50¢

~)(.62J No. 637 ~~' 19 January 1996 Mandela Regime Cracks Down on Black Labor

Striking black municipal workers protesting In downtown Johannesburg last September were met with brutal repression by "new" apartheid police.

In Anglo American's giant Vaal Reefs anee-to halanee the needs of all South gold mine, a runaway locomotive crashes Af~icans, the rich and the poor, without down into an eievator cage, killing over suhstantially compromising the interests a hundred black miners. In rural of either group"! And in South Africa, K waZulu-Natal, a white landowner, the rich are white and the poor are black guarded by police, uses his tractor to pull or "coloured" (mixed-race). Whites own down the mud and cow-dung hut of a 87 percent of the land and 90 percent of family of black tenant farmers. Immi­ now become parliamentarians, govern­ tory. On the shop floor, it became com­ the productive wealth, and have an aver­ grant workers from Mozambique and ment officials, corporate executives, as monplace for workers to walk out in sol­ age income ten times that of hlacks. other neighboring states are routinely well as top union bureaucrats-have idarity when any worker was fired or To balance the interests of the rich and rounded up by police and deported back jumped aboard the "gravy train," buying otherwise victimized by management. poor in South Africa is a "challenge," as across the border. As striking black BMWs and Pierre Cardin suits and mov­ In South Africa, it is recognized that' Manga puts it, which the ANC cannot municipal workers take to the streets of ing into posh, formerly white-only sub­ the ANC is not a unitary movement; meet. For the moment, the Randlords and downtown Johannesburg, they are met urbs. Black workers see some of their people speak rather of the ANC/SACP/ their senior partners in Wall Street and by police firing tear gas canisters and' comrades of yesterday literally growing COSATU "tripartite alliance." This is a the City of London are relying on the stun grenades. Such are some scenes from fat since they're nqw eating meat three nationalist popular front in which the political authority of Mandela & Co. the "new" South Africa since Nelson times a day. Yet these very same people black proletariat is bound to their exploit­ rather than the armed fist of the state to Mandela was elected its first black pres­ are telling the impoverished masses they ers and oppressors through the bourgeois­ prevent and suppress black labor, town­ ident a year and a half ago. have to be patient in waiting for housing, nationalist ANC. Here is how Amrit ship, student and other social struggles. Of course, significant changes have electricity, running water and a decent Manga, a labor columnist for the pro­ However, De Klerk recently told his coa­ taken place at the political level. Open education for their children! ANC New Nation (29 September 1995) lition partners that he could have used white-supremacist rule based on police­ The white ruling class entered into describes "the challenge for the alli- continued on page 6 state terror has been replaced by a the "power sharing" deal with' the ex­ "power sharing" arrangement between pectation that the ANC and closely the African National Congress (ANC) allied South African Communist Party and the former white ruling National (SACP) would use their immense polit­ Workers Vanguard Interview Party of EW. De Klerk. The legal struc­ ical authority to restore a semblance of ture of apartheid-the passbooks, the bourgeois order without seriously threat­ rigid segregation of the Group Areas ening the whites' wealth and privileges. Act, the impoverished bantustan "home­ The township revolt in the mid-1980s lands"-has been dismantled. The estab­ undermined the apartheid system: effec­ lishment of an ANC-Ied Government of tive control of the segregated black cities National Unity naturally awakened the like Soweto and Alexandra passed into expectations of the hlack toilers of rad­ the hands of popular committees gener­ ical improvements in their conditions of ally supportive of the ANC; rents went life. unpaid for years as did charges for eiec­ But increasingly bitter black workers tricity and water and property taxes. and unemployed youth are saying that However, the development of a pow­ nothing has changed in their jobs, their erful and combative black workers townships, their homes. Much, how­ movement posed a far more fundamental ever, has changed in the lives of their threat to the rule of the masters of the leaders. A few thousand ANC cadre- Jo 'burg stock exchange. Formed in 1995, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) quickly became one of the strongest and most militant lahor movements in the Third World. This was signaled hy the great gold mine strike in 7""'25274"81030 1987, the largest in South African his- WV Photo Down With Police-State Repression in Peru!

Last November 30, some two dozen in the late 1700s, is a Guevarist rural tinely tortured, taken before secret mil­ people were seized in a raid by the Peru­ guerrilla group politically sympathetic to itary tribunals, denied any legal defense, vian political police, D1NCOTE, in a left-wing parties in the popular-front and sentenced by unseen judges. The residential district in Lima. Five mem­ opposition. Over the last decade, it has Fujimori regime and the Peruvian mili­ bers of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary mainly struck at military installations tary are heavily backed by Washington, Movement (MRTA) were killed in a six­ and foreign-owned businesses, in dis­ despite occasional run-ins between their hour firefight. Surrounded by govern­ tinction to the Maoist Sendero Lumino­ respective "anti"-drug forces and not­ ment forces, the remaining members of so (Shining Path) movement, which has withstanding the "human rights" rhetoric the rebel unit surrendered, including a often launched murderous attacks on of the Clinton administration. The fact top MRTA commander, Miguel Rincon. workers and peasants unions as well as that in this case an American citizen was Also arrested in the sweep was Lori armed clashes with the MRTA. Hundreds seized has produced some liberal protest Berenson, 26, a Latin America solidarity of MRTA supporters have been thrown where normally the Peruvian military activist from New York. On January II, into Peru's dungeons, along with thou­ butchers carry out their dirty work out­ those arrested were sentenced to lengthy sands jailed as alleged Sendero militants. side the glare of international publicity. terms in prison, including life imprison­ The military-backed government of The workers movement internation­ ment for Rincon, Berenson and two Alberto Fujimori intensified its draco­ ally must denounce these vicious sen­ others. nian security crackdown after the presi­ tences and demand that all the victims The Tupac Amaru movement, named dent dissolved the Congress in 1992 and of this rightist "civilian" dictatorship be after a descendant of the Incas who rose instituted brutal police-state measures. freed. The Partisan Defense Committee in rebellion against Spanish colonial rule Prisoners accused of "terrorism" are rou- issued the following protest statement on January 15: Embassy of the Republic of Peru Lenin and the Washington, D.C. Dear Mr. Ambassador: Lori Berenson, sentenced to life In Revolutionary Party prison by Peruvian military court, On January II, twenty-two members In honoring the memory of VI. Lenin. and alleged supporters of the leftist guer­ who died on 21 January 1924. we reprint population has been the vtctlms of rilla Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Move­ the/i,I/owing remarks hy James P. Cannon. brutal massacres at the hands of Peru's ment were sentenced to decades in a Fllllldillg memher of" the Communist alld military. heavily financed by the U.S. prison by Peru's special military courts. Trotskyist mOl'emellts in the United States. for its so-called "war on drugs." With Among them was Miguel Rincon, Tupac Lellill was the architect and leader (!( the the blood of thousands on their hands, Amaru's second in command. and Lori Bolshevik Party. which was the \'ital instru­ the generals and colonels were recently Berenson who was charged with trea­ mellt jil/' the Octoher 1917 sei:ure of power given a blanket amnesty by your gov­ son and sentenced to life. We demand TROTSKY hy the workers of Russia. the jirst victorious LENIN ernment. including those responsible for freedom for Miguel Rinc6n, Lori Beren­ socialist revolutioll ill history. Lenin's terminal iI/ness and death greatly aided a what is considered one of Peru's most son and all victims of right-wing gov­ notorious human rights cases, the hureaulTatic political count.rrevolution led hy Stalin under the nationali.~t dOlfma of ernment repression. building "socialism In one country." which ultimately laid the hasis for the restoration kidnapping and murder of nine La of capitalism nearly seven decades late!: But the fight for the Bolshevik program of As Ms. Berenson so eloquently an­ Canuta University students and a profes­ nounced at her sentencing, her "crime" world socialist revolution was carried on by Trotsky and the Fourth International, sor suspected of being supporters of the and is continued today hy the International Communist Lealfue. is "to worry about the subhuman condi­ Shinin~ Path. tions in which the majority of this Commentators in this country have Iskra (The Spark), as most of our readers know, was the paper founded by Lenin population lives." That majority of the continued on page II in 1900 .... Iskra made its first appearance at a time of rise in working-class activity, when the spontaneous labor movement was running ahead of its conscious political organization. The ideas of economism-that is, of limiting the political work of the Social Democrats-were being propagated by an influential group of leaders. The Social Democratic movement of the time consisted of loosely connected circles, and Defend NAMBLA! was lacking in a uniform program and cohesive organization. Lenin dedicated Iskra to the task of uniting the political movement and overcoming the opportunist doctrines In the latest installment of a years­ ing bogus charges from "undercover of economism .... long witchhunt against the North cops" that NAMBLA advocates child First of all he called for the formation of a fighting organization: "Work for the American MantBoy Love Association molestation. Like the current Post edi­ establishment of a fighting organization must be carried on under all circumstances, (NAMBLA), just before midnight on torial which advised the cops to look no matter how 'drab and peaceful' the times may be, and no matter how low the January 9 a New York City police for a list in Radow's apartment to 'depression of revolutionary spirit' has sunk. More than that, it is precisely in such "vice" squad broke down the door of reveal if any of NAMBLA's 1,500 conditions and in such periods that this work is particularly required: for it would NAMBLA member Roy Radow's members are employed by the school be too late to start building such an organization in the midst of uprisings and apartment, arresting him and his system, in 1993 NBC's Channel 4 outbreaks. The organization must be ready when the moment arrives." These words friend Clark Inwald for "endangering broadcast the names, faces and ad­ were true for tsarist Russia thirty years ago, and they are no less true for America the welfare" of a 12-year-old boy. The dresses of NAMBLA school employ­ today. Even now it is necessary to prepare for the future day. youngster was in the apartment ees-an open call for firings, and a The organization he projected was to be a political organization; in other words, because his mother is a friend of set-up for violent attacks against a party. Lenin was an irreconcilable foe of all eclecticism, narrow-mindedness, and Inwald's and let her son stay there NAMBLA members. localism. The movement had to be united on a national scale; it had to invest all its after school and on weekends. But all As we wrote then, this was "a cruel detailed activities with a sweeping perspective of revolutionary overthrow .... it took was an anonymous tip from a attack against a vulnerable group, one The article "Where to Begin" was a brief synopsis of the views he was to elaborate nosy, bigoted neighbor for the cops which is ostracized even by most self­ a few months later in his famous pamphlet What 1.1' to Be Done? In this pamphlet, to stage their outrageous invasion of proclaimed radical homosexual activ­ which became a cornerstone of Bolshevism, Lenin settled accounts with the econo­ Radow's home. The youth insists ists .... Attempts to portray sex be­ mists and with the revisers and "critics" of Marx. He elucidated the limitations of there was no sexual contact-even the tween older and younger people as trade unionism with a profound insight which the whole history of international cops admit there is no evidence of equivalent to child molestation are syndicalism has completely vindicated. He outlined the nile of the party-extending this-and his mother steadfastly aimed at enforcing social conformity and concretizing Marx's theory of the vanguard-and brought forward for the first denies he suffered any harm. So the and reactionary sexual mores, and are time the project of a body of professional revolutionaries who would devote their NYPD has now hit Radow, a former in no way related to protecting the lives wholly to the revolution and take upon themselves the leadership and direction school psychologist, with an addi­ interests of youth" (WV No. 571, 12 of the entire movement. tional charge of "obstruction of gov­ March 1993). -James P. Cannon, "Lenin and the' Iskra' Period" (March 1931) ernmental administration." The state's persecution of The lack of any evidence whatso­ NAMBLA is part of a broader effort ever against Radow and Inwald hasn't at government enforcement of a puri­ stopped the gutter press from spread­ tanica
sexual code which deems all ing vicious smears against NAMBLA, homosexuality "deviant." Attempts which advocates repealing reaction­ by "mainstream" gay organizations to ary "age of consent" laws. A Daily isolate NAMBLA have helped fuel !~!!~!!~!~!!..~!! ~ News (II January) headline blared, this reactionary climate, where preg­ DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: George Foster "Pedophile Charged," The next day, nant teenagers need "parental con­ EDITOR: Jan Norden an editorial in Rupert Murdoch's sent" for abortion and sex education, EDITOR. YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Carla Wilson right-wing rag, the New York Post, condom distribution is banned in PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller demonized NAMBLA, claiming, "it's schools, and hysterical charges of CIRCULATION MANAGER: Shauna Blythe time for authorities to begin seeing "sex abuse" result in the persecution EDITORIAL BOARD: Bruce Andre. Ray Bishop. Liz Gordon. Frank Hunter. Jane Kerrigan. Len Meyers. James Robertson. Joseph Seymour. Alison Spencer. Marjorie Stamberg NAMBLA for what it is-a child­ of day-care workers and teachers-a The Spartaclst League Is the U.S. Section 01 the International Communist League (Fourth molestation club, not a collection of campaign that began with witchhunt­ Internationalist). oddballs. " ing homosex ual teachers. Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate Issues In June, July and August (beginning with omiHing the second issue In June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartaeist A similar cop-media campaign The Spartacist League defends Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732·7861 against NAMBLA in 1993 was led by NAMBLA against governmental (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, former WNBC-TV reporter John snoops and cops seeking to regulate Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Miller, who went on to become a gun­ private, consensual sexual acts. We Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. toting "press information" officer for say: Stop the witchhunt ofNAMBLA! The closing date for news in this issue is January 16. the NYPD. Miller made his name Drop the charges against Roy Radow No. 637 19 January 1996 with an "investigative report" retail- and Clark Inwald! .

