WfJIIIlEftS ""'(J'II' 25¢ No. 464 4 November 1988

The power of the integrated labor Today, as Reagan's reign draws to a movement has scored an important vic­ close, the ultrarightists have grown tory against the Ku Klux Klan in Phila­ increasingly frenzied: the KKK stages delphia. The Mobilization to Stop the brazen marches in Chicago's Marquette KKK has taken the site where the Park; from California to Allentown, lynchers had threatened to rally. Work­ PA, swastika-tattooed skinheads have ers, minorities, all opponents of racist been on the rampage, terrorizing gays, terror: fill Independence Mall, Satur­ ers; the Hispanic people are not going to Stopping the KKK in Philly can be the blacks, Asians, Hispanics and anybody day, November 5, to make sure that the be denounced as 'foreigners' who should first step. . else who gets in their way; Jewish Klan doesn't ride in Philly! 'go home'; Catholics, who suffered tre­ The Partisan Defense Committee synagogues are defaced, abortion clin­ The KKK cross-burners and de­ mendously after World War I as vic­ which launched the November 5 anti­ ics bombed, minority students in North­ praved, violent "skinhead" Nazi-lovers tims of the Klan"-all are safer. The Klan demonstration is a class-struggle, ern universities are under attack. At the had planned to stage..a racist "white militant, orderly and democratic dem­ non-sectarian legal defense organiza­ University of Wisconsin, a racist fra­ pride" rally~a deadly menace to labor, onstration to stop the KKK is going tion in accordance with the political ternity staged a "slave auction." blacks, Jews, Catholics, Hispanics, to "full speed ahead," he said. views of the Spartacist League. In the And as the 1988 presidential cam­ all decent people in Philadelphia and "The Klan has never waited for per­ early '80s, as the KKK with the backing paign draws to a close in an orgy of throughout the country. In response, mits to carry out their lynchings, fire­ of the Reagan. White House sought to racist appeals, the Ku Klux Klan the Partisan Defense Committee vowed bombings and murder," said a PDC penetrate Northern cities, the SL and threatened to march in the "cradle of lib­ that "there must be a massive, defiant press release. Underlining this warning, PDC took the lead in organizing mass erty." In response to the PDC appeal, in display of labor/black power, together on the night of October 29, a gang of laborjblack mobilizations to stop them. short order over 200 groups and indi­ with minorities and all intended victims skinheads from Philadelphia and New The strategy of bringing out the power viduals threw their weight behind the of the lynchers ...to stop these fascist Jersey assaulted a family on a train plat­ of labor and minorities to crush the November 5 Mobilization to Stop the terrorists." form in Manhattan for objecting to their fascists is drawn from the Bolshevik KKK in Philadelphia. In the forefront The PDC initiated the November 5 racist epithets. And that same night revolutionary Leon Trotsky's calls for of it were the unions, beginning with Mobilization to honor the working anti-Semites sprayed swastikas on the a workers united front to stop the powerful AFSCME District 33, whose people who built this country and to . front doors of Temple Sholom syna­ Nazis from seizing power in Germany, sanitation workers had waged a hard bring out a determined, united opposi­ gogue in Philadelphia's Oxford Circle. and the experience of the Ameri­ strike against Wilson Goode two years tion to the Klan. In response to its call can Trotskyists in the '30s who mobi­ ago. Other local labor bodies endorsing more than 200 groups and individuals A United Front to Stop the KKK lized 50,000 against a fascist meeting in the November 5 Mobilization include representing tens of thousands of the A lot of people understand that the Madison Square Garden. continued on page 11 Klan's intended victims signed up to say Klan means death, that wherever it "All Out to Stop the KKK!" in Philly. appears, however small its numbers, it Faced with this impressive outpouring inflames and feeds upon racial fears, of opposition, on October 26 the Klan's poisoning any sort of integrated activ­ permit application was put "on hold" in ity, from fighting segregation to win­ Heirs of Stalin Revile agreement with the National Park ning strikes. Today millions are dis­ leninist Internationalism Service. gusted with the state the country is in, PDC spokesman Al Nelson told a with the elections in which Democrats press conference the next day that the and Republicans brazenly compete for Mobilization's success is a blow against _the racist vote, with bipartisan govern­ Trotsky and the Gorbachev racist terrorists who would disrupt serv­ ment policy that spurns the jobless, ices commemorating the Jewish victims homeless and hopeless. Working peo­ School of Falsification of the Nazis' Kristallnacht pogrom. It ple, minorities and a lot of others who means that "black people are not going oppose everything the Klan stands for ------SEE PAGE EIGHT------to be intimidated by hooded nightrid- are looking for a way to fight back. drug can be sold. The anti-abortion crusade is all about Deadly' Right-to-Lifers Target Women politics-the politics of death. As pro­ choice demonstrators chanted last weekend, "Right-to-life, your name's a lie, you don't care if women die." These "pro-life" forces are the same ones push­ ing the viciously racist death penalty. Defend Abortion Rights! And behind the hundreds of (white) Christian fundamentalists, the leaders of "Operation Rescue" are terrorists. On Saturday, October 29 fanatical When they targeted New York City as "Operation Rescue" bigots invaded over the "abortion capital of the world" last 30 cities and towns across the country to April, the blockade was orchestrated by blockade abortion clinics, intimidat­ Joe Scheidler. Scheidler was arrested in ing, harassing and terrorizing any June 1986 for smashing up a twice­ woman brave enough to try to keep her bombed clinic in Pensacola, Florida appointment. From Deer Park, Long where the anti-abortion forces are led by Island to Sunnyvale, California many a "former" Klansman. clinics were forced to close for the day, their entrances blocked by the "right-to­ While the "right-to-lifers" rant about lifers" as the cops kept pre-abortion aborting fetuses, what about the 40,000 demonstrators at a distance. Over 2,200 babies who die every year before reach­ anti-abortion bigots were "arrested" ingtheir first birthday, particularly the outside clinics-gently carried to wait­ children of poverty-stricken black and ing buses, issued summonses and let out Hispanic women? An August 1988 on the streets. "You're treating them like report by the National Commission to diamonds," shouted one pro-abortion Prevent Infant Mortality reveals that rights demonstrator outside Philadel­ the United States has the worst infant phia's Elizabeth Blackwell clinic. mortality rate among 20 industrialized As election day-approaches, the ultra­ nations, eleven per thousand. Black right-wing fanatics, taking their cue infants are more than twice as likely to from Bush and the Reagan White die as whites. Pregnant women in the House, are growjng increasingly brazen. ghettos and barrios desperately need Operation Rescue has plagued Atlanta's prenatal care, nutritious food, decent clinics ever since the Democratic con­ housing. Instead, they are now threat­ WV Photo vention in July, and threatened to ened with being thrown of(welfare by Spartacist contingent in 1,OOO-strong protest against bigots' blockade of the ghoulish "FamilySecurity Act." descend on clinics in Boston and Duka­ abortion clinics, New York, 29 April. kis' home town of Brookline, Massa­ The abortion clinic bombers and chusetts on the 29th. Instead, some despite Dukakis' "pro-choice" stand, it And although the 1973 Roe vs. Wade bible-thumping bigots are only the cut­ 2,000 pro-abortion demonstrators, in­ was the Democratic administration of decision legalizing abortion is close to ting edge of a broad reactionary offen­ cluding the lieutenant governor, turned Jimmy ("life is not fair") Carter that cut being overturned by the Reaganite sive. From "welfare reform" to cutting out for what was, to all intents and pur­ off federal funds for abortions for poor, Supreme Court, the Democrats are back inner-city hospitals and the crimi­ poses, a Democratic Party rally. But mostly minority women. doing nothing to defend it. The deci­ nal negligence over the AIDS epidemic sion whether or not to have a child is a (whose victims are increasingly black woman's elementary right, and it's often and Hispanic), Democrats and Repub­ a matter of life and death. Yet the two licans are united around a genocidal Socialist Revolution or parties of the American ruling class program to resolve the crisis of Ameri­ can capitalism by making entire minor-· Fascist Barbarism don't give a damn about the lives of women forced into back-alley abor­ ity populations expendable, left on the The destruction of the labor movement tions. On July 4, cops at a Paoli, Penn- streets to die. While railing against teen byfascism opened the road to the genocide ,,~ sylvania clinic ordered pioneer abortion pregnancy, they leave ghetto youthsjob­ of the Holocaust. Communist and left­ rights defender Bill Baird to take down a less, homeless and hopeless. It will take wing socialist workers were the first to be photo of a woman who died in a self­ a socialist revolution in this country to thrown into concentration camps, to be induced abortion, claiming it was make respect for the lives of women and followed by millions of Jews, gypsies; "obscene." The hundreds of "right-to­ children a genuine social priority. Slavs. Yet the powerful German workers lifers," meanwhile, were brandishing The Spartacist League and our jour­ movement was prevented by its Social posters of fetuses. nal Women and Revolution call on the TROTSKY Democratic. and Stalinist misleaders from LENIN Intimidation bythe anti-abortion big­ labor movement to defend abortion stopping the Nazis. Bolshevik revolution­ ots has spread far and wide; In France rights. In Chicago last May supporters ary Leon Trotsky hammered away at the needfor bold action by a workers united last week, the Roussel Uclaf chemical of the SL, the Spartacus Youth Clubs, front, led by a vanguard partyfightingfor socialist revolution, to crushfascism, the company that developed an abortion­ Labor Black Struggle League and the last resort ofa decaying capitalism. In an article that was unfinishedat the time ofhis inducing drug, RU 486,' which can be Partisan Defense Committeejoined in a murder by a Stalinist assassin in 1940, Trotsky wrote: used to safely and privately induce militant demonstration that prevented Insofar as the proletariat proves incapable at a given stage of conquering power, abortion in the early stages' of preg­ "pro-lifers" from shuttingdown a down­ imperialism begins regulating economic life with its own methods; the fascist party nancy, yanked it off the market. Roussel town clinic. And at an April 29 demon­ which becomes the state power is the political mechanism.... officials cited "very powerful" pressure stration against Operation Rescue in The American working class is still without a mass labor party even today. But the groups in the U.S. After an outcry at New York, a Spartacist contingent, the objective situation and the experience accumulated by the American workers can an international medical conference largest and most dynamic in the march, pose within a very brief period oftime on the order of the day the question of the against this capitulation to bigotry, the won support with signs saying "Labor conquest of power. This. perspective must be. made the basis of our agitation.... French government of "socialist" Fran­ Must Defend Abortion Clinics," chants Fascism is the continuation of capitalism, an attempt to perpetuate its existence by cois Mitterrand ordered it back on the of "Defend the Clinics, Take a Stand, means of the most bestial and monstrous measures. Capitalism obtained an market. In the U.S., however, under Free Abortion on Demand," and an SL opportunity to resort to fascism only because the proletariat did not accomplish the Food and Drug Administration policy, banner proclaiming "Women's Libera­ socialist revolution in time. The proletariat was paralyzed in the fulfillment of its task it will be years before this life-saving tion Through Socialist Revolution!". by the opportunist parties.... Fascism and the series ofimperialist wars constitute the terrible school in which the proletariat has to free itself of petty-bourgeois traditions and superstitions, has to rid itself of opportunist, democratic, and adventurist parties, has to hammer out and train the revolutionary vanguard, and in this way prepare for the solving of the task apart from which there is not and cannot be any Complete and accurate salvation for the development of mankind. English·translation of -Leon Trotsky, "Bonapartism, Fascism, and War" (August 1940) 1921 CI Resolution from final German text. GUidelines on the Includes, for the first time Organizational Structure in English, the reports of Communist Parties on and discussion of the Resolution at on the Methods and Content !!l!l!!'!!.r.~l!!..'!.~!'!u.s~ the Third Congress. of Their Work DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon With introduction by EDITOR: Jan Norden Prometheus Research Th' d Co Resolution ot the PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jorge Ramirez " ngrass ot the Communilt 'nternation .. Library staff. 12 Ju'y 1921 CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jon Lawrence Inc' dNew:.,ranl'"tion ot the Final German Text EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster. Liz Gordon. Frank Hunter. Jane Kerrigan. u Ing POrtsand DiSCU88ion trom the Congress Len Meyers. Jan Norden. Jorge Ramirez. James Robertson. Reuben Samuels. With IntrOduction and Notes Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer. Marjorie Stamberg. Noah Wilner $6.00 Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December, (includes postage) by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $7.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Order from/make checks L .. Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. payable to: Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not nece~sarily express the editorial viewpoint. Spartacist Publishing Co. Box 1377 GPO . • PROMETHEUS RESEARCH LIBRARY .,.. New York. NY 10116 ... No. 464 4 November 1988 -- 2 WORKERS VANGUARD Skinheads: Psycho Killers

Adaptedfrom Workers Hammer No. electoral base with her own unre­ 101, October 1988, newspaper of the strained anti-immigrant ravings. Spartacist League/Britain. The NF and other fascist outfits Several' years ago, television audi­ experienced a prolonged period of frac­ On the Loose turing, turning more toward open street ences around the world watched in horror as the 1985 European Cup Final terror against Asians, blacks and oth­ football (soccer) match in Brussels ers. Not bound by the fetters of electoral between Liverpool and the Juventus of campaigning, the British Movement Torino, Italy exploded in, bloody recruited heavily on this basis. Fac­ slaughter. Hundreds of people were tional struggle raged within the fascist maimed and 38 killed as British fans movement, with one wing identifying attacked Italian spectators in the ter­ itself as "Strasserite," so-called after the races. This wasn't just a spontaneous populist-demagogic spokesman of the outburst of mindless football violence. Hitlerite Brownshirts, the SA, the crim­ The sinister forces spearheading this inal lumpen terror gangs who were the nationalist carnage were the path­ shock troops for Hitler's rise to power. ological fascistic killers known as For decades, the desperate condi­ "skinheads." tions of British society have provided a For black and Asian people in Brit­ culture medium for various violent ain's cities, this horror has become a youth gangs to spawn and flourish. The daily fact of life and a deadly racist decade of the '60s was marked by bloody threat. For nearly two decades, skin­ street battles between mods and rockers. heads have been on the scene, terror­ The skinheads came out of this culture izing especially the Asian population. medium, but from the very start they The firebombing of shops and homes, were identified by their proclivity to gra­ the razor and knife mutilations, the tuitous, racist violence. In "Oi" music, scrawled swastikas and "white power" they found the "cultural" expression of slogans have reached epidemic propor­ their sadistic nihilism. Those youth who tions. In heavily Asian Newham in Lon­ choose to become skinheads do so not as don's East End a racist attack occurs a. "matter of taste," but because they once an hour. In London Southall a want to become racist killers as their young Asian man was found with the way of expressing outrage with society. initials of the fascist Young National An insight into the sort of psycho­ Front carved into his stomach. pathic and degenerate creatures these These violent white racist thugs were budding fascists see as their idols canbe spawned in the squalor of crisis-ridden found in one Ian Stuart, former lead British society, in the remnants of a rac­ singer for the skinhead bandSkrewdriv­ ist Empire. This is no youth "fad" of kids er, "a squat, powerfully-built man with a drunk on rock music, beer and glue­ Mussolini-style bonehead haircut and a sniffing, addicted to football and fight­ taste for paramilitary clothes" (Observ­ ing, angry at being stuck in grimy slums er, 4 September). Stuart proudly pro­ and unemployment centers. Warped claims, "I think Adolf Hitler was the and twisted by a capitalism in terminal greatest man who ever lived." He decline, they are human garbage. From became a card-carrying NFer in 1979.In their black combat-style "bovver boots" , 1986 he was sentenced to 12months for to their shaven heads, they aim to ree agnum a street attack on a Nigerian in the intimidate, to terrorize, to maim and to In Thatcher's Britain criminallumpen skinhead gangs terrorize, maim and murder Asians, blacks and other minorities. King's Cross area of London. murder. Stuart has been instrumental in the In the past few years, the skinheads formation of a "musical organization" have become that rarest of commod­ which calls itself Blood and Honour, ities in Thatcher's Britain-an interna­ linking not only European fascist tional export. From France to West groups but also the Ku Klux Klan and Germany to the U.S. these dregs of a White Aryan Resistance in the U.S. as decaying system flaunt the regalia of well as the South African Afrikaans Hitler's Third Reich, giving the Nazi instability and of fearsome, frightful Labour alike began pushing ever tough­ Resistance Movement. Other "Oi" stiff-arm salute, "rocking" to the racist collapse."- er anti-immigration legislation. When bands feature names like No Remorse" beat of "Oi" music. And wherever these Hitler's "National Socialists" exploited Enoch Powell spewed his racist "rivers Brutal Attack and Sudden Impact. fascist "bootboys" appear, they' leave immiseration and unemployment, chan­ of blood" demagogy, he gave voice to Their "concerts," in\reality fascist ral­ a trail of sadistic, senseless, racist neling lumpen and petty-bourgeois rage the vicious racism behind the parlia­ lies, are orgies of racist insults against violence. ' into their pogroms and genocidal Holo­ mentary measures and legitimized fas­ blacks and Jews, with "a brisk trade Now the organized fascists-the Na­ caust against the Jewish people. To­ cist "direct action." Blood flowed on the selling fascist literature, badges and tional Front in Britain, Le Pen's Front day the NF and skinheads strike out streets at the hands of "Paki-bashing" records." National in France, neo-Nazis in West at Britain's immigrant population as white gangs. By the 1979 general In Liverpool, a city with a black' Germany-have moved in on this white the scapegoat for Britain's economic election, the National Front was field­ population going back several cen- j , youth "movement" of race-hating de­ decline. ing. 300 candidates, but Margaret turies, NF scum have stepped up attacks; spair. They are the raw material for the In the late 1960s and '70s, Tories and Thatcher won over much of their continued on page 13 shock troops of fascism. They are a deadly menace to every racial minority everywhere, to everything associated with civilized society. They must be stamped out and swept away.

