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.