2 WORKERS VANGUARD Europe today are being dictated by the drive by each national capitalist class to improve its position vis-a-vis its impe­ rialist rivals. The French and German governments want to do to their working classes what Thatcher did to us and Rea­ gan did to the American workers. The British rulers seek to hone their compet­ itive edge by ensuring that wages and working conditions remain lower than those in Japan and the rest of Europe. Now that capitalist counterrevolution has destroyed the Soviet Union and East International Solidarity with European deformed workers states, the imperialists think the way is open to rein­ troduce the untrammelled exploitation and oppression that existed in the nine­ teenth century. Liverpool Dock Strike What is needed is the kind of uncom­ promising, Marxist class-struggle work­ A lesson in labor solidarity: when throughout Britain and against a back­ picket line mounted by the Liverpool ers party that led the Russian workers members of the International Longshore­ drop of intensified racist terror against dockers. Protests are mounting against to power in October 1917. An interna­ men's Association (ILA) saw three pick­ blacks and immigrants. As our comrades the brutal, racist Asylum and Immigra­ tionalist party that fights for the interests eters on the Newark, New Jersey docks of the Spartacist League/Britain empha­ tion Bill. Vauxhall [auto] workers are of all the oppressed-against the racism on December 19, they got the message size in a special Workers Hammer sup­ banning overtime and balloting on their of the capitalist system, typified by the and refused to cross the line. The Atlan­ plement (12 January), excerpts of which claim, after chucking out the inanage- sequence of police killings of black peo- tic Container Lines (ACL) ship Compan­ ion Express had earlier tried to unload its cargo in Baltimore, but when picket­ ers showed up there, too, the Baltimore ILA also honored the line. And when the ship moved on to Norfolk, Virginia, it got the same treatment. The pickets represented 500 dock workers in Liverpool, England, members of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), who since September have been engaged in a bitter fight.against union-busting by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, which sacked hun­ Liverpool dreds of the workers for honoring a picket dockers have waged bItter line. In response to their appeals for inter­ four-month national support. longshoremen in Aus­ battle agaInst tralia, New Zealand and Canada also unIon-busting. refused to touch ACL containers, and dock workers in Sweden and Spain have vowed to do likewise. In "hot-cargoing" ACL ships, these workers have resur­ rected a couple of basic principles of the class struggle: Scab Roods are too hot to handle! Picket lines mean don't cross! These actions breathed new life into are reprinted below, what is needed is a ment offer at mass meetings. Ford work­ pie last year and by the brutal Asylum the struggle in Liverpool, where the local revolutionary leadership with an inter­ ers are to ballot on strike action this and Immigration Bill. One that opposes Labour Party administration has presided nationalist program to drive forward the month, after a wildcat walkout at Dagen­ the imperialist troops in the Balkans and over devastating layoffs and cutbacks in kind of solidarity shown toward the Liv­ ham in November [and again last weekJ. Northern Ireland and fights for the unity social services. The London Guardian erpool dock workers. And from Liverpool to the capital fire­ of working people across national (20 December 1995) noted, "For an fighters are taking or discussing action boundaries. industrial cause widely dismissed as * * * to fight the fire brigade cuts. The obstacle The splendid action of dockers around hopeless, the dockers' campaign has suc­ Since Septemberthe Merseyside dock­ to co-ordinated, joint strike action-and the world points the way forward. The ceeded in calling on a reserve of inter­ ers have been fighting bitterly against to powerful union and minority com­ Merseyside docks should be shut down national solidarity which is causing sig­ casualisation and de-unionisation, win­ munity action and protest against state tight by mass picket lines, which nothing nificant damage to their employer." ning the support of dock workers inter­ racism-is the present reformist union and nobody can cross. But [TGWU The Liverpool dock strike takes place nationally. This week dock workers at leadership. leader Bill] Morris & Co. are so in awe amid a growing wave of labor struggle the Isle of Sheppey refused to cross a The attacks on the working class across continued on paRe 9 David North,"Socialist" Apologist for Scabbing Four years ago, the organization by honoring picket lines put up by dock socialist party." Openly calling to that "the large majority of the 4,000 known as the Workers League, led by workers who had flown in from Liver­ "destroy the influence and control of union members who returned to work one David North, decided to write off pool, giving a huge boost to their strike. the old unions," Hyland offers as proof were not right-wing or anti-union. Most the trade unions, saying "to define the As a cover for their anti-interna­ that any "trade union perspective" is simply recognized the futility of the AFL-CIO as a working class organiza­ tionalist, anti-working-class line, the bankrupt... "the example of Solidar­ policies being pursued by the UAW, tion is to blind the working class" (Bul­ Northites point to the ILA's "history of nose in Poland" (lWB, 11 September which had, after all, abandoned the pre­ letin, 10 January 1992: see "Workers working with the U.S. State Depart­ 1995). Solidarnosc, in fact, was a coun­ vious strike." Now that corporations League vs. the Unions," WV No. 580, ment and CIA backed operations terrevolutionary political movement are shelling out billions every year to 16 July 1993). Now, in the context of abroad." This is pretty cheeky coming masquerading as a "union" on behalf hire union-busting law firms and pri­ the defeated 17-month-long Caterpillar from these political bandits, who took of its CIA and Vatican bankrollers, vate police, are the Northites offering strike and the four-month battle by Liv­ up the cause of every imperialist­ which was cheered by the Northites as themselves as PR agents for the grow­ erpool dockers against' union-busting, backed anti-Soviet movement from the it organized Polish workers behind a ing army of strikebreakers? North & Co. have taken this formulation Lithuanian nationalists to the blood­ program of capitalist restoration. The "hot-cargoing" of scab ship­ out of the realm of theory and shown thirsty Afghan mujahedin reactionaries. Never ones to differentiate the trade ping by dockers internationally is an it for what. it really is: an open pre­ North's Workers League spent dec­ unions from the pro-capitalist bureauc­ example of the kind of genuine soli­ scription for strikebreaking. ades crudely fawning after the anti­ racy that keeps them chained to the darity in action which can fortify the Early last month, as dock workers communist labor tops, calling on the exploiters and their state, North & unions against the worldwide capital­ unions from North America to Aus­ likes of George Meany to form a "labor Co. have now become lawyers for ist offensive. Our perspective is the tralia announced their refusal to handle party." Now, when the world's capital­ scabbing. Reporting on the Caterpillar forging of a new, class-struggle lead­ ships loaded in Liverpool by scabs, ist rulers are escalating their war UAW strike, which was betrayed out- ership in the labor movement as part North's followers in the British Inter­ against the unions, the poor and immi­ _right by the UAW bureaucracy, their of the fight to build a revolution­ national Communist Party (ICP) wrote grants following the destruction of the American newspaper writes, "UAW ary workers party. This requires a hard a scurrilous article, "Dockers Must Re­ Soviet Union, North's followers tell officials have attempted to absolve political struggle to drive out the sell­ ject Fake Internationalism" (Interna­ workers that any struggle by the trade themselves of blame for what has hap- . out bureaucracy-the "labor lieuten­ tional Worker, 2 December 1995), call­ unions against these attacks is useless. pened by diverting the anger of strikers ants" of the bosses-that is undermin­ ing this basic declaration of solidarity The link between the Northites' cur­ towards the 'scabs,' i.e., those union ing and destroying the unions. That a "fraud." Yet some two weeks later, rent anti-labor line and their historic members who decided to cross picket fight must also be waged against scab American trade unionists of the Inter­ anti-Sovietism was captured in a recent lines" (International Workers Bulletin, "socialists" like the Northites, who spit national Longshoremen's Association appeal by ICP National Secretary 18 December 1995). Putting quotation . on the best traditions of working-class (ILA) turned back a scab Atlantic 'Con­ David Hyland to the deeply reformist marks around "scab" is no slip. In fact, struggle as they stand on the side of tainer Lines ship from three U.S. ports Militant Labour group for a "mass the article justifies scabbing, claiming the capitalist union-busters.

19 JANUARY 1996 3 Workers Vanguard interviewed death row political pri.\·;mer Mumia Ahu-Jamal at the SCI Gn'('lle maximum secu.rity l:n.tervie"1l\T prison in w('s(e/"" PCfJl1.\'.vl\'£lfliu Oil 21 lftTorkers Van.gu.ard Decemher 1995. A fi)rmer Black Panliler, su!,!,orter or Ihl' Philadelphia MOVE group and award-winning joumalist, Jamal was fi'amed and senlenced to dealh F)r Ihe l'Nil killing or a Philadel­ phia policemal/. ParI One or Ihis inll'/'­ l'ie\1' was I)rililed in WV No. ()3(). 5 Jalil/ary.