Thatcher's Britain: In New York City's Greenwich heads, who boasted that they were Social Rot and Racist Terror Village on October 29 a gang of up to members of a nationwide skinhead a dozen "skinheads" wearing heavy gang of white supremacists. " The social rot of deindustrialized boots and sporting swastika tattoos Ominously, three of the four Britain, with its millions of unem­ severely beat a white man who object­ accused attackers are from Phil­ ployed, the grim wasteland of empty ed to their racist slurs against blacks adelphia and environs: Matthew An­ factories, dead docklands and closed and Hispanics. William Stump, 31, of drews, 20; John Himmelstein, 23; and mines, has created a generation of Bayonne, New Jersey was waiting with Harry Wilson, 17. While the KKK/ enraged, hopeless, more or less perma­ his wife and three-month-old baby at a skinheads have retreated in the face of nently lumpenized youth. In his book PATH train platform near midnight massive opposition to their threat to The National Front, Martin Walker when the attack took place. stage a racist provocation in Philadel­ wrote: According to a transit worker who phia, this vicious attack shows their "Britain of the early 1970s was being widely compared to the Weimar Repub­ witnessed the incident, one of the skin­ racist violence is an ever-present lic of Germany in the latter 1920s. The heads even tried to push the baby's danger. imminent economic crisis, the permis­ stroller down a steep stairwell, but the It is urgent for labor, minorities and Clare siveness-of cultural life spilling over into father managed a defense by burning all opponents of fascism to turn out at William Stump, courageous victim the sordid lasciviousness .of Soho, the Independence Mall on November 5 to new blunt power of the trade unions, the thug's face with a lit cigarette. of skinhead terror, .with his' wife inflation, the impotence of Govern­ , Police arrested and charged four skin- stop them. Marianne and their baby. ment-there was a sense ofthe brink, of 4 NOVEMBER 1988 Chanting "We stopped the Klan!" thousands charge up Capitol Hill where Klan march was supposed to begin.

of this country. Reaganites and Dem­ ocratic Party liberals, and their black Washington" D.C." 27 November 1982 front men, responded with an orgy of lies, slanders and redbaiting about "mob violence." Elsewhere black youth who had escaped the APC rally looking for the Klan were an easy target for the cops. People were clubbed, tear gassed and How Labor/Black Power shoved through plate glass storefront windows. The media turned the cops' rampage into lurid stories of "violence" and "looting." They wanted to take back in newsprint the victory that we had won by stopping the Klan on the streets. Stopped the Klan Their violence-baiting of "Trotsky­ ist radicals" slandered the SL and The Ku Klux Klan threatened to The reformist left also tried to Washington that day looked down Cap­ thousands of Washington's best black march through the streets of the nation's organize their own diversions. The All­ itol Hill and saw the thousands of deter­ militants. The Washington Times, the capital, for the first time in over half a Peoples Congress of Sam "Marcy's mined protesters awaiting them, they voice of Korean arms manufacturer century. Behind these white-sheeted stuffed their hoods and robes back into. Workers World Party held a rally at and guru Sun Myung Moon, ran a racist killers stood the Reagan White brown paper bags and were herded by McPherson Square, two miles away feature article about November 27 in House, which had given the Klan the the police into school buses. from the Klan site and a couple of hours their 30 November 1982 issue with the go-ahead to terrorize the overwhelm­ The Labor/Black Mobilization gave after the KKK's announced arrival. The headline "Left-Wing Group Linked to ingly black population of Washington. a taste of the working class organized APC!WWP had no intention of stop­ D.C. Riot." More than 1,000cops were called out to ping the Klan-their gabfest was aimed for power. The demonstration had the This mouthpiece for Reaganite reac­ protect the hooded and robed lynchers. at exploiting anger againstthe KKK and order, militancy and discipline of a gen- tion, which joined Ollie North in raising But there were no white sheets on the turning it into votes for the Democrats. , eral strike. Monitors squads included funds for contra terror in Nicaragua, streets of D.C. that day. On 27 Novem­ It was a classic "popular front," tying several members each from the Labor­ accused the Spartacist League of "pro­ ber 1982 the Klan didn't march, didn't the masses to the bourgeois politicians. ers, union, AFSCME, Teamsters and rally, didn't put on its robes. Instead, So concerned were the Marcyites to transit workers, as well as waterfront voking violence" against the cops. The along the route the KKK said it was avoid any "confrontation" that they workers from Norfolk and union sup­ article smeared us as a violent, crimi­ going to march there flew the banners of alienated and set up many combative porters of the Spartacist League. Their nal, paramilitary, terrorist outfit. The more than 5,000 triumphant protesters, ghetto youths. When people tried to presence ensured that there were' no aim was to destroy the revolutionary overwhelmingly black, who had rallied leave McPherson Square to go stop the incidents or arrests despite an hour-long leadership and discredit the class­ to the call of the Labor/Black Mobi­ Klan, they were penned in by a daisy face-off with the cops at the assembly struggle strategy which mobilized mil­ lization to Stop the Klan. chain of reformists. Those who got site, and we were able to hold a itant black and white workers in the It was the largest, most effective mass through were targets for the cops. short, spirited victory rally in Lafayette streets and stopped the KKK terrorists action against the fascists in decades. After a decade of rising racist ter­ Park despite mounted police itching to in Washington on November 27. But they didn't get away with it~too many Initiated by the Spartacist League, it ror and rampant union-busting, black provoke and tear-gas demonstrators. people knew the truth. was built through mobilizing the social Washington wasn't looking for a "free After the sniveling Klansmen were power and muscle of organized labor. lunch" from Fauntroy. They didn't want bused away and the cops pulled back The SL and Spartacus Youth League The first,crucial support came from to listen to liberal windbags drone on for their cordons and motorcycles from the filed a libel suit, and the Moonie paper black waterfront unions in the Tide­ hours. They were looking for a way to Labor/Black Mobilization demonstra­ was forced to make a public apology. water, Virginia area, the largest fight back, and win. They knew that if tion, thousands surged onto the streets Stating, "We no longer charge that working-class concentration in the the Klan got away with parading chanting, "We Stopped the Klan!" The the Spartacist League/Spartacus Youth Southeast. Soon endorsements began through Washington it would be an feeling of the working class organized League provoked violence on thatday," coming in from longshore, machinists, incitement for fascists across the coun­ for action and relying on its own the Washington Times (26 December auto workers and steel workers locals try to load up their guns and get out strength was palpable. And not only to 1983) was forced to eat its libelous around the country. In Washington, their lynch ropes. So three times as us. The sight of thousands of protest­ words against our organization and the officials of the teachers union, postal many came out to the Labor/Black ers, blacks and socialists, students and Labor/Black Mobilization. And on the workers, laborers and the railway clerks Mobilization as to the reformists' hoax, ghetto youth, backed up by the power of "violence" charges, then-FBI director vowed that labor wouldn't permit the because they knew we meant business. organized labor, marching in front of William Webster testified to a Senate KKK to stage its deadly provocation. In When the 28 KKKers who showed up in the White House shook the ruling class subcommittee that police had not found less than a week more than 70 union "any indication" that the SL "did more officials and locals had.endorsed the than urge participation in the anti-Klan mobilization that would stop the Klan. demonstration" by Washington resi­ This opened the way to bring out dents, "who were and are unsupportive thousands from among the black and of the Klan's goals." working-class population of the Wash­ What the Spartacist League did on 27 ington area who rallied at First and November 1982 in Washington was to Constitution, the sitewhere the Klan provide the leadership and organiza­ was supposed to begin their parade of tion that enabled the most politically race-terror. The Klan's opponents came conscious black militants and unionists out in the face' of powerful forces to stop a dangerous threat to their corn­ seeking to prevent the Mobilization. munity. Rather than the reformist dead­ Mayor Marion Barry, a former leader end of looking to the capitalist state and of SNCC, gave the Klan a permit to the Democratic 'Party, or engaging in march ...and then left town. The night no-win small-group confrontations like before the demonstration, the D.C., many frustrated radicals, the Trotsky­ chief of police went on TV telling peo­ ists have a program to win, based on ple to stay at home November 27. Wash­ mobilizing the power of labor in inde­ ington Congressional delegate, black pendent class action. Democrat Walter Fauntroy, urged the As we marched triumphantly through population to "ignore the Klan." to the streets of the capital that day, the keep them away he staged a "com­ AP chant rang out: "1,2,3,4-Time, to Fin­ munity unity" ploy with cheese hand­ Elsewhere in Washington, cops heaved black youth through store windows, ish the Civil War! 5,6,7,8-Forward outs at churches and pray-ins at prisons. bourgeois media screamed "looting." to a Workers State!". ' 4 WORKERS VANGUARD Black Self-Defense in Lancaster County

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_::.-:---. --- -~--- J-- New York Public Library Christiana, Pennsylvania, 1~ September 1851: Armed self-defense routed slave catchers, inspired generation of abolitionist fighters. --Battle of Christiana-- • aiDS aver Before dawn on the lIth of Septem­ Life and Times: from bondage in Maryland in 1839. He would assist in liberating everyone ber 1851 a horn sounded from an old ". .. the thing which more than all else made his way to Pennsylvania and set­ within my reach, at the risk of my own stone farmhouse near Christiana, Penn­ destroyed the fugitive slave law was the tled near Christiana, just over the life, and that I would devise some plan sylvania, a village between Philadel­ resistance made to it by the fugitives for their entire liberation" (Jonathan themselves.... This affair, at Christi­ Susquehanna River, "the boundary of phia and Gettysburg. Upstairs seven ana...inflicted fatal wounds on the the slaveholding empire;" beyond which Katz, Resistance at Christiana [1974]). black people-fugitive slaves-were fugitive slave bill. It became thereafter slave-hunters f-eared to go. A com­ In Lancaster County, just over the bor­ watching for raiders. When they saw the almost a dead letter, for slaveholders munity of black farmers had been estab­ der from slaveholding Maryland, this posse of slave catchers, under the com­ found that not only did it fail to put lished for some time in this area: Quaker was no idle resolution. A gang of pro­ them in possession of their slaves, but mand of a United States marshal, ride that the attempt to enforce it brought farmers lived there, and although they slavery hooligans, known as the "Gap into the yard, a black woman sounded odium upon. themselves and weakened were "nonresistant" (pacifists), they Gang.?" regularly terrorized and kid­ the horn to call for defense. Armed the slave system." were anti-slavery and helped fugitives napped blacks to send. into bondage. black farmers filled the yard to do bat­ escape, These racist thugs-the Ku Klux Klan tle with axes, clubs, corn cutters, guns, Militant Self-Defense Here Parker married, raised a family of the day-were professional "man­ ~oints anything at hand. In the clash a the Way and began farming. As he later wrote stealers," and they operated with or slaveowner was killed, his son seriously . The leader of the Christiana battle in his autobiography, A Freedman's without the open sanction of the state. ; wounded. Taught a good lesson, the was William Parker, who at 17escaped Story: "I formed a resolution that I Soon Parker organized a small group; U.S. marshal fled. of blacks for self-defense, who vowed to; The "Battle of Christiana" was an resist the kidnappers and make the area l important victory for the anti-slavery safe for their families. People called; fighters in the grim decade before the Parker "the preacher"; his house was a Civil War, when chattel slavery seemed Finish the Civil War! meeting place for anti-slavery people, . indestructible. As the first nationally white and black. His boldness and deter­ publicized, armed struggle against the mination earned him the allegiance of 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, the Christiana the black people and the hatred of the resistance proved that blacks deter­ _ racist kidnappers. A number of coura­ mined to defend themselves could win. geous rescues were carried out by Its importance was far greater than the Parker's group. One pro-slavery col­ few slaves who were able to gain their laborator lost his barn to a fire. But in freedom. For the South, Christiana January 1851 the man-stealers forcibly symbolized Yankee opposition to the abducted a young black man, breaking slave system. A North Carolina news­ his skull and beating him so badly that paper editorial threatened disunion: his owner refused to pay them for their "unless the Christiana rioters [sic] are filthy work. Faced with the increased hung ... WE LEAVE YOUL .. If you threat of the new Fugitive Slave Law, fail in this simple act of justice, THE Parker and his comrades renewed BOND WILL BE DISSOLVED" their vow to risk death to stop the (quoted in James M. McPherson, Bat­ kidnappers. tle Cry of Freedom [1987]). -The passage of the law in 1850 gave But the government was not able to blatant federal support for the abduc­ convict anyone for a crime at Chris­ tion of black people in any state, free or tiana, because support for the resisters slave. Blacks were denied any legal and hatred for the cruel injustice of the recourse to prove their status as free­ Fugitive Slave Law were so over­ men, while the government could levy whelming. As the great radical aboli­ Columbia University, March 1987: Spartacists .honor heroes of antl-slaverv a $1,000 fine on U.S. marshals and tionist Frederick Douglass saidin his struggle at demonstration against racist attacks on campus. continued on page 14 4 NOVEMBER 1988 5 Young SparlaCDS DrtDcus

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, . . WV Photo .c.. .. .' .. '. . .•. '. ,Young artacus Left: S.F. Spartacist League/Spartaeus YOUth·,Club demo...stratea'gainsttendlng U.S. troops to Honduras, March 18. Right: Madison SYC joinS protest against racist attacks at University of Wisconsin, April 18. '

