article titled “From the Popular doesn’t go beyond a “democratic” reform of programmatic perspective of Trotsky’s per- Obliged to placate the insurgent peasants National Assembly to the New Constituent capitalism, taking up “the demands of the manent revolution, beginning with the rec- and fearful of proletarian uprisings in the Assembly” (Vanguardia Proletaria, 15-31 large majority,” “renationalization of the ognition that even the most basic democratic cities, the Mexican bourgeoisie judged it January), the PCM (m-l) poses the need for energy sector and privatized enterprises,” demands are incompatible with bourgeois necessary to make some concessions to a “Political General Strike” or “HPG” (ac- etc. A supplement (30 November) proposed: rule. In order to obtain them it is necessary for those sectors in the 1917 Constitution. Since cording to its initials in Spanish) to prepare “For our part, the MTS holds the view the working class to take power and under- those rights already exist on paper, calling “insurrectionary processes” to then “install that a Political General Strike which turns take socialist tasks by abolishing bourgeois for a new constituent assembly today only a revolutionary Provisional Government and the slogan ‘Throw them all out’ into reality, private property of the means of production serves to divert the struggle. Trotskyists convoke a Democratic and Popular Constitu- and which establishes a provisional gov- and extending the revolution to the impe- fight for rights such as universal access to ent Assembly.” While it may from time to time ernment of the working-class, peasant and rialist colossus of the north, with its large public education at every level as well as for add the qualifier “proletarian,” it is clearly popular organizations in struggle, is the road contingent of Mexican workers. In order to other rights “consecrated” in the Mexican seeking an alliance with bourgeois forces. to achieve our demands.” carry out this perspective today we need a Constitution, such as health, work and hous- Thus it explicitly associates itself with the In fact, the MTS places itself to the right Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard of the working ing, while emphasizing that the full satisfac- Initiative for a Popular Civic Constituent As- of the reformist Stalinists of the PCM (m-l), class, a party like the Bolsheviks which takes tion of these elemental rights is impossible sembly of Vera, Solalinde and Sicilia and their who at least recognize that to prevail against up the defense of all the oppressed. under the rule of the exploiting class. “proposal to refound the country” which has a the present bourgeois state a constituent Intervening in the struggle of Ayotzi- In the face of the regime’s crisis and the marked ecclesiastical, if not downright cleri- assembly requires an insurrection and who napa, the Grupo Internacionalista assumes urgency of presenting a genuinely revolu- cal, tone and purely bourgeois liberal content. throw in some empty rhetoric about proletar- as its task the forging of the nucleus of a tionary policy for a proletarian counterof- At the same time, the PCM (m-l) con- ian revolution. The MTS, on the other hand, Leninist-Trotskyist revolutionary workers fensive against decades of repressive attacks tinues to uphold the policy of the popular in its writings about Ayotzinapa never talks party, to contribute to resolving the acute and starvation policies, the immense major- front. It cites the Democratic National about revolution, and the only reference to crisis of working-class leadership. ity of left groups follows a diametrically Convention called by the EZLN (Zapatista socialism is its name Its policies are purely The hard truth is that without an inter- counterposed policy, of class collaboration, National Liberation Army) in 1994, which bourgeois liberal. It calls for the corrupt nationalist, socialist, workers revolution, chasing after bourgeois populist sectors. The likewise called for a “new Constituent As- politicians to “get out” (que se vayan), just as the massacres will continue. There never most prominent of the supposedly socialist sembly” and which called to “vote against Bishop Vera did in his homily of December 5. has been and never will be a “democratic” groups which call for a constituent as- the system of a state party” (the PRI) and And far from calling, as the GI does, for the capitalism in Mexico. Against the bourgeois sembly is the Communist Party of Mexico in favor of the program of the Convention, formation of workers and peasants councils nationalist illusions in a “people united” (as (Marxist-Leninist). These inveterate Stalin- which had been endorsed by Cuautéhmoc (soviets), the MTS only speaks of “organs of in the slogan ¡Ayotzi aguanta, el pueblo se ists have a certain influence in the CETEG, Cárdenas, presidential candidate of the direct democracy,” without any class content. levanta!(“Hold on Ayotzinapa, the people the Guerrero People’s Movement and the PRD. In a document titled “Two Unpost- These “democraholic” social-demo- are rising up!”) proletarian internationalists Popular National Assembly (ANP) formed ponable Tasks” (August 2014), the PCM crats disguised as pseudo-Trotskyists are call for a policy of class struggle, ¡Luchar, in Ayotzinapa last October. presents as examples of a “united front” a horrified by the call of authentic Trotskyists vencer, obreros al poder! (“Fight to win, For the last 80 years, Stalinists of every list of popular-frontist coalitions, among to institute a proletarian dictatorship under workers to power!”). Instead of waving the denomination have applied the disastrous them the National Front of Resistance to the a workers and peasants government. To call red-white-and-green Mexican tricolor flag Menshevik scheme of “two-stage” revolu- Privatization of Electrical Energy, the Com- for a constituent assembly in Mexico today of the mass murderers, we raise the red flag tion: first a bourgeois-“democratic” revolution mittee to Promote National Unity Against is a bourgeois program to divert the poten- of communism. The slogan of the Grupo (anti-oligarchical, anti-imperialist, popular- Neoliberalism, and others. tially revolutionary struggle of the working Internacionalista, Mexican section of the democratic, etc.), and only later a socialist Following close on the heels of the people fed up with murderous governments. League for the Fourth International is: stage, which never arrives. Confronted with Stalinists are several groups which abuse Only by raising up the great mass of the ¡Revolución permanente, en todo el the irrefutable bankruptcy of the stagist policy the name of Trotskyist. The Movimiento de exploited and oppress can we win. Limiting continente, – which by excluding a proletarian revolution Trabajadores por el Socialismo (MTS, So- oneself to “democratic” goals would be to revolución socialista en el monstruo opened the way for the victory of reactionary cialist Workers Movement) has in its previous betray the workers, peasants, students and imperialista! forces, from Franco in Spain to Pinochet in incarnation as the LTS for years called not indigenous peoples. There will not be a new (Permanent revolution throughout the Chile – in recent years the PCM (m-l) has only in Mexico but all over Latin America edition of the Mexican Revolution of 1910- continent, sought to don a more leftist image. Thus it for the slogan of a “constituent assembly.” 17. As we have repeated over and over, the Socialist revolution inside the imperialist proclaims that “the character of the coming The front page of its newspaper Tribuna next Mexican revolution will be a workers monster!)

12 The Internationalist To Smash Capitalist Austerity, Mobilize Workers’ Power to Rip Up Eurobankers’ Diktat on Road to Socialist Revolution Greece: The SYRIZA Illusion Exploded The victory of SYRIZA, the “Coalition ized about “The Greek of the Radical Left,” in the Greek elections Warning,” fretting that

of January 25 was front-page news around a Greek exit from the Alexandros Vlachos/EPA the world. Frankfurt and London bankers euro was “not likely, at warned of impending doom, leftists from least not immediately or Paris and Madrid to Latin America and the intentionally,” but while U.S. hailed the new prime minister, Alexis the Eurozone would Tsipras, as the messiah of struggle against survive an “accidental austerity. The hosannas over SYRIZA’s exit,” even so “the result larger-than-expected vote lasted only a would be ugly.” few hours, until the “radical leftist” Tsipras While the financial announced the formation of a governing press wrung its hands, the coalition with the rightist pro-military, Euroleft was euphoric. anti-immigrant ANEL (Greek Democrats). After three decades of Nonetheless, it was clear that the stage was Thatcherism and its “La- set for a showdown with far-reaching con- bour” version, Blairism,2 sequences for the European Union (EU). the British Socialist In Greece there was an explosion of Workers Party exulted, joy. Finally – finally! – people felt they had “As Greece rejects aus- elected a government that would stand up to terity, we can do it here” the hated Eurobankers who have put them (Socialist Worker, 27 through hell. Official unemployment up to January). The Socialist 27 percent of the workforce, well over half Party of England and of young people with no job. Over one third Wales followed suit, de- of the population living in or on the edge claring “Syriza victory Thousands turned out for February 27 demonstration called by Communist Party (KKE) in of poverty, food banks and soup kitchens shows austerity elite can Syntagma Square outside the Greek parliament to protest agreement with European finance serving old, young and middle-aged. Gross be beaten” (The Socialist, ministers that capitulated to the Eurobankers’ demands for more austerity and privatization. domestic product down by 22%, wages by 29 January). In France, 30%, household income by almost 40%, the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) Socialist Organization (ISO) gushed about tel that cast Greece into misery, SYRIZA the minimum wage slashed to under 500 hailed “Syriza victory, a slap at the Troika” “A new day for Greece and Europe” (Social- bowed to their extortion demands. Tsipras euros a month and basic pensions to €360 (l’Anticapitaliste, 29 January), namely the ist Worker, 26 January), saying the election and finance minister Yanis Varoufakis (US$400).1 The economic devastation is International Monetary Fund (IMF), European represented “a long-awaited breakthrough capitulated on the debt, on austerity, on more severe than in the U.S. during the Central Bank (ECB) and European Com- against the ruling class agenda of austerity privatization, on everything. 1930s Great Depression, and in the sixth mission (EC), who with their “Memoranda” and repression.” But the agreement for a Manolis Glezos, a SYRIZA member year of the crisis it’s still at rock bottom. over the last five years have done their best to joint government with ANEL knocked these of the European Parliament and hero of the As Greeks celebrated the election re- destroy the Greek economy. reformist leftists for a loop. Barely two days Resistance for having dared, as a young sults in the streets, the capitalist media wor- In the United States, the International later the ISO was asking, “Which path for Communist, to tear down the Nazi flag on ried. The London Telegraph (26 January) 2 Conservative Margaret Thatcher became prime SYRIZA?” A statement by its Greek af- the Acropolis in 1941, at least had the cour- predicted, “Syriza triumph in Greece leaves minister of Britain in 1979 and unleashed a war filiate (which is part of SYRIZA) on “The age to say, “I apologize to the Greek people markets set for turmoil.” The Guardian an- on trade unions, culminating in the defeat of the tasks for the left after SYRIZA’s victory” for having assisted in this illusion.” Greeks nounced, “Syriza’s historic win puts Greece 1984-85 miners strike, much as Ronald Reagan criticized the alliance with the rightist party, voted for SYRIZA’s promise to abolish the on collision course with Europe.” In Paris, went after labor in the U.S. with a sledgeham- saying it “jeopardizes the political project regime of austerity imposed by the Troika Le Monde (27 January) headlined, “Syriza, mer. During her 12 years in office, the Tory for a government of the left.” It was only and the “oligarchies,” he noted. But “the fact the Greek warning to Europe.” The voice of “Iron Lady” massively privatized nationalized the first blow for SYRIZA’s hapless leftists. that the Troika has been renamed ‘the Institu- industries and shredded much of the social- the Swiss bankers, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, On all sides, SYRIZA’s election victory tions,’ the Memorandum has been renamed democratic “welfare state.” Labour Party prime proclaimed the “Dawn of a New Age in minister Tony Blair, who held office from 1997 was declared “historic.” Not exactly ten days the ‘Agreement’ and the creditors have been Greece.” The Wall Street Journal editorial- to 2007, largely continued Thatcher’s economic that shook the world, like the Bolshevik Revo- renamed the ‘partners’” changes nothing. He 1 The European common currency, the euro (€), policies, under the watchword that “there is no lution of 1917 in Russia, more like one day that and others cited a popular Greek phrase about currently trades at an exchange rate of about alternative” (TINA) to “free-market” capitalist shook the markets. But the New York Stock how monks in the Middle Ages renamed meat US$1.15. policies generally referred to as neoliberalism. Exchange, Paris Bourse and City of London as fish to get around fasting requirements. bankers quickly recovered from SYRIZA In the January snap election, while shock. Soon the IMF/ECB/EC Eurocrats were SYRIZA ran on a program of ending again blackmailing Greece into submission, austerity through negotiations within the as they did earlier with Ireland and Cyprus. European Union, the Communist Party The first step was a move by the ECB to ban (KKE) campaigned against this dangerous Greek banks from using Greek government illusion, warning at a January 11 election Kathimerini bonds as collateral. This set off a bank run in rally in Piraeus that the new government which depositors withdrew €20 billion, ensur- “will implement the EU decisions” and ing that if Greece didn’t bow to ECB demands “will defend the interests of the big busi- its financial system would collapse when the ness groups.” True enough. Yet the alterna- existing “bailout” expired on February 28. tive offered by the Stalinist reformists was SYRIZA’s election slogan was “Hope purely parliamentary: vote KKE. After is on the way.” The resemblance to Barack SYRIZA’s capitulation, the KKE called Obama’s 2008 “Hope” election poster is a February 27 rally of some thousands in hardly accidental. A “slick and very media- front of parliament to declare “no toleration savvy” campaign, “with the US trained of the new agreement” and call for a break speech writers and reputedly a New York with the EU and capital. How exactly? By based PR firm” Guardian( [London], 26 supporting a KKE bill in parliament. January), sought to project the telegenic A day later, SYRIZA held a central com- Tsipras as a symbol of Greek dignity and mittee meeting at which 41% voted for a an SYRIZA allied with clerical-rightist, pro-military ANEL (Greek Democrats) win votes with vague feel-good slogans. amendment by the dissident Left Platform to form government. Above: ANEL leader Pavos Kammenos, now defense Even more quickly than with Obama, the expressing “disagreement with the agreement minister, at military ceremony, January 28. His appointment is a guarantee that “hope” has been dashed. After three weeks and the list of reforms agreed in the Euro- government will not touch the military, or interfere with coup preparations. of barbs and clashes with the bankers’ car- group” of finance ministers as “an undesirable April-May 2015 13 In the limelight was the “rock star cracking down on tax evasion, mentioned Greek finance minister” (Le Monde, 29 raising the minimum wage “over time,” in a January), Yanis Varoufakis. The tieless Mr. way that “safeguards competitiveness,” and Cool grabbed media attention by show- committed “not to roll back privatizations ing up in untucked electric blue shirts and that have been completed, and to respect motorcycle boots, riding his Yamaha 1300 tender processes that have already been cc. muscle bike to meet dark-suited central launched.” Earlier, in his interview with Der bankers arriving in chauffeured BMW se- Spiegel, he was even more explicit, saying, dans. To a disdainful British top journalist, “We are not stopping the privatization of © spirofoto/Demotix Varoufakis said Greece had been subjected our ports. We just want to make sure that to “a kind of fiscal waterboarding” that our country’s national assets are not sold “turned this nation into a debt colony” (BBC off for peanuts.” The Greek finance minister Newsnight, 30 January). Speaking with the later bragged of the “creative ambiguity” in equally snotty Der Spiegel (14 February), the documents, but these commitments are he added, “Our country is literally being unambiguous, and quite devastating. pushed under water. Just before we suffer In a widely circulated interview, Gior- an actual cardiac arrest, we are granted a gios Gogos, a SYRIZA dock worker, said momentary respite.