Workers Vanguard: Let's talk about the protest movement this past summer. It's amazing how your case took off around the world. One of the most inter­ esting things to us was how much sup­ port was generated among the trade unions. Your fellow journalists in Ger­ many, South Africa, Britain and many other countries made you a member uf their unions. What has this kind of sup­ port meant to you? Mumla Abu-Jamal: Like all support, you know, it kind of sends one the spirit of solidarity. By solidarity, of course, I'm not talking about the former trade union that existed in Poland, I'm talking about real solidarity, the feeling that you are a part of us. That was a feeling that was communicated by MWASA IMedia Workers Association of South Africal, by IG Medien lin Germanyl, by the writ­ ers group in France, that even in the darkest depths of death row, you are a colleague, you are a part of us. And I appreciate it. It's interesting that you mention South Africa, Germany, Great Britain, France, so on. You've mentioned nothing about the United Status Ilaughs I. And I think there's a reason for that as well. I think that in many of those countries, they see the role of journalists far differently than the journalist in the United States. The journalist in the United States is kind of a salesman for selling this system. That's other country, your cause won massive African Americans in this country and free African societies in the Americas. the undercover role. The system is never support among the working class, par­ people sucked into the apartheid system It talked about Zumbi and Palmares, to be criticized. To the extent the system ticularly black workers who identify the who had a sense of struggle, whose basic which is the state he founded, and how is to be criticized, it is to be personalized death penalty with the racist apartheid fundamental dignities and human rights African societies rebelled through the to make it the criticism of a specific per­ system. So your cause was really near were abused. And I think it's those kinds centuries over corruptiun and oppres­ son, not the whole. The system is never and dear to their hearts when they heard of clements that have lessons, one for sion. And since that time-although of to be questioned: that's the unwritten about it. the other. Of course, in the United States course I've not had occasion to speak or rule that all journalists in this society Mumia: Well, of course, for anyone who and in South Africa, the death penalty to consciously invoke that spirit-that must adhere to. You're not taught that has heen involved for any length of time has been used extrajudicially, but also was an inspiration for me. in journalism school. That's not a rule in the black liberation movement, the as a tool of white-supremacist power. 'WV: I wanted, of course, to ask you a that's written on the walls of the editor's black consciousness movement in the Not as an instrument of justice. bit about the hearings this summer in office in radio stations or newspapers. United States, many if not most of us In today's South Africa, the former Albert Sabo's court on your petition for But it's a role that comes with the terri­ have been deeply inspired by what has minister of defense, Magnus Malan, and post-conviction relief. I sat through a tory. It's communicated almost suh rosa transpired in South Africa. There are maybe 13 others were just indicted on couple of sessions, but you had to sit to all their colleagues. even very strong correlations in the civil homicide charges. It's interesting to note through the whole thing. It's also interesting when you consid<:r rights movement in relationship to South that it's been over ten years since May Mumla: Well, it wasn't fun, I'll tell you that in most other societies-like South Africa. Many of us have looked at the 13, 1985 in Philadelphia and not one that. Sabo is like "deja vu all over again." Africa, like Germany--journalists are system in South Africa and sec kind of policeman, not one politician, not one I am reminded hy a lot of questions that perceived as part of the working class. eerie parallels with the United States. government official who conspired to people, especially journalists, ask me: They're average Joes, you see, like the I know that in my personal life expe­ massacre eleven people, to bomb MOVE Well, if you had to do it all over again, guy who works at the auto factory, like rience, years ago when I was in college to death, to shoot them and to dismember would you behave at a new trial the way the guy who works at a service station. and I met black people from the whole them, not one has even been charged for you did at your old trial? Why were you In America they're perceived as the upper diaspora-the Caribbean, North Africa, a single crime! I think it speaks volumes acting so crazy? I have to use the exam­ class. They are wealthier than most. And West Africa, Central Africa-it was about which system is more progressive, ple that we saw in court. I said, well, they speak from their class perspective. those from Southern Africa who kind of that of South Africa or that of the United OK, you can say I acted out at my first And that's how they're kind of sucked touched me the deepest. I felt their kin­ States, I think because we both are living trial. But look at this hearing. Here you in, bought into this protective system at ship. Perhaps it was because in many of in systems where we have to struggle haven't heard me say one word. I've sat all costs. It's like protecting a privilege. the other countries, the African coun­ for the most basic fundamental human quietly at the defense table. Here you WV: That leads me right into South tries, people had experienced indepen­ rights and dignities, and survival, many have one of my lawyers, Rachel Wolk­ Africa. Prohably more there than in any dence. They were mostly freed. It was South Africans see similarities, Repres­ enstein, carried away in shackles, you sive societies are very much alike, and have another one of my lawyers, Leonard people who rebel against those societies Weinglass, fined $1,000 literally for not are also very much alike, moving fast enough. You have all of WV: In Brazil there have been demon­ them threatened with contempt for dar­ strations of support for you also. In ing to ask a question. You had them lit­ August there was a rally at the memorial erally threatened by the court for trying to Zumbi, who led the slave republic in to do what defense lawyers are supposed Brazil and who was murdered 300 years to do, that is; defend. ago by the slavocracy. I understand that It's very clear that what happened in your sister, Lydia Wallace, just spoke in that court had nothing to do with how I November at an international conference behaved in court; it had everything to on the anniversary of Zumbi's murder. do with the fact that this was Sabo's court­ Mumla: Yes, she just sent me some room. This was the courtroom of a life beautiful pictures of the people, people member of the Fraternal Order of Police, who were organizers, workers at the con­ This was a courtroom of the EO.P., ference. She spoke at several health con­ who literally could walk in unmolested, ferences, also a general conference. She untouched, armed, who threatened peo­ met a lot of these people, like Benedita ple, who manhandled people. I remember da Silva la black woman senator from hearing about a German journalist who the Workers Party I. She told me it was comes from Berlin, I believe. This was a life-changing experience for her. a young mother, and while she was wait­ Mumia Abu-Jamal, 1969: As Minister of Information for Phlladelohia I remember reading a book when I ing in line she wa~ brutally pushed, her Panthers, Mumia was a target of FBI's COINTELPRO campaign was in college the first time, '70-'71, a foot was stepped on. When she asked black militants. book called Maroons. And it talked about this guy why is he doing it, the cop looked 4 WORKERS VANGUARD at her-it was a cop who was doing it­ signed his name and sent it to Washing­ looked at her with utter contempt: "What ton and said: Check this signature, are you doing here'?" This was a cop doesn't it look good') Uh-huh, looks working for the city of Philadelphia bru­ great. OK, send them out. This is what talizing a journalist from overseas for the government did. And this is what daring to come to cover the hearing. they "timil they did. So, again, your tax I heard from another group, the Bru­ dollars at work-at work for the govern­ derhof-a religious Christian center--­ ment and its deception. who had come to cover the trial. One To broaden the discussion also, I guy said he went out for the lunch hreak, might add, there's a recent hook that was he was walking around City Hall, and published, written by Kenneth O'Reilly, he's doing nothing, he's simply walking Blad Americalls: The FBI Files (Carroll around, he had a few leaflets he gave to & Graf, 1994). He's the same guy who some of the young people. A cop walked wrote the hook Racial Mailers. He actu­ up to him, in full uniform with sergeant's ally documents how hack in the '30s, stripes on him, hawk-spits him right in '40s and '50s, the FBI kept files on his face. I think that for H lot of pcople, prominent black Americans like Harry and this is not just so-called Jamal sup­ Belafonte, like Dorothy Dandridge, like, porters, but for a lot of pcople the summer of course, Martin Luther King Jr. alld of 1995 was a revelation of the real heart Sr., Malcolm X when he was a prisoner and heartless message of Philadelphia, in, I think, a Massachusetts jail. It's as­ the cold, naked face of the city, No tonishing to sec how these people go to amount of P.R., posters, sweet jingles Campaign of international protest against scheduled execution of Mumla Abu­ those who do hard work, to average hard­ can replace the real horror and vicious Jamal received broad support In Brazil (above) and South Africa last summer. working Americans, to "law-abiding cit­ treatment that people got in this context. International outcry helped win stay of execution. izens," who are also the subject of FBI WV: Our newspaper has raised the de­ .". disinformation campaigns, snooping, mand that you be freed, now, that justice simply because once or twice they may will begin the day you walk out of have announced an opinion, let's say in prison. Relating back to what you just support of Martin Luther King. Or Ict's said, almost all the people involved in say they dare believe that their govern­ your original frame-up conviction and ment was their government, and they met in the penalty phase of your frame-up with someone and said: Well, we want in 1982 are all there, right'! You've got some changes. It shows that this is not the same Judge Sabo. The 1982 prose­ a new thing, that it did not hegin with cutor, Joseph McGill, is a very promi­ the Black Panther Party. It's going on nent spokesman for the F.O.P. and for now, even as we speak, and has been the District Attorney's office-he was on going on for over 50, perhaps 60 years. the radio everywhere over the summer. WV: Certainly there was heavy FBI and The current D.A., Lynne Ahraham, who Philly cop collaboration in victimizing rcally grooves on the death penalty, MOVE. We had protested the May 1985 was the original arraigning judge. Then police hombing of the MOVE horne on you've got Ron Castille, who was the Osage Avenue, and we first heard of your D.A. on the appeal, he's now on the case from some of the MOVE prison­ Pennsylvania Supreme Court. And, of ers in the Partisan Defense Committee's course, the District Attorney in 1982, Ed stipend program for victims of capital­ Rendell, is now mayor of Philadelphia. ist repression. Certainly in the 1985 This describes perfectly well the whole hombing of MOVE the FBI was all over frame-up system that passes for so­ Castille was the D.A. They were prose­ down, going through her house and drop­ that and helped plan the attack with the called justice in your case. cuted before a judge. Some of those were ping some cocaine down there and telling Philly cops, and we have to assume they Mumla: Well, there ain't none. As for before Judge Lynne Abraham when she 'em, oh, look at what we found. The worked with the police in the attack on the editorial position of the paper, I was on the bench. All of them were in very fact that that could happen to her the Powelton Village MOVE home in wholeheartedly agree. You won't hear front of judges of the Court of Common really makes it clear what could happen 1978 as well. As a reporter you covered me disagree. I think that what you're Pleas, Most of them were before the Su­ to someone who has a political history then-mayor Frank Rizzo's press confer­ talking about here is a system that perior Court on appeal or the Supreme for over 20 years. ence following that. So there's quite a rewards corruption, a system that re­ Court. All of them were denied relief­ My lawyer, Len Weinglass, points out bit of history with FBI and police vic­ wards repression, a system that rewards hundreds of people. that in fact the D.A.'s office should have timization of MOVE. the worst instincts of prosecutors, jud­ So what we're talking about is a system been introducing my FBI files as miti­ Mumla: I wouldn't just say Philadelphia ges, and all·of those in that whole pro­ that is corrupt. And not just about Jamal, gation evidence, because from the time police and FBI, and I'll tell you why. cess, It's easy when you make those anal­ not just about MOVE, but about tens I was 14 years old they've been following The weapons that the Philadelphia po­ ogies about my case. But for instance, and hundreds and thousands of everyday me, reading my mail, listening to my lice were using were weapons that were when we talk about the 39th District in people, who were not radicals, who were phone calls, putting informants on me, not provided by the FBI in Washington. Philadelphia, well, people will scream not ex-Black Panthers, who were noi the whole deal. In fact, we later learned The anti-tank weapons and ,50 calibre and cuss and point their finger at those MOVE members, but were everyday peo­ that they've actually been writing letters machine guns they were using were pro­ sick, corrupt cops who framed those hun­ ple. Like Betty Patterson, who was a in my name, bogus letters, in my name, vided by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, dreds if not thousands of people. But church-going grandmother who served to other people. This is your government ATF. The bomb components were pro­ they couldn't have done it alone, you three years and eleven