Below we reprint a leaflet issued 'replace the givebacks and sellouts of the the sinister Louis Farrakhan. The SYC with reactionary age-of-consent laws! September 5 by the Spartacus Youth current union misleaders with hard class fights for revolutionary integration­ For free birth control! Billions for Clubs in Chicago and Madison. struggle. Unchain the unions! For sit­ ism-black liberation through socialist AIDS research! Labor must defend the down strikes to stop the plant closings revolution! Anti-racist students, black rights of gays! The Spartacus Youth Club (SYC) is and layoffs! Picket lines mean don't and white, must ally with the power of Free all class-war prisoners! The a communist youth organization that cross! the integrated labor movement to smash SYC fights alongside the Partisan De­ intervenes in social struggles with a American capitalist society is racist the racists. As a Madison SYC leaflet fense Committee (a class-struggle, non­ working-class program based on the to the core. Klan/Nazi scum march stated: "A one-day strike by students, sectarian legal defense organization in politics of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. through urban black centers like Chica­ the TAA, teachers, campus workers and accordance with the political views of The SYC is the youth group of the Spar­ go while their brothers in blue uniforms other unionists to shut down the the Spartacist League) on behalf of the tacist League (SL), U.S. section of the administer Jim Crow terror in the ghet­ university would do more to change the victims of this racist state's repression. international Spartacist tendency. We tos. Only mass labor/black mobiliza­ racist climate on campus than a thou­ The rulers of this .country want to are fighting to put an end to capitalist tions can stop racist terror. SL-initiated sand token reforms proposed by the disappear class-war prisoners like exploitation, imperialist war and racial, united-front mobilizations of workers, union-busting administration.", Geronimo Pratt, a former leader of the sexual and national oppression through black youth and other anti-racists Free university education for all! In Black Panther Party who has been in world socialist revolution. We take as backed by the power of organized labor capitalist society, education is not a prison for 18 years, victim of an FBI our example the Russian Revolution of have driven the fascists off the streets, right but a class privilege, tailored to COINTELPRO frame-up. It is ourduty October 1917, in which the Bolsheviks from San Francisco to Detroit to producing the technicians, adminis­ to make sure that this generation of mil­ led the working class to state power. Washington, D.C. Last year in Chicago, trators and ideologues needed to keep itants takes up the fight to free Prattand The Democrats and Republicans are Spartacist supporters in the transit the profit system going. Nationalize 'the many other victims of capitalist partner parties of American capitalism. unions led a successful campaign which the private universities under student/ injustice. An injury to one is an injury to Tactical differences aside, they agree on mobilized union action to defend black teacher/worker control! For open ad­ all! the basics: crush social struggle, roll bus driver Cassandra Seay from a racist missions and free tuition, with a state­ u.S. get your bloody hands off the back "communism" around the world cop frame-up. Out of this victory, the paid.stipend to cover living expenses, in world! Democrats and Republicans and regiment the U.S. population for Labor Black Struggle League was order to make universal access to educa­ share the aim of Yankee imperialism: to anti-Soviet war. But. this is an election" formed in Chicago to provide a basis for tion a reality. make the world safe for U.S. capitalist year, so the Democrats-the party that further working-class action for social Women's liberation through socialist exploitation. That means arming Af­ brought you Hiroshima and Viet­ defense. revolution! Under the banner of "moral ghan Islamic fanatics who think it's a nam-have to pose as friends of labor On campuses across the country, rac­ rearmament," the bourgeoisie is at­ "crime" to teach a girl to read and and the oppressed. Jesse Jackson, the ist and fascistic attacks have been on the tempting to enforce puritanical "tradi­ unleashing murderous rapists against ruling class' point man for defusing mil­ rise. The SYC has intervened in anti­ tional values." For women this means the uncompleted Nicaraguan Revolu­ itant black struggle, says, "Don't fight! racist protests with a class-struggle pro­ "children, kitchen, church." Taking tion. In Congress liberals and conser­ Vote Democrat!" But Malcolm X put it gram to drive the race-terrorists off their cue fromthe White House, scream­ vatives vote arms to anti-Communist well: "A vote for a Democrat is a vote campus! No reliance on capitalist ing mobs terrorize abortion clinics with guerrillas-puppets of apartheid South , for a Dixiecrat." Labor and blacks must university administrations-their job is firebombs. Last spring in Chicago, the Africa-who battle the Cuban troops break with the Democrats. What's to enforce the racist status quo! Liberal SL/SYC and the Labor Black Struggle defending black Angola. Even civilian needed is an integrated workers party to consciousness-raising won't stop, the League joined a united-front demon­ airliners in the Persian Gulf are consid­ lead all the oppressed in a revolution­ race-terrorists! Nationalist separatism is stration that spiked an attempt byanti­ ered fair game by the Pentagon war ary struggle for a workers government, a dead-end strategy historically born of abortion bigots to close down a clinic. criminals! Our anti-imperialism is con­ a fighting labor leadership that will despair and pushed by demagogues like For free abortion on demand! Down crete. SYC members have traveled on We Hove o· World to Win I 6 WORKERS VANGUARD" Nightmoreof KKK Terror From The· Autobiog~pJ!y ~ Malcolm!

"When my mother was pregnant with loped around the house, shattering me, she told me later, a party of hooded every window pane with their gun butts. Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our Then they rode off into the night, their home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night. torches flaring, as suddenly as they had Surrounding the house, brandishing come.... , their shotguns and rifles, they shouted Among the reasons my father had for my father to come out. My mother decided to risk and dedicate his life to went to the front door and opened it. help disseminate this philosophy among Standing where they could see her preg­ his people was that he had seen four of nant condition, she told them that she his six brothers die by violence, three of was alone with her three small children, them killed by white men, including one Malcolm X and that my father was away, preach­ by lynching. What my father could not in 1960. His autobiography ing, in Milwaukee. The Klansmen know then was that of the remaining opens with shouted threats andwarnings at her that three, including himself, only one, my chilling account we had better get out of town because Uncle Jim, would die in bed, of natural of Klan terror. "the good Christian white people" were causes. Northern white police were later not going to stand for my father's to shoot my Uncle Oscar. And my father "spreading trouble" among the "good" was finally himself to die by the white Negroes of Omaha with the "back to man's hand. Africa" preachings of Marcus Garvey. We went next, for some reason, to My father, the Reverend Earl little, lansing, Michigan.... This time, the Gordon Parks was a Baptist Minister, a dedicated get-out-of-town threats came from a down. She, had snatched on her clothes some tracks for a streetcar to run over organizer for Marcus Aurelius Garvey's local hate society called The Black to go with them. And all of us children him. His body was cut almost in half. U.N. LA. (Universal Negro Improve­ legion. They wore black robes instead who were staring knew without anyone He lived two and a half hours in that ment Association). With the help of of white. Soon, nearly everywhere my having to say it that something terrible condition. Negroes then were stronger such disciples as my father, Garvey, father went, Black legionnaires were had happened to our father. than they are now, especially Georgia from his headquarters in New York reviling him as an "uppity nigger" for My mother was taken by the police to Negroes. Negroes born in Georgia had City's Harlem, was raising the banner of wanting to own a store, for living out­ the hospital, and to a room where a to be strong simply to survive. black-race purity and exhorting the side the lansing Negro district, for sheet was over my father in a bed, 'and It was morning when we children at Negro masses to return to their ances­ spreading unrest and dissension among she wouldn't look, she was afraid to home got the word that he was tral African homeland-a cause which "the good niggers." look. Probably it was wise that she dead. 1 was six. 1 can remember a had made Garvey the most controver­ I remember waking up to the sound of didn't. My father's skull, on one side, vague commotion, the house filled up sial black man on earth. my mother's screaming again. When I was crushed in, I was told later. Negroes with people crying, saying bitterly that Still shouting threats, the Klansmen scrambled out, I saw the police in the liv­ in lansing have always whispered that the white Black legion had finally finally spurred their horses and gal- ing room; they were trying to calm her he was attacked, and then laid across gotten him." • Stalinist Wreckers Try' to Sabotage Anti-Fascist United Front Resignation from theyeL 23 October 1988 has been the basic motive force of all Unfortunately, as far as 1can tell, nei­ Since so many groups are ignoring the political struggles since the rise of class ther the Communist Party USA or the Klan, and the YCl is actively seeking to To the YCl and others, society. YCl understands these principles. If sabotage, real anti-fascists must work When I joined the.Young Com­ , 4) To take the side of the working they did, they would not be calling for a harder. Nov. 5th must be made a day munist league (the youth wing of the class, the only class in modern society vote for a capitalist candidate like, that the Klan won't forget. To do this, Communist Party USA), I did so on the which has the interest and powerto Michael Dukakis. They would not pre­ we must make sure that people know impression that it was the party ofMarx overthrow the present reactionary sys­ tend that the interests of the working who is working against the Klan and and lenin, the party of the Russian Rev­ tem ofcapitalism and to create a new ,class within the Soviet bloc countries are who is not. olution. Both academic study and con­ socialist world. the same as those of the bureaucracies. Therefore, I wish to publicly an­ crete political experience have shown 5) To organize a vanguard party of These political problems areextremely nounce my resignation from the YCl me just how wrong that impression was. professional revolutionaries that can be grave. However, the YCl has commit­ As I see it, the basic ground rules for a the tribune of-the people and to organize ted yet another political crime. Marxist-leninist party are ... this party under the principles of Dem­ For the last week and a half, I have 1) To look at the world as it really is, ocratic Centralism. been organizing with the Partisan not how we would like it to be. 6) Finally, to intervene in the class Defense Committee to bring Wesleyan 2) To understand that economics are . struggle by winning over the most mil­ students down to Philadelphia to the the basic motive force in history. itant partisans of the working class to united-front demonstration. Unlike the 3) To understand that class struggle lead the class to victory. Students and Youth Against Racism group; who I worked with earlier, the PDC clearly stated the united-front work brigades to Nicaragua. From the mines Soviet defense with its pipe dream demonstration was open to all Anti­ campuses to the factory gates we raised of peaceful coexistence with imperial­ Klan groups and individuals. Further­ over $25,000 which we sent directly to ism. Gorbachev's betrayal of social more, they were relying on the social the Sandinistas to help them crush the struggles in Afghanistan, Angola and power of the labor movement to insure contra scum. Across the country the Nicaragua only intensifies the U.S. anti­ that the demonstration would remain SYC has taken the lead in organizing Soviet war drive. A political revolution disciplined and safe. This seemed to me 1!~1MJCIIIm' united-front demonstrations to drive led by a Trotskyist party is necessary to to be the proper demonstration for a =oe"tllUQlIlUl' CIA recruiters and ROTC off the oust the bureaucracy, restore workers communist to participate in. l!,~CONSERVATI¥ES' ~~ campuses. Pacifists call for "disarrna­ democracy and return the Soviet state to On the evening of 10/22, an organ­ L~'fIUIS'AT1IORl ment"-but the blood-soaked U.S. rul­ the path of lenin and Trotsky, the path izer from the YCl called me and told ing class will be disarmed only by work­ of revolutionary internationalism. me that whoever was organizing the CP calls on racist capitalist gov­ We're looking for a few good com­ demonstration, the RCP or the Sparta­ ers revolution. ernment to "outlaw" racism. Real Defend the Soviet Union! led by V.I. munists. We seek to win young people, cists or whoever...whoever they were, communists mobilize labor/black lenin and leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik whatever their class backgrounds, to a they were in the pay of the FBI and the power to stop fascists. revolution of 1917 successfully placed lifetime of partisanship to the struggles CIA and were violent agent provoca­ the working class in power for the of the working class. The Spartacus teurs and that the YCl and the labor and to denounce the organization for first time in history. Despite Stalin's Youth Club is an action-school for rev­ movement wouldn't touch the demon­ this political crime. Ifthe Klan marches bureaucratic counterrevolution, which olutionaries and serves as the student­ stration with a IO-foot pole. Surpris­ in Philadelphia, if the fascists are liquidated soviet democracy and wiped youth auxiliary to the class-struggle ingly, he did not claim that the Trotsky­ strengthened by this treachery, then it is out thousands of revolutionaries includ­ opposition in the trade unions. If you ists were in the pay of the Nazis, the the cP that must be held accountable. ing Trotsky, the USSR's collectivized, hate the racism and oppression of this Mikado, British Intelligence and Satan, The whole irony of the situation is that planned economy remains a historic rotten capitalist system, if you want to but then, Pravda seems to have some­ the CP can whine to Mike Dukakis to gain for the world working class. We eliminate the threat ofnuclear annihila­ what softened its line on Trotsky lately. ban the Klan, but if the fascists ever unconditionally defend the Soviet Un­ tion, then you had better start fighting Furthermore, the YCl has been circu­ come to power here, the CP will be the ion against imperialist attack and for a socialist America. The time to fight lating these slanderous rumors around first to go just as in Germany in 1933. domestic counterrevolution. The con­ is now, and the way to start is to join the campus making our work doubly Also, they wouldn't be the only ones. servative ruling bureaucracy under- Spartacus Youth Club.• difficult. D.H. 4 NOVEMBER 1988 7 Trotsky and the Gorbachev.School of Falsification He was expelled, exiled, and eventu­ tionary figures as Gregory Zinoviev, authoritative party theoretical journal road back to Lenin: the centrality ofan ally deported from the homeland of the Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin and, Kommunist, drew the' line at jurid­ internationalist perspective. Yet all the revolution he had been instrumental in above all, Leon Trotsky. When high ical-but not political-rehabilitation: participants in the October Revolution leading. Feared and vilified by imperi­ school history exams were suddenly "Trotsky was expelled from the party knew that it was not simply a Russian alists and Stalinists alike, Leon Trotsky .canceled last spring for lack of credible not in 1937, but in 1927 for his anti­ revolution but the first stage of the lived his last years on a "planet without a textbooks, it was a striking admission party activities." By his choice of dates, world revolution. October 1917 was visa," hounded from one European by the Stalinist apparatus that the past Latsis is saying: Stalin was right against followed by revolutionary upheavals country to another, hunted across the has been buried in lies. This summer the Trotsky, but then he went "too far." In throughout Europe: Germany 1918-19, Atlantic, and finally struck down in photographs of Lenin's colleagues sud­ 1937, Stalin's' terror consumed even Hungary 1919, Italy 1920. In the U.S., Mexico in the vilest political murder of denly began appearing in Soviet muse­ loyal Stalinists; in 1927, the forces of there was a general strike and short­ the century. But not even Stalin's assas­ ums. Their writings are supposedly Stalin and Bukharin rallied behind the lived workers council in Seattle in 1919. sins could - silence the revolutionary internationalism which Leon Trotsky had come to personify. Today, the spec­ tre of Trotsky continues to haunt the political heirs of Joseph Stalin. It is the spectre of the October Revolution.

