25¢ WfJRlllRS '.II".R'~X.523 No. 561 16 October 1992 Bush, Clinton, Perot-Callitalist Shell Game

\ Elections '92: The Politics 01 Misery At a whistle stop in western Michigan, the imperial president of the United States sighted a man in the crowd dressed in a chicken suit carrying a sign saying, "George Bush was in the loop." Bush shouted at him: "Let this chicken here tell what's wrong with America. I'll tell you what's great about it." You don't need a chicken to tell you what's wrong with America. The rich have become filthy rich, the working class has become poorer, and the poor have become homeless. - All along the campaign trail, reporters encounter pain, desperation and a grim view of the future. "I don't see a future," said a young worker at a Springfield, Ohio truck and diesel engine plant. "I work seven days a week, and I still can't save any money. I got two kids, a wife and a house payment. I don't know what's going to happen with my kids." It's not just the Midwest rust belt that's suffering. A professional photographer in L.A. exclaimed, "everybody I know is hurting. I've been laid off from my last two jobs." The Clinton candidacy is benefiting from the imrniser­ ation of American working people, even though he hasn't made the slightest pretense of economic populism. Quite the contrary. The Democratic convention in New York last July turned its back on the party's traditional core constituencies-organized labor and blacks-in order to appeal to white suburbanite yuppies. (For the first time, the majority of the U.S. population lives in suburbs, and two-thirds of suburban whites live in communities AP which are less than 1 percent black.) Disdaining the usual Thousands line up for jobs In a Chicago hotel last January as decaying American capitalism is mired continued on page 14 In recession. Imperialism Starves. Africa Thousands of people. are dying of as an inevitable consequence of drought hunger every day in Somalia. The strife­ and war. But the mass starvation is not torn northeast African country, initially due to an "act of god." The countries of a Soviet client, switched sides to become sub-Saharan Africa are deprived of the a client of Washington in the late '70s most elementary provisions for times of and then back to Moscow in the late'80s. shortage and crop failure: food and cur­ With the end of the Cold War it is no rency reserves, reservoirs and irrigation. one's client. Tens of thousands have been Ordered by the IMF (International Mon­ killed by marauding bands, hundreds of etary Fund) to grow export crops instead thousands driven from their lands to of food in order to payoff the usurious become homeless refugees. Drought, debt, cut off by the banks and multi­ famine, civil war and banditry lay waste nationals from new investment, their to the land, where human existence was populations have been driven down into precarious in the best of times. This is desperate misery. The underlying cause the hidden face of the imperialist "New of African famine is the brutal exploita­ World Order." And it reflects the agony tion of the continent by imperialism, of an entire continent, where colonialism which in its ruthless drive for profit is has been replaced by neocolonialism, and thrusting the African peoples into pov­ for the masses life continues to spiral erty which is below the minimum level downward to pure hell. for human existence. CII~~~~~ A famine of unprec- The food reliefsent to Africa by the 'It; edented proportions is capitalist leaders has been pitiful com­ Q) ravaging Africa. The pared to the need. By UN estimates, it will take well over half a million tons turyworst hasdrought hit southernin a cen- of food to provide for Somalia alone over iiiil Africa and the eastern eastern Horn of Africa where communal where the fundamentalist regime is wag­ the next year. Yet only 30,000 tons of part of the continent warfare has devastated crops, curtailed ing a jihad (holy war) to impose Islamic food monthly are being received from up to Kenya, causing trade and interrupted shipments of food rule on the black peoples of the south, donor nations-and other sub-Saharan massive crop failure relief. In Somalia, engulfed by all-sided the situation is possibly even more crit­ countries are being largely neglected. l and destruction of live­ dan conflict, 1.5 million people-more ical as the government continues to Bush flamboyantly announced in mid­ stock. Hardest hit by than a quarter of the population-are in block relief aid to the region. August that the U.S. was airlifting o the famine is the north- danger of starving to death. In the Sudan, The capitalist media treat the famine continued on page 6 California, the Cutback State No to Prop 165!

Fresh on the heels of his $11 billion hatchet job on the state budget, seriously crippling education, health and welfare for the.working class, California Repub­ lican governor Pete Wilson is pushing deadly Proposition 165 on the November 3 ballot. In the guise of welfare and bud­ get "reform," this viciously vindictive proposal blames the poor for their own poverty. Cynical "experts" rant about "helping" the poor end their welfare "dependency"...by phasing out welfare. Right-wing politicians evoke vile racist Students at Cal State Long Beach protest myths about black women living high tuition hikes. State Democratic leader Willie on the hog by making babies, and out­ Brown (above, left) and Republican governor of-state "welfare bums" flocking to Cal­ Pete Wilson agree on new budget slashing ifornia to get on the "gravy train." billions from education, health and welfare. The governor and his cohorts literally want to starve black women and chil­ The measure would begin by amend­ cial backers of the measure is Safeway, This is now reverberating down to the dren, drive thousands into homelessness ing the state constitution to declare that which has been trying to break the Team­ county and city levels in the form and deny life-or-death medical care to "public assistance is not a fundamental sters union and would like people to of layoffs, pay freezes, etc. While the the sick and elderly. The Spartacist right" but rather a "disincentive" to "seek employment" at poverty wages. Democratic-dominated State Assembly League says: Proposition 165 is racist "seeking employment." Instead the So at a time when the official unem­ under Speaker Willie Brown put up a murder, pure and simple, and it must be emphasis is to be on "self-sufficiency" ployment rate in California has been mock battle for two months, it was merely defeated, if not at the polls in November and "family." In other words: homeless, nudging 10 percent, Prop 165 would over the details of where the weight of then on the streets by the mobilization jobless, hungry, sick or disabled-you're slash the maximum welfare grant by 10 the cuts would fall. Both sides had a of the labor movement. on your own. Among the biggest finan- percent, and another 15 percent if a fam­ bipartisan nod of agreement that big busi­ ily continued to receive Aid to Families ness would not be touched, that the work­ with Dependent Children (AFDC) for six ing class had to sacrifice. According to months-totaling a 25 percent cut. This Democratic kingpin Brown, "the state means, for instance, that a mother with can no longer afford to pump money" Lenin Against two children would immediately see her into local governments, so "the battle in Great Russian Chauvinism pitiful grant go from $663 a month to the Capitol has largely been fought over .$597, and then in six months it would how much each would be cut" (San Fran­ In Yeltsin's Russia today we are witnessing drop again, to $507. cisco Examiner, 30 August). the obscene spectacle of Stalinists fostering In addition Prop 165 would deny an For the Democrats, 'the "magic of Great Russian chauvinism and anti-Semitism increase in the AFDC grant for a new democracy" is the "art of compromise" while carrying red flags. This is the legacy baby if it was conceived while the -meaning everything is for sale. But of the nationalist dogma of "socialism in mother was on welfare, and repeal all Reaganite Republican Wilson insisted he one country." It is flatly counterposed to special cash aid to pregnant women, would not sign the budget unless educa­ the Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky which including the $70 "pregnancy supple­ tion suffered the heaviest hit. So the created the multinational Soviet workers ment." And it would mandate limits on Democrats' "opposition" eventually col­ TROTSKY state. As thefollowing statement to the Eighth LENIN county General Assistance/Relief pro­ lapsed and made the deal. In the after­ Party Congress in 1919 underscores, Lenin grams, the last-resort aid received math the Democrats are trying to claim waged uncompromising struggle against any and all manifestations of Great Russian largely by single males, and even allow they won some "concessions" to ease the chauvinism toward the national minorities which had suffered oppression under the , a county to repeal such aid. GA dates pain of the cuts. One gets the feeling tsarist yoke. back to 1931, during the Great Depres­ that if the Republicans proposed a bill The Soviet Republic, which has been established in the country where tsarism sion. Already Alameda County, which to send all Jews to concentration camps, formerly oppressed Finland, must declare that it respects the right of nations to includes Berkeley and Oakland, has in­ the Democrats would propose to com­ independence. We concluded a treaty with the short-lived Red Finnish Government dependently decided to reduce its min­ promise at 50 percent, and then brag that and agreed to certain territorial concessions, to which I heard quite a number of utterly uscule GA grants from $340 to $308 they "saved" half the Jews. chauvinistic objections, such as: "There are excellent fisheries there, and you have starting December I. The remarkable thing about the budget surrenderee them." These are the kind of objections which induce me to say, "Scratch To top it off, the measure includes a fight was the virtually total silence from some Communists and you will find Great-Russian chauvinists."... so-called "reform" of the'·'budget pro­ the state labor movement, whose necks Exceptional caution must be displayed by a nation like the Great Russians, who cess" giving the governor virtual dicta­ are on the chopping block. Indeed, the earned the bitter hatred of all the other nations; we have only just learned how to torial powers over the purse- strings. In only memorable utterance by any labor remedy the situation, and then, not entirely. For instance, at the Commissariat of the event a budget bill is not passed by official was San Francisco plumbers Education, or connected with it, there are Communists, who say that our schools are the state legislature and signed by the union leader Larry Mazzola's offer to uniform schools, and therefore don't dare to teach in any language but Russian! In governor by the July 1 due date, the gov­ pony up $200 million in union pension my opinion, such a Communist is a Great-Russian chauvinist. Many of us.harbour such ernor can declare a "fiscal emergency" funds ...for a new stadium to keep the sentiments and they must be combatted. and implement cuts at will. The only Giants from moving to Florida. The That is why we must tell the other nations that we are out-and-out internationalists explicit limitation is that state employ­ paralysis of the unions flows from their and are striving for the voluntary alliance of the workers and peasants of all nations. ees' salaries cannot be cut more than 5 marriage to the Democratic Party: every­ This does not preclude wars in the least. War is another question, and arises out of percent. Thus Wilson, backed by his far­ thing is banked on electing Clinton, the very nature of imperialism. If we are fighting Wilson, and Wilson uses a small right network of Republican Party com­ and they don't want to do anything nation as his tool, we say that we shall oppose that tool. We have never said anything mittees which are now dominated by evoking images of "special interests." different. Christian fundamentalist kooks, could So they laid low. The California Teach­ - V.I. Lenin, "Speech Closing the Debate on the Party Programme" vastly escalate his assault on public serv­ ers Association relied on Willie Brown, (March 1919) ices (such as his pet peeve, workers to the tune of nearly half a million compensation). dollars in PAC money, and got royally screwed. Pete Wilson Couldn't Do It The unions such as the Service Without Willie Brown & Co. Employees are behind the "No on 165 This vicious attack comes just a few Committee," but here again they duck months after the black and Latino poor for cover. Their propaganda deliberately !!!'!!!!m~~'!~!!.~'!.! ~ rose up in Los Angeles, only to be sup­ avoids talking about the racist attacks DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon pressed by a massive military mobiliza­ on welfare and instead focuses entirely EDITOR: Jan Norden tion orchestrated from the White House on the governor's "power grab" and the PRODUCTION MANAGER: Joan Parker and the state house. Despite the Demo­ threat to state workers' pay. This is a CIRCULATION MANAGER: Karen Valdez crats' electoral posturing as friends of strategy for defeat. What's needed is an EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster. Frank Hunter. Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers. James Robertson, the poor, black Democratic mayor Tom alliance of. labor and blacks and the Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer. Marjorie Stamberg Bradley called on Bush and Wilson to unemployed in a full-scale assault on the The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth send in troops. bipartisan attacks by the governor and Internationalist). Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December, Likewise the Democrats in Sacramento legislature-including a statewide gen­ by the Spartacist Publishing Co.• 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), signed offon the state budgetjust passed, eral strike. But this clearly requires a (212) 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 which slashed over $2 billion from break from the capitalist Democratic to Workers Vanguard. Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. education alone (in a state that already Party, and a perspective of working-class Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. ranks 48th in per capita spending on .revolution. It requires above all a revo­ lutionary party, and that is what the Spar­ 16 October 1992 schools), plus billions more from health No. 561 and welfare, and other vital services. tacist League is working to build.• 2 WORKERS VANGUARD campaign against the predominantly black sanitation From Nebraska to California: workers of DC 33. Whether it's Rizzo, Goode or Rendell, the Demo­ Stop Migra Union-busting! cratic Party mayors and their racist cops have carried out a war on unions and minorities in Philadelphia. In a massive display of state power, with helicopters They continue to persecute the MOVE prisoners, and attack dogs, 200 federal agents, state troopers and locked away in Pennsylvania state prisons.for the cops surrounded a Grand Island, Nebraska meatpacking "crime" of surviving the Philly cop assaults. Black jour­ plant on September 22. The INS immigration cops (ta nalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, framed by Rizzo for his elo­ migra) seized and immediately deported over 300 quent defense of MOVE and black Philadelphia, sits night-shift workers at the Monfort Company plant, on death row in Huntingdon. Free all the MOVE pris­ owned by the agribusiness giant ConAgra. The workers oners! Save Mumia Abu-Jamal! were ripped from their families and bused and flown The unions can bust the union-busters, but this means to Mexico. In some cases children were left alone, as standing up to the capitalist state-beginning with a both working parents were seized and deported. As fight to oust the bosses' lieutenants in the labor bureauc­ many as 600 workers in all (out of a total of 1,700 racy. Waging strikes to win requires mass picket lines employees) have been driven from the plant. that no one crosses, defying court injunctions, and this The nine-hour raid, the biggest by the INS in years, must be accompanied by a political fight to build a was an open union-busting move against an ongoing class-struggle workers party. organizing drive by the United Food and Commercial Workers. A UFCW organizer said that the Mexican­ born workers were the most pro-union at the plant. There was panic at the plant again last week as INS Victory to the NASSCO agents came back. Workers returning to pick up annual Shipyard Strike! bonus checks amounting to hundreds of dollars were WVPhoto told the company had given them to the Mexican con­ Philly sanitation workers fight May6r Rendell's "privatization" schemes. After a resounding 91 percent vote for a strike, the sulate. Midwest labor-especially Teamster truck driv­ 2,700 workers at National Steel & Shipbuilding in San ers and railroad workers-must use its power to hot­ shortest work stoppage by city workers in 50 years. Diego shut down the yard on October I. The workers, cargo Monfort meat and stop the /NS union-busting members of the Operating Engineers, Teamsters, raids and organize ConAgra! The combative mood of the. city workers was clear in the week before the strike, as garbage in the streets Machinists, Electricians, Ironworkers, Carpenters and In Southern California, there has been an escalation Painters unions, struck NASSCO, the last ship con­ of official repression and open racist terror against and paperwork in city offices began to pile up. When the strike began, sanitation workers in AFSCME Dis­ struction yard on the West Coast, for the fourth time immigrant workers. On September 10, the INS opened in eleven years. a "hearing room" inside the L.A. County Men's Central trict Council 33 were angry, bitter and determined to defend their jobs and their union. Pickets at the Machinists business agent Peter Zschiesche told WV Jail to grab foreign-born inmates, including legal res­ that the Navy, which provides almost all NASSCO con­ idents with papers, and deport them without benefit of Wheatsheaf Lane garbage transfer station, targeted to be privatized by Waste Management Inc., told Workers tracts, was caught unawares. The heavily Latino and a lawyer or the chance to produce documentation. black workforce was eager to hit back at the shipbuilder, Immigration attorney Peter Schey called it the "fast­ Vanguard of vicious harassment. One black worker said, "I had to transfer from a station on the west side which is attacking seniority with a plan to rate the track approach.... People with long residence in the "efficiency" of the workers in deciding who gets laid U.S....end up being dragged onto the stagecoach when a supervisor called me a n----r in front of my wife!" off. Jose Rfos told the San Diego Union-Tribune (2 and railroaded out of town." This is the fruit of the October), "I have been working here for 18 years. If 1990 immigration "reform," aimed at accelerating In Center City, militant picket lines were predomi­ nantly composed of black women. They stood on the the company cuts seniority, I cannot stand for it. This deportations. is my life." Skilled journeymen at the yard currently Meanwhile in Alpine, California, east of San Diego, steps blocking the entrance to the D.A. 's offices on a migrant labor camp was assaulted on October 2 in a Arch St. Just after 4 p.m., assistant D.A.s who were racist attack chillingly reminiscent of the "Zoot suit lined up along the curb, itching to put working people riots" of World War II. Whites wielding baseball bats in jail, couldn't stand it any longer and charged the claimed the Latino workers had "whistled" at white picketers on the steps. The feisty pickets held the line women. Three laborers, two Mexican and one Guate­ and drove the would-be strikebreakers back down to malan, were seriously injured, and one is still in inten­ the pavement. As they lost ground, the yuppie D.A.s sive care. The workers have taken measures to defend dragged two women down on the ground and began to themselves if the racist thugs return. Striking drywall stomp on them. The rest of the pickets threw the punks and shipyard workers in the area must be organized to off and rescued their sisters. see that they don't stand alone. But 16 hours after the picket lines went up, the The Latino drywall strikers, who have played hard­ AFSCME bureaucrats sent 15,000 city workers back ball with the contractors with their roving pickets and to work under a tentative settlement which includes a demonstrations, are also battling the LAPD and la wage freeze until April 1995, massive cuts in city pay­ migra. On September 23, representatives of the Partisan ments for medical benefits, privatization of city serv­ Defense Committee joined 100 strikers at the L.A. fed­ ices and layoffs if the city declares a "budget deficit." eral building in a protest picket as deportation hearings The agreement is so bad that one-third of the bargaining were taking place inside. The PDC called on key L.A. 'committee of District 33, representing the 12,000 city unions, including longshore and warehouse Local 13 blue-collar workers, voted against it. DC 33 president and SEIU janitors Local 399, to turn out their members James Sutton lamely pleaded it was "the best deal we for the protest. A solidarity statement was fired off by could get." But a water workers business agent told ILWU Local 6 in the Bay Area, but the local union the press, "The union caved in.... It's a terrible tops stayed home. contract." As drywall pickets continue to shut down construc­ AFSCME DC 47 bureaucrats, representing 3,000 city tion sites from Ventura County south to the border, white-collar workers, quickly followed suit. DC 47 there is talk of a settlement. It is crucial that the labor president Thomas Paine Cronin had already said where Niles Cristal movement in Southern California come to the strikers' he stood before the strike: "it is our intention to keep Striking NASSCO shipyard workers on San Diego aid by demanding that in addition to full union recog­ the rank and file working for as long as we can" (AFL­ waterfront, October 7. nition, all charges be dropped and not one of these C/O News, 28 September). The union tops, as usual, militantfighters be deported! Victory to the strike! Stop refuse to let the membership meet on the sellout; instead earn only $12.72 per hour, eight cents less than they migra union-busting! they will be forced to vote by mail. Philly workers: did five years ago. Dump their sellout! For the unions to fight means driv­ In 1980, after angry protests at the NASSCO yard ing out the present spineless labor traitors and replacing against unsafe working conditions, a government/com­ them with a leadership that has the guts and the pro­ pany conspiracy set up and railroaded three union mil­ gram to wage a real class struggle. itants, including two supporters of the Communist Vote Down the Sellout! Labor Day in Philly should have been the kick-off Workers Party. As part of a union-busting drive, the Union Tops Sabotage of an all-out war on the union-busters. The entire city workers were crudely framed up and convicted of labor movement was poised: AFSCME workers had "bomb conspiracy" charges in a trap set by an FBI Philly City Workers Strike been held back from striking for two months; the con­ provocateur. tract for 20,000 teachers and other school employees In the last decade, shipyards up and down the coast PHILADELPHIA-After months of being held in expired on September 7. Even the hidebound fakers on have closed their gates, as the Navy whipsaws yards check by the union tops, Philly city workers struck the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council made noises about across the country against each other in order to gut on Tuesday, October 6. This was the first joint strike a general strike, but quickly settled the teachers' con­ the unions. NASSCO was unloaded by the Morrison­ of blue- and white-collar city workers since 1986. tract. And now they've shafted AFSCME. Knudsen conglomerate in a phony "employee stock The key issue is a plan by Democratic mayor Ed Philly bosses have waged a long campaign to break ownership plan" leaving total control in the hands of Rendell, supported by the entire city council, to break the power of labor in this city. When former mayor NASSCO bosses. the unions by enforcing "management rights" and pri­ Wilson Goode, black Democratic front man for Reagan A victory at NASSCO would boost a much-needed vatization of city services. But despite the workers' reaction, carried out the horrendous racist bombing organizing drive by the unions' United Waterfront eagerness to fight "Fast Eddy" Rendell, the last thing and massacre of six adults and five babies of the Council among workers of non-union subcontractors, the AFSCME union bureaucrats wanted was a major MOVE commune in 1985, it was a threat to blacks and starting with the big yard at Southwest Marine, which class battle that would upset Clinton's presidential cam­ unionists like Reagan's crushing of thePATCO air con­ has some 1,500 workers in San Diego. Victory to the paign. They abjectly folded the strike in 16 hours, the trollers. Goode followed the MOVE massacre with a NASSCO strikel a 16 OCTOBER 1992 3 Fre"e Mark Curtis! VVorkers League Brokers Frame-Up Operation