… My aim is to end this that the January election sent “an important permanent terror of asphyxiation.” message, that we’re not going to privatize.” Cast opposite the bad boy minister The Port of Piraeus, he pointed out, is vital Capitalist austerity breeds fascism: XA (Golden Dawn) Nazis stage anti- from Athens in the looming showdown to ensure communication with Greece’s Turkish, Greek nationalist provocation, January 31. Organize workers militias was his Berlin counterpart, Germany’s Dr. many islands, whereas “private investors to crush the fascist scum! Strangelove, Wolfgang Schäuble, ever ready care only for their profits and nothing else.” compromise for our country.” It was an embar- In the face of the unrelenting capitalist to go for the “nuclear option” of forcing Gogos vowed, “I have trust in my comrades rassment for Tsipras, but not more. Notably, onslaught, the League for the Fourth Inter- Greece out of the Eurozone and the Euro- in SYRIZA,” that “they will follow what the SYRIZA left wing did not call to overturn national warns that there is no reformist pean Union. The hard-line German finance they have been saying,” and if they have to the capitalist “reforms” nor demand a vote in or national solution to the immiseration of minister provoked the January elections by reverse their plans, “they will have to ask parliament, much less a popular referendum, Greek working people, whether through refusing to extend financial support and then for the opinion of the people and the society nor demand an end to the coalition with illusory negotiations within the EU or insisting that “all previously agreed Greek first” (Viewpoint Magazine, 16 February). ANEL. Leftists in SYRIZA and their interna- by a Greek exit (“Grexit”) from the euro. debt must be paid in full regardless of the Yet now the SYRIZA tops have agreed not to tional supporters have acted as enablers for What’s needed is to mobilize workers’ composition of the next Greek government” stop privatization in general, and of the port the next round of wage cuts, privatizations and power: to build workers councils to chal- (WorldPost, 13 January). While stoking in particular, without consulting the workers. debt gouging – used to round up votes, and lenge the bourgeois parliamentary regime; popular resentment against supposedly lazy, Varoufakis pointed to a phrase in the then discarded as squeezed lemons. occupy enterprises slated for privatization profligate Greeks (who work longer hours February 20 document referring to “flex- The duopoly of the rightist New De- or already privatized; spread workers for less pay than the labor force of any other ibility” on maintaining “appropriate primary mocracy (ND) and the “left” bourgeois control through industry, transport and Eurozone country), Schäuble neglects to fiscal surpluses.” But that only applies to the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party (PASOK) that commerce; for an all-out general strike mention that 90% of the “bailout” money current year, and by agreeing to any kind of ruled Greece for the last 40 years is finished, posing the question of which class shall never went to Greece, but instead was paid “primary surplus” (before debt service) in having delivered the masses to the slaugh- rule. Above all, build a genuinely commu- out to European (including German) banks. the state budget, by definition SYRIZA is ter by the Eurobankers. Ominously, in the nist workers party with a Trotskyist tran- But the financial gunfight at the Eu- committing to continue the austerity regime. absence of a revolutionary opposition, the sitional program of sharp class struggle rozone OK Corral came to an abrupt and Greek leaders cite the democratic mandate Nazi fascists of Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi, for a workers government that initiates fateful end. of the January elections when the population or XA) are lurking about, waiting to pick Europe-wide socialist revolution. After all the defiant talk and tweaking voted overwhelmingly against austerity. But in up support from the ruined middle class the noses of Berlin politicians, Frankfurt a vivid expression of the hauteur of the Brus- and demoralized workers. XA’s two-bit Eurobankers Continue bankers and stuffed-shirt Brussels bureau- sels bureaucracy, European Commission vice Führer Nikolaos Michaloliakos and other Torturing Greece crats, at 6 p.m. on February 20, six hours president Jyrki Katainen declared, “We don’t Golden Dawn members were jailed after the There was drama aplenty on January before an ultimatum from Schäuble ex- change our policy according to elections.” stabbing death of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos 26 as the new Greek government quickly pired, Finance Minister Varoufakis agreed For these guardians of capital, any pretense of Fyssas in 2013. But XA still gets hundreds announced steps to implement its election to a humiliating Eurogroup statement that democracy is giving in to “mob rule.” of thousands of votes, has ties to ND leader platform. Panagiotis Lafazanis, the minister committed Greece to fulfill the “commit- As for the Greek foreign minister’s Antonis Samaras, and may step up its mur- of reconstruction and energy and leader of ments” of the Master Financial Assistance challenge to EU sanctions against Russia, derous attacks on immigrants and leftists as the Left Platform of SYRIZA, declared Facility Agreement (MFFA, i.e., the hated that lasted barely 24 hours. SYRIZA is disillusionment with SYRIZA sets in. that the planned privatization of the Public Memorandum), under minute supervision well aware that Greece’s presence in the As defenders of revolutionary Marx- Power Corporation was frozen, and the of the “institutions” (IMF/ECB/EC, i.e., the Eurozone is in good part due to its strategic ism, of the Bolshevik politics of Lenin and auctioning off of the Port of Piraeus, the despised Troika), and to “refrain from any position on NATO’s southern flank. Greece Trotsky, we stand for intransigent political country’s largest, for which the Chinese rollback of measures and unilateral changes has a huge military (130,000 soldiers in a opposition to the bourgeois Greek govern- consortium Cosco and Danish Maersk were to the policies and structural reforms that country of 11 million people), much of it ment. We wrote at the time of the 2012 vying, would be put on hold. The labor would negatively impact fiscal targets, equipped by German arms manufacturers. elections that a vote for SYRIZA would minister announced that the minimum wage economic recovery or financial stability, as While Greek workers’ wages are slashed on not represent opposition to capitalist rule would be restored to the (miserable) €751 assessed by the institutions.” orders of the Troika, the same creditors insist and “should be rejected by class-conscious a month, collective bargaining rights would That’s it for SYRIZA’s campaign prom- it spend billions on weapons purchases. De- workers.”3 This is even more true today. In be reinstated, laid-off public sector workers ises. Driving in the knife, German finance spite the economic crisis, Greece currently the recent (January 25) election, Trotskyists rehired, and a stop put to drafting striking minister Schäuble remarked, “The Greeks has 170 F-16 fighter jets on order from the would have given critical support to the workers for military service. certainly will have a difficult time to explain U.S. It also has an important NATO air base KKE, in order to draw a class line against The new Greek foreign minister ob- the deal to their voters.” Trying to put a good at Souda Bay, Crete, which was a launching the defenders of capital of SYRIZA and jected to new sanctions against Russia by face on it, Tsipras declared that “we have point for bombing Libya (and would be for the other bourgeois parties.4 But passive the European Union. Not a word against won the battle, but not the war.” But who an attack on Syria). “non-toleration” (KKE) and empty “dis- NATO, though, as SYRIZA (in deference could believe that fiction? The Eurogroup SYRIZA’s 2013 program calls for agreement” (Left Platform) will not defeat to its ANEL allies) has dropped its paper statement insisted on “the independence Greece to leave NATO and close all foreign austerity. Nor will bureaucratic labor rallies: opposition to the Western imperialist mili- of the European Central Bank.” And the military bases, as Greek leftists have long Greece has had more than 30 one-day or tary alliance. Prime Minister Tsipras waxed independence of Greece? Hardly of interest demanded, given NATO’s backing of the two-day “general strikes” since 2010, to poetic, declaring that Greece was “leaving to the “Troika.” Already in the early stages colonels’ dictatorship from 1967 to 1974 no avail. The “movement of the squares” behind five years of humiliation and pain,” of the euro crisis, current European Com- and the U.S./UK role in instigating the in 2011 fared no better, dying out after a and with “a clear, strong, indisputable man- mission president Jean-Claude Juncker told post-WWII Greek civil war in which tens few months, and anarchist clashes with the date” from the people, “Greece has turned a the German news magazine Focus (3 July of thousands of leftists were killed. The police amount to street theater, leading no- page. Greece is leaving behind destructive 2011): “The sovereignty of the Greeks will fact that Greece didn’t leave NATO the day where. The crisis of revolutionary leadership austerity, fear and authoritarianism.” For be massively limited.” In fact, what has been SYRIZA took office is another proof that it in Greece today is excruciating. good measure, his first act as prime minister starkly shown is the dictatorship of finance is a defender of imperialist capitalism. And capital that underlies bourgeois “democracy.” the naming of ANEL leader Panos Kam- 3 See “Battle Over Anti-Worker Austerity was to lay roses at a memorial to 200 Greek On February 24, Varoufakis handed in menos, who is tight with the officer corps Comes to a Head in Greece,” The Internation- Communists executed by the Nazis during alist special issue, Summer 2012. the WWII German occupation. Who could a “submission,” which after talk of fighting and opposes civilian control of the military, 4 See “What Is SYRIZA?” on page 17. miss the symbolism? corruption, “promoting tax justice” and as minister of defense is a commitment

14 The Internationalist toral calculations and obdurate “neoliberal” and “be prepared for extraordinary liquidity ideology, as many bourgeois liberals and measures” in bargaining with the Eurozone pseudo-socialist reformists claim. Schäuble finance ministers in June (Guardian, 2 & Co. are not mainly concerned to rein- March). In other words, it should threaten vigorate the economy, they are out to raise to introduce capital controls, as Cyprus did the rate of exploitation in order to boost when the ECB forced it into bankruptcy profits and bolster the banks, which even in 2013. Some threat, which would almost in Germany are extremely shaky. exclusively affect Greek depositors! Aris Messinis/AFP The entire Eurozone structure is de- In a similar vein, the Red Network (part signed to enforce austerity on the working of the Left Platform, including the DEA5) de- class (budget deficits of over 3% of gross clared that “the left, the labor movement and domestic product are prohibited by the the social movements must find the strength 1992 Maastricht Treaty, although the bigger to answer: NO!” As if that would impress the powers violate this all the time). Moreover, Frankfurt bankers! It threw in a clause about even if the Greek government could miracu- the need for “a working class and popular lously convince European capitalist govern- struggle that seeks to overthrow this policy that ments and bankers to undertake significant binds the government to austerity.” But Greek Keynesian deficit financing of infrastructure workers staged endless protests, one-day and productive investment (as opposed to strikes and other forms of “popular struggle” marginal “quantitative easing” to shore up against austerity in 2010-11, with zero ef- banks), it would not pull the continent out of fect on policy. Moreover, a DEA spokesman Hip fashion plate Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis in Athens, January the economic doldrums. As we wrote in 2011: admitted that “there are still no planned pro- 27. Posing as “erratic Marxist,” Varoufakis says his aim is to “stabilize “The reality is that the advanced capitalist tests by the unions or the social movements” European capitalism” (see article “What Is SYRIZA?”). After tweaking noses industrial countries are stuck in a full- (Socialist Worker [U.S.], 2 March). What the of Eurobankers, he has now traded in motorcycle gear for Burberry scarf. scale depression that will take years to declaration underlines yet again is their loyalty that the new government will not touch the inadequate, provoking the next crisis. As a overcome, through massive destruction of to this bourgeois government, which they military, which together with the police is leading financier said of the Eurobankers in capital (shutting down factories, escalating aspire to pressure and advise. the backbone of the capitalist state. the run-up to the last confrontation in Brus- mass unemployment), imperialist trade In turn, the (reformist) Communist Ten- Kammenos’ nomination recalls the sels, “They are squeezing them [SYRIZA] war or actual shooting war…. dency of SYRIZA6 called on the government Statute of Constitutional Guarantees that on everything, it’s part of a system to suf- “The pseudo-socialists ignore the fact to “immediately cancel the Memorandum the Unidad Popular regime of Salvador focate them, to make them realise the end that the current war on workers is not a agreement” and carry out the Thessaloniki Allende signed on taking office in 1970 is coming, to realise it is time to get on their policy (‘neo-liberalism’) which could be Program, while “advising” the government – guaranteeing that at any time a coup knees” (Financial Times, 18 February). changed, but a necessity for a decaying to “complement” this with “radical and could be mounted to topple the elected Clearly, the European bourgeoisies capitalist system. Keynesian policies were socialist measures, such as the repudiation government. And the Greek police are shot have closed ranks to humiliate the new abandoned in the late 1970s because of of the debt, the nationalisation of church through with high-level fascist supporters. “radical left” Greek government, which is a severe crisis caused by a falling rate of property, and the nationalisation of the larg- Moreover, on February 18, on SYRIZA’s perceived as a threat to conservative and profit. While the current profit rates are est companies, initially the most profitable obscene, schemes like ‘tax the rich’ or taxes proposal, parliament elected ND right- social-democratic parties throughout the ones.” Such helpful advice to a bourgeois on stock market transactions (the Tobin tax) winger Prokopis Pavlopoulos president of continent that are wedded to austerity and parliamentary government is empty postur- will not make it profitable for capital to Greece. Pavlopoulos was minister of interior “free market” capitalism. Greek public debt ing, which Tsipras will ignore. In any case, invest in productive capacity, as it has failed during the brutally suppressed protests over of €317 billion is relatively small, and unlike this program is no more socialist than the the 2008 police murder of the high school in 2010-12 a default would not threaten the to do on a substantial scale in the advanced capitalist countries since the early 1980s. nationalizations by the post-World War II student Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Now, world financial system, since most of it is “Instead, bankers furiously refuse to take Labour government in Britain which this thanks to SYRIZA, he will be commander owed to various central banks and almost a ‘haircut’ (loss) on Greek loans, however Labour-loyal current views as the model. in chief of the army, with the power to name none to the international banks, which were packaged. Their response is not irrational: If the response of the reformist SYRIZA prime ministers, dismiss parliament, issue already bailed out. But ceding to SYRIZA they know, if the reformist left does not, that left has been one of verbal opposition while decrees … and declare a state of siege. could reverberate in Spain, where the popu- the entire international capitalist financial doing nothing to inconvenience the gov- list Podemos (“We Can Do It”) party is now Opportunists Push “Left” system is technically (and actually) ernment, the no-less-reformist groups in leading in opinion polls due to its call to bankrupt and could come crashing down ANTARSYA (Front of the Anti-Capitalist Populism slash the €1 trillion government debt, much on the least hiccup. Companies refuse to Left) have called for mass protest. Their By now, bank lending in Greece has of it held by commercial banks. invest, refuse to hire and instead sit on vast demonstration in Syntagma Square on Febru- virtually stopped, depositors continue to The intransigence of the international piles of cash, while executives cash out ary 26 reportedly drew hundreds of people. withdraw funds but the European central bankers was not only predictable, it was by paying themselves fabulous sums for But while saying “NO!” in the streets rather bankers have cut off all but emergency widely predicted. At the time of the 2012 accomplishing nothing. Their attitude, like than in the confines of the government party, funding, and allowing precious little of that. elections we wrote that “SYRIZA awakens that of Louis XV and the Old Regime prior ANTARSYA only calls for repudiating the Greece’s economy is “running on empty” illusions that it can do away with harsh to the French Revolution, is après moi le Memoranda, cancelling the debt, rehiring déluge (after me comes the flood) – and and is “close to bankruptcy,” as The Econo- austerity by negotiations, which the Eu- laid-off workers and “breaking with the they act accordingly.” mist (7 March) put it. Now “the institutions” robankers will not agree to” (“Battle Over euro.” This amounts to extra-parliamentary (i.e., the IMF/ECB/EC Troika) are dismiss- Anti-Worker Austerity Comes to a Head –“Upheaval in Europe Over Capitalist lobbying to pressure the bourgeois SYRIZA ing Greece’s proposed list of “reforms” as in Greece”). The reason goes beyond elec- Austerity,” The Internationalist No. 33, government to implement a supposedly “anti- Summer 2011 capitalist,” but in reality reformist, program. In short, the ongoing Greek financial That is very different from a call for revolu- crisis is not about mythical overpaid Greek tionary class struggle aimed at bringing down workers, nor just about tax-evading oli- the capitalist regime and replacing it with a garchs (although there are plenty of those) workers government. Greek Reporter and sadistic rulers of the Fourth Reich of For all its vague talk of “overthrow” and German imperialism torturing small Eu- “rupture,” ANTARSYA acts as a transmis- ropean countries, it’s an outgrowth of the sion belt to and from SYRIZA. Various of its world capitalist economic crisis reverberat- 5 ing from Wall Street, whose consequences International Workers Left, associated with the are still with us. And it won’t be ended by International Socialist Organization in the U.S. 6 Part of the International Marxist Tendency negotiations, amicable or not, with the im- (IMT) led by Alan Woods, heirs of the Militant perialist money men. Tendency led by the late Ted Grant, which for So now that the SYRIZA illusion has decades was buried inside the British Labour been exploded, what is the response of the Party. The fact that this “Communist Platform” Greek left? At the latest central committee is part of a bourgeois party, SYRIZA, hardly meeting, the Left Platform of the Coalition bothers the IMT, as it has for many years posed called for a “return to the election commit- as the “Marxist wing” of populist capitalist par- ties, from Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s ments,” i.e., the platform announced at the Party to the Party of the Democratic Revolution Thessaloniki International Trade Fair last in Mexico. The concept of a class line between Germany’s Dr. Strangelove, hard-line finance minister Wolfang Schäuble, September. Platform spokesman and energy bourgeois and proletarian is alien to these oppor- ever ready for the nuclear option of pushing Greece out of the Eurozone, in minister Lapavitsas added that Greece must tunists, who consider the police – the armed fist February 5 Berlin meeting with Varoufakis. “bring a full array of options to the table” of capitalism –to be part of the working class. April-May 2015 15 international extension of the revolution” among all takers (a centerpiece of Trotsky’s (see “Greece on the Razor’s Edge,” The Transitional Program), assumes vital impor- Internationalist No. 32, January-February tance, as does the call for indexing pay to 2011). Calls to cancel the debt must be part inflation (a sliding scale of wages), which of a program for a proletarian revolution- would be a crucial defense against massive ary counteroffensive. wage-cutting in the wake of a Greek exit Likewise on the question of a Greek exit from the euro. But these demands, which from the Eurozone, the LFI underscores that as Trotsky pointed out prefigure a socialist “our opposition to the imperialist European planned economy, will not be implemented Union is not nationalist but internationalist, by SYRIZA or indeed any “left” or even

© Nicolas Koutsokostas/Demotix opposing the Europe of the capitalists by “socialist” government of the capitalist state. fighting for workers rule – asocialist united They must be won by mobilizing workers states of Europe.” Should Greece be forced power against the bosses and against left- out of the EU by the diktat of the Eurobosses ists now administering the capitalist state. enforcing capitalist austerity, class-conscious As Tsipras & Co. carry out the austerity workers throughout Europe should defend policies of the Eurobosses, a revolutionary Greece against the economic assault of the transitional program would mobilize the imperialist overlords. But under capitalism, working class on the path from protest to a “Grexit” will mean a drastic devaluation and struggle for power. Faced with demands for slashing of wages, with little likelihood that privatization, authentic Trotskyists would Dock workers march into Syntagma Square in Athens to protest plans to this will lead to economic recovery anytime call on Piraeus dock workers to not only privatize port of Piraeus, 19 December 2014. Workers should occupy the soon.9 Thus in the face of the bankers’ as- oppose this but to prevent it by occupy- port, including the container terminals already handed over to Cosco where sault, Trotskyists stand for Europe-wide ing the port, including the docks already non-union workers struck last June over dangerous working conditions. revolutionary workers mobilization while turned over to the Chinese company Cosco, components praised SYRIZA’s campaign, Today it says that without “socialization simultaneously calling for a socialist federa- and impose workers control. Likewise, “saluted” its big vote and said its victory of the means of production, the different tion of the Balkans (including the right to fired workers of the shuttered ERT state filled them with “immense joy at achieving organization of the economy and society, the self-determination of Macedonia). radio and TV company should take over victory for a left ‘No’ to austerity, and many return to the national currency on its own A major threat facing the workers move- the closed facilities and start broadcast- worries over what happens next” (Andreas could actually lead to worse developments ment in Greece today is that of murderous fas- ing. Faced with the crisis in health care, Sartzekis of the OKDE-Spartakos,7 in Inter- for the popular strata” (“Syriza, the new pole cism, particularly directed against immigrants workers should impose workers control of national Viewpoint, January 2015). Another of social democracy in Greece,” KKE web and the left. The Golden Dawn Nazis of XA the hospitals, including private hospitals, group in ANTARSYA, the SEK,8 in response site, 10 February). Indeed. Yet vague talk of have strong connections within New Democ- seize needed drugs and medicines from the to the EU/ECB/EC agreement, called to “socialization” and a “different organization racy, which is usually (and falsely) described pharmaceutical monopolies, and provide revive strikes, rallies and occupations. But of society” won’t defeat the Eurobankers. as a “center-right” party, and among the police. free health care to all who need it. what it means by its call for a “transitional It all recalls the “anti-globalization” Even if it tried to, SYRIZA would never be The level of class mobilization today is anti-capitalist program” (“NO to the Agree- movement’s slogan of “another world is pos- able to purge the state apparatus of repression, far lower than it was in 2010-11, and many ment, This Shall Not Pass!” 25 February) sible” and chants of “this is what democracy which ever since the 1940s Greek Civil War workers have illusions in SYRIZA. That is is a series of demands on the government: looks like.” But in these times of worldwide and the 1967-74 colonels’ dictatorship has why it falls to authentic communists, the canceling the debt, breaking with the euro capitalist crisis and depression, the massive been a hard core of anti-communism. Thus in Trotskyists, to take the lead now in putting and the EU, and “nationalization of the impoverishment of working people cannot contrast to the criminal passivity of the KKE, it forward a transitional program of sharp class banks under workers control.” be overcome under imperialist “democracy.” is vital that revolutionary Marxists struggle to struggle. To call on the capitalist govern- For its part, on February 27, the Com- With different formulas, the Greek reformist form armed workers defense groups to smash ment to implement the planks of SYRIZA’s munist Party brought out a crowd of thou- left, inside SYRIZA and without, is putting the fascist thugs and defend immigrants. We now-abandoned bourgeois election platform, sands to protest the agreement and demand forward a program for a more “left” version call as well to shut down the concentration as much of the Greek left does, is to sow a “break with the European Union, capital of bourgeois populism, when the urgent need camps for immigrants, and demand full citi- illusions just as dangerous as the idea that and their power.” Unlike the SYRIZA Left – and only way defeat capitalist austerity – is zenship rights for all immigrants. the imperialist financiers could be induced and ANTARSYA, who view Tispras’ cabi- to fight for socialist revolution. Revolutionary Marxists fight police- to write off Greece’s debt and to abandon state repression, demanding freedom for austerity. By seeing the populists in power net as in some way “their” government, the Forge a Leninist-Trotskyist KKE in a February 24 statement declared all class-war prisoners, including the jailed as allies rather than representatives of the “no support or toleration for the government Workers Party in Greece anarchists and urban guerrillas transferred class enemy, the opportunists are preparing that continues on the same path of commit- The government of the “leftist” SYRI- to recently opened “Type C” maximum the way for another bloody Metaxas dictator- 10 ments to the EU and the profitability of the ZA and the rightist ANEL, champion of the security prisons. We also call for abolition ship to seize power once the populist “radi- monopolies.” But what is its alternative? Greek Orthodox Church and the military, is of the “anti-terrorist” laws under which cal leftists” have managed to demoralize the At the rally General Secretary Dimitris no ally of the working class but the “execu- several were convicted. On March 2, an- mass of the workers and poor. Koutsoumpas cited a draft law introduced tive committee of the [Greek] bourgeoisie” archists occupied SYRIZA’s headquarters, The stance taken by would-be socialist to parliament by the Communist Party – as Lenin in State and Revolution (1917) rightly holding the “leftist” ruling party re- and communist groups on the election of to repeal the Memorandum, reinstate the described all capitalist governments. To- sponsible for the continued imprisonment of the SYRIZA government in Greece today minimum wage, etc. And he ended with a day SYRIZA is the enforcer of austerity their comrades (now on hunger strike). We will be a litmus test of revolutionary Marx- call for “popular sovereignty,” or “people’s on behalf of the Eurobankers. Tsipras will neither call on the capitalist state to ban or ism, as was the 1970 election of Allende’s power” as it used to be called. inevitably crack down on militant work- “jail Golden Dawn,” measures which will be Unidad Popular (UP) in Chile. At that time, ers, as Allende did against the miners and When the rest of the Greek left de- used against the left, nor to free all “political opportunists of all stripes, including social cordones industriales in Chile in 1973 and nounces the “sectarianism” of the Stalinist prisoners,” as a number of XA Nazis have democrats, Stalinists and supporters of Kerensky did in Russia in July 1917. The KKE, they mean above all its refusal to join been jailed on charges of assault and the Ernest Mandel, Nahuel Moreno and other task of Bolshevik-Leninists in Greece today with SYRIZA. To deny political support 2013 murder of leftist rapper Pavlos Fys- pseudo-Trotskyists, helped fuel the deadly is to build a revolutionary Trotskyist work- to a bourgeois party is in fact imperative. sas. Instead, Trotskyists call on the workers illusions of the hope-filled masses in hailing ers party in opposition to the phony “friends But when the KKE poses the alternative movement to smash the fascist threat. the popular-front UP government. In contrast, of the people” of SYRIZA, in order to defeat as “people’s power,” it is denying the need Faced with ongoing mass unemploy- authentic Trotskyists warned that this “left” the Greek Pinochets and Kornilovs and open for workers power. In the past, the arch- ment on a scale unseen since the 1930s capitalist government would lead to a blood- the road to workers rule throughout Europe. nationalist Communist Party called simply Depression, the call for a shorter work- bath once its support had been ground down That means telling the truth to the for Greece to leave the European Union. week with no loss in pay (a sliding scale under relentless imperialist pressure, unless masses, beginning with the battle over the of hours), to divide up the available work class-conscious workers mobilized under a 7 Organization of Communist International- debt. While reformists in SYRIZA and AN- 9 Argentina’s uncoupling from the dollar in revolutionary leadership to bring down capi- ists of Greece-Spartacus, the Greek section of TARSYA call blithely to repudiate Greece’s 2001 is often cited as a positive example, but talism before it crushed the working class. the pseudo-Trotskyist International Committee unpayable burden of debt to the imperialist that led to years of mass unemployment, and Building such a genuinely communist (formerly United Secretariat) of the Fourth In- bankers, who hold it as a sword of Damocles Greece does not have the export capacity that leadership is the challenge that the League ternational, which, however, prefers SYRIZA over the heads of the workers, the Trotsky- enabled the South American country to bounce for the Fourth International poses for those over ANTARSYA, since the former’s far higher ists of the League for the Fourth Interna- back. Greek light industry (such as textiles) who seek a revolutionary way forward in electoral score shows that they are the more has been largely destroyed and cannot compete tional warn that “the dominant imperialist Greece today. n successful opportunist maneuverers. against lower-wage Asian producers, while ag- powers would oust any government and sub- 8 Socialist Workers Party, Greek affiliate ricultural production has been so hard hit that 10 In August 1936, General Ioannis Metaxas of the British SWP, heirs of Tony Cliff who ject to a devastating embargo any country today Greece imports 40 percent of its food. seized power, with the support of the Greek broke with Trotskyism denouncing the bureau- that dared to cancel their debt. Abolition of Moreover, its fruit exports to Russia have now king, and imposed a fascistic, bonapartist (po- cratically degenerated Soviet workers state as the imperialist debt requires workers revo- been slashed by Moscow’s retaliation against lice-military) dictatorship aimed centrally at “state capitalism.” lution, as the Bolsheviks did in 1917, and EU trade sanctions. smashing the left. 16 The Internationalist Bourgeois Populist “Radicals” Based on Middle-Class Sectors which governed Greece for the last four decades. In the port of Piraeus, he said, “the power rests with the Communist Party link What Is SYRIZA? in trade unionism” (Viewpoint Magazine, 16 February). SYRIZA, the “Coalition of the Radical The petty-bourgeois character of