PART ONE OF TWO

In the past year, scarcely a week has gone by without some reference to Trotsky in the Soviet press (see "Leon Trotsky: Fighter for World Revolu­ tion," WV No. 456, I July). Most re­ cently the Soviet government an­ nounced it will publish unspecified writings by Trotsky in 1989. When the official Soviet Communist Party news­ paper Pravda (9 September) recently devoted a full page to an account of the .Stalin-Trotsky struggle acknowledging Trotsky's stature second only to Lenin during the revolution, it made inter­ national headlines. A month earlier Argumenty i Fakty; a journal directed to party cadre, carried a lengthy arti­ cle entitled "L. Trotsky: Myths and Reality." And Gorbachev dramatist lau­ reate Mikhail Shatrov's latest play, "Onward, Onward, Onward," depicts Trotsky declaring: "I am a soldier of the World Revolution." What's going on? Is Leon Trotsky-> LV. Leonidov co-leader with Lenin o( the October V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky; co-leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution, on its second anniversary, 7 November 1919. Revolution and the early Soviet state, S~viet working class will restore Trotsky to his rightful place in history. founder of the Red Army, arch-nemesis of Stalin-i-finally about to be restored being moved to open shelves from the nationalist banner of "socialism in one Colonial peoples of' the East were to his rightful place in Soviet history? closed archives where they gathered country," bureaucratically crushing the inspired to take up arms against their No. That will not happen until the dust for years. And there are reports Bolshevik-Leninist Left Opposition. imperialist oppressors. Soviet working masses return to their that samizdat versions of Trotsky's The This was the "ideological struggle" rightful place in power through a prole­ Revolution Betrayed are circulating. Gorbachev praised during his speech on "Old Thinking" vs. tarian political revolution which shat­ Gorbachev's policy of perestroika­ the 70th anniversary of the October "New Thinking" ters the Stalinist bureaucracy. The cur­ "restructuring" the Soviet economy Revolution last year. According to For all their self-styled "new think­ rent leaders in the Kremlin are the heirs along the lines of "market socialism"­ Gorbachev: ing," after decrying the "blank spaces" and defenders of a political counterrev­ mandates a "restructuring" of Soviet "Trotsky and the Trotskyites negated in Soviet history, the Gorbachevites fill history as well, aimed at sweeping away the possibility of building socialism in olution which in 1924 usurped power conditions of capitalist encirclement. them in with their own selection of lies from the Soviet proletariat and imposed the dross of outworn and shattered lies "In foreign policy they gave priority to that were fashioned more than 60 years a system of bureaucratic rule. Today, dating from the Stalin era. Having export of revolution, and in home ago by Stalin/Bukharin, Their con­ while neo-Brezhnevite opponents of disowned Stalin, they anoint Stalin's policy to tightening the screws on the tribution to the arsenal of "anti­ ideological hatchet man Bukharin­ peasants, to the city exploiting the Gorbachev's glasnost continue to traf­ countryside, and to administrative and Trotskyism" is to obscenely dub the fic in outworn slanders ofTrotsky from purveyor of anti-socialist, anti-Leninist military fiat in running society. man who fought Stalin and Stalinism Stalin's day, the liberal intellectuals views like "socialism in one country" "Trotskyism was ... essentially an attack until his death as "anotherStalin." Their around Gorbachev resurrect an iota of and "socialism at a snail's pacer-s-as on Leninism all down the line." purpose in this incredible slander is the truth-not to praise Trotsky for Lenin's rightful political heir. A recent The current Soviet regime views even clear: by denouncing Trotsky they exor­ being "the soldier of the World Revolu­ poll of Moscow residents commis­ the stodgy Brezhnev as some sort of cise the internationalism of the October tion" but to more effectively bury him sioned by the New York Times found closet "Trotskyite" for "exporting revo­ Revolution. As .an article by Michal and the internationalist ideals for which Bukharin more popular than any his­ lution" by sending troops to Afghani­ Reiman in the Eurocommunist Italian he fought. toric Soviet leader except V.1. Lenin stan. Gorbachev rejects even lip service CP journal Rinascita (9 July) observed For years, to so much as utter a himself. More startling was the fact that to the class struggle internationally; his of the recent Soviet polemics against positive word about Trotsky was one out of nine interviewed had a favor­ colleagues blame the Soviet Union for Trotsky.: "By attacking him you can enough to be sent to a forced labor able opinion of Trotsky, "The Demon of the Cold War. And with all the injunc­ attack, from a nationalist standpoint, a camp, or worse. History books were the Revolution" as Pravda called him. tions to "return to Lenin," the Com­ whole revolutionary period of Bolshe­ rewritten time and again, photographs In an unprecedented public call for munist International is scarcely men­ vism, describe it as foreign to Russian retouchedvrnuseum exhibits carefully Trotsky's rehabilitation published in tioned. What is missing on all sides in national history and the history of Bol­ designed to erase any evidence of the Komsomolskaya Pravda last June, Dr. the debates wracking the Soviet press is shevism itself." roles played by such historic revolu- Otto Latsis, the deputy editor of the precisely that which alone can open the The question of Stalin vs. Trotsky 8 WORKERS VANGUARD has featured prominently in the byz­ antine ideological war between the Gorbachevites and their conservative opponents centered around the recent­ ly demoted Yegor Ligachev. For un­ reconstructed Brezhnevites, to credit Trotsky with any positive role in Soviet history is nothing short of heresy. On the eve of Gorbachev's 70th anniver­ sary speech, Sovetskaya Rossiya (27 .September 1987), the flagship organ of anti-Gorbachev conservatives and of Russian nationalism, published a scur­ rilous diatribe. by historical sciences professor V. Ivanov under the title "Re­ painting Yudushka," (In an angry note in 1911, Lenin had called Trotsky Yudushka, an allusion to a character in Russian literature, but which the Sta­ linists habitually translate as "Judas.") With the old Stalin lie that Trotsky was a lifelong agent of Hitler and the Mikado too discredited to be used, the Ivanov article retailed virtually every other anti-Trotsky vilification under the sun: he left his wife and children in Sibe­ rian exile, he joined the Bolsheviks only to subvert them from within, he tried to wreck preparations for the insurrec­ tion, he used the revolution to help his father (who "started 1917 with a wealth of nearly 1 million rubles") to set up VK Bulla a "'bread business' in famine-stricken Lenin lays foundation stone for monument to Communist martyrs Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and the Moscow." Etc., etc. ad nauseam. Ivan­ heroes of the Paris Commune, at the Second Congreslof the Communist International, Petrograd, July 1920. ov tries to deny Trotsky's leading role in the October insurrection by inanely misers