months, going at work, the FBI, the government and vided by the FBI, C-4, it's a military see. Everyone of those people that were through the hell and humiliation of being the Philadelphia police department. Well, explosive. And the helicopter was pro­ framed, victims of the 39th District,.they in one of the worst prisons for women­ during all that time they never saw me vided by the Pennsylvania state police. were prosecuted by a prosecutor. Many or for anybody-in Pennsylvania. Be­ commit one crime. But they turned So all of those elements of so-called law of those prosecutions happened when cause a cop felt like kicking her door around and said: Ooh, look, he was a enforcement were integrated into one Black Panther many years ago and that's continued on paxe 10 May 1985 pollee firebombing of why you should kill him today, because Philadelphia MOVE commune, he's been planning all these years to kill approved by black Democratic cops. It's just turning the truth on its mayor Wilson Goode, with head. That's the function of policemen, explosIves and weaponry provided that's the function of the prosecutor, by FBI and BATF, killed eleven and that's the function of the jUdiciary. people and burned down entire I think we should at this juncture quote black neighborhood. Judge Sabo, aptly and accurately, on the question you raised about justice. In his words, "Justice is just an emotional feeling." . WV: It has also come out that the Philly cops kept files on some 18,000 people during the '60s and '70s. What was it like for you to read some of your new files? You got about 100 more pages this year that you didn't know about hefore. Mumla: You're talking about FBI, it wasn't Philadelphia. It was precisely in that last hundred pages, of the full 700 or 800 pages, that we found out about the letter-writing campaign of the FBI. When they raided the Panther office, I'm sure just like the Leoncavallo center in Partisan Defense Committee pam­ Milano Isee WV No. 636, 5 January], pHlet exposes government conspiracy well, they didn't just destroy the files, to railroad Mumla Abu-Jamal. To they stole the fi les. They wrote crazy order, send $.50 to PDC, P.O. Box letters, with real crazy messages, and 99 Canal St. Station, New York, NY 10013. they signed them with my name. And also another brother, they wrote and 19 JANUARY 1996 5 ism, generous subsidies to business and South Africa ... extensive state ownership and controls. But in agreeing to the "power sharing" (continued from pal?e I) arrangement, the white ruling class now the army to remain in power for five or expects the ANC to suppress worker even ten years. This is a not-sa-veiled militancy and hold down labor costs. And threat that elements of the white rul­ with a black government in Pretoria, the ing class might attempt a military capitalists are no longer willing to carry coup if the "new" South Africa proves the overhead costs of a fortress economy. not to be to their liking. And any move Despite all the pious lip service to the by the ANC to purge the white officer RDP, the actual program of the Mandela corps which still commands the army regime conforms to the neoliberal eco­ will explode the fragile neo-apartheid nomic model pfescribed by the Interna­ arrangement. tional Monetary Fund and World Bank: The Government of National Unity-­ fiscal austerity, tight control over the ranging from black African union bureau­ money supply, dismantling of trade pro­ crats to white bankers-is bound to frac­ tectionism, selling off state-owned enter­ prises or running these on the basis of ture, and when it does South Africa will AFP be thrown into a period of violent polit­ May 1994 Inauguration of Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first black market profitability. The London Finan­ ical conflict and turmoil. Already we arc president In "power sharing" deal with white capitalist ruling class. At left, cia/ Times (21 November 1995) points seeing in the province of K waZulu-Natal deputy president Thabo Mbekl. out, "Quasi-Thatcherite supply-side pol­ that the Inkatha tribalist movement, icies are replacing the protection and backed by right-wing white suprema­ make up 13 percent of South Africa's before such schooling is possible. export subsidies put in place by previous cists, has escalated its murderous attacks population) to enjoy "First World" liv­ According to the RDP, a million new administrations." For example, as part on ANC supporters. There has also been ing conditions. Skilled workers, almost houses are to be built in five years. Yet of a cost-cutting program the big state­ formed a "Coloureds Resistance Move­ exclusively white, were paid six times in the first year of the ANC-Ied regime, owned steel firm Iscor plans to reduce ment" (KWB), fighting for a "homeland" as much and middle-level managers 15 a mere 11,000 houses were built with its labor force from 4R,000 to 42,000 for coloureds and modeling itself on the times as much as black laborers. ANC government funds. over the next five years. Barlow's, a fascist Afrikaner Resistance Movement and especially SACP/COSATU spokes­ Instead of exposing and denouncing major manufacturer, is threatening to (AWB). If the many-sided tensions and men have vowed to eliminate the apart­ the Reconstruction and Development stop producing household appliances in conflicts in South African society are not heid wage structure. Legally the color Program for the sham that it is, much of South Africa because, with reduced tar­ centered around a class axis, they will bar has been abolished and blacks can the South African left agitates for the iffs, it cannot compete with cheaper be fought along racial, ethnic and tribal apply for any job. But it is still white ANC to carry out this utopian, reformist imports from East Asia. lines. In conditions of unrelieved poverty, management which decides whether or program. Typical in this regard is the The layoffs generated by the ANC-Ied if the nationalist principle prevails, Zulu not blacks get tbe better-paying jobs­ Socialist Workers Organisation, part of government's neoliberal policies occur will be set against Xhosa, black Africans and they still do not. More fundamentally, the British-centered international ten­ under conditions, more or less perma­ against coloureds and Indians, South the technical and administrative skills dency led by Tony Cliff, which writes: nent, in which half of the black work­ Africans against immigrant workers and needed to run a modern industrial econ­ "There is no real shortage of money. The force has no regular, full-time employ- refugees-and this will be done by self­ omy are concentrated in the dominant styled "progressives" in the ANC alliance white caste. Over half of the adult black '"Q) no less than by open reactionaries. A frican popUlation cannot read, a result ~ ~ Already the housing program under of the "bantustan education" imposed by z since-deceased SACP leader Joe Siovo the apartheid rulers. ~ Q) led to an explosion of hostility to col­ For significant numbers of blacks to ;; Il. oureds, as the government tried to collect become skilled workers, technicians and back rents from them (but not from black administrators will therefore require a Africans). A revolutionary workers party massive financial expenditure on educa­ must be built to lead the working class tion and training. Obviously the white in til" .l'tI'UKK/" .fl)J' state power, drawing capitalists are not going to do this. And behind it the rest of the oppressed black the Government of National Unity is African, coloured and Indian masses committed to not raise taxes on business along with non-racist whites. or otherwise redistribute wealth from the Such a revolutionary party will not affluent white community to the impov­ simply defend the economic interests of erished black toilers. In fact, the ANC Armed supporters of reactionary Zulu the workers against capital but will com­ would not do so even if it governed independently of De Klerk's National tribalist Inkatha bat all the manifold forms of oppression Freedom Party which beset South Africa: the demolition Party. marching In of squatter camps in the townships and Like all popular fronts, the ANC/ Johannesburg eviction of farm laborers from the land, SACP/COSATU tripartite alliance prac­ In 1994. the deportation of "illegal" immigrants tices a division of labor between its and refugees from neighboring African bourgeois and labor-reformist compo­ states, the degradation of women by, for nents. Mandela and his No. 2 man, example, such tribalist patriarchal prac­ Thabo Mbeki, reassure the spokesmen tices as polygamy and lohola (bride for capital at home and abroad that they price). South Africa conforms in an are committed to serving their interests. exceptionally clear way to Trotsky's South. Africa's first black president conception of permanent revolution: declared that one of his most impor­ real problem is the greedy minority who ment. Bourgeois economists project that national liberation and social and eco­ tant accomplishments was creating "an control most of it. It's time the ANC of the 400,000 black youth who will nomic modernization in backward coun­ investor-friendly environment." At the stopped trying to impress these scum and leave school this year, only between tries can be achieved only through pro­ same time, SACP and COSATU leaders got on with meeting RDP promises" 50,000 and 100,000 will be able to find letarian revolution and its international arc pushing the Reconstruction and (Socialist Worker, 16 August 1995). As jobs in the so-called formal sector of the extension to the advanced capitalist Development Program (RDP), which if the bourgeois party of Mandela, economy, i.e., government bodies, cor­ countries. promises dramatic improvements in the Mbeki, Ramaphosa & Co. could be pres­ porations or other white-owned busi­ conditions of the black masses. For sured to act in the interests of the black nesses. The large majority will either be "Neoliberalism" Comes to example, it calls for ten years of free, toilers! The ANC leaders have become unemployed or eke out a living as petty Neo-Apartheld South Africa compulsory education for all children in the political agents for the greedy minor­ traders, day laborers, doing whatever The economic bedrock of the apartheid South Africa. But the minister of educa­ ity who control most of the money in they can to survive. system was the superexploitation of black tion has already reneged on this, saying South Africa, a job for which they are workers, which enabled the whites (who that it will take seven or eight years being quite well rewarded. ANC Demobilizing Black Historically, South African capitalism Workers Movement ~ has rested on the superexploitation of In 1986, the leadership of the newly '"3 0' black labor, including many contract formed COSATU issued a joint state­ '" "'Z workers drawn from outside the country's ment with the ANC proclaiming the lat­ ..,..: borders, in the mining sector. The profits ter as head of the "national liberation '3 from the Rand gold fields, along with movement." In turn, COSATU was '"w the platinum, diamond, coal and other declared to be "an important and integral Rura~ black mines, have supported a modern manu­ part" of the "democratic forces of our family's home facturing industry producing both stra­ country." In subsequent years, the unions destroyed tegic goods (e.g., armaments) and con­ acted as the main mass combat organi­ last year sumer goods (e.g., autos) for the affluent zations in undermining the apartheid sys­ after eviction by white landowner, white community. The emergence of a tem. Strikes, even around narrow eco­ A Bolshevik powerful and combative trade-union nomic issues, were viewed by the black workers party movement coupled with a particular eco­ populace as weakening the white power In South Africa Is nomic structure has over the past decade structure as, in fact, they did. needed that raised wages in key manufacturing sec­ But now the language of nationalism would defend tors in South Africa to a level higher and "nation building" is being used all the than in Latin America and some East against the black workers movement. oppressed. Asian countries. For strategic reasons, ANC leaders are trying to mobilize black the Afrikaner nationalist regime sought sentiment against the unions, claiming to maximize the country's economic self­ that the relatively high wages in the sufficiency through trade protection- industrial sector are responsible for mass 6 WORKERS VANGUARD structure, The local authorities have divided Greater Johannesburg into four sub-districts, each of which has the power to negotiate its own separate agreement with the municipal workers union. This would mean that workers in the affluent white suburbs and downtown business district would get far higher wages than those in the impoverished black town­ Black COSATU ships, thus "perpetuating the social and trade unionists demonstrate In economic apartheid that we have inher­ Johannesburg ited" in the words of local SAMWU last June to leader Mbongeni Mabaso (Johannesburg Improve terms of Slar, 27 September 1995). new Labour The strike began in spectacular fash­ Relations Act, ion on September 26, as the workers which alms to stormed through the streets overturning shackle labor garbage bins, uprooting trees and open­ militancy through ing underground water pipes. The bour­ class geois media was scandalized by "the coliaboration. trashing of downtown Jo'burg." But the union bureaucrats used the "trashing" of Jo 'burg-letting the workers blow off steam-as a substitute for a genuinely effective strike. No attempt was made to cut off electric power or the water sup­ unemployment in the townships and line is replaced by back room deals. In itant trade unionism. Yet this is the line abject poverty in the countryside. Strikes June, the metal workers signed a three­ pushed by groups to the left of the ply. Nor were picket lines set up at key workplaces to prevent scabbing. and shop f100T militancy are blamed year deal with the auto companies, in­ ANC/SACP. For example, the Interna­ for repelling multinational corporations cluding a no-strike pledge, which was tional Socialist Movement (ISM), the An experienced trade unionist and from investing in South Africa. Mandela hailed as a model for harmonious labor more leftist of the two Cliffite groups in supporter of the International Commu­ has denounced some unions for contin­ relations in Mandela's South Africa. Yet the country, ran a front-page headline in nist League, who was in Johannesburg at the time, reported: uing a policy of resistance