Left,” mesmerized the mainstream capitalist www.avgi.gr SYRIZA’s base was heightened in the re- media and the bulk of the left throughout Eu- cent elections, as it managed to break into rope and the world with its January election traditional ND and PASOK fiefdoms in the victory. It recalled the election of François countryside where, the Guardian (28 Janu- Mitterrand and his Union of the Left in ary), reported: “farmers have been forced France in 1981, or the victory of Salvador to take mortgages, the banks are clamour- Allende’s Unidad Popular in Chile in 1970. ing to repossess and suicides in these quiet Those popular-front coalitions headed off a farming towns are on the up.” The planks potentially revolutionary crisis by chaining in SYRIZA’s election platform calling for the workers to a section of the ruling class, an end to the onerous unified property tax thus opening the way to a return of the right and lowering rates on small and medium as the left failed. In the Greek case, SYRIZA property had a particular echo there. Urban is a bourgeois populist party with a “left” homeowners were attracted by calls to end rhetoric. But seldom has the bankruptcy of seizure of bank accounts as well as foreclo- the “left” governing a capitalist state been sures and evictions from primary residences. so dramatically shown as in Athens today. With its electoral appeal among white- Many a disillusioned leftist has to be ask- collar government employees, homeown- ing, “How could this happen, and so fast?” ers and property-owning small farmers, Part of the answer is that SYRIZA lead- SYRIZA managed to attract much of the ers Tsipras and hip finance minister Varou- SYRIZA supporters at October 2014 rally. former base of PASOK. From over 3 million fakis were bluffing in the high-stakes game It was the largely middle-class move- As SYRIZA was transformed from a votes in 2009, it fell to 750,000 in 2012 and of liar’s poker: they never had a plan nor the ment of “aganaktismeni” (the outraged) coalition of activists into an electoral party, under 300,000 in 2015. Although part of resources to withstand an unbending “nein” camped out in Syntagma (Constitution) there was an influx of middle-aged academ- the social-democratic Second International, from the German-dominated Eurobankers. Square in front of parliament and in other ics, petty-bourgeois professionals and office PASOK is a bourgeois nationalist party with Partly, too, they miscalculated badly on the city plazas in 2011 that launched SYRIZA as employees. Kouvelakis noted that the party a clientalist base in the government bureau- response of the ruling French and German a contender for power. The Coalition raised is “dominated very much by intellectual cracy. As it crumbled amid popular fury over social democrats and Italian Democrats, its electoral score from under 10% to 27% in layers: public-sector workers with a high the austerity it implemented under the Eu- none of whom broke ranks with the conser- two legislative elections in 2012, as its num- level of skills and education,” and “the rela- robankers’ Memorandum, whole sections of vative bankers. Despite the Greek leaders’ ber of deputies shot up from 9 to 71. Under tive weight of the younger layers remains this capitalist party went over to SYRIZA, whirlwind tour of European capitals, in the pressure from the bourgeois media to rein quite limited.” And when snap elections typified by the prominent legislator Alexis end they had no allies in Brussels. But much in leftists in its ranks, a founding congress were called after the failure of parliament to Mitropoulos, a founder of PASOK. In fact, of the explanation for SYRIZA’s political in mid-2013 began transforming SYRIZA elect a president in December, the “radical” in key respects SYRIZA is to the right of the kolotoumba (somersault) is confusion about into a bourgeois electoral party, including Coalition’s slate was stacked with distinctly early PASOK, which called to leave NATO, the nature of the party itself. organizational measures concentrating non-radical members of parliament: nationalize the means of production, etc. “Left” and “right,” after all, describe power in the hands of Tsipras. A program “On 3 January, the day he filled a stadium Today, SYRIZA is not a “far left” party relative positions on the spectrum of bour- was adopted replacing calls to cancel the with 5,000 party members, the inner at all, or even part of the workers move- geois politics, dating back to the French debt with vague talk of “renegotiating” it core saw him browbeat his party’s left ment, but – like PASOK, whose position it into withdrawing their objections to Revolution of 1789. SYRIZA started out within the EU framework. has inherited – a party based on the petty his choice of prospective MPs. Tsipras in 2004 as a coalition of (not-so) “far In a lengthy interview with a social- bourgeoisie with a bourgeois populist pro- leftists” who were in the process of turn- democratic magazine in the U.S., Stathis has transformed both the party and its operation; the central committee in gram. The phenomenon of capitalist parties ing sharply to the right. A crazy quilt of Kouvelakis, a leader of the Left Platform proclaiming themselves “radical,” “socialist” ex-“Eurocommunists” of Synaspismós of SYRIZA, explained that after 2012, there its shabby HQ became less important than the policy team around shadow and “revolutionary” is hardly new. In fact, (Coalition of the Left, Movements and was “a process leading more to a party of ministers.” they often appear in a potentially revolution- Ecology) and AKOA, ex-KKEers of KEDA, members than a party of activists or active –“‘Hope begins today’: the inside story ary crisis when the ruling class needs some Maoists of the KOE and groups mislabeled members, a parti d’adhérents rather than a of Syriza’s rise to Trotskyist including followers of the late parti de militants. Which also means that power,” Guardian (28 League for the Fourth International Tony Cliff (DEA) and Ted Grant (Com- this rendered Syriza as an organization to January) munist Tendency), SYRIZA came together a certain extent permeable to the practices LFI, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY While SYRIZA re- 10008, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] as an anti-establishment electoral coalition of, if not clientelism, at least the practice ceived the votes of many firmly rooted in capitalist parliamentary of local, traditional networks of power, working people, its ties to Internationalist Group/U.S. politics. Despite the “radical” in its name, which are still very strong in Greek society” the workers movement are its program didn’t go beyond classical social (“Greece: Phase One,” Jacobin Magazine, Internationalist Group, Box 3321, Church Street slim, and hardly organic. Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. democracy. 22 January). A dock worker member, E-mail: [email protected] queried about criticisms New York Tel. (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 that the party “is domi- Portland Tel. (971) 282-7903 nated by university in- tellectuals, not people Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil from the union move- Brazil: write to Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251- ment,” answered that this 740, Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil is “more or less true,” and “people in the unions who Rio de Janeiro: write to Caixa Postal 3982, CEP are members of SYRIZA 20001-974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil are few in number.” He E-mail: [email protected] added that SYRIZA and LIVI/Deutschland the unions “don’t have write to Postfach 74 06 41, 22096 Hamburg, strong connections,” and Germany: Germany agreed that “there is a negative opinion of trade Grupo Internacionalista/México unions” in the party, be- México: write to Apartado Postal 12-201, Admón. cause of historical ties of Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, México D.F, México the unions with the rightist E-mail: [email protected] New Democracy (ND) Tel. Mexico City: 55-3154-7361; Guadalajara: 33-1752- and the Pan-Hellenic Mr. Tsipras goes to Washington, to assure imperialists he is “not so dangerous.” 6643; Oaxaca: 951-129-2086 Here SYRIZA leader speaking at Brookings Institution, January 2013. Socialist Party (PASOK), April-May 2015 17 left-talking poseurs to defuse the crisis and divert the masses. This was the case of the French Radical Socialist Party, founded in 1901 amid the mass radicalization over the clerical-militarist and anti-Semitic Dreyfus Centrists Waffle in Greece Affair. The bourgeois Radical Socialists In the kaleidoscopic Greek left, two bloc, in reality the EEK acted as a pressure usual laundry list of demands raised by the ensnared the Socialist Party of Jean Jaurès in smaller groups, the Workers Revolutionary group on SYRIZA. reformists. There is no mention of workers the web of class collaboration, bringing it into Party and the Trotskyist Group of Greece, Following the election, Savas de- militias, for example, and it includes the the capitalist government via the Left Bloc. merit attention. Unlike the out-and-out clared bombastically in a February 3 call to “nationalize the banks.” In fact, the As Tspiras noted in a talk at the Brook- reformists, whose program is clearly to article that “The Greek people has shaken TGG’s call is strikingly similar to the Cliffite ings Institution in Washington, D.C. during pressure the capitalist state, now under new the world” and claimed that in the Greek SEK’s program (see main article) and even a 2013 visit to introduce himself to the In- management with the bourgeois populists context a “government of the left” meant to the right of the OKDE-Spartakos’ call (in ternational Monetary Fund and U.S. State of SYRIZA, these centrists at least pur- a government of revolutionaries. While he its election manifesto) for expropriation of Department, “the term ‘radical’ was used by port to be fighting for workers revolution. saw in the SYRIZA-ANEL government the banks without compensation. many parties in Greece, even former Prime In practice, however, in both cases their “some features of a Kerensky type of Calls to nationalize the banks are a staple Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis used the concrete programs and calls amount to a government,” a subsequent statement on of reformists and populists in periods of eco- term ‘Radical Union of Greece,’” one of the slightly more leftist version of the reform- the agreement with the Eurogroup declared nomic crisis, and are hardly anti-capitalist. parties the conservative leader led during ists’ platforms … or not even. that if the election of SYRIZA was “a leap Greek banks are today technically (and the quarter century he ruled the country. It should be mentioned at the outset forward of the popular movement,” the actually) bankrupt, and nationalization by Tsipras ended his talk saying, “I hope I’ve that in 2013, Workers Revolutionary Party February 20 agreement and election of the bourgeois SYRIZA-ANEL government convinced you that I’m not as dangerous as (EEK) leader Savas Michael-Matsas was the rightist Pavlopoulos to the presidency could be the only way to stave off economic some people think I am.” He convinced the prosecuted as a result of a lawsuit by the constituted “a step back,” and called to disaster for the bourgeoisie, especially should Hellenic Federation of Enterprises, which Golden Dawn (XA) Nazis accusing him “oust the nationalist and pro-capitalist Greece abandon the euro. To call for nation- declared after the January election that “The of defamation and incitement to violence ministers.” Yet all the ministers are “pro- alization of Greek banks today is no more Federation, as the basic representative of the for sponsoring a 2009 demonstration call- capitalist” as members of the bourgeois revolutionary than when Mexican president organized Greek businesses, will be at the ing to “smash fascism” after a murderous SYRIZA-ANEL government. José López Portillo seized Mexican banks side of the government.” XA attack on immigrants. Among the The Trotskyist Group of Greece, in 1982 to prevent their collapse. Or when In the case of Greece, a country of several co-sponsors of the protest, Savas section of the International Communist the popular-front bourgeois government of small businesses, whose monopolistic sec- was singled out by the Nazi-fascists in a League (ICL) called for critical support to France under François Mitterrand national- tors (shipping and banking) operate mostly vile anti-Semitic diatribe as “an instrument the Communist Party (KKE) in the Janu- ized most of the French banks in 1982. (In offshore, while SYRIZA’s rhetoric may of the World Jewish Conspiracy to foment ary 25 elections, a valid tactic in this case both cases, after being recapitalized by the have a social-democratic tinge, its bour- civil war among Greeks to impose a Judeo- where the KKE was sharply counterposed to state, the banks were reprivatized.) geois nationalist program (like that of its Bolshevik regime in Greece.” XA’s connec- SYRIZA and its satellites in ANTARSYA. While SYRIZA’s call for “public predecessor PASOK) reflects the interests tions with the ruling New Democracy were The TGG accurately characterized SYRIZA ownership” of banks and utility compa- of a significant section of the ruling class. powerful enough to trigger the prosecution, as not a “radical left” party or even part of nies is openly bourgeois, even to call for The weak bourgeoisie of this “second-tier” although Savas was eventually acquitted. the workers movement, but a bourgeois “nationalization under workers control” imperialist country requires a strong state The EEK, Greek affiliate of the Coor- party based on the petty-bourgeoisie (not (as the SEK does) is just a fig leaf to have sector to survive in the face of the multi- dinating Committee for the Refoundation unlike PASOK, whose position in the Greek some kind of class-collaborationist “works national giants that dominate the Eurozone of the Fourth International led by Jorge