List of Endorsers 8S of 30 October 1988 Leon Harris. SecretaryfTreasurer, ILWU Local 6,' San Francisco, CA Efraln Roche, Editor. Enfoque Comunitario,' Philadelphia. PA Mumla Abu-Jamal, Huntingdon. PA Willie F: Harris. Staff Representative. SEIU Local 25,' Chicago. IL . Joel Rogers, Associate Professor, School of Law. University of Wisconsin,' Ralph Accma. State Representative, Philadelphia. PA Herbert Harvey, Steward/Delegate, AFSCME District Council 33. Philadelphia. PA Madison. WI ,/ Actlvl.t Studies Forum. Hunter College.' New York. NY Charles Hayes. Member of Congress.' Chicago, IL Selwyn Rogers. Mid-West Regional Chair. Black Rank and File Exchange,' ACT UP (AIDS CoaHtJon to Un....h Power). New York. NY Calvin Hernton. Professor of Black StUdies. Oberlin College,' Oberlin, OH Detroit. MI Ru..... L. Adam., Associate Professor. Afro-American Studies Department. Mary B. Hester. Secretary, CWA Local 4309,' Cleveland, OH James W. Rookard. Director. CWA Local 4309 (Ameritech Companies),' Howard University,' Washington. D.C. Baruch Hlrson. Editor, Searchlight South Africa.' London. England Cleveland. OH African American Student Union. Temple University,' Philadelphia. PA Gene Hoftman, General Chairman, lAM,' Lynbrook. NY seth Rosen, Director, CWA Local 4309 (Ohio'Bell),' Cleveland Hei!lhts, OH AFSCME CoUiIcII S7, Baltimore. MD John Holmes. Chairman. Daily Review Chapel. Bay. Area Typographical Union Jettrey M. Roth, Executive Director. P'nai Or Religious Fellowship,' AFSCME Df,trlct Council 33, Philadelphia, PA Local 21,' Oakland. CA Philadelphia, PA AFSCME Local 444. Oakland. CA Linda Kaye Holme., Recording Secretary and Chair of Civil Rights Committee. Verena S. Rottmann. Lawyer, Hamburg, West Germany AFSCME Local 2019. Oakland, CA SEll) Local 82,' Washington. D.C. Richard E. Rubenstein, Professor of Public Affairs, George Mason University,' AFSCME Local 2412, Madison. WI James Hunter, President, AFSCME Local 2799,' Detroit, MI Fairfax, VA AFSCME Local 2586, Philadelphia. PA Linda Hunter, Associate Professor. Department of African Language and Joseph Rubio, Vice President. lAM Local 311,' Azusa. CA AFSCME Local 3210, Oakland, CA Literature. University ~f Wisconsin,' Madison, WI Anthony RUBBO, member, U.S.lVietnam Friendship Association,' N.oml Allen. Shop Steward. TWU Local 100,' Brooklyn, NY lAM Local 1111. Hawthorne. CA Santa Monica, CA Amalgamated Tran.lt Union Local 241, Chicago, IL lAM Local 1894, South Ozone Park. NY Fermin N. Ruybalid, Business Representative, Painter District Council 33: Amalgamated Tran.1t Union Local 732, Atlanta. GA ILA Local 1408. Jacksonville, FL San Jose, CA Amalgamated Tran.1t Union Local 1210, Runnemede, NJ ILA Local 1458, Frelghthandlers, Norfolk, VA John W. Ryan, President, CWA Local 4309,' Cleveland. OH American Federation of Government Employees Local 1457, San Francisco, CA Yves A. Isldor, Professor, ROXbury Community College,' and Officer of the James W. Ryder. Business Agent, ILWU LOCal6,' Oakland. CA American Federation of Teachers Local 1474 Executive Board, Berkeley, CA Committee of Solidarity with Haiti,' Cambridge, MA David Sambolin, member, National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights,' Gary Andersen, Vice Chairman, ConductorfTower Division of TWU Local 100,' Edgar S. Jackson. Business Agent, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192,' Philadelphia. PA Bronx, NY Oakland, CA Chris Hanson-Sanchez, President, National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, Antl-Aparlheid Committee, AFSCME Local 1644,' Atlanta, GA Ronald W. Jackson, Sr" President, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 268: Philadelphia Chapter,' Philadelphia, PA Anti-Fascist Organization, Coburg. West Germany Cleveland, OH San Francisco School Bus Drivers Union, UnitedTransj>ortatlon Union Local 1741, Ascension Poetry Reading Series, Washington, D.C. Harold L. Jamison, Journalist, New York Amsterdam News,' New York, NY San Francisco, CA Asian American Alliance, Oberlin, OH Willie Jenkins, ex-Business Manager. Laborer's International Union Local 334,' Gale Sayers, United Negro College Fund,' Chicago Bears' (retired), Skokie, IL Leora Auslander, Assistant Professor, History Department, University of Chicago,' Detroit, MI Elana Schachter, Philadelphia Steering Committee member, P'nai Or Religious Chicago,IL E. Roy John, Director, Brain Research Laboratory and Professor, Department of Fellowship: Philadelphia, PA Martez V. Byrd Baker. President, AFSCME Local 2477,' Washington, D.C. Psychiatry, NYU Medical Center,' New York, NY Rabbi Zelman M. Schachter-Shaloml, President. P'nai Or Religious Fellowship: Barnard Organization of Black Women, Barnard College,' New York, NY Randy Johnese, Senior Field Representative. SEIU Local 535,' Oakland, CA Philadelphia, PA Donald L. Barnett, President, NALC Branch 24,' Los Angeles, CA Cynthia Johnson,cAssistant Director. Legislative Office. Women Strike for Peace: Morris U. Schappes, Editor, Jewish Currents,' New York, NY James R. Barrett, Executive Board and Past President, USWA Local 8751,' Washington, D.C. David SChermerhorn. Business Agent, ILWU Local 6,' San Francisco, CA Hyde Park, MA Nelson N. Johnson, President, Theologue Fellowship. Virginia Union University,' Tim Schermerhorn, Shop Steward, TWU Local 100,' Brooklyn. NY Haskell Berman, retired member, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers: Richmond. VA School of General Studies Evening Student Government, Hunter College.' Philadelphia, PA Roscoe D. Johnson, President, Pennsylvania Social Services Union, SEIU Local New York, NY Paul Bigman, International Representative, Retail, Wholesale and Department 668, Philadelphia Chapter. Philadelphia, PA ' WIlliam R. SCott, Chairman. Black Studies Department. Oberlin College,' Store Workers,' Chicago, IL Harllel Jones, member, Grass Roots Congress,' Cleveland. OH Oberlin,OH Black & White Men Together. Chicago, IL Journal and GuIda, Norfolk, VA ' Israel Shahak. civil rights advocate. Jerusalem, Israel The Black Community Council of Quebec, lne., Montreal, Quebec Mlchlo Kaku, Professor. Physics Department, City College of New York,' David R. Shelton, Vice President. San Francisco School Bus Drivers Union. United Black Student Alliance, Georgia State University,' Atlanta, GA New York. NY Transportation Union Local 1741. Richmond, CA Wanda J. Black. Financial Secretary-Treasurer, Amalgamated Transit Union Rabbi Joanna Katz, Philadelphia, PA James P. Shenton. Professor of History. Columbia University,' New York, NY Local 241, Chicago, IL Joesephus R. King. President, AFSCME Council 25 Local 23,' Detroit. MI C. Shone. Shop Steward, Letter Carriers Union of Canada Local 1. Ajax, Ontario Bolshevik Tendency Andre Kolompar, President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers Toronto Local,' Paul N. Siegel. Professor Emeritus, Long Island University,' New York. NY Frank Boone, Vice Chairman, United Motormen Division of TWU Local 100: Toronto, Ontario Chris Silvera. Steward. Teamsters Local 808,' New York. NY New York, NY Peter J. Kott, Professor. Borough of Manhattan Comm ..nity College, Marchal Smiley, President, SEIU Local 722,' Washington. D.C. Spurgeon L; Boone, President. IBEW Local 2280,' Portsmouth, VA City University of New York,' New York, NY George Smllnak, Treasurer, CWA Local 4309,' Cleveland, OH Louis J. Brady, Director, Department of Civil Rights, 'International Union of Maggie KUhn, National Convener, Gray Panthers," Philadelphia. PA Donald A. Smith, Executive Board member, NALC Branch 2200,' Pasadena. CA Operating Engineers,' Washington, D.C. William Kunstler, Attorney, New York, NY Leona Smith, Board member, Committee for Dignity & Fairness forthe Homeless.' Dr. Peter Brandt, Historian, West Berlin, Germany Labor Black League for Social Defense. Oakland, CA Philadelphia, PA Jackie B. Breckenridge, International Vice President. Amalgamated Transit Labor Black Struggle League, Chicago, IL Malcolm Smith, volunteer/member. Health Care Committee, Philadelphia Union: Chicago, IL . George Lach, Executive Board member. AFSCME Local 2203,' Baltimore. MD Unemployment Project,' Philadelphia, PA . Preston Browning, Associate Professor, Department of English, Susan L. Lantz, Director, Labor and Community Affairs, Independent Federation of Sparlaclst League of the U.S. University of Illinois,' Chicago. IL Flight Attendants,' Forest Hills. NY Spartacus Youth ClUb. New York, NY Cadena de Solldaridad can Chile. Bronx, NY Frank Laraque. Associate Professor. Black Studies Department, City College of RUSB Slallberg, Shop Steward, Canadian Union of Postal Workers Toronto Local,' Michael L. Callen, founding member, People with AIDS Coalition,' New York. NY New York,' New York, NY Toronto. Ontario Campaign Against Apartheid, University of California,' Berkeley, CA Jack Layton, City Councillor, Toronto. Ontario James V. Slancll, President, Student Government Association. Chicago State Giovanni Campari, Deputy Editor. Interstampa,' Milan. Italy James Leehan, Director, University Christian Movement. University,' Chicago. IL Sadie Campbell. Business Agent, CWA Local 1150. Bronx, NY Cleveland State University,' Cleveland, OH Steve J. Stern, Professor, History Department, University of Wisconsin,' Caribbean Students Association. City College of New York,' New York, NY Melvin Leiman. Professor of Economics, State University of New York,' Madison. WI Caribbean Student Union, Hunter College: New York, NY Binghamton, NY Homer Stevens, Board of Trustees member, United Fisherman and Allied Workers Gerald J. Cavanaugh, Lecturer, University of California,' Berkeley. CA Mildred F. Leonard, Steward. IBEW Local 134,' Chicago, IL Union,' Vancouver, B.C. Chris Carlls. Public Affairs Director, WRTI 90.1 FM,' Philadelphia, PA lesbian/Gay Alliance, san Francisco State University,' San Francisco. CA Albert E. Stewart, Organizer. Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers,' Alicia L. Carroll, Secretary. Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. Philadelphia, PA Lesbians Rlslng Collective of Hunter College, New York, NY Cambridge. MA Brenda L. Carroll. Steward, Teamsters Local 743,' Chicago, IL Letter Carriers Union of Canada Local 1, Toronto, Ontario David Stewart, Executive Board member. ILWU Local 10,' Berkeley, CA Jerry Carter. Financial Secretary, USWA Local 436,' Atlanta, GA Isaac Levert. Financial SecretaryfTreasurer. UAW Local 486,' WIlliam J. Storrlng, Vice Local Chairman. United Transportation Union Local 483,• John H. Carter, Council Administrator, AFSCME Council 67, Baltimore, MD Cleveland Heights, OH Toronto. Ontario Centro Pedro Claver. Philadelphia, PA Paris Lewis. Organizer, Howard Urilversity Progressive Student Mo.vement.' John F. Street. Councilmember, Philadelphia City Council,' Philadelphia, PA Gall P. Chauncey. Special Projects Editor. The Spartan Echo, Norfolk State Washington. D.C. , Student Government Aaaoclatlon. Hampton University,' Hampton. VA University: Chesapeake. VA Richard Lewontln, Professor of Zoology, Harvard University: Cambridge. MA Student Government of Barnard College. New York, NY Gabl Christov. member. Women Strike for Peace, Washington Peace Center,' Jack L1ebleln, Steward, CWA Local 1150, Brooklyn, NY Student Health SocIety of Hunter College, New York, NY Washington. D.C. Walter Lippmann, Secretary. SEIU Local 535. Los Angeles Social Services Students for Non-Intervention In Central Amerlce and the Caribbean. State Representative David Clarenbach. Wisconsin State Assembly,' Madison, WI Chapter,' Los Angeles. CA City College of New York,' New York, NY Rev. J.W. Clemons, Hampton Road Minister's Conference: Chesapeake, VA Sheldon B. L1SB. Professor of Latin American History and Government, Hugh TlIQue, Business Manager. OPEIU Local 14,' Philadelphia. PA Coalition of Black Trade Unlonl.ts, Philadelphia, PA • University of Akron,' Akron. OH William "Bill" Tate, Vice President and New York Regional Director. David Cohen. Councilmember-at-Large, Philadelphia City Council,' L. I.\lkkarlnen, 2nd Vice President. Canadian Union of Postal Workers District 65-UAW,' New York. NY Philadelphia, PA Toronto Local,' Toronto, Ontario Temple Lambda Ailiance,tha lesbian and lillY student union aI Temple University. Leroy Collier. Branch President. NALC Branch 2200,' Pasadena, CA Conrad Lynn, Mid-Hudson Regional Counsel. NAACP,' Nanuet, Ny Philadelphia. PA Victor Collins, Director. Minority Student Service at Old Dominion University,' William Marshall, Pacoima. CA Ron Tenlnty. President. Teamsters Local 315,' Martinez. CA Norfolk, VA Aurelio P. Martinez, Jr.. President, National Association of Letter Carriers Gerald nttermary. Vice President. Retail. Wholesale and Department Store Columbia College Student Council, Columbia University,' New 'fork, NY Local 142,' Washington. D.C. Workers Union Local 1034, Philadelphia. PA Comlte por la No Intervencl6n en Centroamerlca, San Francisco. CA David Matza. Professor of Sociology, University of California,' Berkeley. CA Stanley E. Tolliver. Sr•• Attorney-at-Law and member, Thomas Paine Cronin, President, AFSCME District Council 47,' Philadelphia, PA Carlton McBurroWB. President, AFSCME Local 2920. Michigan Council 2,5,' Cleveland Board of Education,' Cleveland. OH William E. CrOBB. Associate Professor. Cornell University,' Ithaca, NY Detroit. MI " Zollo Torres, President. National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights,' CWA Local 1150, New York. NY Fred McMUllen. Exlicutive Co-Coordinator, Temple Lambda Aliiance, Philadelphia. PA Danny K. Davis, Alderman, 29th Ward, Chicago. IL the lesbian and gay student union at Temple University. Philadelphia. PA Trotzklatlsche L111ll Deutschlands (TLD) Richard Davis, Madison. WI James M. McPherson, Edwards Professor of American History, Terence S. Turner. Professor, Department of Anthropology. Day SeSBlon Student Government. Hunter College,' New York, NY Princeton University,' Princeton. NJ , University of Chicago,' Chicago. IL . Day Student Government, City College of New York: New York. NY Sheila McTlgha, Assistant Professor. History of Art, Cornell University.-Ithaca, NY Jean Y. Tussey. Delegate to Cleveland AFL-CIO Federation of Labor,' and Ronald V. Dellums. Member of Congress,' Oakland, CA Michael Mezo, President, USWA Local 1010,' East Chicago, IL member, CTU No. 53, CWA Local 1452,' Cleveland Heights. OH Tracey T. Devlin, Test Lab Shop Steward, TWU Local 100,' New York, NY Cheri Mlcheau. Teacher. University of Pennsylvania,' Philadelphia, PA Ronald A. Tyree, Vice President, CWA Local 1150. Mount Vernon. NY Byron Dickens. Vice President, Canadian Auto Workers Local 1459: _ Franz Mlnuty, Host, The Caribbean Forum, WZBC Radio,' Mattapan. MA UAW Chlcego Civil Rights Counctl. Chicago. IL Etobicoke. Ontario Harold Mitchell, President, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. Cleveland Chapter.' Umml's Strategic Plan for Conscientious Survival. Philadelphia. PA John J. DIPaola, Vice President. lAM Local 1018,' Flushing. NY and President, AFSCME Local 100, Cleveland City Employees,' Cleveland, OH Unl6n de Trabajadores de la Industria Etectrlca y Rlego de Puerto Rico (UTIER), Ernest Downing, Chairperson, East New York Shop. TWU Local 100,' Queens, NY Parren J. Mitchell. Former Member of Congress,' Baltimore, MD Santurce, Puerto Rico Steve Downs, member, TWU Local 100,' New Yorl<, NY Alicia A. Montes-Matzger. District Council member, ILWU Local 6,' Oakland, CA Douglas A. Uren, President, TWU Local 30,' North Vancouver, B.C. WIlliam Easterling. Retlied President and Business Agent. Amalgamated Transit Jim Moran, Director, PHILAPOSH,' and Executive Board member, USWA Local 1014, Gary, IN Union Local 268,' Cleveland Heights, OH Newspaper Guild Local 10,' Philadelphia, PA Lloyd K. Vandever, President, UE Local 1412,' Oakland, CA Herbert Edwards, President, ACTWU Local 170,' Philadelphia, PA Thom J. MOSB, SecretaryfTreasurer, OCAW Local 1-547,' Lawndale, CA Charlie van Gelderen, Socialist Outiook,' Cambridge, England Rev. Graylan SCott Ellis-Hagler, Minister, Church of the United Community: Mark Nalson. Professor of Afro-American Studies, Fordham University,' Anna C. Verna. Councilmember, Philadelphia City Council,' Philadelphia, PA ROXbury, MA Brooklyn, NY Benjamin Vlsnlck, Executive Board member, Oakland Education Association/ Henry English, President/CEO. Illinois Black United Fund. Inc.,' Chicago, IL National Association for Chicano Studies, Midwest Region. Minneapolis, MN CTA/NEA,' Kensington. CA Bruce Evans, Advocator and member. Philadelphia Unemployment Project,' New Alliance Party, Philadelphia, PA Esteban Volkov. Curator, Leon Trotsky Museum,' ccvcacan. Mexico Philadelphia, PA Morton Newman. Business Agent, ILWU Local 6,' San Francisco, CA Mark von Hagen. Asst. Professor ofHistory. Columbia University,' New York, NY Jesse S. Everett, Shop Steward, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 732, New York Labor Black League for Social Defense. New York. NY VVN, Aaaoclatlon of Victims of the Nazi Regime, West Berlin, Germany Atlanta, GA Clifton Norman. Director, AFSCME District Council 88,- Wayne, PA The Washington Sisters, Columbus, OH 15th & York St. Small Businessperson Association, Philadelphia, PA Bertell Oilman, Professor. Department of Politics. New York University,' Arthur Watson. SecretaryfTreasurer. American Federation of Government James C. Finkel, Recording Secretary, United Motormen Division of New York, NY Employees Local 1457, San Francisco. CA TWU Local 100: Brooklyn, NY Orange County Central Labor Council, Santa Ana. CA Glenroy B. Watson. Organizer. Southern Africa and Apartheid Information, Eric Foner, Professor of History, Columbia University,' New York, NY Angel L. Ortiz, Councilmember-at-Large, Philadelphia City Council.' National Union Of Railwaymen,' London. England Marvin Foreman, Secretary-Treasurer. Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees Philadelphia. PA , Edward A. Watt. Executive Board member. TWU Local 100,' Brooklyn, NY No. 23,' Norfolk. VA louise Palmer. Coordinator. Amnesty International. Wesleyan University Jerome Watts. President, ILA Local 1429,' Baltimore, MD Benny Foster, Vice Chairman, Power Division of TWU Local 100,' Chapter,' Middletown, CT A"onso Wells, Former Chair of Trustees of UAW 1776,' Detroit, MI Brooklyn. NY VlctorPamlroyan, Business Agent. ILWU Local 6,' Oakland. CA Wesleyan Soctallsts, Wesleyan University,' Middletown, CT Fourth Internationalist Tendency Panhellenlc Council of Temple University, Philadelphia, PA Philip E. Wheaton, Director. Ecumenical Program for Interamerican Sara C. Franco. President, Confederation of Latin American Students at the Partisan Deferlse Committee Communication and Action: Washington. D.C. University of Illinois,' Chicago, IL David Pearce. Shop Steward. Canadian Union of Postal Workers Toronto Local,' Donald Wheeldln. Vice President. Pasadena Resource Allocation Commission: Richard S. Fraser, Historic American Trotskyist. Los Angeles, CA Toronto. Ontario Pasadena, CA Freedom Socialist Party Dr. William A. Pelz, Lecturer, Political Science Department, Roosevelt University. ~ E. Lois Williams, President. Philadelphia Council of Neighborhood Organizations.' Peter H. Freeman, Delegate, Social Service Employees Union Local 371,' Chicago,IL Philadelphia. PA . New York, NY Pennsylvania Social Services Union, SEIU Local 668. Philadelphia. PA Ire L. Williams. Vice President. Social Service Employees Union Local 371,' A. James Gaetanlello, President, lAM Local 1018,' Flushing. NY Martin Perllch, Writer/Producer, Los Angeles, CA New York. NY Gay and Lesbian Alliance, San Francisco City College,' San Francisco, CA K8Ith Phelps. Business Representative, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Jena R. Williams. President,.Atr"lCanAmerican Student Union. Temple University: Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual Alliance. University of California,' Berkeley, CA Workers Union Local 1064,' Dearborn. MI Philadelphia. PA . Gay Men's Allianee of Hunter Collage. New York, NY Philadelphia Area Labor Committee Against Apartheid, Philadelphia. PA Lois A. Williamson, Executive Director, Citizens Unitedfor Rehabilitation of Errants Gay People's Union, Hunter College,' New York, NY Pi Alpha Chapter, Delta Si~ma Theta Sorority Inc.,' Middletown, CT (CURE),' Philadelphia. PA Jeremy Genovese. Executive Board member at large, CWA Local 4309,' Sterling D. Piumpp, Professor. Black Studies. University of Illinois,' Chicago, IL Arthur Willis. Chairman. People United for Justice,' Philadelphia, PA Cleveland Heights, OH Marlon Pollack. President. Canadian Union of Postal Workers Vancouver Local.' Edward WolkenBlein. Former President, Erie #1 Co-op Teachers Assoc. Louis Giannetti, Professor of English and Film. Department of English. Vancouver. B.C. NYSUT. AFT,' Buffalo. NY Case Western Reserve University,' C;'eveland. OH Poder Popular de Chile. Bronx. NY Tarez E. Woods, Executive Board member and Assistant Chief Steward. John Glasel. President, American Federation of Musicians Local 802,' Jonas Pontuason. Assistant Professor, Department of Government, CWA Local 4309,' Cleveland, OH .: New York. NY Cornell University,' Ithaca. NY Evelyn M. Wyatt. Steward. CWA Local ~10,' San Francisco, CA Michael Goldfield. Professor of Government, Cornell University,' Ithaca. NY janice Poyer. Shop Steward. AFSCME District Council 37 Local 1549,' James Ya.... author and veteran of Abraham Lincoln Brigade,' New York. NY Vaughn Goodwin. President. NAACP Temple Chapter-SCORE,' Philadelphia. PA Brooklyn. NY Richard I. Yates. Clinical Counselor. Cleveland State University,' Gilbert Gordon. Attorney, Chicago, IL Geronimo ji Jage (Pratt). Tarnal. CA Cleveland Heights, OH Samuel Green, Executive Board member. Amalgamated Transit Union Local 732. ("Quack") Magazlne~ Hunter College.' New York. NY Ron_ Youmans. member, Human Rights Commillee and House of Atlanta, GA Radical Women Representatives of United Teachers of Los Angeles,' Los Angeles, CA James Grimes. New York City transit worker (retired), Riverdale. GA Homer Reed. Second Vice President, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241, Richard Ziebell. President, UAW Local 477,' Chicago. IL Frank Grlnnon. Business Representative. ORTIIIBEW Local 1011,' Oakland. CA Chicago. IL . Die GrUnen (Greens) Parliamentary Fraction, West Germany Larry Regen, President. USWA Local 1014, Gary. IN ·Organizational affiliation for identification purposes only. Haitian Student Association. City College of New York,' New York. NY Kal Reltlln. Chairman. VVN Altona, Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime.' Jerry Hall. President, SEIU Local 535. Los Angeles County Chapter,' Hamburg. West Germany Los Angeles. CA Relall, Whol...le and Department Store Workers Union Local 1034. We want to make it very clear that endorsers do not necessarily agree Berkley Harmon III, Vice President, Kappa Alpha Psi, Temple University,' Philadelphia. PA in any particular with written material aboutthe mobilization published Philadelphia, PA lewis' G. Robinson. Vice President, Grassroots Political Action Committee.' by the Partisan Defense Committee in initiating the mobilization or Alexan~r Harrington. member, Democratic Socialists of America,' New York. NY Shaker Heights. OH by others.