rather than a few months later thousands ,of workers its press, "Build the Fightback." After switching to "reconstruction." at Volkswagen's giant plant in the East­ "Several times during these rallies I saw denouncing the attacks on the working angry workers rush the podium and ask The new Labour Relations Act (LRA) ern Cape walked out to protest the firing class carried out by the Government why were some of their members work­ aims to place the trade-union movement of a fellow worker as a result of a fist­ of National Unity, the Revolutionary ing during the strike? The bureaucrats in a straitjacket of tight government con­ fight with a white foreman. Socialist (August 1995) concludes: handled this hy retorting, 'Hey, you're trol. COSATU general secretary Sam The immediate aftermath of Man­ "We have to rebuild our democratic, rank asking the wrong people,' implying that and file organisation. Our unions arc us. the workers who were angry about this Shilowa. a member of the SACP Central dela's election as president in May 1994 development should be 'talking' to the Committee, approvingly stated that the saw a sharp upsurge of black labor strug­ They do not helong to the bureaucracy. United on the shopfloor we can win the scabs. But no picket lines were set up to LRA's "primary purpose" is to "mini­ gle. Since then, however, the ANC-Ied democracy and independence necessary keep them out. It was quite clear that the mize conflict on the shop floor." An government and allied union bureaucrats to fight hack against the rotten deal." hureaucrats were not fighting to win and were maneuvering to get the ranks back oppositional resolution by the chemical have succeeded in dampening worker This amounts to nothing more than a to work, which they finally managed to workers union summed up the nature and militancy. For the first three quarters of call for militant economism within the achieve eight days later by accepting a intent of this corporatist legislation: last year, man-hours lost to strikes framework of neo-apartheid capitalism. mediation deal." "The main objective of the new La­ totaled R70,000 compared to a five-year But to break the working class and The strike saw the white ruling-class bour Relations Bill is to push the work­ annual average of 2.6 million. Further­ plebeian masses from the nationalist parties and ANC use a typical hard ing class into a collaborating and co­ more, the most significant labor strug­ popular-frontism of the tripartite alliance cop/soft cop approach. In the Greater operative relationship with the bosses gles which have taken place have either through the employee hased workplace requires a revolutionary vanfiuard party Johannesburg Transitional Metropolitan forums. This will undermine the political been defused or defeated outright. fifihtinfi FJr a black-centered workers Council, representatives of the National and ideological fabric of the trade union A major auto strike in July-August fiovernment. Party moved to take "disciplinary action" movement." 1994 was ended on the companies' terms against all strikers. The ANC councilmen -New Nalion, 27 October 1995 when the government ordered a cut in Municipal Workers and abstained, thereby allowing the motion A new, lucrative profession has devel­ tariffs on imported cars, a clear threat to Nurses Strike' to pass. At the same time, ANC labor oped for South African ex-leftists who the workers' jobs. A month later, a high­ minister Tito Mboweni entered the scene,' didn't 'make it into parliament or gov­ way blockade by long-distance truckers The anti-working-class character of stating that "all of us would like to see ernment office. They've set up labor organized by the militant breakaway the ANC-Ied regime was clearly demon­ normality return as quickly as possible," mediation' services since they speak the Turning Wheel Workers Union was dis­ strated in different ways by the munici­ and called for statutory mediation with same political language as the union persed by the police and army at gun­ pal workers' and nurses' strikes, both of the threat of compulsory arbitration if bureaucrats, who are in many cases theiF point. This September, a strike by munic­ which took place in late September-early that didn't work. The SAMWU bureau­ former comrades-in-arms. ipal workers was shunted onto the track October. The first, organized by the crats were more than willing to "return However, it will not be easy to get of government mediation. And, most South African Municipal Workers Union to normality," that is, the neo-apartheid black workers to accept government­ ominously, the nurses strike last fall was (SAMWU), involved some 50,000 work­ system. regulated "business unionism," where condemned as "counterrevolutionary" ers in more than 40 cities and towns in Because the municipal workers were the fight on the shop floor and picket by SACP/COSATU bureaucrats while four provinces. The strike was centered in a COSATU-affiliated union, the ANC/ the government threatened-and later in Johannesburg, the country's major SACP leaders responded to their strike carried out-mass firings of the nurses. metropolis, and also embraced the cap­ through diplomatic maneuvering. The As a letter recently received from a ital city of Pretoria, nurses, however, were given the bare­ South African militant reports: In the "new" South Africa as in the knuckles treatment. This strike-or "The South African society is increas­ old, striking black workers invariably rather its underlying causes-also dem­ ingly becoming divided along racial face attacks by the police. In Johannes­ onstrated in a very clear way the sham lines: De Klerk's Nationalist Party was burg, they used tear gas and stun gre­ of the ANC's social reform program lobbying the extreme right-wing organ­ nades, which proved ineffectual against embodied in the Reconstruction and isations, Constant Yiljoen's Freedom the strikers. But in Pretoria the cops used Development Program. Front and the Conservative Party, to form an election pact against the ANC which rubber bullets and in Pietersburg live One of the first acts of the Mandela never succeeded. On the other hand, the ammunition. At least one striker was government was to decree free health Popular Front government is starting to killed. care for all children under the age of six use an iron fist against the working class. The strike in Johannesburg was basi­ at local clinics and hospitals. But no I am going to give you typical examples of a growing tendency: Tuesday, 5 Sep­ cally directed against the apartheid wage continued on page 8 temher 1995, City Deep Market strike, workers go on strike demanding at least R300 rUS$80j minimum a week. The highest paid worker is taking home R 140 a week. Bosses offer R26 increase and t arrogantly tcll workers 'to go to hell' if not satisfied by that dehumanising wage r;7IL'l1t'UZt ltI'l1/1/) offer-far below the breadline. Workcrs block the entrance to the market and Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League refuse to move when told to. Police are called-apparatus of organised violence o $10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal against the whole populafion. Strikers (includes English-language Spartacist, Women and Revolution are brutally forced out while many are and Black History and the Class Struggle) arrested, including those with blood­ international rates: $25/22 Issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamsil soaked faces." o $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist) South African capital and its partners in Wall Street and the City of London o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espaiiol) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist) cannot and will not long tolerate the Name ______powerful and combative black workers Address ______movement which developed in the last Highway blockade by long-distance period of direct white-supremacist rule. ______Apt.# Phone (_) ______Thus, this is a dangerous period for the truckers In September 1994, or­ City state Zip, _____---;;;;; ganized by militant Turning Wheel South African proletariat. Trade-union 637 Workers Union, was dispersed by gains in South Africa today cannot be Make checks payable/mall to: Sparlaclst Publlshtng Co., Box 1377 GPO. New York, NY 10116 police and army at gunpoint. defended simply with a program of mil- 19 JANUARY 1996 7 and would, under_Jhe pressure of the masses, destroy the power of the white South Africa ... ruling elite. (continued limn paRe 7) The ANC, perhaps bolstered by the additiollal jimds were allocated to hire arrest of Malan, won a clear-cut victory in the November I local elections, gain­ more nurses and other health care work­ ers. Quite the contrary! As part of the ing two-thirds of the vote with a respect­ able turnout among black Africans. regime's commitment to fiscal austerity, government spending cuts closed down However, this vote was heavily concen­ hospital wards, deprived clinics of drugs trated among older blacks, whose deep­ and medical staff of e4uipment needed seated loyalty to the ANC derives from to treat patients. The lines in front of the decades-long struggle against the hospitals and clinics arc endless, people apartheid state. Furthermore, shortly in need of treatment have to wait forever before the elections the Mandela regime and the 4uality of public health care is had falsely promised to raise benefits for poor since nurses and other health care old-age pensioners. workers are terrihly overburdened. In Expressing the approval of American some hospitals nurses have to single­ imperialism, the New York Times (12 handedly manage wards of up to 50 November 1995) commented on the elections: "the results suggest that the vot­ patients. ing black majority is an anomaly in this As in other countries, many nurses in day and age: an electorate with a high South Africa, who are overwhelmingly Growing discontent with neo-apartheld exploitation WillS reflected in nurses' degree of tolerance and patience, despite black or coloured, consider themselves strike last September. Nurses called Mandela "driver of the gravy train." the ruling party's shortcomings." What "professionals" distinct from the mass the results actually indicate is that in the of industrial workers. Only a minority seems to have caused some' tension within ularity and authority. Under the head­ ahsence of a revolutionary working-class of nurses are organized by the COSATU the SACP, for the African Commullist line "Don't Give the Nats a Chance," alternative the black masses retain their union covering health care workers. The (Third Quarter 1995) criticized the "alle­ the Socialist Worker (6 September 1995) traditional loyalty to the ANC against the main body of nurses sought to represent gation, which is sometimes heard from maintained "we must vote for the ANC parties of the white ruling class. their interests in a newly formed asso­ within our own alliance ranks," that the in order to defend the reforms we have The electIons did not, and by their ciation, Nursing Forum, which, however, striking nurses and also municipal work­ won from the system" while adding "we nature could not, reveal the increasing was not recognized by the government ers had been "manipulated by third force shouldn't be under any illusions that discontent and tensions within the as a union. elements. " they will lead a fight for full realisation in directly attacking Mandela the of our needs." The bourgeois-nationalist ANC's social base, especially its strate­ When the nurses demanded a 33 per­ nurses showed themselves far to the left ANC has become the main political agent gic core: the unionized industrial prole­ cent across-the-board pay increase and of self-styled "revolutionary socialists" administering the exploitation of South tariat. Those discontents and tensions improved working conditions, ANC offi­ in South Africa. These groups criticize Africa's black toilers by domestic and were clearly revealed at a meeting of the cials tlat out said that no more money the ANC regime in ever-so-polite terms foreign capital. But the Socialist Workers Witwatersrand regional shop stewards was available for health care. Mandela and never in a way disrespectful to Man­ Organisation, self-described supporters council in August, where delegates got on television and in effect told the dela. Thus, the Workers Organisation for of "workers struggles against the bosses' blasted the Labour Relations Bill as a nurses to go to hell. The minister of Socialist Action (WOSA) of Neville greed," portray the ANC as representing "miserable compromise." Far more sig- health, Nkosazana Zuma, sought to whip Alexander issued a leatlet, "Support the interests, albeit inade4uately and par­ up popular feeling against them, declar­ Nurses and Municipal Workers," which tially, of the black masses. ing that a "strike will put innocent lives doesn't even mention the role of the at risk." In addition to the demagogic In order to divert attention from their ANC/SACP in breaking the first strike attacks of the ANC leaders, the nurses own right-wing social and economic pol­ and sabotaging the other. also confronted a pervasive disdain for icies, Mandela & Co. made a show of women in a society saturated with patri­ Without a trade-union organization of political militancy against the white archal attitudes. An article sympathetic their own, without lhe support of and right. Two days before the elections, the to the nurses in the Johanneshurg Star even facing opposition from COSATU, ministry of safety and security an­ (7 October 1995) noted that "the strike and with the prospect of wholesale dis­ nounced that arrest warrants had been escalated to the point that it did because missals, the nurses resorted to a series issued for former defense minister Mag­ the strikers were women working in a of one-day wildcats. But this tactic could nus Malan and ten retired military offi­ profession whose main attributes are not be sustained and the strike petered cers for their involvement in a 1987 mas­ compassion and servility." out by mid-October, broken by the ANC sacre of black Africans, mainly women regime and its labor tieutenants. In the and children, in KwaZulu-Natal. Malan But the nurses were anything but ser­ aftermath, 6,000 nurses were dismissed and his colleagues were the supposed vile. On the picket lines, many carried by the prov i ncial government of the "third force" which financed and trained signs reading "Away with Zuma" and Eastern Cape headed by Raymond the terrorist squads of the Zulu tribalist sang derogatory songs they had made up Mhlaba, who is also