political spectrum it has taken over). And council” with union representatives oc- economy. In this way, the “Coalition of the Altamira’s Partido Obrero in Argentina, it also correctly called for no vote to the casionally looking over some sanitized Radical Left” resembles various populist ran candidates in the January elections on ANTARSYA front, which in effect acts as figures. A genuinely revolutionary tran- bourgeois parties in Latin America. a program calling for “mass struggle for a pressure group on SYRIZA. sitional program in Greece today would An example is Evo Morales’ Movement workers’ power,” for a social revolution The TGG put forward a series of be for workers to occupy and seize Alpha toward Socialism (MAS) in Bolivia, based and “socialist unification of our region and demands including to organize the unorga- Bank, Eurobank Ergasias, Piraeus Bank, on the Aymara and Quechua peasantry. Europe over the ruins of the imperialist nized, for a sliding scale of wages and hours the National Bank of Greece and the rest; While invoking “socialism” in its name E.U.” But while expressively dismissing and for union defense of immigrants, al- for a workers commission to open the and although Morales frequently excori- SYRIZA’s Thessaloniki Program as trying though in line with the ICL’s repudiation of books to investigate the rampant financial ates Washington – much as Tsipras goes to “empty the ocean of the people’s suffer- the key thesis of Trotsky’s Transitional Pro- corruption, speculation, etc.; to implement after German domination of the EU while ings with a teaspoon” and warning that its al- gram1 – that the crisis of humanity is reduced genuine workers control – dual power in recalling the Nazi occupation of Greece in legiance to the continuity of the state “opens to the crisis of revolutionary proletarian the plants, ports and other industries; World War II – the MAS regime of “An- the way to a 1973 Chile-type tragedy,” the leadership – it does not refer to transitional and to fight for a revolutionary workers dean capitalism” (in the words of Bolivia’s EEK called on workers and youth to urge demands. And indeed its “class-struggle government to expropriate the banks and left-talking vice president Álvaro García the leaders of SYRIZA, a bourgeois party, program” is not all that different from the all of capitalist commerce, transport and Linera) has spearheaded vicious attacks to “break with the bourgeoisie.” Thus like 1 See “In Defense of the Transitional Program,” industry in the fight for a Socialist United on the workers while using rhetoric about ANTARSYA, with which it tried to form a The Internationalist No. 5, April-May 1998. States of Europe. n defending (state capitalist) enterprises like the COMIBOL mining company.1 Another 2 parallel is the United Socialist Party of militants. In fact, key slogans from chavista ments in the Central Committee, but CC leading bourgeois economists, including Venezuela (PSUV) of the bourgeois populist Venezuela have been cribbed by Tsiparas’ decisions are meaningless. No need to Joseph Stiglitz, most of them advocates of government of the late Hugo Chávez and his party in Greece, whose program passed check if the union tops are lined up either, John Maynard Keynes’ policies of stimulat- successor, Nicolás Maduro, although here at its 2013 founding congress proclaimed as British Labour Party leaders still do oc- ing production by boosting demand. again SYRIZA is notably to its right. “SYRIZA’s strategic objective is socialism casionally. Greek unions could be decimated Finance Minister Varoufakis (a former With their anti-Yankee rhetoric and ties of the 21st century.” It was Chávez who and it wouldn’t put in question SYRIZA’s advisor of PASOK prime minister George to Cuba, Chávez and Maduro have been a coined the slogan “21st century socialism,” existence any more than it would that of Papandreou and not a member of SYRIZA) thorn in the side of Washington, under Re- later picked up by Ecuador’s anti-labor the U.S. Democrats, Argentine Peronists, says openly that his aim is “stabilising Eu- 3 publican Bush as well as Democrat Obama. capitalist ruler Rafael Correa. or the ex-Communists of Italy’s bourgeois ropean capitalism,” and that his “agenda [is] In the face of imperialist attacks, Trotskyists Today SYRIZA operates as a bourgeois Democratic Party. founded on the assumption that the left was, stand for military defense of Venezuela, electoral machine, with an atomized mem- As for SYRIZA’s economic program, and remains, squarely defeated.” He decided Bolivia and other countries targeted by the bership, in which all important decisions are it is resolutely capitalist. Nothing in its plat- “not to propose radical political programs arrogant Yankee overlords. But despite its taken by Tsipras and his ministerial clique form for the 2015 election, the Thessaloniki … to overthrow European capitalism,” talk of “revolution” and the reference to while party bodies and militants are pow- Program, goes beyond what bourgeois gov- but instead favors “forging alliances with “socialism” in the party’s name, the PSUV erless. When it was forming the coalition ernments have done elsewhere. Its call for a reactionary forces … to stabilise Europe is a bourgeois party based on the capitalist with the rightist ANEL and agreeing to the “European New Deal” recalls U.S. president today” at “the risk of becoming co-opted, of state apparatus, particularly the military. February 20 Eurogroup statement not even Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s; in urging shedding our radicalism through the warm And while we stand four-square against MPs were consulted, or even informed, “quantitative easing” by the European Cen- glow of having ‘arrived in the corridors of the seditious opposition by pro-imperialist before these steps were announced. Sure, tral Bank, it echoes the U.S. Federal Reserve power’” (“Yanis Varoufakis: How I became rightists following Washington’s script for leftists can sound off and present amend- Bank under Barack Obama (whom Tsipras an erratic Marxist,” Guardian, 18 February). has cited as an alternative to EU austerity This “game theorist” is no Marxist at all, toppling the Caracas regime, Trotskyists 2 See “Leftist Union Leaders Assassinated policies). And SYRIZA’s call for a morato- but he’s certainly aware of the game he is denounce its repression of labor and worker in Venezuela,” The Internationalist No. 28, March-April 2009. rium on interest payments and for writing off playing. In bowing to the Eurobankers he 1 See “Brutal Repression by Evo Morales 3 See “Ecuador Needs a Workers, Peasants and much of the public debt in order to make it didn’t betray his principles, just stabbed in Against Bolivian General Strike,” The Interna- Indian Government,” The Internationalist, De- “sustainable” was endorsed in an open letter the back the working people who voted for tionalist No. 35, Summer 2013. cember 2007. to the Financial Times (23 January) by 18 SYRIZA. n 18 The Internationalist French Leaders Declare War After Charlie Hebdo Massacre Defend Muslims in Europe Against Racist “War on Terror” Backlash! Imperialist Mass Murderers Seek to Exploit Indignation

On January 7, the offices of the French perialists and their NATO junior partners weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris were sub- AFP have waged a vicious war and occupation jected to a horrific massacre. In all 12 people that has annihilated an estimated 600,000 were shot to death, including the top editor people in Iraq (after an estimated 1 million and caricaturists of the satirical magazine, were killed by imperialist sanctions in the and another 11 wounded. The attackers were previous decade) and 80,000 in Afghanistan, of North African descent. As they carried overwhelmingly non-combatants. Photos out their assault, the gunmen are said to of sadistic torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu have cried out “Allahu akbar” (god is great). Ghraib reportedly enraged the brothers who Afterwards on the street, an amateur video murdered the journalists at Charlie Hebdo. showed the attackers shouting as they killed Yet in the days after the Paris killings a policeman (of Algerian descent), “We have there was hardly a mention in the media of avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We have these wars and mass murder by the impe- killed Charlie Hebdo!” In response to this rialists that set the stage for the murders at grotesque terror attack, France’s imperial- Charlie Hebdo. Nor was it noted that France ist rulers have launched a war against the and the U.S. had sent tons of arms to Saudi “enemy within.” While they claim to be Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, which in only targeting jihadis (holy warriors), the turn financed and armed jihadists seeking French army special forces comb through northern France during manhunt Muslim and immigrant population as a to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria. for Charlie Hebdo killers, January 8. whole is under siege. Then on January 13, the National Assembly Immediately after the shooting, a mas- sands went into the streets with signs say- murderer of Gaza. Also the ambassador of voted 488 to 1 to continue the war in Iraq sive manhunt was launched. Some 88,000 ing, “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie). Then Saudi Arabia, which two days earlier began and Syria. The next day President Hollande police and gendarmes (paramilitary police) on Sunday, January 11, over four million the flogging of liberal blogger Raif Badawi strode onto the deck of the aircraft carrier were mobilized, as military helicopters flew people marched throughout the country in with the first 100 of 1,000 lashes on charges Charles de Gaulle to declare that the Paris overhead. Hundreds of soldiers were posted the largest demonstrations in French history, of insulting Islam. Let’s not forget Ukrainian attacks justified its dispatch to the region around the French capital. Two days later, a “against terrorism” and for “republican president Petro Poroshenko, who ordered to help “carry out operations in Iraq with police woman was shot to death in a south- values.” The French national anthem, La the “anti-terrorist operation” that is killing greater intensity.” So the killing of cartoon- ern suburb by a gunman, who shortly after- Marseillaise, was repeatedly sung. What thousands of Russian-speakers in the east. ists at Charlie Hebdo is used to escalate wards attacked a kosher supermarket near a travesty! Also present was his handler, U.S. “diplo- the butchery in the Middle East! This is the the Porte de Vincennes, killing four Jewish The “values” of the bourgeois French mat” Victoria Nuland. meaning of “national unity” with imperial- customers and holding others hostage. republic, what might those be? Mass de- French president Hollande is himself a ist terrorists. Within a few hours police had surrounded portations of tens of thousands of Roma certified warmonger, sending troops to kill the Hyper Casher market and the printing (Gypsy) people, begun by the previous Muslims from Mali and the Central African Muslims and Immigrants plant where two of the Charlie Hebdo killers conservative government and then escalated Republic to Iraq. Without a doubt, the mas- Targeted had holed up, and in a coordinated assault by the present “Socialist” administration? sacre at Charlie Hebdo was an attempt to One must ask, why in this period of killed the assailants. The gunmen, who “syn- “Freedom of expression”? Like banning pro- impose censorship through the barrel of a continuing global capitalist economic crisis, chronized” their actions, proclaimed their Palestinian protests when Israel attacked gun, while the attack on the supermarket was massacres and never-ending war is there a allegiance to rival Islamist1 jihadi groups, Gaza last June-July? Or the police murder anti-Semitic terror – and at the same time major political crisis over some cartoons? Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the of 21-year-old environmental activist Rémi these acts of Islamist jihadis were the pre- It is all part of the “new world disorder” Islamic State. Fraisse protesting construction of the Sivens dictable result of years of wanton slaughter following counterrevolution in the Soviet The shock of the killing spree deeply Dam last November? “Secularism”? Like by U.S., French and lesser NATO imperial- Union and East European deformed workers shook France, and the rulers rushed to as- when the Catholic church, fascists and ists in the Middle East and elsewhere. states at the beginning of the 1990s. Ever sert control. Social-democratic president conservatives mobilized against gay mar- • In “one short year,” defense minis- since, the imperialists (particularly U.S. François Hollande and the conservative op- riage, including a homophobic mass march ter Jean-Yves Le Drian recently boasted, the imperialism) have sought to assert world position called for “national unity” against of 800,000 in Paris? And “national unity”? nearly 4,000 French troops in West Africa hegemony in a “war of civilization.” The terrorism. The liberal daily Le Monde (9 When marchers in the January 11 parades in Operation Barkhane have killed over 200 war is also directed at the working class in January) published a somber front page for “national unity” sang (in the words of jihadists. This was after killing 700-800 in the imperialist countries in a frantic drive headlined, “The French September 11,” the Marseillaise) of “hordes of slaves” who Mali in 2013-14. Now the French army to shore up the decaying capitalist system. recalling the 2001 attack on the World are coming to “cut the throats of our sons wants to cross over into southern Libya. Rampant union-busting, religious reac- Trade Center and Pentagon. The lights on and our women,” and whose “impure blood” The Hyper Casher gunman was of Malian tion and racist repression exemplify Leon the Eiffel Tower were dimmed, the bells of should “irrigate our fields,” whose blood descent, as was the Muslim supermarket Trotsky’s observation in the Transitional Notre Dame cathedral rang. Tens of thou- were they baying for? That of our colleagues worker who hid a number of the Jewish Program (1938): “The objective prereq- and neighbors. customers. uisites for the proletarian revolution have 1 Islamism, or political Islam, is a doctrine hold- And how grotesque to demonstrate • Currently France has 900 mili- not only ‘ripened’; they have begun to get ing that Islamic law (sharia) should govern so- “against terrorism” by marching together tary personnel and 15 fighter planes in the somewhat rotten.” ciety. Thus for Islamists there is no separation with – in fact, behind – blood-soaked im- Middle East, plus another hundred officers of church and state. While there are different Is- Today Muslims and people of North lamist currents, and sharp differences between perialist terrorists, their allies and puppets! at American command posts, in Operation African and Arab origins or appearance in Islamists of the Sunni and Shia branches of Heading up the January 11 Paris march were Chammal. It is the second-largest compo- particular are in the crosshairs of the “anti- Islam, all call for a theocratic regime in which 44 heads of state and government, various nent of the U.S. war against the Islamic terrorist” backlash. Racist forces are already religious doctrine and authority are supreme, of whom are guilty of terrorist killing on State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In response beating the drums for stepping up the war and thus are inherently anti-democratic. Jihadis an immensely larger scale than the Charlie to a French air strike, a French tourist was on immigrants. Tens of thousands of police or jihadists seek to impose Islamic rule through Hebdo and Hyper Casher killers. There was executed by ISIS allies in Algeria. and troops are in the streets of French cit- holy war (jihad) against infidels, apostates and Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, the mass • For the last 13 years, the U.S. im- all non-believers. ies. The League for the Fourth International No to Equating Muslims with Terrorists! Drive French and U.S. Imperialism Out of the Middle East and Africa!