10 WORKERS VANGUARD Klan Won't any useful integrated action, like winning strikes. Ride .•• .-We vehemently protest the accusation that violence would be (continued/rom page 1) engendered by our demonstra­ AFSCME Local 2586, SEIU Local 668, Partisan Defense Committee tion, which will be militant, orderly RWDSU Local 1034, the Coalition of and democratic. We repeat: the Black Trade Unionists, and the Phila­ Press Release KKK and skinheads are killers. If delphia Area Labor Committee Against 11 October 26 the labor movement in Germany Apartheid. p.m., demonstration of thousands to had stopped the Nazis when they Nationally, more than 100 union In the face of the massive out­ honor the working people who locals and officials are supporting the pouring of opposition to the ter­ built this country, and to guar­ were small, there never would have November 5 Mobilization to Stop the roristic KKK (rom groups and antee that.the Klan does not ride in been the Holocaust. Violence­ KKK. Endorsers include ILA locals in individuals representing tens of Philly. baiting and red-baiting those who Jacksonville" and Norfolk, Machinists thousands of union members, civil An . agreement between the want to stop the Klan only serves to locals in the L.A. area and New York rights activists,community groups, National Park Service and the Ku encourage violent attacks by the City, presidents and locals of the Steel­ students and others, the Klan's Klux Klan is no assurance that the Klan on the people of Philadel­ workers union in Gary, East Chicago threat to invade the city of Phila­ decent people of Philadelphia are phia. We are determined that the and Sudbury, Ontario, bus drivers in delphia November 5 has report­ safe from the Klan's racist terror. horror perpetrated by Nazi Ger­ San Francisco, two divisions of TWU many must not happen here. Local 100 in New York, ILWU officials edly been "put on hold." The Klan has never waited for per­ in California. This is a victory against the mits to carry out their lynchings, - Statement of the Endorsements have also come in from Klan. The All Out to Stop the firebombings and murder. Even Partisan Defense Committee, prominent civil rights activists, local KKK mobilization will be at Inde­ when they appear in small numbers initiator of the and national political figures, student pendence Mall at 9 a.m., Novem­ they feed upon and into every kind November 5 Mobilization to and other groups. Four Philadelphia ber 5 with a mass labor-centered of racial fear-they are poison to Stop the KKK in Philadelphia city councilmen, U.S. representatives Ron Dellums and Charles Hayes and former Congressman Parren Mitchell "two-tier" wage schemes dividing their demonstration was announced. The "Wednesday, 26 October-The day of have endorsed. Also Operation PUSH; ranks. The ghettos have been devas­ conference, chaired by Al Nelson who the Park Service/Kk.K pact. Following. Gale Sayers, legendary former Chicago tated by unemployment, social spend­ spoke for the Partisan Defense Com­ weeks and weeks of Park Service public Bears star; former Black Panther leader ing is slashed to the bone to finance the mittee, received considerable coverage, statements that the Klan would get a Geronimo jiJaga (Pratt); ex-Panther bipartisan anti-Soviet war drive, mil­ including news reports on Philadelphia permit if they applied, and telling us that and MOV-E supporter Mumia Abu­ lions are homeless and hungry, and now radio stations WCAU, WIP, WHYY Judge Lewis Quadrangle was reserved Jamal and Civil War historian James come laws to throw women and chil­ and WWDB. Speakers included Gerald for the Klan [!] the government, citing'a McPherson. At Temple University in dren off welfare. Tittermary and Charles Valenta of substantial likelihood of violence from Philadelphia the black and gay student And in Philadelphia, from Rizzo to RWDSU Local 1034,Shannon Duffy of others,' signed an agreement with the unions are energetically building the Goode it's been war on blacks and the Temple Lambda Alliance, and Gene KKK (under the alias United States November 5 anti-Klan mobilization. In unions. Both the "mayors of murder" Herson and attorney Rachel Wolken­ League of White Christian Patriots) New York City, student governments waged a deadly vendetta against stein of the PDC. A statement was read 'holding in abeyance any determina- and councils at CCNY, Hunter and MOVE, culminating in the mass mur­ Columbia have endorsed. ' der of 13 May 1985. Small wonder that In Philadelphia's Hispanic commu­ the KKK and skinheads-whose mutual nity, state representative Ralph Acosta, hero is Adolf Hitler-thought they had leaders of the National Congress for a green light to parade their racist filth in Puerto Rican Rights and of local com­ Philly! Plenty of people would like to munity groups are supporting the fight back and turn this situation November 5 Mobilization. Interna­ around if they could see a way to do it. tionally, the Canadian LCUC postal Even one major successful strike could workers as well as officials of the CUPW unlock the impasse. But what's neces­ and UTU in Toronto and the fisher­ sary is militant leadership to mobilize men's union in Vancouver are backing labor/ black power in class struggle.. the call. From Mexico, Esteban Vol­ kov, curator of the Leon Trotsky A Battle for Philly Museum in Coyoacan; from Puerto As soon as we publicized the mobi­ Rico, the UTIER electrical workers; in lization call, as soon as it was clear that Germany the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN), the Greens par­ one way or another the KKK/skin­ heads would strut unchallenged liamentary fraction and Peter Brandt not through the center of this city on are among the endorsers. November 5, various forces moved into The breadth and depth of this sup­ high gear, not to stop the KKK, but to port has been vital. All over the coun­ .try, the racists and union-busters have stop the anti-Klan mobilization. The last thing some highly placed bourgeois been getting away with everything up to "city fathers" wanted to see was labor and including murder. Labor has taken and minorities flexing their muscle. a pounding: thousands of PATCO air They tried violence-baiting the anti­ controllers fired, their leaders dragged fascist mobilization-hoping to make away in chains; billions in "giveback" the anti-Klan mobilization off-limits to contracts shoved down unions' throats, the people of Philadelphia and to strong-arm its supporters into backing Wirtz/Philadelphia Inquirer off, or at least to pressure the Park Serv­ Militant Philadelphia city workers protest Mayor Goode's cutbacks and It Takes $$$ to ice into canceling the demonstrations. layoffs, June 1988. Integrated labor movement has the power to beat union­ They tried organizing "ignore the Klan" busters and lead social struggles of all the oppressed. Make Sure the diversions. They tried everything, but nothing worked. They came up against from Maxine McCleary of AFSCME tion' on the Klan's rally permit. Super­ Klan Won't Ride solid support for a militant anti-Klan Local 2586, and a union motion from intendent Hobart Cawood of the Inde­ demonstration whose backbone was the the PSSU. pendence National Park, grotesquely in Philly! integrated labor movement. "That afternoon, Mayor Wilson praised the Klan race-terrorists as IT TAKES ssss AND PEOPLE On October 19, the Fellowship Com­ Goode responded by calling on the Park 'straight forward' and seeking 'to con­ TO STOP THE KLAN-dig deep mission, led by real-estate developer Service to deny a permit to all groups duct an orderly demonstration.' Ca­ and donate NOW! Get your union, Willard Rouse, III, announced plans to seeking to demonstrate on November 5. wood specifically slandered the PDC as community group to pledge. Ex­ hold anevent th~!lliY before the planned Goode said the demonstrations would 'violent.' penses are mounting. We expect KKK rally. It ended up being canceled. be 'a clear and present danger' which "Partisan Defense Committee staff to print over 350,000 leaflets and A group around state representative 'can lead to ugly confrontation'." members went all out Wednesday night thousands of posters. We'll need David Richardson began talking of a Partisan Defense Committee spokes­ and Thursday morning to counter the over $7,500 just for printing-costs, "get out the vote" rally timed to draw man Marjorie Starnberg shot back that government's violence-baiting of the and much, much more to get the people away from the mobilization-s­ after his bombing of the MOVE com­ anti-Klan mobilization. At II p.m. a word out and to get buses in. We nothing came of it. The efforts to spike mune, which burned to death eleven press release went out, and an early need you and your help. Call us at the mass anti-Klan event began with an black people, including five children, morning demand for a retraction was (215) 790-1822 or your Partisan appeal by the mayorjust hours after the "Mayor Goode, like former Mayor sent to' superintendent Cawood.... Defense Committee representative. Mobilization's first press conference. Frank Rizzo, is a proven, clear and "Thursday, 27 October-At 10:30 Send your contribution to: Issue No.3 of the November 5 Mobi­ present danger to the well-being of all a.m., PDC representatives met with November 5 Mobilization lization Notes (31 October), regularly Philadelphians, especially, but not lim­ National Park Service and Philadel­ c/o Partisan Defense Committee distributed to the far-flung endorsers of ited to, black people" (Philadelphia phia Police Department officials. The P.O. Box 99, Canal St. Station .the mobilization call, recorded the Daily News, 25 October). The Mobi­ Park Service handed over a copy of their New York, NY 10013 week-long battle: lization Notes continued its account: joint statement with the KKK and a or: "Monday, 24 October-The Novem­ "Tuesday, 25 October-The Mobi­ written retraction of the previous day's November 5 Mobilization ber 5 Mobilization held a press confer­ lization received a call from the Police vile slander: 'All the information avail­ 1530 Locust Street, Suite #92 ence at the Pennsylvania Social Serv­ Department asking if we would call off able to us indicates,that your group Philadelphia, PA 19102 ices Union hall. The time and place the demonstration if the Klan backed intends to sponsor a lawful, orderly (then the third block of the mall) of the down. We told them no way.... continued on page 12 4 NOVEMBER 1988 11 I ...black Democrat Wilson Goode (left) and police chief Sambor bombed MOVE house, murdering eleven black people including five children on Mother's Day, 13 May 1985.

Mayors of Murder: Racist pig Frank Rizzo (above) as Philadelphia deputy police commissioner led cop riots against black ghetto in 1964...