There's a first-rate anti-communist What kind of people go to a Rodney and sexual abuse are serious crimes, witchhunt in progress over the case of King demonstration against cop brutality and we have given careful consideration Mark Curtis, a member of the quirky and a Haiti demonstration against a mil­ to the Curtis case. We have read the Mark Curtis after savage beatlnq reformist Socialist Workers Party, now itary junta in order to pillory a young 400-page trial transcript and the vol­ Des Moines cops in March 1 doing 25 years in the Iowa state peni­ socialist militant who was active in uminous articles and pamphlets on this tentiary on frame-up charges. The Des the defense of immigrant workers at a case, and we have documented our con­ 17 workers. On March 4, Curtis spoke Moines district attorney's 1988 railroad­ meatpacking plant in the Midwest? Even clusion that Mark Curtis was framed­ in Spanish at a meeting in defense of ing of Curtis was aided and abetted by if they think he is guilty of rape, see the statement of the SLjU.S. Politi­ these workers. Only hours after this, he the Workers League, a dubious outfit that why are self-proclaimed advocates of cal Bureau, "The Workers League and was arrested at the Morris residence in specializes in provocation, in pursuing the interests of women, blacks and labor Mark Curtis" (WV No. 480, 23 June Des Moines by cops who took him to its vendetta against the SWP, long a tar­ so driven to go after someone who is 1989), and our article "Why Should police headquarters where they beat him get of government harassment and "dirty to a pulp, calling him a "Mexican lover." tricks." But although Curtis has spent In September 1988, Curtis was con­ the past four years behind bars, his victed of third degree sexual assault and defense campaign has been the object of first degree burglary. The state charged a frenzied assault by right-wing femi­ that he had forced his way onto the porch nists who want to prevent him from get­ of the Morris house, and attempted to ting out on parole. Their aim is to smear rape 15-year-old Demetria Morris. Cur­ the entire left as racists, rapists and sex­ tis said he was lured there by a request ists. To do so, they pass off the Workers for aid. By no account, not even that of League as good coin, ignoring its history the police or the young woman at the of many years of sinister provocation, trial, did a rape ever take place, nor was insist on the existence of a "rape" which anything stolen, nor was there a weapon. even the prosecution doesn't claim took Whatever may have happened to Demet­ place, and cite a plethora of "pro-victim" ria Morris, there was never any physical sources which tum out to be linked to evidence of contact between Curtis and government agencies. the alleged victim. The court refused to There's some pretty strange stuff allow testimony about the government's going on, particularly coming out of the multi-year campaign of "dirty tricks" Boston area. Consider the following: aimed against the SWP. And now Curtis • The Boston NAACP has been on is serving a 25-year sentence. Despite campaign footing circulating a letter (dat­ vows by members of the Iowa State ed March 14) declaring "MARK CURTIS Parole Board that he will serve his entire IS A VIOLENT RAPIST!" and urging sentence unless he confesses his "guilt," those who had defended him to withdraw Curtis has not been broken. "I am not a their names from the Curtis campaign. rapist, but a fighter for women's rights. • When multiracial protests swept the And I am not guilty of the crimes I have country in solidarity with the Los Ange­ been charged and convicted of," Curtis les upheaval against the acquittal of the declares. racist cops who beat Rodney King, Bos­ The Workers League has aided the ton NAACP official Mary Bertin and capitalist state prosecution of this young some associates attended a May 8 dem­ socialist militant as part of their decades­ onstration at Boston City Hall. They long vendetta against the eccentric, and were there not to protest the racist L.A. pretty irrelevant, reformists of the SWP. verdict, but. .. to circulate an anti-Curtis In the trial, the closing arguments of the tract calling to "Dis-endorse now" and Polk County prosecutor were taken vir­ saying "it's not anti-left to be anti-rape." tually verbatim from the pages of the • Days later, at a May 16 Boston SWP WL's paper, the Bulletin. After the con­ forum on the Rodney King case, a group viction, they have sought to destroy Cur­ of so-called progressives showed up tis' defense committee and drive away including Bertin, Fred Pelka' of "Men to its endorsers. Through the father of the End Sexual Assault" (MESA) and other alleged victim, Keith Morris, they went activists of the "stop rape movement.", to the capitalist courts demanding the They had come, not to discuss police names of endorsers, and access to the brutality, and certainly not to criticize defense committee finances. WL agents the SWP's reformist call on George have crisscrossed the globe searching Bush's "Justice Department" to indict out individuals who endorsed or contrib­ the cops, but. .. to set up a picket line uted to the defense fund, contacting and harassing them. outside the Pathfinder Bookstore, chant­ Right-wing feminists push demented witchhunt against Socialist Workers Party In January, Mark Curtis won a police ing "Racist, sexist SWP!" and "Keep member Mark Curtis. Sinister Workers League's Bulletin initiated and Mark Curtis in jail!" braintrusts vicious anti-communist campaign against Curtis and the SWP. brutality suit against the Des Moines • On July 18, a forum was held at the cops who beat him bloody the night of Boston Public Library where Bertin, his arrest. (The verdict came a month Pelka and Ann Russo, a women's studies already in jail? What is going on here? Anyone Believe David North?" (WV after the Des Moines cops were exposed professor at MIT, participated in a panel "What's going on here is a sinister, No. 487, 13 October 1989). for the brutal beating of a black worker, discussion whose purpose was ...to de­ organized provocation with a not-so­ Larry Milton, who they subsequently stroy the Mark Curtis Defense Commit­ hidden agenda of vilifying the left. In The Railroading of Mark Curtis tried to frame up on "theft" charges.) tee activities in the Boston area. Mark the name of victims' rights and stopping Mark Curtis is a former national chair­ The court decided the cops lied when Curtis was described here as a "white rape, a network has sprung up that works man of the SWP's youth group, the they said they didn't beat up Mark Cur­ man" who "raped" "an Afro-American closely with the police, embraces vigi­ Young Socialist Alliance. At the time tis, and awarded him $11,000 plus attor­ woman," and the SWP as "racists" who lantism and is in the tow of reactionary of his arrest he was a union activist at ney's fees. Since the cops were critical "glorify" a "rapist." forces. With liberal rhetoric they engage the Swift packing plant in Iowa. There witnesses at Curtis' trial, that testimony • At a demonstration in Boston on Sep­ in witchhunting taken straight from the had been a lot of turmoil in the Mid­ is deeply suspect as well. tember 30, where thousands of black book (literally) of J. Edgar Hoover. And west meatpacking industry, particularly The Smear Campaign Haitian workers were protesting the anni­ the whole operation is being brokered around the protracted 1985-86 Hormel versary of the military coup that over­ by David North's Workers League, strike by Local P-9 in Austin, Minnesota, All this has only been a spur for the threw the government of the radical priest which is obsessed with destroying the which was broken by the combined Workers League to accelerate their cam­ Jean-Bertrand Arisride, the anti-Curtis Socialist Workers Party and sees this efforts of the company, the Demo­ paign smearing Curtis as a "depraved crowd was back again, with leaflets not case as its vehicle. cratic state government and the social­ rapist." The WL went after Curtis' labor against the bloody junta and its links to The Spartacist League has no love lost democratic national union bureaucracy. support, lining up with the Iowa AFL­ the U.S. government but. .. denouncing a for the rotten-reformist SWP, but we can In the Swift plant in Des Moines, four CIa officialdom as well as bourgeois socialist group and its imprisoned mem­ tell a dirty frame-up when we see it. And days before Curtis' arrest in March 1988, black organizations like the Des Moines ber for "Racism and Rapism." this one is a threat to everyone. Rape an INS immigration raid had picked up NAACP and Black United Front. More 4 WORKERS VANGUARD recently they have hooked up with a clot in Boston including the Rape Crisis Cen­ ter, black politicos and union officials. As a result of their poison campaign, some 20 people have reportedly with­ drawn their support, including former Boston mayoral candidates Mel King and Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler, IUE Local 201 president Jeff Crosby (Lynn GE), former Boston University professor Howard Zinn and feminist author Mar­ garet Randall. Circulating in the feminist milieu are several articles notable for their praise of the Workers League and virulent attacks on "the left" for supposed racism. "The Strange Case of Mark Curtis: Vic­ tim or Victimizer?" by Fred Pelka of Boston MESA appeared in an obscure Queens, New York "progressive wom­ an's quarterly" On the Issues (Spring 1991). And the Boston-based feminist newspaper Sojourner (October 1992) has an article by Ann Russo, "Mark Curtis: When Racism Equals Rapism." Russo calls the WL's Martin McLaughlin "one of the few progressives who supported the rape survivor and her family." She ~ also lays out the witchhunt campaign in . Labor Brown Brothers detail: American CP and the International Labor Defense battled courts and NAACP sabotage to mobilize mass support among "Efforts to challenge the propaganda of labor and blacks for Scottsboro Boys (right) against false charges of rape. the defense committee escalated this past spring when Mary Bertin, on behalf harbor rapists if they are among "their for the zwo women, one did "tell her CP's International Labor Defense, the of the Boston NAACP, got involved.... A group of us, includingBarry Shuchter, own." Pelka claims that a "feminist anal­ story." Ruby Bates later recanted her tes­ economist WL never mentions any of the Fred Pelka, Anita Saville and others, ysis of the Curtis case" shows "how timony, and in 1933 marched at the head ILD's defense of blacks. Moreover, the including myself on behalf of White effectively the left has acted to silence of a protest in front of the White House WL's Bulletin (31 July) fulsomely quotes Women Against Racism and Violence the survivor." "What does it mean ... demanding freedom for the Scottsboro from Pelka and Russo without a mention AgainstWomen, have been directingour when so many 'politically correct' peo­ Boys. As James P. Cannon, the founder of their vicious anti-communism and efforts towards supporters of Curtis, en­ couragingthemto disendorsehis defense ple are willing to take, at face value, the ofAmerican Trotskyism, wrote in a 1932 racism. Their silence on these issues is campaign." word of a white man convicted of rape article entitled "Mobilize White Workers utterly damning. "Some activists wonder why we are over that of his Black victim?" And in for Scottsboro Prisoners": The Scottsboro and the Curtis frame­ making such an effort to stop the Curtis showing that the left supposedly has a "The deliberately planned assassination ups are wielded in a cynical attempt to of the unfortunate Negro children is defense campaign," Russo writes. "In long tradition of vilifying rape victims, portray the left as enemies of women he obscenely cites the case of the Scotts­ notice to the entire worldthat imperialist this case, the rape survivor faces an inter­ America, this pretended pacifist and and blacks. Pelka, Bertin & Co. are sup­ national progressive community that boro Boys! friend of justice, is in fact a monster. The porters of the racist capitalist system. supports this white male rapist." She This astounding claim comes in re­ endeavor to thwart its bloody designs in Just look at the charge of "lying." Pelka sponse to Russ Davis, a Boston supporter the presentcase calls out the deepestand approvingly cites the argument of pros­ ,quotes Mary Bertin saying: "For the past best human instincts." four years, [the SWP has] literally had of the Curtis defense campaign, who ecutor Catherine Thune that Curtis can't & the reign of the world, and that has to wrote that there are historical precedents Not so for Pelka Co., for whom, even be trusted because he lied ... on an em­ end. I felt the NAACP could be her for the use of rape in frame-ups. Pelka 60 years later, the case of the Scottsboro ployment application! Is there another voice, and so we designed a campaign asserts: Boys calls out the basest, if reflexive, way to get a job? And what about the to inform people of Demetria's story." "It's significant that Davis' list of cases instincts. "illegal" immigrant workers at Swift Russo's piece is loaded with emotional where rape 'has been used in frame-ups' What gets them seeing red is not the whose jobs Curtis was defending-if begins and ends with the 'Scottsboro white liberal guilt-tripping. At issue in lynch rope, but that the lives of these their documents weren't in order does Boys'-a group of African-American that mean they should be deported? On the Curtis case, she claims, is "a young men convicted of rape by an all-white young men were saved by mobilizations working-class African-American girl. .. (and all-male) jury in Alabama in led by Communists. In his attack on the the other hand, Pelka waves aside the brutally raped and beaten by a white 1931.. .. left over the Scottsboro Boys, Pelka is fact that one of the cops, Gonzalez, had man." Russo keeps repeating: Deme­ "Thereis one similarity, though,between playing on an old theme. The NAACP been suspended from the Des Moines the Curtis case and that of the Scottsboro sabotaged the Scottsboro defense, de­ police for lying, saying he was only tria Morris was "brutally raped and defendants. In both cases, the prosecu­ assaulted," she is "a rape survivor." tion witnesses, women withoutaccess to fended the court that convicted the "fudging an arrest report to protect the Russo puts herself inside the victim's power and unable to tell their stories, framed-up youth, denounced the mass identity of an informant." Actually, Gon­ mind, saying "imagine being reminded" were vilified by the left. In 60 years that mobilizations and raised the cry of the zalez was caught lying about beating a much, at least, hasn't changed." about "the good things that the man who "red menace," accusing the CP of using suspect. raped you has done." Russo imagines What racist, anti-communist trash! Nat­ the case for its own purposes. (Only four A lot of Pelka's stuff sounds like it this, imagines that. Of the SWP, she says urally Pelka doesn't bother to mention years later, under intense pressure from comes out of the House Un-American that "they consistently downplay the that the Scottsboro Boys-s-nineyoung the black masses, did the NAACP finally Activities Committee. "How is it," he rape" of one of the "women ofcolor who black men-were sentenced to die on the take up the case.) During the McCarthy­ wants to know, that the SWP has gotten have been raped by white men," and they basis of the testimony of two young ite witchhunt, the liberal historian Wil­ so much support for Mark Curtis? For ignored "the impact of their campaign on white women, based on charges of rape son Record vituperated against the CP the answer he goes to Barry Shuchter, the rape survivor." How hasthe SWP that had been manufactured by the Ala­ over the Scottsboro case in his book The formerly an editorial committee member "gotten away with" a "support campaign bama cops! But to keep Curtis in jail, Negro and the Communist Party (1951). of the Boston Labor Page. "The first in defense of a rapist," she asks. The Pelka is glad to retry these victims of And today we have the Boston and Des thing (SWP members) do is the personal "progressive community...supports this Southern lynch law. Moines NAACP and Fred Pelka playing favors trick," says Shuchter. "They say, white male rapist," and this supposedly Defense of the Scottsboro Boys was the same theme in the Mark Curtis case. 