April-May 2015 19 calls for U.S., French and all imperialist proclaimed “terrorism expert” for Mur-

forces to be defeated and driven out of the doch’s Fox News wrote that areas of France, www.tellmamauk.org Middle East. And while fighting to defend London and the entire city of Birmingham democratic rights for all, including freedom were “no-go areas” that “are totally Muslim of the press which is constantly threatened where non-Muslims just simply don’t go by the capitalist rulers now posing as its in.” But while the media made fun of the champions, we urgently call on the work- Murdochian nightmares of British cities un- ers movement to come to the defense of der the sway of sharia police and courts, the the embattled immigrant and Muslim call to hold all Muslims “responsible” for populations in France, Germany, Britain the Paris killings is a deadly serious threat. and elsewhere in Europe. In Italy, the immigrant-bashing Lega The threat is hardly abstract. January Nord (Northern League), which has led vio- 7: shots fired at a Muslim prayer room in lent demonstrations attempting to block the Port-La-Nouvelle; car of a Muslim fam- construction of mosques, and leftovers of ily hit by gunfire in the Vaucluse; “death the fascist Alleanza Nazionale (AN) infest to Arabs” spray-painted on the gate of a many local administrations. In the Venice mosque in Poitiers. January 8: grenades region, the AN head of educational policy thrown and bullets fired at a mosque in Le sent a threatening letter to school principals Mans; an explosive device set off at a kebab to pressure parents to “request a condem- restaurant near a mosque in Villefranche- nation of these acts, because if they have sur-Saône; gunshots fired toward a mosque decided to come to live in Europe, in Italy, in Saint-Juéry; a mosque in Aix-les-Bains in the Venice region, they must know that caught fire in a suspected arson.January 9: they are being received in a civilization with graffiti outside a mosque in Bayonne saying principles and values, rules and customs to “assassins” and “dirty Arabs”; a 17-year- which they must adapt.” In the Netherlands, old of North African origin attacked by a Geert Wilders of the ultra-rightist, anti- gang near Isère; a pig’s head and entrails Muslim PVV is calling to close the borders. left outside a prayer room in Corte, Corsica In particular, anti-immigrant hysteria with a note, “next time it will be one of your has reached a fever pitch in Germany, heads.” By January 11, 50 anti-Muslim ac- where since last October weekly Monday tions were reported. demonstrations by Pegida (European Patri- The racist backlash is already being ots Against the Islamization of the West) in exploited politically by the racist right. Dresden have steadily escalated. On Janu- Marine Le Pen, the leader of the fascist ary 12, police said 25,000 joined a Pegida National Front (FN), has kept it relatively march claiming to mourn the dead in Paris. said. Yet the government can already put in So now France is under siege – not by low key, preferring to play the victim for be- But while 30,000 marched against Pegida preventive detention, ban from leaving the terrorists, but by its government. Under ing excluded from the January 11 “national in nearby Leipzig and 100,000 throughout country and seize the passport and national the “anti-terror” plan Vigipirate, 10,000 unity” demonstration. But she is demand- Germany that night (Berliner Zeitung, 13 identity card of anyone it can convince a army troops are being posted at “sensitive ing reinstitution of the death penalty, has January), blocking demos of a few hun- special “anti-terrorist” magistrate might locations” around the country, in addition reiterated the FN’s opposition to “massive dred anti-immigrant fanatics, government- “disturb public order” by “intimidation” or to the almost 90,000 police and gendarmes immigration” and called for tougher mea- sponsored assemblies will be no match for is part of a “criminal conspiracy,” even if the already mobilized. Some 4,700 of those sures against “radical Islam.” Immediately the Islamophobic marches shot through with “conspiracy” has done nothing and consists forces will be protecting Jewish schools after the massacre, smaller more explicitly Nazi thugs. What’s needed is mobilization of a single person. and synagogues, although dozens of Is- Muslim-hating far right groups vituper- of the workers movement to crush the racist Adopting the language of the fascist lamic mosques and prayer rooms have been ated against the “Islamization” of France. hate-mongers. FN, in a January 13 speech to the National defaced, firebombed or shot at in the last The fascists are seeking to garner votes in But the most immediate threat ac- Assembly that was applauded by the entire few days. In addition to harassing people coming elections with their anti-immigrant, tually comes not from the fascists and body, Prime Minister Valls declared that of Arab and African appearance in the Paris Islamophobic appeals. But their sinister ac- other anti-immigrant rightists, but from “France is at war with terrorism, with jihad- metro, no doubt many of those military and tion won’t stop at the ballot box. the mainstream bourgeois parties and the ism, with radical Islamism.” To wage this paramilitary forces will be stationed in the This is also true internationally. The capitalist state. In France, ex-president war he called for “exceptional measures,” heavily immigrant banlieues (suburbs) of anti-immigrant UKIP (United Kingdom Sarkozy thundered against the “enemy including “improving” surveillance, “ex- major cities. Not to “protect” the Muslim Independence Party) denounced a “Fifth within” the day after the “national unity” panding” monitoring of Internet and social population but to occupy their quartiers, Column” undermining Britain. The de- march. Jihadis should not be allowed back media, “reinforcing” measures against to back up police raids and suppress mani- mented Zionist media mogul Rupert Mur- into the country, anyone with a French propagating radical Islam, a new law for festations of discontent, particularly by doch tweeted that “Maybe most Moslems identity card who wants to “destroy France” spy agencies (already in the works), more minority youth. peaceful,” but until they denounce jihadists should be expelled, more prisons built and money and hundreds more intelligence After all the feel-good media coverage “they must be held responsible.” A self- surveillance of the Internet increased, he agents, a national “anti-terrorist” index of of the January 11 “national unity” march, individuals like that of sexual predators, it was noted that one sector of the French special cells and solitary confinement of population was conspicuously absent – jihadi prisoners, and data on all airline pas- young people from the banlieues. Hash- sengers. No need for “special laws” like tags appear on social media proclaiming the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, rammed through #jenesuispascharlie, “I’m not Charlie.” The Congress in the wake of 9/11, says Valls, Ministry of National Education reports that they’ve got plenty. in 70 schools (out of 64,000), some students Already the machinery of internal contested the January 8 minute of silence Philippe Wojazer/AFP repression is being ratcheted up. Some 100 for victims at Charlie Hebdo. Horrors! The people have reportedly been jailed in France minister demands that educators carry out for “glorifying terrorism.” Not only the a “great mobilization of the schools for the anti-Semite and fascist stooge Dieudonné values of the Republic.” Teachers unions are M’bala, who identified with the gunman at called upon to assume a special responsibility the kosher supermarket, but also someone in imparting these “values,” including to turn who joked about the attacks (sentenced in to the police students who object to praise to six months), another who supposedly of Charlie Hebdo. But as a teacher in Seine- referred to the Charlie Hebdo killers when Saint-Denis told Le Figaro (14 January): he was arrested drunk after an auto accident “Everyone’s talking about the unrest. (he got four years), and quite a few for The pressure cooker is about to explode. Facebook postings. Elsewhere in Europe, If you throw in the amalgam that’s being at least two dozen “suspected radicals” and made between Islam and the murders, “potential terrorists” have been picked up on plus some attacks on mosques, the the same sort of flimsy pretexts. So much mixture becomes even more potent than for “freedom of expression”! All those ar- that which provoked the riots of 2005. The “Sacred Union”: millions demonstrated “against terrorism” grotesquely rested under such anti-democratic speech Get ready for it to explode.” marching behind imperialist terrorists and their puppets, Paris, January 11. laws should be freed. Meanwhile, spy agencies everywhere 20 The Internationalist are trying to use the crisis to legalize indis- was tight-lipped about the mounting racist criminate data sweeps, give them unlimited threats, and while the union tops have gone access to everyone’s electronic devices along with the calls for “national unity,” a and override encryption introduced after local union section, the CGT at the Saint- the Edward Snowden revelations about the Gobain research center in Aubervilliers, U.S. National Security Agency’s massive, didn’t mince words: illegal spying on the general population. “We denounce the racist and xenophobic The idea of British prime minister David theses of all stripes, whether they are anti- Cameron marching in the January 11 Paris Arab, anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant and demo in defense of freedom of the press is their theory of a supposed Islamization grotesque: not so long ago his government of Europe. ordered computers at the London Guardian “We say: NO, the Muslims of France with encrypted Snowden files pulverized. and elsewhere do not have to feel more Of course, it’s all beside the point as it turns concerned than anyone over these despicable murders and thus don’t have out that U.S. and French spy services had to justify themselves or take a position…. been monitoring all of the Charlie Hebdo “We will not be found in the National “malefactors” for years, had jailed two of Union, under the banner of the them, and one even starred in a documentary reactionaries. Progressive union forces about home-grown jihadis. must not stand united with those whose Left Tail of the political aim is to silence every dissident voice, every opposition in order to ensure “Sacred Union” our total submission but must instead Immediately after the Charlie Hebdo fight them anywhere and everywhere. massacre, French media and political circles Moreover, we will not march hand in began talking of an “union sacrée,” the hand with our exploiters, who know political truce during World War I when the so well how to profit from the current bulk of the French left and labor movement confusion.” agreed to support the imperialist war effort. –statement reproduced on the web site of This shameful capitulation took place only the Tendance CLAIR days after the veteran socialist leader and As Revolutionary opponent of imperialist war Jean Jaurès was assassinated by an ultra-rightist French Internationalists, We Are Not nationalist. The reformist French left today Charlie is treading the same path of betrayal of the What is urgently needed in France working class, immigrants and oppressed. today is an authentically Trotskyist, com- With the Socialist Party in office and calling munist vanguard that fights tooth and nail the shots, the French Communist Party (PCF) against all the imperialists and seeks to has taken up the call for national unity while mobilize the working class against the rac- smaller left parties tag along behind with a ist repression coming down on Muslims, transparent pretense of “independence.” immigrants and people of Arab and North The PCF, the allied Parti de Gauche African heritage. At the same time as we (PG – Left Party) and its leader Jean-Luc denounce the murders of the journalists Mélenchon (the joint PG-PCF presidential and Jews, we state frankly our disgust at candidate) built and marched in the January On 17 October 1961, Paris police chief Maurice Papon, a former Nazi those Charlie Hebdo cartoons which were 11 demonstration, portraying it as a “re- collaborator, unleashed a monstrous massacre of Algerians demonstrating deliberately insulting to oppressed sectors publican response against obscurantism against a racist curfew. Over 12,000 were arrested (top) and 300 or more of the population. Since the murdered car- and religious fundamentalism of all sorts” were murdered, many of their bodies thrown off bridges into the Seine River toonists included well-known figures such and proclaiming “We are Charlie.” In the (bottom). Writing says: “Here Algerians were drowned.” French authorities as Stéphane Charbonnier (“Charb”), Jean National Assembly two days later, the en- long denied there was a massacre despite massive documentation; no one Cabut (“Cabu”), Bernard Verlhac (“Tig- tire body rose to sing the Marseillaise, for was ever punished for it; Papon received the Legion of Honor medal the nous”), Georges Wolinski and Philippe the first time since 1918. The spokesman same year. The bloodbath is not mentioned in French school history books. Honoré beloved by many on the left, and had for the PCF, Olivier Dartigolles, praised So what of the parties that claim to call for French arms and “protection” for the drawn cartoons for l’Humanité and other Prime Minister Valls for having “found the stand to the left of the PCF? The reform- Kurds. But in any case, neither they nor any left papers, our views will not be popular right words” on the issue of security, and ist New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), into other leftists dared to go against the govern- in certain circles. congratulated the deputies on the “beauti- which the pseudo-Trotskyist Ligue Com- ment’s use of the Charlie Hebdo massacre to The original Charlie Hebdo (1969- ful image of national unity” (Le Monde, 15 muniste Révolutionnaire dissolved a few justify escalating its military intervention in 1981) was a leftist, “anti-establishment” January). On the motion to continue French years back, issued a joint statement with the Near East. Was there any protest outside publication satirizing Charles de Gaulle participation in the Iraq-Syria war, the PCF other left groups distancing themselves the National Assembly against the renewal and other ruling figures. Its reincarnation and PG deputies abstained, their sole criti- from calls for national unity and criticizing of the mandate for the war in Iraq and Syria? (it was relaunched in 1992), however, has cism being that it was under NATO. French military intervention. But the NPA’s We have seen no mention of any. stayed well within the bounds of bourgeois But this is par for the course for these formal differences with the government Lutte Ouvrière (LO), the largest osten- journalism. Moreover, in recent years it has inveterate reformists. Back in 1935, the PCF are a mere fig leaf to hide its actual pro- sibly Trotskyist organization left in France, had a provocative anti-Muslim and anti- dropped the last vestige of Lenin’s com- imperialist policies. In fact, the NPA called issued statements criticizing the govern- Arab bent. In 2006, it reprinted the vulgar munism and on Stalin’s orders voted for the on France to arm NATO-backed Syrian (and ment’s call for “national unity” and cynical cartoons of the prophet Muhammad pub- French war budget. Soon they were support- before that Libyan) Islamists, and although claim to defend freedom of the press. But lished by the racist right-wing Danish paper ing the popular front coalition of Socialist a September 22 NPA resolution said “no to despite its pious appeals saying, “Don’t Let Jyllands-Posten.4 In 2011 these supposed Léon Blum and the bourgeois Radical Party all forms of imperialist intervention,” at an Our Class Enemies Set Workers Against leftists did their own version with a special which in short order capitulated to Marshal October 11 Kurdish solidarity demo NPA Each Other” (Lutte Ouvrière, 16 January), issue titled Charia Hebdo in reference to Pétain’s pro-Nazi regime without a fight. spokesman Olivier Besancenot reportedly its calls are limited to more jobs, education, Islamic