AP thinking that by attacking black and red We, the working people and minor­ and grotesquely whitewashes his role in "extremists" they will ingratiate them­ ities, won a battle. On November 5 we bombing MOVE, has refused to join Klan Won't selves with the centrally white Christian should celebrate that victory in Phila­ the mobilization while (particularly at American rulers-under an adminis­ delphia, and mobilize our forces to keep Wesleyan University) violence-baiting Ride ... tration endorsed by the anti-Semitic the race-haters, redbaiters and union­ those who would stop the Klan/skin­ (continued from page 11) KKK terrorists. Both they and anti­ busters on the run. heads. Sam Marcy's Workers World/ Semitic black nationalist Louis Farra­ All-Peoples Congress, which habitually demonstration and I regret .that any­ khan fail to understand that if gas cham­ Build a Class-Struggle seeks a popular front with the Dem­ thing I said may have indicated bers start operating in the U.S. of A. Workers Party! ocratic Party, sought to organize a show otherwise.' ... blacks and Jews will be thrust into them of weakness against the fascists: its "Friday, 28 October-Plans to pro­ together. How to do it, how to fight back and initial press statement talked of bring­ ceed with the November 5 Mobilization But this vile baiting of the anti-Klan win? Philadelphia gives you a sense of ing only 200 people rather than a show received widespread media coverage, mobilization didn't work either. The what labor can do when it relies on its of strength by thousands. Unable to find including the Daily News, Tribune, next day a meeting of the Black United numbers, militancy, organization and any pop-front partners and spurning the Inquirer and WCAU radio and TV. The Front Coalition, which had earlier discipline. Ifthe unions stood shoulder­ PDC call for a principled united front, Daily News captioned a picture of floated the "get out the vote" rally idea, to-shoulder on the picket lines like this the Marcyites are trying to organize a Cawood: 'Was he too nice to the Klan?' voted to support the November 5 Mobi­ instead of the usual backstabbing, sideshow on the fringes of the Novem­ On the Friday evening news, WCAU lization and to give credit to the PDC there'd be an end to the cycle of busted ber 5 mobilization. Channel lO-which knew that Cawood for stopping the KKK. And courageous unions, broken strikes and givebacks The nationalist African Peoples [had] had to retract his slanders­ Israeli civil libertarian and concentra­ and takeaways. The Kluxers would Socialist Party has been blustering broadcast an attack on the anti-Klan tion camp survivor Israel Shahak sent a creep back into their swamp water hide­ about stopping the Klan "by any means mobilization inspired by the Anti­ 'message: "As an opponent of racism in outs while the skinhead filth would slink necessary," while simultaneously peti­ Defamation League. The PDC de­ any form and in any country, and espe­ into the sewers instead ofterrorizing the tioning Mayor Goode to ban the Klan. manded an immediate retraction. cially the fight against racism here in streets. But the unions can't fight On a recent radio show in Philly a "A letter by the PDC staff counsel to Israel and in the Occupied Territories, I because they're shackled to the parties frenzied APSP spokesman baited a the ADL protested the remarks of the support the struggle against the Ku of capitalism, and they play by the black PDC representative as a "carpet­ ADL's Barry, Morrison which violence­ Klux Klan in Philadelphia and the rally bosses' rules. bagger," using the language of the for­ baited the Mobilization and told peo­ against their march there ... ." And any serious class struggle is nec­ mer slaveowners against those North­ ple to stay away. The ADL was founded What's behind the gratuitous rid­ essarily a political struggle, against both ern radicals who supported the anti­ to prevent-not 'ignore'-Klan terror baiting and violence-baiting is an the partner parties of American capital­ slavery Reconstruction after the Civil after the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank in alignment of class forces. On one side, ism. Few workers and minorities today War. Meanwhile the chauvinist fake­ Georgia. If the German workers move­ representatives of the bourgeois order have any illusions in Bush or Dukakis, Trotskyists of the Workers League have ment had stopped the Nazis when they who want to keep the lid on social strug­ but many expect more from Jesse Jack­ the dubious distinction of having one of were small there would never have been gle againstthe reaction; on the other, son. Jackson is the living disproof of his their supporters in NYC transit be the a Holocaust! ADL slanders gf anti­ important sectors of organized labor own hype that if he can make it, any only memberin his union meeting to vote fascists play into the hands of the worst and oppressed minorities who under- black person can make it in America. against endorsing the anti-Klan mobi­ enemies of Jewish and black people." .stand that the Klan/Nazis mean death, He's done everything to convince the lization. Fortunately, the antics of the These Zionist redbaiters apparently and who want to fight. The Mobiliza­ racist Democratic bosses that he can be fake-left have had little impact. hate communists and blacks more than tion could not be stopped because it had relied on, appealing for anti-drug witch­ All these so-called socialists aim their they do the Nazis who murdered six tapped the enthusiastic support of large hunts while dismissing the Klan, saying sights no higher than making some million Jews. They forget that they are numbers of people who despise the rac­ "we've lost more by dope than by the friends and winning a bit of influence not living in Israel, where the ruling ist terrorists. The key was a determined rope." When 10,000 marched for school among "progressive" bourgeois politi­ class is Jewish. The ADL deludes itself leadership. integration in Norfolk in 1983, Jackson cians and /or the pro-capitalist trade­ told them to forget busing, vote Demo­ union bureaucracy. Without a willing­ crat. After Howard Beach, he preached ness to challenge the capitalist state and ...... ti§au .-efen§e we have to stop dwelling "on that which the parties of capitalist reaction there £ .....naittee pulls us apart," obscenely excusing the can be no real victories for labor. We of lynch mob. And what's it gotten him? the Spartacist League are fighting to G'-J.~"'ij;lllem'jl]#jj~':'lk(·)'~1I Among self-proclaimed socialists it forge a workers party that acts as a trib­ NOMER 8 $1.00 ~.,,, SEPTEMBER 1 988 should be axiomatic that the working une of all the people, fighting against the class can only rely on its own forces to deadly chauvinism that pits one section The PDe is a class-struggle, NO APARTHED EXECUTIONS! free itself from capitalist exploitation of the working masses against another. non-sectarian legal defense SAVE THE SHARPEVILLE6! and oppression. In addition to the Spar­ Uniquely-on the American left we soli­ organization in accordance tacist League/Spartacus Youth Clubs darized with the MOVE family from the with the political views of and Labor/Black Leagues in New York, beginning. The resurgence of Klan ter­ the Spartacist League. Chicago and the Bay Area, who have ror today is part of the price that Phila­ thrown themselves into the campaign delphia unions are paying for their pas­ With your contribution from the beginning, a few other left sivity in the face of that racist massacre. of $5 or more receive groups have joined those calling for a But now the workers and oppressed a subscription to Post Office 8nd Telecornlnl.lnlcl_ have put the Klan on the run. In con­ lionlWorkers mass labor-centered action. The Free­ ClasscStruggle proIftllhe Iulngingoftwo trast to the dreary and sterile elections, milit81\hl. dom Socialist Party, Fourth Interna­ Defense Notes. Jonlnn...burg, I September tionalist Tendency and Radical Women here -is a chance to strike a real blow For a single copy "" have endorsed, as have the Philadel­ against oppression. And out of this send $1 to: phia New Alliance Party and the All­ powerful struggle we seek to win a core Partisan Defense Committee, African People's Revolutionary Party. of militants that will join with us to P.O. Box 99, Canal Street But the Communist Party looks to the smash this rotting capitalist system Station, New York, NY 10013 racist government to "ban the Klan." through workers revolution. 'All Out to The CP, which backs Goode to the hilt Stop the Klan November 5!. 12 WORKERS VANGUARD loathes and fears these killers, much of Skinheads ... the left denies any identification of the (continued/rampage 3) skinheads with fascism, and even invites them into its midst. An article in the on integrated couples and families. In anti-fascist journal Searchlight (Sep­ London, skinheads recently attacked a tember 1986) exposed a nest of fascists lesbian bar, slashing women with bro­ with histories of violent racist attacks ken glass, leaving more than 20 bat­ being hired as stewards by gay pride, tered. The fascists have particularly tar­ eND (Campaign for Nuclear Dis­ geted football, the plebeian sport of armament) and anti-apartheid events. Britain, for their recruitment cam­ Denouncing the "complacency of many paigns. "To spend nearly a week' with progressive organisations towards this the tough-nut core of English soccer is nazi infiltration," the article concluded: to start to doubt the location of the "By their lack of political and moral boundaries of civilisation," observed a sense the labour and gay movements Sunday Telegraph magazine reporter. have allowed a very large Trojan horse 'The reason that television broadcasts into their midst which may well turn out of international football games never to be a tiger that will devour them." show the English fans while the pre­ A subsequent article in Searchlight match national anthem is being played is that the Englishpens are a solid mass (February 1988) explained how the of Nazi salutes.... A chorus of gorilla­ fascists started organizing skinheads likegrunts or a barrage of bananas from around "Oi"music: "The NF saw the the English terraces greet opposing huge success of the rock against racism black players." movement of the mid to late 1970s and Skinhead Terror Spreads decided to try and attract young street fighting skins into the NF by offering The skinhead phenomenon has been them gigs that would be heavily racist spreading its poison through Europe. In and anti-Jewish...." Britain, they feed off pervasive depres­ "Rock against Racism" was the youth sion and despair; on the continent they corollary of the popular-frontist Anti have appeared together with the mass Nazi League (ANL) organized by Tony unemployment of the '80s. As well the Cliff's Socialist Workers Party. The "skins" have become fashionable among SWP sought to compete with the fas­ petty-bourgeois eiements who want to cists by vying for their base ofsupport get their kicks by kicking the shit out of among youth with rock concerts. The "foreigners." While Britain reportedly Cliffites tried to 'organize skinheads has several tens of thousands of skin­ against the Nazis, with explicit appeals heads, there are now some 2,000 in West to this lowlife scum: "Skins hate author­ Germany and several hundred in France ity and the Nazis represent authority" as well (1£ Nouvel Observateur, 19 (Socialist Worker, I July 1978). When August). . the National Front staged a mass In the Fourth Reich of German im­ demonstration in the substantially perialism, skinheads and other fascists Asian East End of London in 1978, the have also targeted football fan clubs as a ANL deliberately diverted tens of thou­ prime recruiting ground. Every Sat­ sands of anti-fascist militants away from Spartakist urday shouts of "Sieg Heil!" and Top: Ligue Trotskyste de France protests Le Pen's racist attacks on confronting the Nazis with its "Car­ "Deutschland, Deutschland iiber alles" immigrants, March 1988. Bottom: German Trotskyists demonstrate against nival 2" rockfest. These days, the SWP are bellowed ,out in the stadiums. The Nazis in Berlin, April 1988. does not even pay lip service to the need National Socialist Action Front of to fight fascism. Meanwhile, it has spon­ Michael Kuhnen dominates the Ham­ "Heil Hitler!" and sporting SS symbols More recently, skinheads attacked a sored a rock group called the Red Skins, burg' "Lions" club, while the Eagle or the Prussian eagle beat up Turks, the dormitory for refugees seeking asylum, whose album is entitled "Neither Wash­ Front in Frankfurt includes former respectable poLiticians in Bonn, both in Schriesheim on January 30, the anni­ ington Nor Moscow." members of the "Hoffmann Defense rightist Christian Democrats and Social versary of Hitler's seizure of power. An increasingly dubious group called Sport Group," the murderous Nazis Democrats, pass legislation to force out When Kuhnen's ANS thugs called for a the Revolutionary Communist Party, who set off a bomb at the 1980 Munich immigrants and set up concentration pogrom against a Hamburg refugee which originated in a split from the Oktoberfest, killing 13 and seriously camps for Sri Lankan Tamils seeking dormitory on February 20, several hun­ Cliffites in the 1970s, has gone even fur­ injuring over 200. asylum. dred leftists countermobilized to stop ther. Specializing in classless appeals to The deadly menace of the Hitler­ But the fascist punks have also met them. While various reformists called lumpen and petty-bourgeois outrage, loving bands in West Germany has been with opposition. In October 1983, when on the West German imperialist state to emphasizing the "politics of power," documented in the book Nazis, Skins the West German football team played ban the fascists, a contingent of the vying with Radio Free Europe in the und alte Kameraden (1986), edited by Turkey in the Olympia Stadium in Trotzkistische Liga Deutschlands, Ger­ stridency of its anti-Soviet propa­ Georg Biemann and Joachim Krischka. Berlin, neo-Nazi gangs threatened to man section of the international Spar­ ganda, disavowing the organized labor In December 1985, Turkish immigrant assault Turks in the heavily immigrant tacist tendency, called for mass worker/ movement (even openly organizing Ramazan Avci was murdered by a gang Kreuzberg neighborhood. "Sports" immigrant mobilizations to srnash the scabs during the miners strike), the RCP of Some 30 skins screaming"Turks out!" clubs with names like Zyklon-B (the gas fascists. not only has numerous skinhead toughs Then a black man was beaten at night at used by the Nazis in their death camps) The skinhead "phenomenon" has in its organization but has even recruit­ a subway station by skins who smeared and skinheads with bomber jackets now spread to France as well, where Le ed a "former" fascist organizer. It is a him with swastikas and the slogan"Nig­ proclaiming "Proud to Be a German" Pen's National Front fascists won 10 telling indictment of, the rest of the ger out-White Power!" Earlier, in July vowed "Kreuzberg must burn." West percent at the polls last April. On May British left that the Spartacist League 1983, a woman was stabbed by a skin Berlin unions responded to the planned Day, squads of shaved-head thugs was virtually the only'organization to after replying that she was Turkish. orgy of racist terror with a 3,OOO-strong formed up on the Charnps-Elysees in a raise the alarm over the RCP's invita­ These deadly racist assaults are not "friendship walk" and attempts to Le Pen provocation against the interna­ tion for fascist infiltration into the left just the work of some deranged fringe drown out the fascist chants during the tional workers day. And recently a and labor movement. elements. While neo-Nazi bands yelling game. homeless man was murdered outside The "red skins" phenomenon has Lille, his head kicked in by a skinhead. meanwhile spread to other European Hundreds outraged by this atrocity countries, particularly West Germany. marched through the city under a An anti-fascist demonstration in West banner reading "Skinheads, Nazis, Berlin on August 20 allowed the pres­ Vermin." ence of a contingent of"left" skinheads, Last May, for the first time the who distributed a Maoist pamphlet rail­ skinheads staged a Europe-wide "ac­ ing against the "superpowers" of the tion," converging on Normandy for U.S. and USSR, a chemically pure a "Nazi rock concert." In Rouen expression of resurgent German nation­ and Brest this turned into a nightmare alism. Opening the door to these "red" of racist violence as they attacked skinheads is playing with fire, as our North Africans, Asians and blacks German comrades warned after the Ber­ from the Antilles. Our comrades of the lin demo: Ligue Trotskyste de France responded "The TLD had to learn the hard way with a protest demonstration the next how the 'new German nationalism' is a day at Sotteville, near Rouen, where transmission belt to punk-fascism. One a Moroccan-owned bar was assaulted Uli Sandhaus was expelled from our organization in 1982, after develop­ by the fascists. LTF signs called ing an enthusiasm for 'Oil Oi!' music for "U nion/ Immigrant Self-Defense and exhibiting the swastika in his Groups" and for "Full Citizenship apartment. ... Rights for Immigrants;" "In 1984, Sandhaus translated these 'proclivities' into direct action and led a Not "A Matter of Taste" bloody attack on our supporter, Gisela Borowski, to whom he had previously It is only in the absence of a class­ sent postcards with 'Oi! Oil' threats." struggle leadership of the labor move­ -Spartakist No. 58, September/October 1988 SchroederlSipa ment that the barbaric skinhead scum British fascists instigated deadly riot at Brussels soccer match, May 1985, can fester and grow. Yet while the On August 20 one of the "red skins" leaving 38 dead, 250 injured. British population at large rightly continued on page 14 4 NOVEMBER 1988 13 In the '20s and '30s the German rabble must be crushed in the egg before class collaboration, from the Labour Skinheads ... Stalinists at times appealed to the Nazi they become the shock troops for Party' to the chauvinist French Com­ (continued from page 13) . ranks on the basis of "national Bol­ another triumphant fascist movement. munist Party to the Cliffite SWP. At the shevism," i.e., championing imperialist On the other side of the Atlantic, the time of the Brussels massacre, which fol­ declared that "VIi is my friend," No Germany's national cause against Brit­ lowed 'on the heels of the defeat of the doubt! nativist fascists of the Ku Klux Klan ain and France, and helping fuel the along with groups like Tom Metzger's bitter 12-month miners strike, we noted: There is nothing surprising about the nationalist hysteria which paved the existence of such "red skins." Fascist White Aryan Resistance (WAR) have "It was the heroic miners whom Nazis' way to power. Likewise today it is recently allied withskinheads in staging Thatcher tried to crush in blood gangs are drawn from lumpenized youth who pointed the road out of the resurgent German nationalism which racist provocations from Orange Coun­ who hate established authority. Di­ links the reformist left with the "red barbarism witnessed in Brussels. In­ ty in Southern California to Chicago's stead offences to separate rival vorced from the working class and skins" with their "Neither Washington socially nihilistic. they easily swing from Marquette Park to Atlanta during the gangs competing in bloodthirsty pa­ Nor Moscow" slogan-a slogan also Democratic convention (see "Fascist triotism, we saw French and English the extreme left to the extreme right. claimed by the outright fascist skin­ miners shoulder-to-shoulder singing Not a few.of Hitler's stormtroopers had Metzger and His Deadly Skinhead the 'Internationale'.... heads since it captures nationalist Thugs," WVNo. 462, 7 October). Now at one point or another supported the resentment and anti-Communism. "Had the miners defeated Thatcher and Communists. In West Germany today the skinhead cutthroats and KKK opened up an intensified working-class lynchers are threatening to stage a rac­ offensive against capitalist oppression there is a large lumpenized milieu of the and unemployment, it would have given "no future" generation-from squat­ The Workers Must Crush ist rally in Philadelphia, November 5. In the Fascist Rabble the masses of despairing and lumpen­ ters and Autonomen anarchists to the response, the Partisan Defense Com­ ised youth something positive to look various skinhead gangs-in which the In France, some of the skinhead mittee has initiated a mass labor­ to. But the labour misleaders who in the lines between left and right are totally groups call themselves the "neighbor­ centered mobilization to keep the streets aftermath of Brussels mutter about safe from the race-terrorists. unemployment and underlying social blurred. hood SA." The Nazi SA Brownshirts causes were the very same gentlemen The key is revolutionary leadership­ were recruited from the socially patho­ The Spartacist League/U.S., whose who stabbed the miners strike in the a workers movement which is not afraid logical, criminal dregs of crisis-racked class-struggle defense strategy the PDC back: ...·.. to draw clear class lines, which is willing German society, used to terrorize the embraces, has a record of interdicting -Workers Hammer No. 70, June 1985 to organize a fight for workers power to labor movement and Jews, and then dis­ fascist incursions into Northern U.S. resolve the crisis of bourgeois society. A carded after Hitler took power. The cities, including a 5,OOO-strong labor/ The fascists and their skinhead dogs revolutionary leadership of labor could Nazis rose to power in the service of black mobilization which stopped a of war are a deadly danger to minor­ draw to its side in the anti-capitalist German capitalism. Once there, they KKK race-hate provocation in pre­ ities, to the workers movement, to all struggle many layers of the most had to discard their plebeian shock dominantly black Washington, D.C. in decent people. This human refuse can oppressed including desperate youth. troops and the rhetoric of "national November 1982. Such a class-struggle and will be swept away by the power of But instead, the bankruptcy of the socialism." In the "Night of the Long strategy is, urgently needed today in the proletariat organized in sharp class cringing reformists leaves a vacuum Knives" in June 1934, following an ulti­ Britain and throughout Western Eu­ struggle against the racist terrorists, on which fascists are eager to fill, while matum by the German general staff, rope, necessarily entailing a political the road to the revolutionary over­ others to their left seek to compete with Hitler carried out a "blood purge" ofthe struggle within the labor movement throw of the rotting system that spawns the fascists on the latter's terrain. lumpen SA Brownshirts. The skinhead against advocates ofall persuasions of this racist filth .•