'We've been on the line with you, we've "illustrates the racist ignorance and the focus of an international campaign, At the same time, the Workers League come to your events. Now we're asking denial of sexual assault that continue to centrally led by the Communist Party, in has scandalously erased the Scottsboro for this one favor in return.' Then comes permeate the progressive community." which hundreds of thousands of people Boys from American working-class his­ the 'Look who else has endorsed' trick." Russo locates the source of this in "the were mobilized to save these young tory. While fraudulently claiming to have This sounded so much like a page out ideology that so-called 'good men' black men from Jim Crow "justice." As recently resuscitated the traditions of the of J. Edgar Hoover's Masters of Deceit (which in this country translates into that we decided to check. Sure enough, white men) don't rape." In the May 8 the FBI boss gave as an example of Com­ leaflet this is rendered as "'good men' munist agitation: (that is, progressive activists) don't "The communists publish a story: John Doe has beenarrested,the chargeis mur­ rape." What is the conclusion? That all der.... The Party machinery springs into men rape? But in the midst of all this action, typical of thousands of mass­ imaginary psycho-projection and dema­ agitation campaigns .... The next step is gogic collective guilt-tripping, a simple probablythe formation of the XYZCom­ mitteeto SaveJohn Doe.... Finallycome fact has been left out: in this case there Mark Curtis the unsuspecting noncommunists, with was no rape! In fact the state dropped (right) and contact being made either in person or the charge of rape against Mark Curtis. his wife and on the telephone. So why then this tabloid-style hysteria comrade '''Mr. X, I'm So-and-So from the XYZ based on the assertion that there was a Kate Kaku Committee to Save John Doe. I was just over at Mr. V's office. You know him, rape? And what purposes does the explain his defense don't you?' ... exploitation of the non-rape of Demetria "On and on. 'Dr. F, Rev. 0, etc., have Morris serve? campaign to given statements'.... his coworkers ,"'Why,' a friend will say after reading In Defense of the at Swift the testimonial, 'if So-and-So endorses Scottsboro Boys meatpacking that organization [or issue], it must be plant, OK.' The dupe becomes a communist In this respect, the article by Fred spring 1988. thought-control relay station." Pelka of Men to End Sexual Assault is Pelka and Shuchter have learned well at instructive. This smear job paints the left the knee of this master of frame-ups. as "sexists" who reflexively defend and continued on page 13 16 OCTOBER 1992 5 Nowhere is the necessity of world­ Imperialism wide socialist revolution clearer than in the inhuman condition that capitalism imposes on its colonial and semi­ Starves Africa ... colonial slaves. Famine has become a (continued from page 1) chronic condition in Africa and the situation is getting steadily worse. The 140,000 tons of food to Somalia, but it UN Food and Agriculture Organization later turned out that only one-tenth of that amount would be airlifted; the rest (FAO) estimates that about a third of the 450 million people on the continent suf­ will supposedly be available the "next fer from malnutrition and between one­ fiscal year" and will be sold to "mer­ quarter and one-fifth of the population chants in Kenya." The racist arrogance in the region does not have enough food of the Washington. fat cats is summed to be able to work or pursue any form up by one official who suggested that of physical activity (Jean Dreze and Somalia "should be paved over and turned into a parking lot" (Washington Amartya Sen, eds., The Political Econ­ omy of Hunger [1991]). Post, 12 August). Instead of feeding the population, Africa is caught in the blind alley, food relief has become a weapon in the inherited from colonialism, of concen­ savage fighting between Somali clan trating its agriculture on tropical cash chiefs. Journalists report that starving crops for sale on the world market. villagers who received food aid were Prices for these crops are steadily falling assassinated and their food seized by because of the imperialist stranglehold the warlords. The UN, while stationing on the world market for tropical exports. 500 Pakistani soldiers to protect the This market is characterized by compe­ unloading of shipments at the port of tition among many suppliers while a few Mogadishu, is negotiating to sell most giant trading companies, often having a of the food at cut-rate prices to local near-monopoly, drive prices down by strongmen, who will resell the supplies playing suppliers off against each other. at exorbitant prices to finance their mur­ For example, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, derous feuding. Washington saw in this Uganda and the Ivory Coast all compete human tragedy an opportunity to do with each other (and with Brazil, Colom­ bia and others) to sell coffee to a handful some saber rattling, stationing a 2,400­ Morris/Black Star man Marine amphibious group from the of companies like General Foods and Persian Gulf just. off the coast of Nestle. Mogadishu to provide "seaborne com­ Above: Somali At the same time, 90 percent of world mand and control." famine victims are grain exports come from North America, The violent disintegration of the buried wrapped.in giving the U.S. near-monopoly control sacks from food of the market for exportable grain. The Somali state is a by-product of the col­ relief. Lack of lapse of Stalinist rule in the Soviet hammer lock that a few U.S. trading medical supplies companies have on the world market for Union. For more than two decades, the condemns many Somalian regime of Mohammed Siad children (right) food grains makes the "oil cartel" pale Barre played off the Soviet Union who are too ill in comparison. The result is that world against U.S. imperialism, obtaining the to be saved by food prices have steadily skyrocketed. guns and a dribble of aid that enabled food alone. In the decade following the mid- '70s, him to keep "order." With the end of the African countries' food bill increased Cold War, Barre lost his international Feferberg/AFP five-fold-and their foreign debts in­ backers and last year fell from power. medical supplies are being sent, epidem­ the area planted, triggering the largest creased ten times. The country was engulfed in furious war­ ics of measles, pneumonia and tubercu­ one-year fall in worldwide grain produc­ The high price of oil is often cited fare among rival clans who turned on losis are decimating the population of tion in history. as the reason underdeveloped countries each other the modern weaponry that had weakened children and turning the So as Africa is starving, the imperial­ are driven into debt to the world bank­ been provided by the U.S. and the Soviet camps into what one relief worker called ists order huge cutbacks of grain pro­ ers. In reality, food imports place a Union. The capital of Mogadishu was a "death trap." duction! The answer to mass hunger is much heavier burden on the poorest turned into a wasteland. Now that the Horn of Africa no longer not philanthropy but class struggle. And countries than oil. Imports of food and For a full year the world's capitalist has strategic interest for the imperialists, the main enemy is not a bunch of feuding fertilizer in the mid-1970s cost the least­ leaders closed their eyes to the famine they see no profit in "humanitarian" aid. clans in Somalia, but the worldwide cap­ developed countries nearly twice as raging in Somalia. Last July, it suddenly When famine last struck Africa in 1984­ italist system which produces solely for much as their payments for oil imports. became front-page news when UN sec­ 85, the world's capitalist leaders mobi­ profit and not to satisfy human need. Many African countries, after selling retary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali lized relief for Ethiopia (and rock stars Lenin noted, regarding one of the many their cash crops on the world market, challenged the expansion of the UN sang "We Are the World") to discredit famines in tsarist Russia (when the gov­ are able to import less food than they "peacekeeping" operation in Bosnia­ the Soviet-allied regime. (They virtually ernment continued to export grain in the could have grown themselves! Hercegovina, calling it a "rich man's ignored the other sub-Saharan countries midst of starvation): But they are not permitted to grow it themselves. The imperialist powers, and war" which detracted from relief opera­ which were also hit by the drought.) This "There neither is nor can be any other tions in black Africa. Journalists sud­ time, famine in Africa coincides with a means of combating unemployment and their agents in the IMF and the World denly discovered the tragedy in Somalia. massive cut in grain production engi­ crises, as well as the Asiatic-barbarian Bank, see to it that the semi-colonial Now UN aid operations have resumed, neered by the U.S. to drive up prices. and cruel forms the expropriation of the countries increasingly concentrate on small producers has assumed in Russia, cash crops to "export" themselves out but many who flock to the relief camps After a record harvest in 1990, the U.S. than the class struggleof the revolution­ are already so sick that foodalone can slashed wheat production by 30 percent aryproletariatagainsttheentirecapitalist of the debt crisis. This only pushes them no longer help them. Since almost no (27 million tons), largely by reducing system. The rulers of the capitalist state further into the red. When the Sudan, in are no more concerned about the vast the 1970s, decided to switch over from numbers of famine and crisis victims cotton to food production in the vast, than a locomotive is concerned about those whom it crushes in its path. Dead irrigated Gazeira region, the IMF and SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY bodies stop the wheels, the locomotive World Bank imposed a veto. As a World halts, it may (witha too energetic driver) Bank official explained: "Cotton defi­ National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 jump the rails, but, in any case, after a nitely has an advantage in terms of effi­ delay, long or short, it will continue on ciency of production and profit margin Atlanta Detroit Norfolk its way." Box 4012 Box 441043 Box 1972, Main PO - V.I. Lenin, "Review of Home in the short run over wheat in that area" Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 Affairs" (October 1901) (PBS documentary "The Politics of Food," 6 January 1988). Oakland Boston Los Angeles Africa: Imperialism and This is simply a continuation of the Box 29497 Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Hunger policy followed by the colonialists since Cambridge, MA 02139 Oakland, CA 94604 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Africa's natural resources are more they first conquered Africa, of seeking (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 than adequate, if correctly utilized, to to eliminate subsistence farming in favor San Francisco Chicago Madison provide sufficient food for its popula­ of cash crops for the market. Only in Box 77494 Box 6441, Main PO Box 1492 tion. Estimates of the continent's uncul­ this way could the Africans' labor be San Francisco, CA 94107 transformed into profit to fill the colo­ Chicago, IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701 (415) 777-9367 .