law (sharia), which led to its offices After World War II, the PCF played a key role “call[ed] on the French government to pro- services, nothing about defense against rac- being firebombed. Its depictions of Muham- heading off workers revolution and reestab- tect the Kurdish people against the jihadis ist attacks. Moreover, LO teachers set off the mad have sometimes been downright racist, lishing the bourgeois republic under General of the I.S.” (AFP). racist ban on wearing the Islamic head scarf a caricature of a “swarthy” Arab figure. A de Gaulle. And after supporting the French There are several tendencies inside the (hijab) in schools by campaigning to expel similar cartoon about Jews would immedi- colonial war against Algerian independence, social-democratic NPA which strike a more two secondary school girls of immigrant ately be denounced, rightly, as anti-Semitic, on 17 October 1961 as thousands of Algerian militant posture (Tendance CLAIR, Courant origin in Aubervilliers! And in the 2005 recalling posters for Nazi films like Der demonstrators were arrested – literally under Communiste Révolutionnaire, Anticapital- revolt by youth in the banlieues, LO echoed ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) and Jud Süss. the windows of L’Humanité – and hundreds isme & Révolution) which last September put Sarkozy’s racist insults of “thugs,” denounc- It was notable that while portraying killed, their bodies thrown into the Seine, the forward a joint resolution against the leader- ing “traffickers” and “two-bit neighborhood the uproar over Charlie Hebdo’s anti- PCF did nothing to mobilize the workers in ship’s overtly pro-imperialist line. Yet as is caïds” (capos) who “today [have] the sup- Muhammad cartoons as oversensitiveness 3 their defense.2 typical of centrists who play their opportunist port of a large part of the youth.” by religious fanatics who can’t take a joke, It is notable that while much of the left 2 See “France: Racist State Terror From World games in the shadow of larger reformist for- 4 See “Racist Anti-Muslim Provocations Trig- War II to Today,” The Internationalist No. 5, mations, after bickering among themselves 3 See “France Turns Hard to the Right,” The In- ger Storm of Islamic Reaction,” The Interna- April-May 1998. they then dropped any criticism of the NPA’s ternationalist No. 26, July 2007. tionalist No. 23 (April-May 2006). April-May 2015 21 Newspaper of the Internationalist Clubs at the Revolution City University of New York DREAM Act Axed Democrats Swindle Immigrant Youth, Again

MARCH 30 – For the second time in a year, supporters of the New York State Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! Internationalist photo DREAM Act have been kicked in the teeth by the racist politicians who lord it over No Tuition – Open Admissions! youth, workers and all the oppressed in the service of the capitalist class. Last time pieces of what citizens get by right. The somewhere over the rainbow. In reality, his around, in March 2014, various State Senate “American Dream” is a fraud; as Malcolm proposed reform has always been a fraud to Democrats joined forces with Republicans X called it, a nightmare. Smash racist dis- cover increasing militarization of the border to kill the bill in what nysdreamact.org crimination – full citizenship rights, equal and never-ending attacks on immigrants, as called “a surprise vote.” In the latest shell access to all programs and services for ALL he escalated deportations to over 400,000 a game, Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo immigrants, now! year and imprisons untold tens of thousands took the proposed act out of his budget, The CUNY Internationalist Clubs were in hideous ICE camps. while unleashing new vicious attacks on born out of the campaign we launched to Raising the dreams and hopes of immi- public education, teachers and students. stop the CUNY administration’s attempted grant youth, only to dash them on the brutal Like the struggle against racist police purge of undocumented students after 9/11 realities of bourgeois politics in racist USA murder from Ferguson to NYC, any real in 2001. When a racist Queens politician – that is the function of all the vote-hunting fight for immigrant rights requires telling ranted that “illegal aliens” at CUNY posed NGOs, NYPIRG hucksters, union “leaders” the truth: This entire system, and all the a “security threat,” the CUNY tops saluted and reformists of every persuasion. Nor politicians that represent it, are enemies of and moved to drive them out by more than will “militant” lobbying win the promised our most basic interests. The name of that doubling their tuition to the out-of-state rate. reforms. “Cuomo Betrays the People!” system is capitalism – and to uproot racism, Bringing in support from immigrant work- writes the populist Revolutionary Student we must organize to overthrow it. ers organizations and other labor groups, Coordinating Committee. The only “people” CUNY Internationalist Clubs at May The NYS DREAM Act would allow our campaign succeeded in rolling back this Cuomo has ever represented are the bankers, Day 2015. “undocumented” students who meet in- attack for many undocumented students. real-estate sharks and other capitalists who Independent of and against all the capital- state tuition requirements to gain access to (See the Internationalist pamphlet Defend call the shots for him, as they do for liberal ist politicians, this means fighting for full state financial aid. While crafted in such a Immigrant Students – Stop CUNY’s “War De Blasio and the other Democratic and access to all programs and benefits for all way as to do nothing for the vast majority Purge!”) Those who have attended a New Republican politicians, as well as CUNY’s CUNY students – an end to any and every of immigrant working people, this minimal York State high school for at least two years Board of Trustees. kind of discrimination against immigrants, reform is supportable (unlike the federal and graduated, or got an NYS GED, are eli- What is needed is a revolutionary for restoring open admissions and no tuition DREAM Act, a Trojan Horse aimed at luring gible for in-state tuition. Today, however, the struggle, going beyond the campuses and at CUNY, and for full citizenship rights immigrant youth into the imperialist armed CUNY bureaucracy routinely fails to inform bringing in a power strong enough to defeat for all immigrants. Even these democratic forces). The bitter truth is that this brutal new students of this fact, and tries to hit them our enemies from Wall Street and City Hall demands can only be won as part of an all- society is intent on making pariahs out of with out-of-state tuition upon seeing that they to Albany and Washington. That power out class struggle aiming to overthrow the immigrant workers without whose labor it don’t have a Social Security number. is the multiracial, multi-ethnic working oppressive system of capitalism and replace could not run – but who lack a miserable For the Democratic Party, the issue of class, with its vital and growing immigrant with a government of the working class. scrap of paper issued by the government immigrant rights is just a way to round up component. NYC is an immigrant town That is the revolutionary truth that must be of their exploiters. The daughters and sons votes. Like his fellow Democrat Cuomo, and a labor town, as we have emphasized told. Join us to help build the international- of those workers are told to be supplicants Barack Obama has pumped out empty prom- at one protest after another with the chant ist workers party needed to win this fight. showing they are “worthy” of even bits and ises about immigration “reform,” always “Workers and students, shut the city down!” CUNY Internationalist Clubs the New York Times (8 January) announced pregnant veiled Muslim young women yell- crudeness. But, beyond singling out Islam a hard time laughing about it.” The fact is that it “has chosen not to reprint examples ing “Don’t touch our welfare checks.” This and Muslims for disdain, Charlie Hebdo that Charlie Hebdo had long since joined of the magazine’s most controversial work was allegedly referring to the kidnapped was not so much going after the high and the bourgeois “establishment,” which is because of its intentionally offensive con- female students made pregnant by Boko mighty as scorning the downtrodden and why the virtual entirety of the French rul- tent.” Which is putting it mildly. And behind Haram in Nigeria – as if Nigerian school discriminated. Even had it given offense ing class and well-to-do petty bourgeoisie the depictions there is real animus. In 2000 a girls received welfare checks! This racist “equally,” which it didn’t, in a viciously un- could proclaim, “Je suis Charlie.” But the Charlie Hebdo writer was purged for object- and sexist content was also seen in a cover equal capitalist society this would victimize wretched of the earth resented its derisive ing to an editorial by then editor Philippe Val showing the cabinet minister Christiane the poorest and weakest where those with insults. which labeled Palestinians “uncivilized.” In Taubira, a black woman, as a monkey. This resources could shrug it off. The satirical The caricaturists and journalists of 2003, another was “pushed out the door” for was supposedly caricaturing a right-wing weekly all too often seemed to groove on Charlie Hebdo reflect a strain of bour- objecting to the magazine’s joining a “cru- publication which had labeled her “as ma- taunting the oppressed. Its de facto guideline geois radicalism with a long (and not so sade of (‘European’) Civilization against lignant as a monkey” and carried the symbol was “épater l’opprimé.” illustrious) pedigree in French political (‘Muslim’) Barbarism” (“The Opinion of of the fascist NF, but the vile caricature A good summary of how Charlie Heb- life. Today some supposed left-wingers in the Boss: Freedom of Expression According was so hateful that it could well have been do was perceived as part of the “everyday the Socialist Party, notably former lead- to Charlie Hebdo” [in French], Les mots published by the National Front. humiliation of Muslims in France” came ers of SOS-Racisme, including the likes sont importants.net, March 2006). Val has Charlie Hebdo was addicted to la from a young transit worker in Paris quoted of ex-pseudo-Trotskyist Julien Dray, have gone on to a powerful position as head of provoc (provocation), which the New by the Washington Post (14 January): “You taken to lecturing Muslims and youth of Radio France Internationale. York Times (13 January) called being an go to a nightclub, and they don’t let you in. the impoverished suburbs on the value of Offensive cartoons in Charlie Hebdo iconoclastic “equal-opportunity offender,” You go to a party, they look at your beard, laïcité (secularism). Marxists are staunch fixated on, but were by no means limited supposedly going after all religions and and say, ‘Oh, when are you going to Syria defenders of secularism, a heritage going to, portrayals of Muhammad. In its series on ethnic groups. There is a long tradition in to join the jihad?’ Charlie Hebdo is a part back to the French Revolution and the 1789 “The Life of Muhammad,” Charlie Hebdo French literature and humor going back to of that, too. Those who are stronger than us Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the went out of its way to insult Muslims, with Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Flaubert summed are mocking us. We have high unemploy- 1905 law on the separation of religion and one cover showing a cleric exclaiming “The up as “épater le bourgeois,” to shock the ment, high poverty. Religion is all we have the state, ferociously opposed by the clerical Koran is s—t.” Last fall a cover caricatured prudish middle classes or bourgeoisie with left. This is sacred to us. And yes, we have right. Nevertheless, bourgeois secularism 22 The Internationalist is often impregnated with the values of Authentic Trotskyists fought against Jaurès socialists failed to understand No. 23, April-May 2006 capitalist society. Islamist jihadis in the 1980s, proclaiming the line of demarcation between the We also called for “workers mobilizations This ideology is particularly strong “Hail the Red Army” in Afghanistan, when bourgeois and the proletarian camps: in defense of the ghetto population ,” and to If the question presented itself to the in the French educational system, which the government of Socialist president Fran- forge the nucleus of a revolutionary workers friends of Dreyfus as an attack upon traces its roots to Jules Ferry. Celebrated çois Mitterrand was making common cause party to fight for a workers government. The the by-products of militarism – as the today as a preeminent republican and fa- with the CIA-backed mujahedin (warriors attraction of religious delirium for some sec- cleansing of the army and the suppression ther of the secular school (école laïque), of god). At the time, much of the French of corruption – a socialist had to view it tors of this disinherited population can only including by some supposed “socialists,” “far left” was demonstrating together with as a struggle against the root of the evil – be overcome by a workers movement with Ferry was the mayor of Paris in 1870-71 fascists and royalists denouncing Soviet against the standing army itself…. With a revolutionary, internationalist leadership under the government of national defense, “aggression” for backing an Afghan regime the entry of Millerand into the Radical that mobilizes all its forces to fight for jobs who made a fortune out of imposing hun- that promoted women’s rights to education, cabinet, the socialists stood entirely upon for all, full citizenship for all immigrants, ger rations on the city’s poor (the “Ferry- freedom from religious dictates and full the same ground as their bourgeois allies. an end to racist repression and liberation of famine”), who was a co-conspirator of participation in social life. In fact, violent “The circumstance which divides socialist women through socialist revolution. the attempted coup of 18 March 1871 Islamic fundamentalists represented a tiny politics from bourgeois politics is that the This is the program of the League for led by Auguste Thiers and had to flee minority until the Western powers imported socialists are opponents of the entire the Fourth International. n to Versailles to escape the proletarian them from their Saudi allies to serve as existing order….” insurrectionists who founded the Paris mercenaries in the anti-Soviet imperialist –Rosa Luxemburg, “The Socialist Crisis Commune. He was also a notorious racist, Asesinato... crusade. But then the jihadists slipped the in France, Part II” (1901) sigue de la página 24 an advocate of the expansion of French leash, as happened once again in Libya and Today we must defeat the imperialists’ rosca en comisaría local. Sin embargo, esto colonialism which he justified as a “right” is now happening in Syria. war and occupation that first armed and no asegura para nada que se detendrá los of the “superior races” who had a “duty We defended Salman Rushdie against financed the jihadis only to see the monster asesinatos rutinarios de la policía ni su trato to civilize the inferior races.” As two-time the fatwa (religious edict) by Ayatollah they created escape their control. To defend brutal de la población latina. Una medida prime minister he presided over colonial Khomeini, the supreme leader of the Islamic freedom of the press and freedom of speech, de cuán profundamente arraigado está este rule from Africa to Vietnam. Republic of Iran, ordering the assassination one must oppose all the laws restricting sentimiento lo ofrece una pancarta penosa en of the Indian author for supposedly insult- these basic rights along with the new crop Smash Religious Reaction la protesta del 14 de febrero: “Dispárame en ing the prophet in his book Satanic Verses. of “anti-terrorist” laws opening the door to la pierna, pero no me mates”. Pedir justicia and Imperialism Most of the pseudo-Trotskyist left actually a police state. The bourgeoisie has nothing del enteramente injusto estado capitalista no Through International supported the 1979 “Islamic Revolution” in to offer a generation of youth without jobs sólo cae en oídos sordos, sino que la policía, Iran – which soon began murdering leftists, (youth unemployment in the ghettoized Socialist Revolution las prisiones y los políticos que sirven a los Kurds, gays and women who refused to Paris suburbs is 40% or more), without hope As communists, we are opponents of all intereses de los patrones de los agronegocios wear the veil – where we proclaimed “Down and who are subjected to unrelenting police religions, whether Christianity, Judaism, Is- conforman una máquina de represión racista with the shah, no to Khomeini.” We have harassment. Instead, class-struggle mili- lamism, Buddhism or others, which all serve para cuyo derribo hace falta una revolución. defended Bangladeshi author and women’s tants in the workers movement must fight as the “opium of the people” in Karl Marx’s Las peticiones de que se realice una rights activist Taslima Nasrin, threatened to mobilize active defense of the besieged famous phrase, serving to divert the masses investigación federal no servirán de nada, with death charged for “vilifying Islam” Muslim population, while putting forward a from class struggle. But Marx also stressed, como lo ha mostrado Ferguson. La cháchara in her novel Shame (1993) portraying the transitional program to combat the exclusion “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed crea- liberal de exigir “rendición de cuentas” de la ture, the heart of a heartless world, and the persecution of a Hindu family by Islamist of youth of immigrant origin. 