victory against slavery. Comparing it to Battle of another, failed rescue attempt, when "nonresistant" abolitionists failed to stop armed thugs shooting at a fugitive, Christiana .'.. Douglass said: (continued/rom page 5) "Had a few balls there whistled, as at deputies who refused to cooperate with Christiana, about the heads of the slave­ catchers, it would have been the end of the slave catchers. The law imposed stiff this slave-catching business there. There penalties on anyone found to be har­ is no necessity of permitting it. The only boring a fugitive. Most notoriously, fed­ way to make the Fugitive Slave Law a eral commissioners who ruled in the dead letter is to make a few dead slave­ slaveowners' favor got $10 for their dirty catchers. There is no need to kill them either-shoot them in the legs, and send work, while those who ruled for the free­ them to the South living epistles of the dom ofthe slave got $5~an open bribe! free gospel preached here at the North." Armed with this hideous law slave­ -Frederick Douglass, owner Edward Gorsuch of Maryland Life and Writings, Vol. 2 went man-hunting in Pennsylvania. He To Douglass, the battle at Christiana had been tipped off that four ex-slaves, was an example of the "John Brown who had escaped from his plantation way" to fight slavery. When John / some two years previously, were living Brown challenged the slavocracy with in the Christiana area. In Philadelphia arms at Harpers Ferry in 1859, he the federal commissioner gave Gorsuch presented the only challenge which warrants and a federal marshal to lead could win a revolutionary victory and a posse. But the man-stealers were overturn the entire social system of the being watched by the Vigilance Com­ Washington Post plantation South. John Brown lost his Labor/Black Mobilization to Stop the KKK, Washington, D.C:.,November mittee of the integrated Philadelphia 1982. Promise of black freedom was betrayed after Civil War-Emancipate battle, but he started the war. It took Anti-Slavery Society, and a messenger all working people from wage slavery! four bloody years of civil war to defeat sped off to warn the black people of slavery, over 600,000 deaths on the way Christiana. When the smoke cleared, Gorsuch lay few muskets, and headed by a miller, in to Appomattox Court House. Armed and ready, William Parker, dead. a felt hat, without arms and mounted on William Parker IS little known today. his family and friends and Two of Pro-slavery president Millard Fill­ a sorrel nag, levied war against the Yet as a fighter he stood for the "J ohn Gorsuch's fugitives waited in Christia­ more called out the Marines. Parker and United States." Brown way." The second American rev­ na.When the posse crept up to the house .two of his closest associates had fled to While pro-slavery bigots clamored olution, known as the Civil War, which in the dark of night the warning signal Canada, but the slave masters de­ for blood, nationwide meetings in sup­ defeated the slaveowners was sparked by Parker's wife aroused the neighbor­ manded revenge. Anti-slavery whites port of the accused passed resolutions by the William Parkers, the dedicated hood. The kidnappers launched a vol­ and black men, women and children and collected money for their defense. anti-slavery fighters, black and white. ley of bullets to cut her down. Safe were harassed, arrested, thrown in jail. Even the "nonresistant, moral suasion" When the reluctant Lincoln finally behind the thick stone walls of the Parker's own mother-in-law-a woman Garrisonian abolitionists hailed the issued the Emancipation Proclamation house, she went on blowing the horn. over 50 years old-was seized and sent Christiana resisters as "fully justified in in 1863, setting the slaves "forever free," The posse was surrounded by some 15to back to slavery. A grandjury indicted 36 what they did by the Declaration of the Civil War became what Douglass, 25 armed blacks and a few whites. A blacks and five whites not merely for Independence." A jailer arranged the Brown and Parker knew it would have Quaker miller advised Gorsuch to leave. breaking the Fugitive Slave Law but escape of two witnesses faced with re­ to be: a war to end slavery. The recruit­ But Gorsuch vowed, "I will have my for treason, "levying war" against the enslavement. The judge, though notori­ ment of black soldiers into the Union property, or go to hell." He got his wish. United States, a crime punishable by ous for his pro-slavery convictions, Army helped to tip the military balance death. The government wanted to ruled that an individual act ofresistance for Northern victory. illegitimize abolitionism and smear as was not a treasonable conspiracy. After The Civil War wiped chattel slavery dangerous criminals those who were deliberating for 15minutes the jury pro­ from the U.S. But the promise of black Spartacist League fighting for black freedom. nounced "not guilty." freedom in the Civil War was later Public Offices Grotesquely, the trial was held in The battle at Christiana was a great betrayed by the Northern capitalists Philadelphia's Independence ~ Hall, victory for the abolitionist cause. As the when they turned their backs on the -MARXIST L1TERATURE­ where the Declaration of Independence black abolitionist William Wells Brown newly liberated freedmen. Today, to Bay Area had been proclaimed 75 years before. put. it, "a slaveholder will never come complete the unfinished democratic Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.rn. But the prosecution was unable to get a there again in pursuit of fugitive slaves." tasks of the Civil War and to win the 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) conviction. The federal marshal, al­ Frederick Douglass was more than a emancipation' of all working people Oakland. California Phone: (415) 839-0851 ready proven to be a coward, also defender: he helped Parkerand his com­ from wage slavery, we need a third . Chicago proved a liar. The defense included rades to escape. Through the Under­ American revolution. This proletarian Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11:00a.m.-2:00 p.m. Thaddeus Stevens, later a leader of the ground Railroad they came to Doug­ revolution, led by a Trotskyist van­ 161 W. Harrison si., 10th Floor Chicago. Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 Radical Republicans, and made a lass' house in Rochester, New York and guard party with a strong black leader­ laughing stock of the government's case. boarded a ship to Toronto. To Doug­ ship component, will be inspired by New York City Tues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. One defense lawyer ironically summed lass "they were heroic defenders of the John Brown, Frederick Douglass and 41 Warren St. (one block below _ up the charges: " ... three harmless non­ just rights of man against manstealers William Parker, standard-bearers of the Chambers St. near Church St.) resisting Quakers and eight-and-thirty and murderers...." Douglass recog­ fight against slavery. And once again the New York, N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025 wretched, miserable, penniless negroes, nized the significance of the Christiana horn of resistance will sound the battle armed with corn cutters, Clubs, and a resistance in proving the possibility of cry of freedom.• 14 WORKERS VANGUARD going into fighting and winning strikes Straight," that began: "Say it ain't so, blitz'." This blatant class collaboration Workers - have been thrown at the Democratic Duke." (Last August Frontline head- / is not only a far cry from genuine com­ campaign. But as one CWA bureaucrat lined, "Backing Dukakis Comes with munism, it's downright stupid. Party••• groaned, they've given up waiting for the Territory.") And the therapy-cult The Communist International, the the spark that would ignite rank-and­ reformist New Alliance Party, running world revolutionary party founded by (continued from page 16) file support for Dukakis. Lenora Fulani for president in all 50 Lenin and Trotsky in 1919, addressed skinhead fascist killers threatened to The liberal and reformist "left" who states, is campaigning as an ersatz this question in the Manifesto of the rally for racist terror in Philadelphia tail the Democrats feel cheated. They Rainbow. Second , World Congress (1920), au­ three days before the election. were looking forward to an easy time The bottom line for these pathetic thored by Trotsky: Both campaigns are sending the same with their Rainbow Coalition version of pseudo-socialists, to paraphrase Mar­ "In America the line of demarcation message to the working-class popula­ the New Deal popular front. But the rul­ lon Brando, is "We couldda been between the Republicans and the tions of the cities, and especially the ers have ruled out a new New Deal, contenders." The Communist Party is Democrats has been completely erased. These two powerful political organiza­ black ghettos and Hispanic barrios: the tions of the exploiters, adapted to the "American dream" is off limits to you. hitherto narrow circle of American rela­ And the message has gotten across: a tions, revealed their total hollowness sizable chunk of the black electorate,the the instant the American bourgeoisie entered the arena of world plunder. most solid voting bloc for the Dem­ "Never before have the intrigues of indi­ ocratic Party, seems intent on sitting it vidual leaders and cliques-in the out; a spokesman for a major Hispanic opposition and in the Ministries alike­ organization denounced both can­ been marked by such open cynicism as didates for pursuing patronizing and now." empty "taco politics." Frustration with­ In the death agony of American cap­ in the black community has reached the italism, the rulers of this country ape the point that some black Democrats are French queen Marie-Antoinette, who talking under their breath about a third contemptuously replied to the Parisian party, if only as a pressure tactic. masses' demand for bread: "Let them Bourgeois elections have never of­ eat cake." Nancy Reagan, who "bor­ fered more than an illusion of change for rows" a million dollars worth of gowns those whom the bourgeoisie exploits tax-free, says: Let 'em eat jelly beans. and oppresses. Today even the illusion is The French Revolution swept away gone. Both parties support the massive Marie-Antoinette, the American social­ rearmament program and the anti­ ist revolution will deal with her latter­ Soviet war drive; both parties speak for day imitators. the big-bucks financial swindlers and While ever greater numbers of the their leveraged buyouts and destruction American people suffer a living hell, of the trade unions; 'both parties sup­ Wyman/Newsweek their rulers plunder the world and gorge port the genocidal attack on entire lay­ Cold War Cardinal O'Connor, all-purpose bigot, blesses Republicrat pres- themselves as though there were no ers of the American people enunciated idential hopefuls Bush and Dukakis. ' tomorrow, while preparing to plunge in the new "workfare" legislation. the world into a fiery holocaust. But in Heading into the election campaign, Dukakis' last-ditch "I am a liberal" running a handful of local candidates, the American proletariat they will find the Democrats looked like a shoo-in. In statement notwithstanding. The rad-lib like Charlene Mitchell in New York and their gravedigger. The coming Ameri­ the wake of Contragate, pervasive cor­ Guardian, social-democratic In These Angela Davis in California, to placate can revolution will avenge the gratu­ ruption, the Noriega scandal, the stock Times and liberal Nation all moan any party members concerned about itous viciousness and criminality of market crash, the Reagan/ Bush admin­ about how hard it is to hustle votes for maintaining an "independent" stance. American imperialism. Given a good istration was utterly discredited. The the Democrats' Reagan/Bush look­ But the CP's People's Daily World (20 cause around which to rally, the work­ labor bureaucrats finally thought they alike ticket. Irwin Silber's Frontline October) leaves no doubt who its pres­ ers and minorities are more than ready 'had a chance to get a "friend of labor" (24 October) summed up the Rainbow idential candidate is: "Steelworkers to fight. ,What is required above all into the White House; $40 million of reformists' lament in an article on work hard for Dukakis," "Pa. labor is a workers party to galvanize that trade unionists' dues which should be "The Campaign That Couldn't Shoot leaders organize Dukakis 'homestretch sentiment. •

which launched the Holocaust,. -~. llJ1ti-fascist l"aUy.-OnThursday, October tion of Victims of the Nazi Regime But the organizers of the DGB protest 13, a Frankfurt court threw out all the (founded by Communist survivors of West declared they had no intention of pre­ bans. But the following day the NPD Hitler's concentration camps), which venting the Nazi provocations and held a news conference to announce had supported both protests. Police Germany ••• would turn their rally into a "cultural they were canceling all their events. lines relaxed and the joint demonstra­ (continued from page 16) program," And both'demonstrations The thought of encountering organ­ tion grew to 3,000 as it marched to the fostered suicidal illusions in the West ized, anti-fascist trade unionists on the intended site of the Nazi rally, where to stop the fascist rally which was to German state, self-proclaimed succes­ streets of Frankfurt was enough to instead an anti-fascist victory celebra­ meet only 1,000 meters away at Merian­ sor state to the Third Reich, by calling send the Nazi dreck back into the tion took place. platz. They called in a leaflet for joining on Gunther Sare's killers to banthe fas­ sewers. A contingent of the Trotzkistische forces with a second anti-fascist protest cists. Such "bans" are always turned On October 15, the 2,00{) young anti­ Liga Deutschlands, German section of called by the powerful West German against leftists, striking workers and fascists and leftists who took off from the international Spartacist tendency, trade-union federation, the DG B. The anti-fascists. Friedberger Platz sought to link up with carried signs demanding: "Full Citizen­ unions, joined by church, immigrant Many DGB members, including the the social power of the unions. But as ship Rights for Immigrants" and and Jewish community groups, called union federation's immigrant worker they approached the Hauptwache where "Smash the Nazis Through Worker/ attention to the Obscenity of Nazis membership, wanted to join with anti­ the DGB-led rally was being held, a Immigrant Mobilizations." The mere threatening to march through the streets fascist youth in driving out the Nazis. So massive police chain, four deep, encir­ threat of the power of organized labor of Frankfurt 50 years after the night­ in the face of mounting outrage over the cled the anti-fascist youth. As the cops was enough to send the.fascists scurry­ mare of "Kristallnacht," the Nazi po­ fascist threat, Bruck banned both the closed in further, ready to bust heads ing this time. But the fact that only a few grom on the night of 9 November 1938 Nazi events and the Friedberger Platz and make mass arrests, a majority showed up for the DGB-sponsored of the 400 participants in the DG B event shows that the union bureaucrats rally, including a contingent of metal merely want.ed a symbolic turnout for workers carrying the banner of their their "cultural program." A revolution­ SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY two-million-strong union, the IG Me­ ary leadership must be forged to unleash tall, joined the anti-fascist youth. the social power of organized labor, National Office: New York An Autonom announced his demon­ especially its strategic immigrant 'com­ Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Box 444, Canal St. Sta. stration was "dissolved," and leader­ ponent, to finish off the Nazis and the (212) 732-7860 New York, NY 10013 ship of the jointaction was assumed by a capitalist system that breeds racist (212) 267-1025 representative of the VVN, the Associa- genocide and imperialist war.. Atlanta Detroit Norfolk Box 4012 Box 441.794 Box 1972, Main PO Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 Boston Ithaca Oakland Box 840, Central Sta. Box 6767 Box 32552 Cambridge, MA 02139 Ithaca, NY 14850 Oakland, CA 94604 Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League (617) 492-3928 (415) 839-0851 Chicago Los Angeles San Francisco Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. o $7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $3/3 issues of Box 6441, Main PO Box 5712 (includes English-language Spartacist) Women and Revolution Chicago, IL60680 Los Angeles, CA 90029 San Francisco, CA 94101 o New 0 Renewal 0$2/10 introductory issues (312) 663-0715 (213) 380-8239 (415) 863-6963 International rates: $25/24 issues-A,irmail $7/24 issues-Seamail of Workflrs Vanguard Cleveland Madison Washington, D.C. (includes English-language Box 91037 Box 2074 Box 75073 0$2/4 issues of Spartacist(edicion en espaiiol) Spartacist) Cleveland, OH 44101 Madison, WI 53701 Washington, D.C. 20013 Name_~ _ (216) 881-3700 (608) 255-8068 (202) 636-3537 Address --- Toronto ______Apt. # Phone (_)_~ _ TROTSKYIST LEAGUE Box 7198, Station A City State Zip ---::=-: OF CANADA Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 ~ (416) 593-4138 Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, N_ York, NY 10116

4 NOVEMBER 1988 15 WfI/iliE/iS V'II(itJ,/i,

Millionaires' Elections: Whoever Wins, Labor/Minorities Lose ,We Need a, Workers Party! Once every four years the American Armageddon. American capitalism is a of their party preference, want another many Jesse Jacksons they get to run people are treated to all the democracy dying empire: unbridled greed and choice of candidates. A major voice of around mouthing populist rhetoric. We big money can buy. In corporate board­ rapacity reign supreme in the ruling cir­ the American bourgeoisie, Newsweek needa workersparty tofightfor a work­ rooms and swank, segregated country cles of this country, as they loot the (31 October), wails: "Couldn't we just ers government, to rip the wealth out of clubs, the billionaire masters of this industrial wealth built up by the blood call the whole thing off and start over?" the hands ofthe master class! country draw up their short list of which and sweat of the working people. The The working people of this country, millionaires will vie for the post of Chief "debates" have been a mind-numbing the black and Hispanic poor, the farm- Duke and the Dixiecrats: Not the Executive Officer of America, Inc. New Deal But the Raw Deal Millions are poured into TV media hype, the press moguls churn out their "The dirty little secret" of this election lies and, come election day, the "com­ has been "race," writes pro-Dukakis mon man" gets to pull a lever in the New York Times (20 October) col­ sanctity of the ballot booth for the umnist Anthony Lewis. Two weeks "lesser evil" of his choice. The pres­ before the election, the Democrats idential election, that paramount finally "realized" that the Bush cam­ expression of American democracy, paign, which is staffed with Nazi war offers the "choice" between a Republi­ criminals and has hammered away on can Tweedledum and a Democratic the old KKK theme of a black man rap­ Tweedledee. Whoever gets inaugu­ ing a white woman, appeals to racism. rated, the party of property wins and the It's not a secret, and it's not just Bush. working people and oppressed minor­ From the start of the campaign, the ities get screwed. Democrats have set their sights on The 1988election campaign is the big­ winning white middle-class "Reagan gest yawn of the decade. And it's not just Democrats" by ostentatiously giving the because the candidates lack any charac­ finger to black people-telling Jackson ter, or because they blatantly refuse to to take a walk, avoiding black inner-city address the problems plaguing the ghettos, making an early appearance American people. More so than usu­ before a nearly all-white rally at the ally, the American ruling class is united Neshoba County fair in Philadelphia, around the policies with which it intends Mississippi, the town where three civil to oppress and exploit the American rights activists were murdered in 1964. people and ride roughshod over the rest Bush charges Dukakis with being of the world. In the ornate coronation "soft on crime"; Dukakis counters that ceremonies of the Russian autocracy, Bush is soft on drug pushers. They're when the new ruler was crowned the playing the same side of the street-rac­ aristocrats cheered, "The tsar is dead, ist "law and order"-and grotesquely Photo long live the tsar!" Today the American Militant workers support Greyhound strikers, New York, November 1983. competing for the cop vote. Not sur­ aristocracy says, "Reagan is going, long Labor tops sabotage struggle, shackle workers to capitalist parties. For a prisingly, Bush is coming out ahead wi-th live Reaganism!" . class-struggle workers party! the killers-in-blue who police the ghet­ What they mean by a "kinder, tos. The Bush campaign came to New gentler" America is millions sleeping farce because the "bad news bores" have ers trying to scratch out, a living, can York City for the first time in late and dying in the streets and millions nothing to debate. And the polls reveal a start over-ifthey take power into their October, to push the racist death pen­ more condemned to slow death by stark fact: most people find the whole own hands. The racist, imperialist part­ alty at a cop rally in a white enclave of starvation and disease. Their "vision of election meaningless, dirty and dishon­ ner parties of American capitalism will Queens. And the Ku Klux Klan and greatness" in the world is a nuclear est. Two out of three voters, regardless not change their stripes-no matter how continued on page 15

Adaptedfrom Spartakist No. 59, No­ graves of the Nazi SS at Bitburg in 1985. vember/December 1988, newspaper of Later that year, when 700 unionists and the Trotzkistische Liga Deutschlands. leftists protested an NPD rally in Frank­ FRANKFURT-With racist terror furt, the cops broke up the protest with resurgent across West Germany, the deadly violence. A police water cannon Nazi "National Democratic Party" ran over a 36-year-old worker, Gunther (NPD) thought that by targeting immi­ Sare, killing him. Today the financial grants it could mount a massive fascist capital of West Germany has a right­ provocation here. A march and two ral­ wing Christian Democratic mayor, lies, including one in,the inner city, were Wolfrom Bruck, who demands that the to top off months of race-hate activity limited quotas for asylum-seekers be under the slogans "Frankfurt Must filled by "Volksdeutsche," ethnic Ger­ Remain a German City" and "Deport mans from the Soviet bloc. At the,same All Criminal and Illegal Foreigners." time fascists,·using incendiary devices For a goon squad they recruited the obtained from the Bundeswehr, fire­ self-proclaimed successors to Hitler's bomb concentration camps where im­ Brownshirts, Michael Kuhnert's "Free migrants and asylum-seekers are locked Workers Party" (FAP) and their skin­ up pending deportation hearings. head gangs. But on October 15, despite But when the NPDjFAPjskinhead the menacing presence of 1,000 cops in scum announced their October 15 prov­ full riot gear, the streets of Frankfurt ocation, they encountered mounting belonged to 3,000 youth, trade unionists outrage and protest. Anti-fascist youth and leftists chanting, "Nazis out!" organizations, spearheaded by the anar­ The resurgence of German national­ ·chist Autonomen, mobilized across the - country for a protest on the 15th at ism and race-terror was inflamed when Spartakist Reagan and Chancellor Helmut Kohl Friedberger Platz. Theirclear intent was German Trotskyists demand "Full Citizenship Rights for Immigrants!" at saluted their anti-Soviet alliance at the continued on page 15 Frankfurt antl-Nazl protest, October 15. 16 4 NOVEMBER 1988