~ tivated arable land range from three to (312) 663-0715 four times the area presently cultivated. nialists' coffers. Vast tracts of land were New York Washington, D.C. As one study concluded, "there is little seized outright and turned into planta­ Cleveland Box 444, Canal St. Sta. Box 75073 doubt that Africa contains enough land tions. Peasants who retained their land Box 91037 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 to feed its present population and were "persuaded" to stop producing food Cleveland, OH 44101 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 more, if rural areas were properly devel­ by such measures as taxation (which oped" (Ronald Cohen, ed., Satisfying required cash crop production in order Africa's Food Needs [1988]). However, to have money to pay the tax), stark coer­ TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA the irrigation projects, drainage of cion and even subsidizing food imports. Toronto Montreal Vancouver swamps and cleaning of disease-infested By imposing cash crops, often to the Box 7198, Station A C.P. Les Atriums Box 2717, Main P.O. areas which would be required to exclusion of staple foods, colonialism Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 develop Africa's agricultural potential sowed the seeds of famine. (416) 593-4138 Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 (604) 687-0353 are unthinkable as long as Africa Numerous academic studies have been (514) 849-6540 is squeezed in the vise of Wall Street made to uncover the causes of the crisis and the international bankers. of African agriculture and to propose 6 WORKERS VANGUARD ways to increase the productivity of those peasant holdings producing food. However, the root of the problem was explained by Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916): 18- "It goes without saying that if capitalism could develop agriculture,...if it could 15- raise the living standards of the masses, who in spite of the amazing technical progress are everywhere still half-starved 12- and poverty-stricken, there could be no question of a surplus of capital. ... But if capitalism did these things it would not be capitalism; for both uneven devel­ opment and a semi-starvation level of ex­ istence of the masses are fundamental and inevitable conditions and constitute premises of this mode of production." 3 The "Food Weapon" o The excruciating fact is that the terri­ 1935 '40 '45 '50 '55 '60 '65 70 75 '80 '84 ble famines which strike capitalism's COl London New York Times Graph semi-colonies take place in the midst of "Green Revolution" in the Punjab: Current grain production could amply feed world's population, but extension of large­ plenty. Currently, worldwide production scale capitalist farming drives peasants from land, increasing hunger. of cereal grains alone is sufficient to sup­ ply a diet of 3,600 calories a day to every of agriculture enthused that food was the has increased as a result of the "Green reinforcing small farmers. This is a futile man, woman and child on the planet. As U.S.' "greatest weapon" because "coun­ Revolution." Hybrid strains will grow attempt to hold back the tendency under a recent study declared: "If food were tries become more dependent on Amer­ only if they have irrigation, fertilizer capitalism to increased concentration of distributed equitably, current supplies ican farm exports and become reluctant and insecticides which require enor­ capital. Despite the American myth of would be more than adequate to provide to upset us" (New York Times, 24 Decem­ mous capital outlays. Only the largest the family farm, which capitalist ideo­ an ample diet to all" (Basil Blackwell, ber 1980). landowners can profit from the new tech­ logues are now trying to transplant to Hunger in History [1990]). The reason The U.S. pioneered the use of food as nology, and small peasants, unable to the ex-USSR, in fact corporate "facto­ food does not get distributed to all is a weapon during the Vietnam War when compete, are driven from their land. A ries in the field" (relying on heavy that under capitalism, food is a commod­ President Lyndon Johnson repeatedly study by the Asian Development Bank mechanization and low-paid Mexican ity which is-sold on the market in order interrupted food aid to India, suffering of the consequences of the "Green Rev­ agricultural workers) are far more effi­ to make a profit. Like any other business, from the terrible famine of 1965-66, in olution" in the 1970s concluded that the cient producers. In fact, the majority of agribusiness seeks to monopolize and retaliation for criticisms of U.S. policy. number of malnourished people had American agricultural output now c.omes control the market to keep prices as high from units that are the size of Soviet as possible and maximize profits. collective farms. To achieve hegemonic control of the Hunger is not exclusively a "Third world food market, the U.S. carried out World" problem. It results from the pov­ a fundamental transformation of that erty and misery which are inevitably pro­ market-and turned agriculture into the duced by capitalist exploitation. In South country's number one export industry. Africa, the sixth leading grain producer Before World War II, Europe was the in the world, three million black children only continent which was a net importer suffer from clinically diagnosable mal­ of food, all others produced more food nutrition, and some 50,000 die each year than they consumed. By the 1960s, this from illnesses related to hunger. In the had been fundamentally altered. All U.S., a scientific survey determined that continents except North America (and 12 million children-more than a quarter Australia) now produce less than they of all children-are chronically under­ consume and have become net importers nourished (Scientific American, Febru­ of food. By the late 1970s, the under­ ary 1987). And the immiseration of the developed countries of Africa, Asia and ghetto population fosters epidemics of Latin America had gone from being deadly diseases of poverty, from cholera non-importers of food to buying almost and tuberculosis to AIDS. In Africa 80 percent of U.S. wheat exports. alone, an estimated six million people The unchallenged dominance of the have been infected with HIV viruses. U.S. as global food supplier was With present-day technology, U.S. achieved through a policy of massive Der Spiegel agriculture alone could make up for the government assistance to U.S. agricul­ Somali regime, without Soviet backing, fell last year. Savage clan warfare entire world shortfall offood production, ture and forcing world grain prices down destroyed the capital, Mogadishu (above). eliminating hunger from the face of the in order to "drive out" the competition. earth. With aid from the advanced indus­ Grain prices on the world market were In late 1974, as a million people in increased, that rural incomes had de­ trial countries, Africa could feed itself kept low by "dumping" U.S. grain at arti­ Bangladesh perished in a famine, the clined and that unemployment had been and have plenty of surplus left over to ficially low prices, by maintaining enor­ U.S. cut off food aid because Bangladesh exacerbated. It declared that "the region invest in improving the life of the mous unsold government grain reserves sold jute to Cuba. In late 1982, when is no closer to solving the food problem masses. The question is what class holds and by massive food aid (through the PL famine struck Ethiopia, the U.S. held up than ten years ago" (quoted in Susan the power. So long as capitalism 480 program) and credits (in the 1950s, relief assistance because Ethiopia was a George, Feeding the Few: Corporate remains, it will continue to reproduce U.S. aid alone accounted for one-third Soviet ally. And last year, as famine Control of Food [1979]). the scourge of mass hunger. However, of world trade in wheat). . swept across southern Sudan, the UN cut The liberals' proposals for "solving" capitalism sows the seeds of its own When the heroic struggle of the Viet­ off food relief because of Sudan's sup­ the hunger crisis-such as easy credit destruction. By socializing and interna­ namese people knocked U.S. imperial­ port for Iraq in the Gulf War. The cut­ for small agricultural producers, organ­ tionalizing production, it lays the basis ism from its position as hegemonic impe­ throats in Washington have turned death ization of producer cooperatives and for the working class, through world rialist power, marked by the devaluation by starvation into a routine instrument breakup of the agribusiness monopo­ socialist revolution, to institute eco­ of the dollar in August 1971, agriculture of foreign policy. lies-are centered on preserving and nomic planning on a global scale .• was slated by U.S. leaders to playa cen­ tral role in shoring up the declining U.S. Hunger and the economy. In 1972, U.S. leaders engi­ "Green Revolution" STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, copies each issue during preceding 12 months: A. neered a world "food crisis" which drove MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION Total no. copies (Net press run): 18,083; B. Paid food prices to unprecedented levels by Technological advances in agriculture (Required by 39 U.S.C. 3685) and/or requested circulation: (I) Sales through dealers taking 50 million acres out of production have been spectacular in the last 30 IA. Title of publication: Workers Vanguard. and carriers, street vendors and counter sales: 11,585; (2) Mail subscription: 2,503; C. Total paid and/or IB. Publication no.: 098770. and wiping out U.S. grain reserves. years, but under capitalism even these requested circulation (Sum of lOBI and IOB2): 2. Date of filing: I October 1992. 14,088; D. Free distribution by mail, carrier or other Despite famines in Africa and Bangla­ have translated into increased hunger 3. Frequency of issue: Bi-weekly (except 2nd issue means, samples, complimentary, and other free copies: in August and with 3-week interval December). desh and crop failure in the Soviet and misery. The "Green Revolution" was 340; E. Total distribution (Sum of C and D): 14,429; 3A. No. of issues published annually: 24. Union, the U.S. slashed food aid to one­ launched in 1943 in Sonora, Mexico F. Copies not distributed: (I) Office use, left over, 3B. Annual subscription price: $7.00. third its previous level (much of the rest where Norman Borlaug (who received unaccounted, spoiled after printing: 3,654; (2) Return 4. Complete mailing address of known office of from news agents: 0; G. Total (Sum of E, FI and 2 was sent to South Vietnam and Cambo­ the 1970 Nobel peace prize) with the publication: 41 Warren St., New York, NY 10007. -should equal net press run shown in A): 18,083. dia to help finance the war). By 1974, a backing of the Rockefeller Foundation 5. Complete mailing address of the headquarters Actual no. copies of single issue published nearest of general business offices of the publisher: 41 to filing date: A. Total no. copies (Net press run): ton of wheat was selling for three times used genetic selection to develop "mir­ si., Warren New York. NY 10007. 20,000; B. Paid and/or requested circulation: (I) Sales as much as a ton of oil! acle" strains. Since they were introduced 6. Full names and complete mailing address of through dealers and carriers, street vendors and publisher, editor, and managing editor: Publisher­ The U.S. imperialists were quick to in the mid-1960s, hybrid strains of counter sales: 14,7~8; (2) Mail subscription: 2,400; Spartacist Publishing Company, 41 Warren St., NY, C. Total paid and/or requested circulation (Sum of seize on their power to throw under­ wheat, rice and corn have provided NY 10007; Editor-Jan Norden, 41 Warren St., NY, lOBI and IOB2): 17,198; D. Free distribution by mail, developed countries into starvation as a spectacularly increased yields. India NY 10007; Managing Editor-None. carrier or other means, samples, complimentary, and 7. Owner: Spartacist Publishing Company (Un­ way of furthering their political interests. went in five years from severe famine other free copies: 327; E. Total distribution (Sum of incorporated Association), 41 Warren St., NY, NY C and, D): 17,525; F. Copies not distributed: (I) A secret CIA report of August 1974 to being self-sufficient in grain. Indo­ 10007. Office use, left over, unaccounted, spoiled after projected that "the United States' near­ nesia, which had been the world's largest 8. Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other printing: 2,475; (2) Return from news agents: 0; G. rice importer, became self-sufficient in security holders owning or holding I percent or Total (Sum of E, FI and 2-should equal net press monopoly position as a food exporter... more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other run shown in A): 20,000. could give the U.S. a measure of power two years. The new hybrid strains were securities: None. i I. I certify that the statements made by me above _ touted as solving the problem of world 9. For completion by nonprofit' organizations are correct and complete. it never had before" (quoted in Robert authorized to mail at special rates: Not applicable. Paarlberg, Food Trade and Foreign Pol­ hunger. 10. Extent and nature of circulation: Average no. (Signed) Jan Norden, (Editor) icy [1985]). President Reagan's secretary In fact, the hunger of the world's poor 16 OCTOBER 1992 7 The following is a leaflet produced-in Russian by the International Communist League for distribution in the former leL Leaflet in Ex-USSR USSR.