national chairman Inkatha in its war against the ANC. about Mandela, whom they labeled "the of the SACP! Everyone in South Africa knows that the driver of the gravy train." This was some­ former defense minister of the white­ Former apartheid defense minister thing new. It has become commonplace For a Bolshevik Workers supremacist regime acted with the full for black working people to complain Magnus Malan, recently charged in Party In South Africa! knowledge and approval of his then 1987 massacre of ANC supporters. that the ANC-Ied government has done boss, F.W. De Klerk. And Inkatha chief nothing to improve their lives and to de­ In the weeks leading up to the nation­ Mangosuthu Buthelezi, now a minister nificantly, some even called for an end nounce "the gravy train." However, Man­ wide local elections in early November, in the Government of National Unity, to the tripartite alliance "so that we can dela was considered sacrosanct. His per­ ANC spokesmen openly voiced concern was obviously also deeply involved. fight the enemy." "How can we fight sonal authority is a key factor in holding that the black populace was becoming An important, though unwritten, with the government," one shop steward down the explosive contradictions gen­ apathetic and disillusioned with the slow clause in the "power sharing" agreement asked rhetorically, "if we are in an alli­ erated by the neo-apartheid arrangement. pace of social reforms. Even De Klerk was that officials of the former apartheid ance with it?" (South African Lahour demagogically lambasted the ANC for Thus the nurses' attack on Mandela, regime would not be prosecuted for their Bulletin, September 1995). failing to build houses, while at the same far more than the strike as such, threw crimes. Key sections of the white ruling What kind of struggle is necessary time lashing out at strike actions for "dis­ the leaders of the tripartite alliance into class now see Mandela & Co. breaking to break the black workers movement rupting services." a frenzy. A number of SACP/COSATU this promise under the pressure of the from the bourgeois-nationalist ANC? The bureaucrats branded the nurses' action Much of the South African left moved black masses. De Klerk predictably conventional designation of the ANC/ a "counterrevolutionary strike." This to shore up the ANC's faltering pop- declared that "selective prosecutions are SACP/COSATU "tripartite alliance" ex­ totally unacceptable" and that the action presses an important fact about South against his former defense minister was African politics. It is the Communist harming "racial reconciliation." For the Party which is the crucial link between SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY first time since Mandela was elected the now openly pro-capitalist ANC lead­ National OffIce: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860 president, t

cold through denying them all state ben­ attempt to use racism, to keep the work­ Revolution of October 1917. The Labour Dockers ... efits. Besides mass protest, the trade ing classes of the world divided and at Party is a hourgeois workers party, with unions must block the implementation each other's throats. To protect "British" a working-class base but a pro-capitalist {continued from pu/{e 3) of the racist checks on immigration status jobs, workers are supposed to accept leadership. Blair wants to turn back the of the bosses' state (which they want by government agencies and employers. worsening conditions and pay. Such pro­ clock, and sever the links with the trade [Labour Party leader Tony I Blair to These government attacks fuel race tectionist poison fuels racism, and stands unions: to abandon even the pretence administer), that they haven't even given terror on the slreets. Fascist attacks on in stark contrast to the recent acts of of class independence. Arthur Scargill official backing to the dockers. Thanks Asians and blacks have become an en­ international solidarity with the Liver­ wants to maintain ·the pretence. to the T&G leadership's treachery, the demic part of British society-reinforced pool dockers. British workers cannot see But the working cIass doesn't need a port bosses have been able to bring in by the official action of the capitalist the Australian and American workers pretence-it needs the real thing: a party scab "replacement" workers to work the state. In December, Alton Manning, a who blacked [boycotted] the scab ships which actually represents the separate docks. Repeatedly, mass rallies in sup­ 33-year-old black man, died after a vio­ as the "enemy," but as their firmest allies class interests of the proletariat, which port of the dockers have brought out lent attack by warders in the privately-run in the class struggle. The protectionist can only be satisfied by a workers state. thousands of supporters from across the Blackenhurst prison in Redditch. The rubbish pushed by so-called left-wingers A revolutionary party will be built by country, including Fire Brigades Union same month, cops beat to death a young in and around the Labour Party, such as widening the contradictions and antago­ members who have carried out a series black Brixton man, Wayne Douglas, the call for import controls on foreign nism between the aspirations and objec­ of strikes againsl the job-slashing attacks seven months afler the similar bludgeo"n­ coal advocated by Arthur Scargill, is a tive interests of the working class, cen­ of the Labour-controlled Liverpool local ing to death of Brian Douglas. When reactionary non-answer to the "free mar­ trally organised in the trade unions, authority. But demonSTrations alone will protesters gathered in Brixton on 14 De­ ket" ideology of Major and Blair. against the policies and actions of the noT win This dispUTe: only a complete cember to demonstrate against the killing pro-capitalist leadership. Marxists seek shut-down 4 the porT will stop the scah of Wayne Douglas, they were met by a The Labour Party Has Never to win the support of the working-class operaTion altogeTher! huge cop mobilisation. The cops openly Had a Socialist Soul base of reformist parties like Labour, in The 500 dockers who are on strike carried sub-machine guns that night. Much to the dismay of the majority order to build up a vanguard party like have the determination to win this strug­ When the crowd began to dissipate, the of left Labour MPs (and of not a few Lenin's Bolsheviks, which can lead the gle, but they don'l have the power on cops moved in, jabbing people with their Labour-loyal "revolutionary" groups), working class to victory in the class bat­ their own. The labour movement as' a batons. The resulting riot they provoked Arthur Scargill is making noises about tles which will rend apart the new world whole has the potential, but it is shackled was an outpouring of youth anger and breaking from Tony Blair's discredited disorder. The purpose of the Spartacist by a trade-union leadership which across frustration involving running battles with "New Labour" Party, and forming a League, British section of the Interna­ The hoard fears unleashing that power cops and attacks on shops and cars. The breakaway Socialist Labour Party [whose tional Communist League, is to pursue because they don't want to jeopardise police and press responded with an formation he announced in a January 13 this perspective, in order to bring about Tony Blair's election and their own cozy hysterical witch hunting campaign accus­ press conference]. The Socialist Workers the overthrow of bloody British imperi­ relations with the capitalist bosses. They ing Guyana-born barrister Rudy Narayan Party (in line with Labour left Tony Benn) alism, its monarchy, House of Lords and quake in fear of a strike declared "ille_ and other demo speakers of "igniting vio­ cautions against departing from Labour, parliament, and to replace it with a gal" by the bosses' state. Well, the only lence." Down with the police and bosses' announcing that "a vote for Labour is a federation of workers republics. For a "illegal" strike is one that loses! Strike media witch hunt! Defend the Brixton class vote" (Socialist Worker, II Novem­ workers government based on workers action alongside the dockers at Vauxhall anti-racist jJrotesters! ber 1995). This is a counterposition to councils (soviets) to expropriate the Ellesmere Port and Ford Halewood The great miners strike of 1984-85 Scargill, not from the left, but from the bourgeoisie! _ would make Merseyside a launching pad won powerful support in the black and right. Workers Power enthuses over Scar­ for the working-class fightback we so Asian communities in British cities, pre­ gill's SLP initiative but their fundamental sorely need. cisely because these communities saw loyalty to Labourism is captured graph­ Spartacist· League in the miners the potential power to ically by the statement that a "revolution­ No Deportatlonsl innict a decisive blow against the whole ary" Socialist Labour Party "would call Public Offices Down With the Asylum Bilil apparatus of police brutality ,and oppres­ for a vote for Labour in any constituency -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ All across Europe there has been a sion which was also aimed at them. Sim­ where there was no revolutionary candi­ resurgence of anti-immigrant hysteria ilarly, the international campaign to save date, and continue to demand that Labour Bay Area and blatant racism, as each national cap­ the life of the American black journalist acts in the interests of those workers" Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) italist cIass seeks to divert the anger of Mumia Ahu-Jamal has galvanised sup­ (Workers Power, December 1995). Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 the working masses by pointing the finger port from workers around the world who The problem with Scargill's proposal at immigrants and minorities as the real understand that the racist imperialist is not that he wants to break from the Chicago "enemy." The British ruling class today, American state which wants to execute Tue •. :5:00-9:00p.m.,Sat.: 11 :00a.m.-2:00p.m. Labour Party, but the reformist politics 181 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor no less than during the Empire, rests on him is their enemy as well. Such soli­ of the party that he wants to create. Scar­ Chicago, illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 hrutal divide-and-rule: the Asylum and darity can be a powerful force propelling gill cites Blair's junking of the 1918 Immigration Bill threatens thousands of working-class struggle, if it is con­ constitutional Clause IV as the definitive New York City sciously mobilised and channelled by a Tues.: 8:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. refugees with deportation, torture Jlnd betrayal of Labour's "socialist" soul. 41 Warren St. (one block below death, while condemning the vast major­ revolutionary programme and party. But Clause IV was never more than a Chambers St. near Church- St.) ity of asylum seekers to a life of begging, The capitalists attempt to use nation­ fig leaf to improve Labour's "socialist" New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 soup kitchens, or death from hunger and alism and the "national interest," as they credentials in the wake of the Bolshevik 19 JANUARY 1996 9 California Bans Prisoner Interviews As the U.S. prison population grows Foremost among the prisoners they daily, the country's racist rulers rapidly are silencing is former L.A. Black Pan­ eliminate what little is left of "prison­ ther Party leader Geronimo ji Jaga ers' rights." The chain gang is back in (Pratt), who has been the subject of a the South, access to education is with­ numher of newspaper and TV reports drawn, legal services for prisoners to disproving the charges on which he was challenge the brutality of racist guards imprisoned. For over 25 years, Geron­ and their bosses aFe on the chopping imo has been imprisoned for a 1968 block. Now, in what will most likely murder in Santa Monica which the gov­ start a trend across the country, Cali­ ernment knows he did not commit. In fornia prison officials are banning his recently published book, FBI Secrets: inmates from face-to-face interviews An Agent's Expose, former agent M. WV Photo with reporters. Wesley Swearingen reveals that there Geronimo jl Jaga (PraH), Prison authorities contend that their were at least three different sets of FBI America's foremost class-war prisoner, was Interviewed In motivation is to eliminate what they wiretaps on Panther offices revealing 1987 by 60 Minutes (right), deem to he interviews for "entertain­ that Geronimo was 400 miles away in which was refused further . ment" purposes and allow only those Oakland at the time of the murder. Interviews, they consider "legitimate news." These Geronimo has tenaciously fought to draconian restrictions are of a piecc with prove his innocence and to expose the including restricting paralegal visits. lowing announcement of the publica­ Supreme Court decisions and Congres­ FBI's deadly COINTELPRO operations Litigation challenging the ongoing tion last year of his book, Live Fum sional legislation to do away with the against the Panthers. Every time his case harassment of Geronimo, first filed Death Row. Visits from paralegal assis­ right of Iwheas corlJUs challenges to has caught the interest of the press in 1989 by Partisan Defense Commit­ tants were restricted and Jamal's legal convictions and sentences. They arc and won increased support, prison offi­ tee counsel Valerie West and Geroni­ correspondence was intercepted; in intended to prevent cxposure of hid co us cials have retaliated. In January 1994, mo's attorney Stuart Hanlon, is still addition, he was barred from speaking prison conditions like those at the noto­ when FOX TV aired a three-part series pending. Three months ago, prison otl"i­ with the media for eight months. Jamal riously hrutal Pelican Hay "super­ detailing his innocence, prison offi­ cials turned down 60 Minutes' request described his fight against this harass­ maximum" prison ncar the Oregon hor­ cials immediately transferred Geron­ to interview Geronimo. ment in the first part of our interview der, and to prevent victims of the racist imo to Mule Creek prison. placed him In a similar vein, Pennsylvania death with him (see WV No. 636, 5 January). frame-up system from proving their in a douhle cell and intensified a pattern row political prisoner Mumia Abu­ Drop the ban on interviews with pris­ innocence. of interfering with his right to counsel, Jamal suffered punitive measures fol- oners! Free all class-war prisoners!