6 policía, los civilian complaint review boards 5 fanatics. soul of soulless conditions.” In seeking to As we called for at the time of the (paneles para recibir quejas de la población But consistent defense of freedom of raise up the exploited and oppressed against 2006 battle over youth jobs, on the heels civil) u otras instancias semejantes no son expression and secularism, and the rights the exploiters and oppressors, Marxists must of the 2005 revolt of the banlieues, it is más que un engaño cruel. La justicia para of women, immigrants and the poor, along take into account both sides of this dialecti- necessary to: los que trabajan en los campos agrícolas sólo with opposition to “holy war,” requires an cal formula. As Leninists and Trotskyists, “Sweep Away: Capitalism, Precariousness vendrá de la clase obrera misma, mediante intransigent policy of class struggle against we are opponents of Islamist theocracy [lack of secure jobs], Exploitation una guerra en toda la línea en contra del the capitalist system and its imperialist wars and all theocratic regimes, including the “Workers action to stop layoffs! Convert racismo, la injusticia y la clase dominante which have spawned the mass murderers self-proclaimed “Jewish state” of Israel or contract jobs into permanent jobs! For que los crea. Desde Ayotzinapa hasta Fergu- of Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Casher. The Pétain’s Christian French State or Franco’s workers control of hiring! son y Pasco, la lucha es una sola. El Grupo bourgeois government of the “Socialists” “Jobs for all – For a sliding scale of wages dictatorship in Spain. At the same time, we Internacionalista llama por la movilización Hollande and Valls and their imperialist and hours! must vigilantly defend the democratic rights masiva de la multiétnica clase obrera para partners in crime are the far greater threat to “Union training and employment programs of Muslims and oppose the bigoted delirium parar en seco a los policías asesinos. Para the working people of France and the entire for youth subject to discrimination! Full of Islamophobes. ello necesitamos construir un partido obrero world. As the Marxist revolutionary Rosa citizenship for all immigrants! Revolutionary Marxists oppose dis- revolucionario que combata toda forma de Luxemburg noted in her polemic against the –“France: Workers Mobilize to Beat Back criminatory and exclusionary measures opresión en la lucha por una sociedad en la first case of socialist “ministerialism” (join- Attack on the Youth,” The Internationalist such as the 2004 law banning the hijab que quienes trabajan manden. n and the 2010 French law banning the full- ing the government) at the turn of the 20th length burka or niqab even as we oppose century, every time the French bourgeoisie the veiling of women as symbolizing their is in trouble, it cries out “The Republic is subjugation and hail the heroic Algerian in danger!” and expects the workers to line The women who in the 1990s braved insult and up in its defense. Internationalist deadly violence to reject the veil. In France At that time Jean Jaurès cited the 7 today revolutionaries would come to the aid on-going Dreyfus Affair to justify the A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the of young women in the banlieues who are participation of socialist Alexandre Mil- Reforging of the Fourth International threatened for daring to break such religious lerand in the bourgeois cabinet of Pierre Publication of the Internationalist Group, taboos. We oppose the bourgeois state act- Waldeck-Rousseau alongside the butchers section of the League for the Fourth International ing as censor, as with the 1990 French law of the Commune. Luxemburg, like Lenin, outlawing racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic praised Jaurès for defending the Jewish of- Annual subscription US$10 for five issues. statements or actions, including denial of the ficer Dreyfus, falsely accused of treason by an anti-Semitic military officer corps, at a Holocaust, because this arsenal is always Name______deployed against the workers and oppressed. time when a number of socialists dismissed Address______We call for – and have organized – mass this as a dispute between bourgeois rivals. But Luxemburg wrote: mobilizations to smash the fascists because ______Apt. #_____Tel.(___)______only the workers and oppressed have both “Already in the Dreyfus campaign, the 6 the power and the interest to do so. See “Defend Taslima Nasrin,” The Interna- City______State/Province______tionalist No. 6 (November-December 1998). 5 Marx goes on to say, “The abolition of reli- 7 In 1894, the Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus Postal Code/Zip______Country______gion as the illusory happiness of the people is was framed on charges of supplying French the demand for their real happiness. To call on military secrets to the German embassy and Make checks/money orders payable to Mundial Publications and mail to: them to give up their illusions about their condi- imprisoned in the infamous Devil’s Island in Mundial Publications tion is to call on them to give up a condition that French Guyana, South America. The high com- Box 3321, Church Street Station requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, mand continued the frame-up by suppressing New York, NY 10008 U.S.A. therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale documents showing that the real spy was an of tears of which religion is the halo.” From the army major. The affair dragged on for a decade, Write the Internationalist Group at the above address, or contact: 1843 introduction to his anticipated work, in- splitting French politics into the camp of anti- Tel (212) 460-0983 Fax (212) 614-8711 troduction of his proposed work A Contribution clerical Republican dreyfusards and anti-Semit- E-mail: [email protected] to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. ic clerical-militarist antidreyfusards. April-May 2015 23 El Internacionalista abril-mayo de 2015 ¡Movilización obrera para detener el racista terror policíaco! Asesinato policíaco de trabajador mexicano en el estado de Washington PORTLAND, Oregon – Los racistas minantemente blanca pisotea asesinatos policíacos de víctimas desarmadas, a la población mayoritaria- Trujillo/APJoshua particularmente entre los sectores oprimidos mente hispana. Hay un solo de la población, siguen sin parar. El concejal latino en la ciudad, año pasado, furiosas manifestaciones se y no hay ningún latino en la extendieron por todo el país para protestar junta de educación, a pesar por los viles asesinatos policíacos de Eric de que el 70 por ciento de Garner, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley y los estudiantes son hispanos. Tamir Rice, todos afroamericanos. Ahora ¿A quién le pueden pa- los manifestantes se han volcado a las calles sar inadvertidos los parale- de Pasco, Washington, por el asesinato a los? Se trata del asesinato manos de la policía del trabajador mexicano de Michael Brown en Fer- Antonio Zambrano Montes el 10 de febrero. guson, Missouri, sólo que Zambrano fue asesinado con múltiples esta vez atrapado en video. balazos disparados por tres policías La población negra o latina, mientras, sin arma alguna, levantaba las la policía y la estructura del manos. Se trató de una ejecución a sangre poder blancas. “¿Manos fría, como pudieron ver millones en un video arriba, no disparen?” Bang: que circuló en Internet. estás muerto. El New York Antonio era un hombre de baja estatura, Times (17 de febrero) titula de apenas metro y medio. La policía acusó un artículo: “Asesinato en a este trabajador agrícola de 35 años de estado de Washington ofre- estar aventando piedras contra los agentes, ce un momento ‘Ferguson’ aunque recientemente se había roto ambas para los hispanos”. Y como muñecas al caer de una escalera en la co- gritaba un manifestante en secha de manzanas. El video del incidente Ferguson en agosto pasado, muestra a Zambrano corriendo aterrorizado “¿Es ésta la Franja de Gaza?” mientras los policías lo persiguen en un (ver “Mobilize Across U.S. Airados manifestantes marchan en Pasco, Washington, el 14 de febrero, para protestar crucero con tráfico, y luego cómo éste se Against Racist Police Terror contra el asesinato policíaco de Antonio Zambrano Montes (en la foto, junto con su hija.) da la vuelta y sube las manos mientras los in Missouri”, en The Internationalist No. 38, mortífera e impune brutalidad policíaca. una fuerte historia sindical. Durante los policías le disparan. Además, aunque el octubre-noviembre de 2014). En la ciudad Pasco es una segregada ciudad latina en años 1930, los anarcosindicalistas de los asesinato ocurrió alrededor de las 5 p.m., la predominantemente hispana de Pasco, como el área metropolitana de las Tri-Cities junto Industrial Workers of the World (Obreros policía dejó el cadáver de Zambrano toda la en la Palestina asediada por los sionistas, con Kennewick y Richland, Washington, cu- industriales del mundo – IWW) organizaron noche tirado en la calle, como una espantosa la policía considera una piedra en la mano yos habitantes son blancos en más de un 80 piquetes para exigir mejores condiciones de advertencia. Su angustiada prima María Ma- como permiso para matar. por ciento. La mayor parte de los reportes trabajo y alzas salariales, en tanto que los drigal dijo en un programa de radio, “Para Entretanto, el gobierno mexicano y mediáticos citan la estadística del censo de patrones se vanagloriaban ante la prensa mí, es como dejar ahí a un animal muerto” el presidente Enrique Peña Nieto conde- 2010 según la cual la población de Pasco es local de su relación especial con la policía (KUOW Seattle, 13 de febrero). naron el asesinato del trabajador agrícola de menos de 60 mil personas, con un 56 por que actuaba como rompehuelgas y para Según todos los testimonios, Zambrano mexicano en Pasco por ser un “uso despro- ciento de hispanos; sin embargo, el estimado imponer prácticas laborales draconianas. estaba pasando por una mala racha. Su esposa porcionado de la fuerza letal”. Exigen una poblacional del estado de Washington de En los años 40, el gobierno incorporó traba- lo había dejado, mudándose con sus dos hijas investigación minuciosa y el castigo de los 2014 cifra en 68 mil los habitantes de Pasco, jadores agrícolas y ferroviarios mexicanos a California. Tras haberse lastimado, estaba responsables del homicidio. Su propósito con un porcentaje de latinos cercano a las mediante el programa Bracero. En los años sin trabajo y parecía desorientado. En enero es quitarse la atención de encima por la dos terceras partes. La diferencia se debe 1960, hubo varias huelgas de trabajadores quedó atrapado en el incendio de la casa masacre y secuestro de una cincuentena al gran número de inmigrantes indocumen- agrícolas latinos que contaron con la ayuda donde vivía y sus pertenencias se quemaron. de estudiantes normalistas de Ayotzinapa tados en Pasco, como Antonio Zambrano, de estudiantes chicanos. Durante un tiempo vivió en un refugio para en septiembre pasado. En lo que toca a la que no participan en el censo por miedo a Hoy en día, los productores agrícolas gente sin techo. Más relevante aún, es que la “investigación” del asesinato policíaco en ser deportados. No es una casualidad que de Washington impulsan un programa au- policía iba por Antonio. Fue acusado de arro- Pasco, ésta es realizada por una agencia po- la policía en Pasco actúe como si estuviera mentado de “trabajadores huéspedes”, para jar piedras a unos policías hace un año, y fue licíaca, igual que en México la Procuraduría tratando con una población sin derechos. conseguir una corriente eficiente y constante arrestado una semana antes, aparentemente General de la República “investigó” para Las Tri-Cities crecieron enormemente de trabajadores de bajos salarios que sean por faltar a una cita en los tribunales. “Fue encubrir el papel del estado. cuando se estableció el sitio nuclear de Han- desechables, prácticamente sin derechos. Y liberado el lunes”, informó el Seattle Times El asesinato de Antonio Zambrano ha ford durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. cuando la “zanahoria” de los sueños del salir (11 de febrero). Al día siguiente, la policía galvanizado las áreas donde reside la pobla- Richland sirvió de complejo habitacional del adelante con trabajo duro y determinación lo abatió con una lluvia de balas. Acusación: ción trabajadora latina, llevada hasta el lími- gobierno para alojar a los trabajadores. Pas- ya no funcione, los policías pueden blandir aventar piedras a la policía. Juicio: ninguno. te por el terror policíaco. Una mujer señaló, co albergó la fuerza de trabajo agrícola del el garrote para mantener a los “esclavos Sentencia: la muerte. “Es como si tener una placa de policía te valle de Yakima (manzanas, peras y viñedos) asalariados” a raya. En una ciudad en la que El asesinato policíaco de Antonio diera el derecho de acabar con la vida de un y de la cuenca del río Columbia. La finali- un alto porcentaje de los habitantes trabaja Zambrano no es un incidente aislado, sino mexicano”. La familia y los compañeros de zación de la presa Coulee en 1941convirtió en la agricultura o en industrias relaciona- que forma parte de un patrón. La policía de trabajo convocaron una manifestación ante aquella área semiárida en una de las zonas das, muchos de los cuales residen ahí desde Pasco ha asesinado a cuatro personas en la alcaldía de Pasco para el día siguiente. agrícolas más ricas del país, donde se produ- hace largo tiempo, la policía está potenciada los últimos seis meses, lo que es más que Conforme se esparció la noticia del ase- ce prácticamente toda cosecha importante. para usar despiadadamente la fuerza letal lo que ha ocurrido en los últimos tres años sinato, la manifestación del sábado 14 de Las granjas familiares fueron rápidamente en contra de los inmigrantes, sin mucho en toda Inglaterra (con una población de febrero reunió a unas mil personas. Los que remplazadas por gigantes agroindustriales. temor de enfrentar consecuencia alguna si 60 millones). Ni uno solo de los policías protestan exigen “justicia”, pero la justicia Hoy, el campo está salpicado de círculos de logran mantener a los trabajadores inquietos asesinos de Pasco ha sido enjuiciado. Uno no vendrá de este racista sistema capitalista. siembra irrigados con agua subsidiada por aislados y bajo control. de ellos fue sujeto a una demanda en 2012 Después de la furia desatada por los asesi- el gobierno, proveniente del río Columbia. Seguramente, un millar de manifes- por uso excesivo de fuerza en contra de una natos policíacos de Ferguson, Cleveland Ya antes de esto, el valle de Yakima tantes marchando en Pasco debe tener un madre latina que iba a recoger a sus hijos y Nueva York, Pasco se ha convertido en en el sudeste de Washington fue un centro efecto aleccionador en los amigotes de la de la guardería. La fuerza policíaca predo- el nuevo foco de protestas en contra de la de producción y comercio agrícolas con sigue en la página 23