For the Communism of Lenin and Trotsky! Why Haven't the Workers Risen Up? It is now more than a year since the forces of counterrevolution led by Boris Yeltsin and orchestrated by Washington gained the ascendancy and launched a forced draft march toward capitalist restoration. Hunger and home­ lessness stalk the land. Pensioners line the street, selling their possessions to survive. Thousands of factories face liquidation. Fratricidal wars rage. The counterrevolutionary drive could have been spiked through concerted workers' mobilization against the Yeltsinites at the outset, against the devastating price rises in January, against the threat of mass unemployment which has been looming for months. But this has not happened. Why? At bottom it is a question of pro­ letarian leadership. The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) said in August 1991 that a mobilization of Moscow workers should have swept away the counterrevolutionary scum on Yeltsin's White House barricades. We issued an urgent call, "Soviet Workers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevolution!" At the same time, the botched putsch by the GKChP ["Emergency Committee"] sought to enforce "perestroika without glasnost" by imposing the heavy hand of repression in order to continue on Gorbachev's road to capitalism. We raised a program to mobilize the working class in struggle against the restorationist ~~ ~ drive: for independent workers commit­ Remnants of Stalinist bureaucracy now calling themselves patriots (left) block with anti-Semitic Russian fascists such tees in all enterprises to prevent layoffs as Pamyat (right). . and privatization, through seizing con­ trol of production; against the witchhunt­ ing ban on the CPSU; for multinational Leon Trotsky, for which. countless forces within the working class. Yet they denounces "cosmopolitans"-Stalin's workers defense guards to prevent inter­ numbers of Bolshevik-internationalists have not organized a hint of serious anti-Semitic code word for Jews-and communalist fratricide and nationalist went to their deaths at the hands of Sta­ working-class resistance to the ravages was elected to the presidium of the Sobor. and anti-Semitic pogroms. lin's assassins. The program of the Left of capitalist restoration. It is no accident that Pamyat endorsed Following the imposition of Yeltsin's Opposition was the program of the Bol­ From "hardline" Stalinist leftovers Makashov for president in June 1991. "shock treatment," in our leaflet "Form shevik victory in October 1917. Stalin­ like Anpilov and Andreyeva to pro­ The June 12 conference in Mos­ Workers and Soldiers Soviets to Stop ism, which trampled on that program, Gorbachev social democrats like Med­ cow of the Sobor-including monarch­ Capitalist Restoration!" we raised the received its death blow in August 1991, vedev, these organizations have been a ists, black-shirted fascists and Cossacks call for workers committees to seize con­ but the communism of Lenin and Trotsky roadblock to struggle by the multi­ in full regalia, as well as the RKRP trol of food distribution, backed up by lives in the international class struggle. national Soviet working class. The rea­ -marked an important stage in workers defense guards. "There can be Now with the demise of the CPSU, son: these organizations continue the the strengthening of fascist-corporatist no return to the old crap of Stalinism," there are more organizations than one Stalinist policies of nationalism and forces. The Sobor railed that the Yeltsin we stressed. "Out of yesterday's Stalin­ can count which call themselves "com­ blocs with bourgeois forces which paved regime is an "administration of national ists come today's Yeltsinites." munist" or "socialist": the Russian the way for counterrevolution. The treason" which is "Russophobic and Jew­ Throughout, the ICL has fought for Communist Workers Party (RKRP) of workers, not only here but throughout loving." Sterligov is just as fanatic an proletarian political revolution to restore Viktor Anpilov and General Albert the entire world, have paid dearly for anti-communist as Yeltsin or Gaidar. the multinational Soviet state on the Makashov, the All-Union Communist this. Sterligov denounces communism as basis of its Leninist foundations, to drive Party (VKPB) of Nina Andreyeva, the Nearly seven decades of Stalinist "hostile to the old national traditions of out the capitalist-restorationist govern­ Russian Party of Communists (RPK) of bureaucratic rule politically paralyzed Russia... so it is quite impossible to col­ ments of Yeltsin, Kravchuk & Co. and Anatoly Kryuchkov, the Union of Com­ and atomized the Soviet proletariat. laborate with people who are carriers of replace them with the rule of democrat­ munists (SK) of Alexei Prigarin, the Today the numerous decomposition this ideology." Both Sterligov and his "ically elected soviets' of workers and 'Socialist Party of Labor (SPT) of Roy products which emerged from the col­ deputy Ilya Konstantinov, who parades soldiers deputies, and for a Leninist­ Medvedev and A. Denisov, and the lapse of the bankrupt Stalinist apparatus as head of the "All-Russian Toilers Trotskyist party to lead the workers Socialist Party of the Ukraine (SPU), as aid the consolidation of the counter­ Assembly," sided with Yeltsin in August struggle to victory. In this, we continue well as Boris Kagarlitsky's Labor Party revolution by sowing passivity and crim­ 1991. But while Anpilov rails against the struggle of the Left Opposition of (PT). They claim to represent significant inally fanning chauvinism within the Yeltsinite "demofascists," this does not multinational proletariat. One and all, prevent him from licking Sterligov's they have blocked with reactionary boots. The Leningrad RKRP's Narod­ nationalist and other pro-capitalist ele­ naya Pravda (No. 24) featured the full ments who are no less committed to text of Sterligov's June 12 speech to the counterrevolution than Yeltsin. Sobor. Molniya (No. 40) published another speech by Sterligov and hailed "Red-Brown" Coalition: it as an example of the "intellectual might Betrayal of the Working Class! of the opposition." The demonstrations of Anpilov's Sterligov/Zhirinovsky try to poison Counterrevolutionary RKRP invariably include the fascist the Russian workers with chauvinism, rabble manning Pamyat and a gaggle of supporters of the better to lead them to the capitalist barricades the rabidly anti-Semitic Zhirinovsky, slaughter. And they are aided in their at Yeltsin while Anpilov's Molniya (No. 39) calls efforts by those, like the RKRP, who "White House" on its readers to subscribe to that stand at their side obscenely waving red in August 1991 Pamyat-loving chauvinist rag Dien. The flags. This is a cynical operation. should have been RKRP is prominent in the disgust­ Anpilov & Co. call the Yeltsin gang dispersed by working-class ing "red-brown" coalition with out­ "demofascists" in order to justify unity mobilization right Great Russian chauvinists like with "national patriots" against Western under genuinely the anti-Semitic writer V. Rasputin and influence. This harks back to the sup­ communist Zhirinovsky, the monarchist Alexander posed "national unity" against the Nazi leadership. Nevzorov and the Russian National invaders in 1941, when Stalin resurrec­ Synod (Sobor) of General Alexander ted the tsarist watchword of the "strong Sterligov. On the RKRP Central Com­ state" (derzhava). What a perversion of mittee sits Makashov, who calls Yel­ history! It was neither Stalin's chauvin­ tsinites "Zionists" and regularly ist progaganda for a "Great Patriotic 8 WORKERS VANGUARD War" nor the alliance with the "demo­ enterprises." The same issue includes cratic imperialists" which defeated the remarks by Buzgalin of the PT, which Nazis, but the heroic effort and sacrifice explicitly models itself on the pro­ of the multinational Soviet proletariat. capitalist British Labour Party, calling The "red-brown" coalition spits on the for the "transfer of property to the work memory of that struggle. collectives." All of these, in one form or TheSobor's only difference with Yel­ another, amount to calls for illusory tsin is in wanting to restrict a new class "workers' privatization." of capitalist exploiters to purebred sons Even if such a system could be set up, of the Rus. Konstantinov calls for "Rus­ ownership by work collectives would sia, one and indivisible; equal rights for only be a brief transition to neocolonial all forms of property; a mixed economy." capitalist exploitation. Such collectives Sterligov rails that property must not be would be competing against one another allowed to pass into the 'hands of Jews under conditions of hyperinflation, total and foreigners, but only "those whose disruption of the supply system and mass ancestors built Russia." In other words, unemployment. Most enterprises would he wants to restore Russia's factories, go bankrupt even if they cut wages to collective farms, mines and oil fields to the bone. Desperate worker collectives those who would follow in the footsteps would then have to sell the enterprises of tsarist capitalists and landlords and to foreign investors or well-heeled the rest of the old Russian nobility, who members of the Russian mafia. Even in will be no less servants of imperialism Yugoslavia, where limited "workers self­ than is Yeltsin. In reality, the pre-1917 Der Spiegel management" existed on the basis of tsarist autocracy-for all its reactionary Woman scrounging for food in Moscow garbage dump. Yeltsin's capitalist­ state-owned property, this undermined Russian nationalism-served as agents restorationist regime is starving Soviet working people. working-class solidarity, increased in­ of Western finance capital, especially equality in all spheres and widened eco­ the Paris bourse, in exploiting Russia's Zhirinovsky, with signs- proclaiming, "red-brown" coalition. This statement nomic divisions between the constituent toilers. "Russian TV Means TV Without Jews." proclaimed: "We, representative of the national republics, setting the stage for Meanwhile the RKRP and others join As Lenin said, "Kto kovo?" (who does 'left' and 'right' oppositions, have come the bloody counterrevolutionary breakup in every sinister chauvinist crusade, as what to whom?). Elements of the RKRP to the conclusion that the salvation of of the country. over Moldova, falling in line behind the may try to fool themselves that they are the Fatherland is only possible through We Trotskyists oppose the reactionary fascists and other counterrevolutionar­ only "temporarily" using the Sterligovs joint action on the basis of civil peace utopia of "workers' capitalism" and ies. In doing so they claim to be defend­ and his ilk to further the struggle against and national trust." The declaration stand for a planned collectivized econ­ ing Russian-speaking minorities against Yeltsinite counterrevolution. Others, like insists on "the impermissibility of con­ omy under a workers government based nationalist assaults. As Leninists we the RKRPer whose letter was pub­ frontation between 'whites' and 'reds'." on democratically elected soviets. Gen­ oppose all national privilege and all lished in Glasnost, worry about "too In other words, this was an appeal for uine soviets would be organs of mass nationalisms. To support either the close contact with national-patriots." But the workers to maintain "class peace" struggle and proletarian rule rather than Slavic or Romanian side in Moldova will Ostankino shows who is using whom. while the fascists march with impunity the bureaucratic apparatuses under Sta­ only escalate the inter-ethnic bloodlet­ Any bloc with, any conciliation of these and the counterrevolution rages trium­ linism (or the artificial concoctions of ting, further inflame murderous nation­ reactionary "national patriots," no matter phantly. The "red-brown" coalition is the rump Stalinists today). alism and lead to an endless series of how many red flags are present, only simply the most grotesque form of the Stripped of "left" phrasemongering, in communalist massacres and counter­ Spartacist AP massacres. Look what has happened in the Caucasus; and in Yugoslavia the workers state was destroyed in all-sided nationalist fratricide! It was only through the most ruthless struggle against all national oppression From left to right: that Lenin created the basis for the multi­ Viktor Anpilov, national Soviet workers state. While rec­ Nina Andreyeva and ognizing the right to self-determination Albert Makashov, for all nations, Lenin opposed even "the leaders of Stalinist 'most just,' 'purest,' most refined" "patriots" aligned with anti-communist nationalism ("Critical Remarks on the Russian nationalists. National Question," 1913). He de­ nounced as Black Hundreds propaganda any taint of anti-Semitism or Great Rus­ sian chauvinism; And not only before furthers their goal of bloody fascist class-collaborationist People's Front Russia today the call for privatization but also after October. In his struggle, counterrevolution. policy proclaimed by Stalin/Dimitrov in through the "work collectives" is noth­ in league with Trotsky, against Stalin and 1935. Then as now, the popular front ing more than the program of the indus­ Ordjonikidze over the Georgian ques­ Allying with Capitalists subordinates the workers movement to trialist Volsky and would-be strongman tion, Lenin declared "war to the death to Fight Oapltallsm? a section of the bourgeoisie. Today there Rutskoi for factory managers to take on dominant nation chauvinism" (Octo­ The Ostankino demonstration was so is not even the old Stalinist fig leaf jus­ ownership of the means of production ber 1922). flagrantly reactionary that some have tifying support to "democratic". capital­ under a corporatist "strong state." They Yet today the Black Hundreds chau­ sought to take their distance from it. ism as a supposed stage on the road to understand that the restoration of capi­ vinism denounced by Lenin is propa­ Medvedev and Denisov even held a press socialism, but rather an open bloc with talism cannot be carried through demo­ gated by those falsely claiming his conference on June 23 to announce that the more nationalist wing of the cratically, but requires the strong hand mantle. A recent issue of the Toiling Rus­ "only a few [!] isolated provocateurs" counterrevolution. of a bonapartist, i.e., dictatorial, regime. sia newspaper Shto Delat ("What Is To shouted "beat the yids." But the journal No different in substance is the sup­ The "Russian Communists" of the Be Done") carried a rehash by Yakushev Glasnost, on whose editorial board Med­ port given by many of these same ele­ RKRP et al. are in fact the left flank of the