party after the rally you could hear a pin trialists. or the military-industrial com­ Mumia: I think the real reason you need Mumia ... drop when your statement was played plex. So unless people organize to push capital punishment, of course, is tied to by tape. People were exhausted, they forward those interests in their countries. the destruction of the capital infrastruc­ (colltinued ./i"om flage 5) were cold. and they were very happy. then they will be organized against their ture in terms of jobs we need, in terms unholy ohjective, to destroy MOVE, kill they were very jubilant. It was powerful. best interests, against their very life, by of industry unable to serve the needs of thcm root and branch. Again, when Mumia: Long live John Africa. utilizing their own nationalism, racism, this country, in terms of not hiring peo­ you look at the corollaries hetween what ple. They know that there are people who WV: We were struck in reading what of all of those chauvinisms. happened in Philadelphia, May 13,1985, are going to rebel against the poverty your FBI files were made public that When you think about wartime, no and the political murders that happened and hunger and homelessness that's apparently one of your first acts of pro­ matter what you're talking about­ in South Africa against the anti-apartheid going to result. They need places to cage test was at a rally commemorating the Vietnam War, Korean War,world war, movement, the ANC, SWAPO and so that growing number. They need those victims of the atomic bombing of Hiro­ whatever-they utilize those real deep­ forth, you see how there was no differ­ places. shima and Nagasaki. seated hatreds. That means people from ence hetween one branch of the govern­ America going to Vietnam and killing WV: In closing, I wonder if you have Mumla: Yeah, I think it was 1969. ment and another, b€cause their objec­ over 2 million people and calling them any additional comments for our tives were ultimately the same. They WV: Well, this year the 50th anniver­ "gooks." People from the United States readers? worked together no matter what their sary of the end of World War II was used going to Japan and talking about "Japs" Mumla: Well, I thank the readers for department was, and their objective was by the ruling class to promote a very -that racist projection that is so easily providing me a platform. As any writer, to destroy revolutionary organizations. ugly wave of anti-Asian racism. Clearly, used by the state to achieve its narrow the best thing for me writing is to be WV: The first opportunity our organiza­ the U.S. sees Japan as one of its main interests, and its economic interests. But read. And I thank your readers for read­ tion had to actually work with you was competitors in the post-Soviet world. So they're never the people's interests. So ing my writings. It makes me feel as if when you gave a very powerful state­ I wondered if you had any comments on they should organize, they should fight, I'm a part of your lives, and it makes ment to the Labor/Black Moblization, in this. organize and fight to create a war against me less isolated. I should also let you November of 1988, in Philadelphia Mumla: The question is to really talk the rulers. know the latest issue, WV No. 635, was against the Ku Klux Klan and the skin­ about the future. Unless masses of peo­ WV: I wondered if you might have a held up by the prison. heads. The PDC wrote to the state to ple around the world begin to organize comment on Lynne Abraham's trip to WV: It's been a privilege, and we look demand that you be given a special in their hest interests, then the elite, in Poland, where she said that if you're forward to hearing more from you in the parole to address the rally, because you terms of the ruling class of their coun­ going to have capitalism, you need cap­ future. belonged there. tries. will begin organizing them against ital punishment. Mumla: Give my love to everybody. _ Mumla: Right. their best interests. War is never in the interests of the poor, never in the inter­ WV: And of course they refused. ests of the working people, never in the Mumla: Of course. interests of the masses of the country, WV: But I can say this: at the victory but always in the interests of the indus- our Copy of S-STRUGGLE The,. Is No Justice In lIIe Capitalist -,-Courts No. 23 Free Mumia Now! Winter 1995-96 • Includes: • Mumia Abu-Jamal Fights Prison Harassment • The Red Month of November • Free Geronimo- ji Jaga Nowl • Federal Court Turns Down Appeal of Union Militant Jerry Dale Lowe • Leonard Peltier Fights Racist Frame-Up

With your contribution of $5 or more receive a subscription to ClaSS-Struggle Defense Notes. Emergency press conferences by International writers' group PEN protesting For a single copy of issue No. 23 send 50¢ to: Impending execution of Mumla Abu-Jamal were held In Paris (above) and New Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal 51. 5ta., New York, NY 10013 York City, 1 August 1995. 10 WORKERS VANGUARD self a member of the Sweeney "team." union-busters. Council 37, is sweating bullets trying to NYC Strike ... Scabs hired before the strike immedi­ On January 10, a meeting of the Cen­ ram through a similar package for city ately started appearing inside the office tral Labor Council drew over 100 offi­ workers. And in late December, the heav­ (('ontinued from paRe J 2) buildings. That was to be expected, but cials from New York unions to discuss ily black and Hispanic Local 420 munic­ lower wage levels of maintenance work­ the real scandal is that union electricians, how to deal with the strike. At a press ipal hospital workers, who face massive ers in other parts of the country. The operating engineers, plumbers and ele­ conference the next day, Bevona de­ layoffs and closures, voted against Hill's building owners' union-busting assault vator repairmen are crossing picket lines clared that the other unions would be contract by 4,402 to 34! The sentiment in what is still the strongest bastion of with the approval of both 32B-32J and "honoring our picket lines" and support is there for an explosion of union strug­ organized labor in the U.S. is a frontal their own union tops! One worker outside the strike "any way they can." However, gle, which could link up with the jani­ challenge. As one striker told Workers the World Trade Center (WTC) told no officials from other unions showed tors' strike, but what's missing .is the Vanguard, "They want to bust our union, Workers Vanguard, "We should shut the up, and when pressed to explain.exactly leadership to take it forward. like they did to PATCO" air traffic con­ whole place down. All the unions should what the Teamsters and skilled· trades In his own way, John Sweeney recog­ trollers in 1981. be out." would do, he said they would only do nizes this potential for an explosive labor The New York Times (15 January) head­ Dozens of janitors gathered outside what they could "legally"-i.e., what­ upsurge-and fears it like the plague. lined, "High-Stakes Strike: Building the Twin Towers in the first days of the ever the bosses will allow. He added, Remarking on how impressed he was by Workers'Walkout May Set Union Pattern strike to block the street near the main "What that means remains to be seen." the recent mass strikes in France, the Nationwide," noting that new AFL-CIO loading dock, confronting delivery driv­ Beyona's business unionism is a dead AFL-CIO chief quickly added, "I hope president John Sweeney came out of ers and turning many of them away. Half end. But the only opposition to Bevona it never comes to that here in America." Local 32B-32J. Everyone is watching to of WTC's 600-plus janitors are women within the union is an outfit frequently From failing to build picket lines to see how the shock waves of the wretched who have been instrumental in stopping touted in the bourgeois press. To sup­ refusing to defend black people against betrayal of the Caterpillar strike (see page deliveries. But at hundreds of smaller posedly fight corruption, "Members for pervasive cop terror, the labor bureau­ a Better Union" is playing a treacherous crats are sworn enemies of class struggle game of suing the union and local offi­ against the capitalist rulers. The key to cials in the bosses' courts. Letting pros­ unleashing labor's muscle is to sweep ecutors and court-appointed monitors out the pro-Democratic Party agents of pry into union affairs is the kiss of death capital within the unions, and transform for workers' struggle. Labor's got to the unions into instruments of revolu­ clean its own house! tionary struggle against capitalism. Going to the courts against the union Aclass-struggle leadership of the labor feeds right into the employers' strike­ movement will be forged in the fight for breaking. Striking janitors have already a workers party. This is what the Spar­ suffered close to a hundred arrests. tacist League fights for, a party that cham­ Police have taken to ambushing strikers: pions the cause of all the oppressed as hiding in the back of delivery trucks, part of the struggle for a workers gov­ cops pounce on picket line militants. ernment that expropriates the propertied Many strikers are learning that the police exploiters. That is the road to an egali­ are on the other side of the class line. tarian socialist society that will provide Breaking strikes is as fundamental to homes, jobs, education and a future for their job as terrorizing urban ghettos and all working people and minorities .• barrios. And scandalously, Local 32B- 32J includes some of the building secu­ rity guards, whose job is to act as a private auxiliary to the cops. Police, Peru ... "correction" officers, prison guards and all the bosses' uniformed thugs are not (continued from pa!ie 2) part of the labor movement! voiced their concern that Ms. Berenson, Break with the Democrats­ an American citizen, was tried with­ ')*:t%;V~,'i~. out any rights in Peru's special mili­ WV Photo Build a Workers Party! Labor must defend the oppressedl New York demonstration for Mumla Abu­ tary courts. Her trial, as well as those of Jamal last August drew 1,000 people, Including contingents from SSEU Local A lot of the devastation and decay of the members of Tupac Amaru, before a 371, Local 1199 hospital workers, Mall Handlers and Teamsters. this metropolis can be placed at the masked military judge, in which they doorstep of real estate speculators. were not allowed to call any witnesses The Rockefellers were the granddaddies or confront their accusers, was a traves­ 12) are felt in his hometown. While buildings, the pickets mostly consist of of them all. Today the names Leona ty. Countless fighters for the oppressed claiming to represent a "new voice for only two, three or four workers who can Helmsley and Donald Trump epitomize have already been sentenced by those American workers," Sweeney, now a barely cover the main entrance. the rezoning, rent-raising and profit­ courts to Peru's notorious jails, and mil­ member of the Democratic Socialists of Wherever 32B-32J picketers gather, gouging practices of this propertied elite. lions are racked by starvation and disease America, is no less wedded to class col­ there are women and men, West Indian While tens of thousands of homeless under President Fujimori's austerity pro­ laboration than "Lame" Kirkland. Instead and East European, black and white and people have been thrown into freezing grams championed by Washington. We of preparing the ranks for this battle, he Hispanic, recent immigrants and native­ streets because of extortionate rent demand that Miguel Rincon, Lori Ber­ came to New York last month to address born, fighting together-notable in a city increases, the Helmsleys and Trumps are enson and all leftist victims of govern­ an audience of businessmen, including plagued by racism and rampant cop ter­ claiming poverty and inability to pay the ment repression be immediately freed. many real estate tycoons: "Offering an ror against minorities. Multiracial class janitors' wages beclluse of supposedly Very truly yours, olive branch, he said he and the labor struggle is essential to this strike and to high vacancy rates and inadequate com­ Paul Cooperstein movement might tone down their con­ every advance of the working class. As mercial rents. Yet vacancy rates for com­ frontational oratory and adopt a cooper­ part of their divide-and-rule strategy, the mercial space in Midtown and lower ative attitude if business would treat real estate