anti-Semitic tsarist secret police vedev and Denisov sit, praises the Sobor ments around the SPU and SK in the of the counterrevolutionary faction of forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of of anti-Semitic provocateur Sterligov. Ukraine to Kravchuk in last year's pres­ Volsky/Rutskoi/Sterligov. When Rutskoi Zion." Molniya (No. 39) then defended And the SPT-along with the RKRP, idential elections as the "lesser evil" deployed the forces of the state to at­ Yakushev as a "leader of the workers VKPB, RPK and SK-joined with such against the fascist Chornovil. The ram­ tack the air traffic controllers strike in movement." The June 12 demonstration reactionary outfits as the Sobor, the paging Ukrainian fascist bands see no August, the Stalinists stood aside. They at Ostankino to demand a chauvinist "Union of Cossacks" and the "Fund for need to "unite" with the left. But no less justify their own hostility to the strikers "Russian Hour" on television, built the Restoration of the Shrine of Christ than Yeltsin, Kravchuk is administering by pointing to the fact that the "free trade through the efforts of Toiling Russia, the Savior" in signing the "Declaration the restoration of capitalism, which will union" leaders are pro- Yeltsin, even was an orgy of chauvinism and anti­ on the Founding of the United Opposi­ necessarily proceed to a fascist Or though these unions were now pitted Semitism dominated by Sterligov and tion" last March which formalized the bonapartist stage in order to crush the against the Yeltsin regime. By arrogantly Saprony/AFP DeKeerle/Sygma workers. blaming the workers for the crimes of Is it not obvious that one cannot fight their leadership, the Stalinists serve only against capitalist counterrevolution by to drive these workers deeper into the joining with capitalist forces? The truth arms of their reactionary leaders. And of the matter is that none of these organ­ where have the arrogant supposed work­ izations are opposed to the reintro­ ers' leaders of the RKRP, Toiling Russia duction of capitalism. The SPT, SK and et al. ever led any strikes against Yel­ RPK all support a "mixed economy," tsiri's starvation policies? which in the context of raging counter­ revolution means support to capitalist The Anti-Leninist Lie of restoration. "Socialism in One Country" The RKRP occasionally makes "left" Behind the capitulation by these self­ noises against privatization, while regu­ styled "communists" to nationalist coun­ larly proclaiming the "equality of all terrevolution is their fealty to Stalin/ Aleksandr Rutskoi (far left) and property forms." Molniya (No. 39) re­ Bukharin's nationalist lie of "socialism Arkady Volsky prints a statement from the "Federation in one country." Lenin concluded his (above), leaders of of Communists of Educational, Scientific brief address to the Petrograd Soviet corporatist faction and Creative Organizations" which calls announcing the workers' seizure of of capitalist for "destatification" through "the estab­ power in 1917 with the words: "Long counterrevolution. lishment of self-management of people's continued on page 10 16 OCTOBER 1992 9 Trotskyists fought for the former pro­ gram; Stalin and his heirs promoted the' Stalinist latter. And when the bankruptcy of their bureaucratic-commandist system be­ Has-Beens... came apparent, Stalin's heirs saw no (continued from page 9) alternative but to accept the development live the world socialist revolution!" of capitalism. Time and again, Lenin-expressing the "Workers Democracy" Group = view of all Marxists-insisted that Yeltsinite "Democrats" socialism could triumph only through international proletarian revolution. But The grotesque character of the "red­ in 1923-24, the Bolshevik Party of Octo­ brown" coalition provides an open door ber was strangled and the program of for some to offer a seemingly "left" alter­ Lenin was thrown overboard. The polit­ native as a halfway house to authentic ical counterrevolution led by Stalin Leninism-Trotskyism. This is the role of transformed the CPSU into a bureau­ the Workers Democracy group of Sergei cratic apparatus and proceeded to betray Beits, associated with the British Mili­ one revolutionary opportunity after tant group. Despite their economist another-from China to Spain to post­ demands and workerist rhetoric,· they war Western Europe-in the name of have not. opposed capitalist restoration. "socialism in one country." On the contrary, in August 1991, they From the RKRP to the SPT, the var­ joined the forces ofcapitalist restoration . ious degeneration products of the col­ in the defense of the White House with Spartacist lapse of the Stalinist bureaucracy all the rest of the Yeltsinite "democrats." Protest against privatization by workers at Moscow Zil auto factory in trace their origins to this bankrupt, Likewise, Alexei Gusev's Socialist September was addressed by spokesman of the International Communist League. treacherous program. Thus RKRP "ideo­ Workers Union (affiliated to the British logue" Sergeev dismisses the idea of Workers Revolutionary Party of Cliff for capitalist restoration in Poland in Union Conference of the CPSU," pub­ "international collectivism" while claim­ Slaughter), Dmitri Zhvania's Proletarian 1981. They welcomed the destruction of lished in Pravda (8 September), con­ ing that "the idea of Russian, or Great Revolutionary Cells (connected to the the USSR, absurdly denying that "the cedes "large-scale miscalculations, Russian, if you please, collectivism will British anti-Soviet Socialist Workers liquidation of the USSR weakened the abuse of power and crimes against the work." And Medvedev echoes: "We have Party of Tony Cliff) and Workers Power position 'of socialism in the world" positions and the very lives of people" to say ... of Leninism, that too much all stood with Yeltsin in August 1991. (Workers Democracy, April-May 1992). under the Stalin era, as Khrushchev importance .was placed on the idea of Workers Democracy actually hailsYel­ They are not Fourth Internationalists, but already admitted in 1956. But despite world revolution." We have to say of tsin's counterrevolutionary countercoup Second International social democrats: its denunciation of "betrayal by the Sergeev, Medvedev and their kind, that as the beginning of "the revolutionary the Militant group in Britain was for four Gorbachev-Yakovlev group," there is no those who repudiate the Leninist per­ anti-bureaucratic process," grotesquely decades buried deep inside the pro­ attempt to come to grips with the degen­ spective of world revolution are neces­ paraphrasing Lenin in proclaiming: "The imperialist, anti -Soviet Labour Party, to eration of the Bolshevik Revolution, and sarily incapable of combatting the revolution that gave power to the bour­ which they remain loyal. thus it is only a cover-up for the policies counterrevolution. geoisie has finished, the next revolution But in the classical manner of oppor­ which led to Gorbachev and Yeltsin. In The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky will put power in the hands of tunists, when they found there was At the CPSU conference itself, held explained that even a healthy revolu­ the workers." These people have noth­ no gain to be derived from tailing on October 10, Prigarin, one of the tionary workers state could not for ing to do with Trotskyism, but rather the Yeltsinite "democrats," they simply authors of the Pravda declaration, con­ long escape the pressures of the imperi­ represent a strain of Stalinophobia. switched over to tailing after the "red­ tinued to defend blocs with "patriots" alist world market. The choices: either Behind their talk of "democratic social­ brown" coalition. In a front-page appeal and called for an all-inclusive party the promotion of socialist revolution to ism" is support to not-so-democratic to Toiling Russia over fighting privat­ containing those who see "Stalin as a eliminate capitalism internationally, or capitalism against the Stalinist degener­ ization, Workers Democracy (April-May criminal" and those who see him as a conciliation of imperialism abroad and ated workers state. They supported Lech 1992) in no way denounced Toiling Rus­ "savior," those who want a centralized concomitant rehabilitation of domes­ Walesa's Solidarnosc, financed by the sia'schauvinist position-not even men­ economy and those who favor "market Vatican and the CIA, during its drive tic nationalist reaction. The Leninist- tioning the words "chauvinism" or "anti­ socialism." Such a Kautskyan mishmash Semitism." Now Workers Democracy is a recipe for.a social-democratic party has finally mustered up the courage to which at best would confuse and disori­ say, at least in the abstract, "Down with ent those workers over whom it might nationalism and chauvinism! Long live exercise influence. What these former the October of Lenin and Trotsky!" bureaucrats fear above all is a clear, rev­ But what can such words mean coming olutionary program. from people who invited outright mon­ Seven decades of Stalinism perverted archists for "comradely" discussion at the conception of revolutionary leader­ an August 29 meeting in Moscow, and ship into one of bureaucratic fiat, but­ stood with Yeltsin on the barricades of tressed by the constitutional enshrine­ counterrevolution? ment of the "leading role of the party." Cossacks, Revolutionary leadership is the struggle Reforge the Communist Party to break the working masses from the descendants of of Lenin and Trotsky! shock troops of misleaders who foster bourgeois and na­ tsarist autocracy, There is much talk today of reconsti­ tionalist ideology, and to mobilize them reappear at tuting the CPSU. But what is decisive around the genuine interests of the inter­ Congress of is the question of program-a fighting national proletariat. What is needed today People's Deputies. strategy to mobilize the proletariat in is the genuine unity of all who seek the struggle for its own power. We are for communism of Lenin and Trotsky around the reconstitution of the Bolshevik Party the Bolshevik program of world socialist of Lenin and Trotsky. The draft "Pro­ revolution. That is the only way forward. grammatic Declaration of the 20th All- 11 October 1992

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10 WORKERS VANGUARD from the workers." Over the din, UIL leader Larizza, the main speaker, said Workers Pitted Against Union Tops, Cops under pressure that "if necessary we will make a general strike." During one of the cop charges, he added, "Let's thank the police workers." These were Larizza's last words. as he was taken away for his own good. Bertinotti, leader of "Essere Sinda­ cato" (To Be a Union), a grouping close to Rifondazione Comunista (RC), was panic-stricken, yelling out, "Stop this violence somehow!" While RC mouths opposition to the betrayals'of CGIL chief Trentin who signed the July 31 agreement, small-time bureaucrats like Bertinotti are terrified by the fact that the union brass can no longer appear before the workers without a security guard of 10,000 goons and cops. When the chips are down, the RC reformists stand with the bureaucrats, not the out­ raged ranks. The afternoon demonstration (around 25,000) by the Cobas was like a Sunday afternoon picnic in comparison. The ranks of the working class were not

Repubblica present, and there was no tension October 2 demonstration in Rome against government austerity: police and goons of the trade-union bureaucrats because the trade-union bureaucracy was disperse workers denouncing sellout leaders. not there. The demo gave the impression of a leftist playpen. Although small ROME, October 2-Today was the turn ing banners proclaiming, 'The Workers way" and' "general strike!" advanced sections of the working class of the Italian capital to protest against Must Be Allowed to Speak," and chant­ When the crowd pressed toward the see themselves part of this movement, the vicious- austerity package of the ing "general strike!" The contingents of platform, the union bureaucracy author­ the Cobas slogans center on union Amato government. Where most capital­ students and youth were forcibly dis­ ized a charge into the crowd as police democracy rather than calling for revo­ ist governments talk of "sacrifice" as persed, producing the first injuries and fired off tear gas. This was followed by Iutionary action. And they try to sidestep they seek to tighten the belts of the work­ arrests. By the end of the morning, over indiscriminate beatings of demonstra­ the crucial task of breaking the strangle­ ing class, the current prime minister is 100 had been detained by the police, tors. During the charges, the bureaucrats hold of the reformist bureaucracy on the calling for "penance." Other sections of the march, made up could be heard screaming, "They're only workers. Striking government employees from of public sector workers and Rank-and­ 200 delinquents, 200 vagabonds, 200 Militants of the Lega Trotskista, Ital­ the ministries, municipal workers, teach­ File Committees (Cobas), also sought to fascists!" But the crowd wouldn't leave ian sympathizing section of the Interna­ ers, postal workers and other public make their way toward the rallying the square. tional Communist League, sold some employees brought the city to a halt as point. As the bureaucrats droned on One embarrassed union marshal re­ 120 copies of their press, including a nearly 200,000 workers tried to march about pressuring for improvements in marked, "Once upon a time the trade special supplement on the current work­ on the huge Piazza San Giovanni. They the Amato package, the crowd shouted unions were there to defend the workers, ers upsurge (see "Red Hot Autumn in were furious over the July 31 sellout out "you clowns," "get out of the now they're here to defend themselves Italy," WV No. 560, 2 October). _ accord between government, business • and the union tops that eliminated the scala mobile (sliding scale of wages). In huge rallies in Florence, Milano, Torino, Bologna and Naples, angry workers had been pelting labor misleaders with rotten vegetables and worthless coins. In Rome today, militant workers and youth were hurling ball bearings, bot­ tles and pieces of pavement at the sell­ out tops of the CGIL-CISL-UIL union federations. The bureaucrats, in turn, sur­ rounded themselves with a huge (10,000­ man) helmeted union goon squad which was bused in from the provinces and stood guard in front of the podium from the early morning hours, along with a massive show of police force. From the very beginning, concentra­ tions of young militants were singled out Carriere della Sera for special treatment. They were carry- Demonstration called by Cobas (Rank and File Committees).