bosses are looking to use des­ Manhattan are down and rents are sky workers fairly and with respect," the perately poor, undocumented immigrant high. Meanwhile, their pols in City Hall CAT Sellout ... Times reported. But while Sweeney was workers to scab on the building strike. just gave themselves raises averaging (continued from page 12) begging for "cooperation," the bosses A class-struggle leadership would under­ more than what the 32B-32J workers were gearing up for union-busting. . cut this racist ploy by fighting for full make in an entire year. strike action, let alone an industry­ The Wall Street Journal (12 January) citizenship rights for all immigrants, and NYC labor officialdom's "strategy" wide strike. The first big strike was reported that the strike is taking a toll for a union hiring hall, to fairly distribute for fighting layoffs, privatization and called off in April 1992, just one day on package deliveries, but even so UPS the available work and also protect high­ Giuliani's replacement of laid-off union­ after the AFL-CIO endorsed Democrat drivers are allowing office workers to seniority workers from victimization. ized municipal workers with "workfare" Bill Clinton for president. For the next pick up packages on the street and bring For jobs for all, through a shorter work- recipients is to endlessly lobby their two years they ran an "in-plant strategy" them upstairs. Without the organized week with no loss in pay! \ supposed "friends of labor" in the work slowdown that resulted in dozens support of the unions, the picket lines Playing by the Bosses' Rules Democrat-controlled City Council, while of activists being victimized by the com­ will remain like sieves. In the first few doing "anything they can" to suppress pany while amassing scores of (still un­ days of the strike, Teamster-organized On the third day of the strike, New class struggle. Meanwhile, hospital resolved) Labor Board complaints. When trash haulers not only crossed picket York City was hit with one of the worst workers Local 1199 president Dennis rank-and-file anger erupted into anoth~r lines, but on several occasions threat­ blizzards on record, piling snow up on Rivera (a longtime vice president of the major strike in June 1994, the bureaucrats ened the strikers, brandishing pipes and sidewalks, outside building entrances state Democratic Party) has drained the substituted chauvinist appeals to Clin­ shovels! Teamster officials have claimed and loading docks. But when Mayor Giu­ union treasury lobbying the legislature ton's government to "defend the Amer­ no knowledge of this, but as yet have liani threatened striking janitors with in Albany against budget cutbacks-with ican Dream" for a hard-nosed fight to not officially told drivers not to cross arrest if they interfered with snow nothing to show for it. While these labor stop CAT's scabs with mass pickets. the lines or service struck buildings. removal, Local 32B-32J president Gus misleaders beg for more crumbs from Throughout this fight, working people Victory in this strike centrally depends Bevona ordered his members to cooper­ Albany and City Hall, the two million across the Midwest were itching for a on the organized solidarity of other ate with the scabherding bosses and city union members in the state are under an chance to win one for labor. Tens of thou­ unions. The Teamsters, including UPS authorities while $2/hour snow shovel­ all-sided attack by both Democrats and sands would have eagerly responded to drivers, are key-they can cut off deliv­ ers took their jobs. RepUblicans. the call for mass pickets to shut down eries. Moreover, many Fed-Ex workers, Meanwhile, the strikers are getting So far, New York's labor traitors Caterpillar, which is exactly why the who are not unionized, have been refus­ practically no information from the have worked hand in glove with Giu­ UAW International never made such an ing to cross the picket lines. A militant union. Frustration over the conduct of liani to knife the poor and kept a lid appeal. To organize such a fight, a c1ass­ Teamster leadership would use this the strike, which seems to be just drag­ on the seething discontent at their base. struggle leadership is needed which is opportunity as a springboard to begin ging on, is mounting. The $50 per week But in November, teachers rebelled unremittingly opposed to the capitalist, unionizing this key transport company strike benefits are scarcely enough to against social-democratic union presi­ racist Democratic Party and which re­ nationwide. But under "reform" presi­ get to and from the picket lines. Bevona dent Sandra Feldman, voting down a fuses to bow before the dictates of bour­ dent Ron Carey, the Teamsters are sad­ is talking about the strike going on five-year contract she worked out with geois legality. What's needed is a revo­ dled with a leadership that was installed "for a long time," but every day that Giuliani which froze wages until 1998. lutionary workers party- such as we of by the federal government, which still scab cleaners and scab deliveries skip Meanwhile, Stanley Hill, president of the Spartacist League are striving to effectively runs the union. Carey is him- across the picket lines strengthens the the 120,000-memher AFSCME District build .• 19 JANUARY 1996 11 WOIIKEIIS ""''''111) Victory to NYC Building Workers Strike!

On the morning of January and on the picket line to see 4, over 30,000 building main­ this strike through to victory. tenance workers began their Picket Lines Mean Don't Cross! If every union in town hon­ strike against New York City's ored the elementary labor multimillionaire real estate principle that picket lines barons. Streaming out of sky­ mean don't cross, the strike scrapers like the Empire State could be won in a matter of Building, World Trade Center days. But to do that will mqn and R!Kkefeller Center, the going head-on against the commercial building workers powers of finance capital that represented by Service Em­ run this city, and their politi­ ployees International Union cians, cops and courts. (SEIU) Local .12B-32J slung This is the enemy that has red-and-white picket sIgns to be defeated, and the biggest over their shoulders and ohstacle to doing so is the pro­ braced themselves against capitalist union bureaucracy. bo"es and scabs, as well as They police the unions on record snowfall and arctic behalf of the bosses, rather cold. With pickets all over than mobilizing labor's power Manhallan's business dis­ against the bosses. There must tricts, this is a very visible be a political struggle within strike. Over 1,300 buildings the unions to sweep away the arc struck, including such cit­ misleaders whose first loyalty adels of capitalist greed as the is to the capitalist order and New York Stock Exchange replace them with a fighting and Trump ·l(,wer. leadership that doesn't bow to Negotiations hetween the the bosses' rules. In the pres­ Realty Advisory Hoard (RAH), ent strike there is an immedi­ representing the filthy rich ate, pressing need for an huilding owners and property elected strike cOfllmittee to managers, and Local 32B-32J take control of the strike and hroke off over the landlords' hammer out a strategy to gal­ demand that newly hired vanize thc union for the hard workers have their pay slashed battle it will take to win. hy 40 percent. This union­ World Trade Center, January 10: Striking building workers picket loading dock. All NYC labor "All the Unions busting two-tier wage demand must honor Local 32B-32J picket lines to win this strike. is the key issue of the strike. Should Be Out!" Although the RAB cUllhroats reportedly stake in this battle. A hard-fought strike deliveries, no mail, no UPS or Fed-Ex After 48 years without a single strike, demanded a slew of other givebacks, by this heavily integrated workforce packages, no garbage pickup! If the the 328-321 commercial building work­ these have not been revealed by either could be resoundingly popular with skilled trades walk out, building system ers are now engaged in a bitter fight for union or management negotiators. But the ground-down working population of breakdowns could effectively make office their jobs. What the bosses want is to 32B-32J strikers across the city keenly New York. But the passive, leMa listie road towers uninhabitable. slash starting wages from $573 to $352 understand that this is a recipe for gelling heinM pursued hy the union hureaucracy Mobilizations of pickets drawing in per week-givebacks that could total rid of the current workers, As one striker is leadillM to disaster. Even at the biggest other sectors of city labor should mass over $300 million each year, to be pock­ said, "They'll find reasons to let us go sites, the picket lines are not being at key sites like the World Trade Center eted by the bosses. The employers want one by one and then they'll put in new organized to stop anything, but rather as and Rockefeller Center to shut them to drive wages down from $30,000 a guys at a much lower wage." . moral witness appeals. To win this one down. NYC workers, who are them­ year, which makes for a barely livable The ex istence of the union and the you need picket lines at every location selves facing Mayor Giuliani's budget existence in New York, to the drastically jobs of everyone of its workers are at that nohody and nothinM crosses: no fuel ax, should be mobilized in the streets continued on page 11 CAT Sellout Sets Up "In-Plant" Repression JANUARY 16-Caterpillar, Inc. is member told Workers Vanguard that he try to a halt'," a CAT worker in Decatur month some members spoke out against wreaking revenge on the 8,700 workers only spent one half-hour in the plant told WV, adding that pickets "four lines the arbitration straitjacket; pointing to whose long and grinding walkout against before they laid him off and told him to deep" would have won the strike in short the massive strike wave in France, one the heavy-equipment giant was liqui­ come hack in April! order. Instead, all three struggles were militant called for strike action to win dated by United Auto Workers (UAW) While the CAT bosses purge the work­ sold down the river, by the same bureau­ a new contract. The local president president Stephen Yokich last December force of the most determined and con­ crats who last fall elected a new AFL­ responded by demagogically asking who 3. Deserting 150 strikers that the com­ scious unionists, Yokich & Co. claim CIO leadership pledging to "renew" the wanted to "go out on strike and lose pany had fired, Yokich sent the rest hack their hands are tied. What' a crock! It labor movement! your job" like at Caterpillar. The union with no contract and no grievance pro­ was the UAW International along with The only thing these fakers will ever misleaders counterpose the betrayal at tection. Since then, at least 88 unionists the entire AFL-CIO bureaucracy that "renew" is their role as labor lieutenants CAT to the strikes in France in order to have been fired or suspended under handed victory to Caterpillar on a silver of capitalism, company cops enforcing argue that strikes supposedly don't work C AT's draconian "rules of conduct" for platter hy prel'enting militant mass class peace so the bosses can get on with anymore! "offenses" ranging from wearing union action that could have shut the company the business of exploitation. The "new" What doesn't work is pressuring the T-shirts to "shunning," i.e., not shaking down tight. A year ago, central Illinois AFL-CIO leadership of John Sweeney bureaucrats who misled, disorganized hands with a scah. Strikebreaking Vance was being called a "war zone" for lahor, and Richard Trumka push "political , and sold out the Caterpillar fight from Security thugs walk the aisles and sala­ with striking rubber workers and locked­ action" through the bosses' Democratic Day One. In the four years since the ried "hird dogs" arc constantly looking out Staley workers on the picket lines Party, no-fight diversions like consumer last CAT contract expired, the UAW over workers' shoulders. Management alongside the CAT strikers. "It was a boycotts and "corporate campaigns," and International steadfastly refused to even says they have called hack 90 percent of tilne for all the union leaders to get shackles like binding arhitration. At a call all its CAT members out in joint the strikers, hut one returning UAW together and say, . Let's bring this coun- transit union meeting in Chicago last cOnl/nued 011 page II

12 19 JANUARY 1996