linked to "ex"-Klansman David Duke and NAMBLA over to a murderous lynch ington's "sexual predator law" helped to arch-bigot Jesse Helms. At the Christian mob. Last January in San Francisco, keep a "pervert" out of town. Oregon Coalition's "Road to Victory" conference some members of the gay milieu literally This anti-gay vendetta is one aspect in Virginia Beach, Virginia last Novem­ stood side by side with Confederate of the reactionary "family values" hys­ Referendum ... ber, members of the OCA attended, along flag-waving skinheads in protesting a teria. The crusade to "save" the family (continued from page 16) with Helms, Dan Quayle and David Duke NAMBLA press conference-eriminal is an essential part of a quest for social booster Reverend Billy McCormack, complicity with' bigots who call for stability, necessarily targeting gays, Oregon are double what they were this who introduced Pat Robertson. "Death to Child Molesters" as part of whose very existence is deemed a time last year. OCA promises their associates to take their program to murder all gays and "threat." The "war on drugs," attacks on The local fascists also direct their mur­ anti-gay legislation on the road to Cali­ lesbians. women's right to abortion, criminal derous terror against racial minorities. fornia if things go their way in Oregon. As we wrote in a 1983 article in neglect of people suffering from AIDS In 1988 an Ethiopian immigrant, Mul­ Voting against Measure 9 is certainly defense of NAMBLA, "Not only is the and the onslaught against welfare are ugeta Seraw, was beaten to death by called for-but this menace must be existence of NAMBLA, the livelihoods the product of decaying capitalism. skinheads in Portland. The killers were resoundingly defeated, which ultimately and perhaps the lives of its members The key is to mobilize the social linked to San Diego "ex"-KKK grand will not happen through the ballot box, threatened, but democratic rights for all power of the working class against dragon Tom Metzger through his son, a but through class struggle. the oppressed, particularly homosexuals, this filth. The Spartacist League dem­ skinhead leader. Robertson's followers have made a must be an early casualty in the crusade" onstrated this in 1982, when Nazis Oregon's Measure 9 is not the home­ point of going after not just tmain­ (WV No. 321, 14 January 1983). State threatened to stage a provocation against grown bigotry of the backwoods Pacific stream" gays, an oppressed sector of out of all consensual sexual activity! Gay Pride Day in Chicago. Instead, Northwest, but part of a national cam­ society enjoying little sympathy from the Government out of the bedroom! the fascists found themselves vastly paign which is being tested in Oregon rest of the population, but a particularly In line with the attacks on NAMBLA, outnumbered by a contingent of labor, in order to advance a vicious reactionary demonized group within it, the North police and residents of Tacoma, Wash­ gays, blacks, Jews, and students, mo­ agenda targeting not only gays, but American Man/Boy Love Association ington literally ran out of town a former bilized by the communist Spartacist blacks, women and all of the oppressed. (NAMBLA)-libeled as "child molest­ supporter of the organization, who had League. Colorado now has a similar measure on ers"-by prominently displaying them in just served a prison term for a child Hard class struggle under revolution­ the ballot to amend the state constitu­ the OCA's video smear propaganda. molestation conviction, after police ary leadership can cut through the anti­ tion to prohibit "protected status based The Spartacist League, in defending posted notices warning that he posed a gay, anti-black, anti-labor crusade. To on homosexual, lesbian or bisexual NAMBLA's democratic rights, has stood "high risk" because he "felt no remorse." bring an end to this bigotry, it is neces­ orientation." against the liberal gay community and A cop reportedly responsible for tracking sary for the working class to overturn The Christian Coalition, of which OCA ­ "radical" feminists who in past years NAMBLA's activities gloated to the the capitalist system that breeds it and is the Oregon chapter, is organizationally have shown that they would turn Oakland Tribune (8 October) that Wash- build a socialist future. _ 16 OCTOBER 1992 11 than speak the truth-that the bedrock racism of U.S. society is the single fjght Over Malcolm XSchool greatest obstacle to the construction of a multiracial, revolutionary workers party-the WLhas responded with some­ thing much worse even than the Debsian position that the socialist movement has "nothing special to offer the Negro." Detroit: WL Blocks with The WL sneeringly calls the Spartacist League's commitment to build black leadership, our view that the black work­ ing class is strategic to the success of White Segregationists proletarian revolution in this country, an "obsession with race." And in the streets of Boston and Washington,- D.C., this Swastikas embhlzoned on school "I am a white resident of Detroit who ranks first among all major cities in the denial of the need to fight against special doors. A poster reading "We won't have grew up in the Warrendale neighbor­ number of children living in poverty­ oppression has placed North & Co. Malcolm X" and signed "KKK." A hood. I am appalled, but not surprised, 46.6 percent. Black Democratic mayor squarely on the wrong side of the class crowd of angry whites shouting "Open at the racist sentiments expressed by Coleman Young, installed by the Big 3 line. your school in a crack house!" Is this many who oppose the new Malcolm X auto bosses to derail and repress social Little Rock, 1956? Selma? Ole Miss? Academy." struggle in response to the 1967 ghetto When racist anti-busing mobs took to No, it's Detroit 1992. Giving a "left" cover to "we just want rebellion, has been on the warpath the streets .attacking black schoolchil­ dren in the early 1970s in Boston, the Last year the Detroit school board our neighborhood school" racists, the against city unions, slashing wages and SL fought for mass mobilizations of opened three "black male academies" for Bulletin (11 September) screams: "Rad- thousands of jobs. And school board elementary school students, named after labor/black defense to stop racist attacks Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson and Mal­ and to extend busing to the suburbs. At colm X. This summer, the Malcolm X the height of the violent, racist rampages, when black schoolchildren's lives were school was moved to the closed Leslie school in Warrendale, a neighborhood on in physical danger and defense of inte­ KKK/Nazi symbol grated education was posed in the con­ the far west side of Detroit. Warrendale, of racist terror crete, the WL's Bulletin (13 September which is over 75 percent white (the and murder inverse of the rest of this heavily black 1974) declared: "The issue offorced bus­ painted on door ing is being used to whip up racism to city) is home to many white cops who of Detroit's divide the working class." are forced by a residency law to live Malcolm X inside the .city limits. There was an erup­ Academy. In November 1982 in Washington, tion of segregationist filth against the David North's D.C., the Spartacist League initiated and opening of the school at two school Workers League led an important victory against the board meetings in August that left no obscenely says resurgent racist terror of the Carter/Rea­ "race isn't gan years, when 5,000 black and white doubt about the motives of the opposi­ the issue," tion: "Is this the forcible integration of workers and youth drove the KKK off alibis white the streets. It was built in sharp struggle Warrendale?" one racist shouted. segregationists. But there was one organization that against the black Democratic Party pol­ rushed to defend the segregationists and iticians and reformists like Workers deny that the opposition had anything to World who sought to divert workers do with racism! The Detroit-based Work­ from stopping the Klan. But for the ers League and their newspaper, the Bul­ icals Defend Segregated Schools." This superintendent Deborah McGriff has WL-which wasn't to be found in D.C. letin, have championed the racists' is a prime example of the Workers gone after the teachers union, provoking that November 27-the successful mobi­ attempt to keep the Malcolm X school League brand of laborite provocation, a bitter strike in her efforts to gut teach­ lization was a "Revisionist Frenzy Over out of Warrendale. The WL brags that the product of years of tailing after the ers' seniority while packing more stu­ Klan" (Bulletin, 7 December 1982) and their candidates "were warmly received pro-capitalist, racist labor bureaucracy. dents into the overcrowded classrooms. "an adventure which played right into by residents when they canvassed the While WL honcho David North today the hands of the police": neighborhood" and "denounced the writes off the unions as no longer WL "Blind Eye" to Racism "For the Spartacists, the issuein America working-class organizations in any is race, not class.... The grotesque fixa­ racialist policies of Mayor Coleman The Workers League has campaigned sense, on questions of racial oppression tionwiththe issueof raceplaysan utterly Young and the school authorities" (Bul­ heavily in Warrendale, holding a press he sidles up to the racists in a way that reactionary role and the Klan undoubt­ letin, 14 August). With that line they conference there on August 25, and edly .sees it as an assist for its own even the UAW's Owen Bieber couldn't could also get applause at a David Duke alibiing the racists on the Sally Jessie recruitment campaign." get away with. rally. Raphael TV show in September. WL Only Northite pseudo-dialectics could The WL says "the issue in Warrendale "African-Centered" Education Congressional candidate D'Artagnan claim that the Klan was emboldened by is not race," and proceeds to disappear Collier spews their "color-blind" line fleeing before they even donned their every racist taunt and placard at school After the board set up the schools as that the racists in Warrendale "were sheets. But the KKK will get a boost board meetings and outside the school. male-only academies, it was forced to justifiably angry at the news that Leslie from the activities of the segregationist With phony talk of uniting the working admit girl students last year after a court was to be reopened as a 'black academy' thugs the WL is shielding in Warrendale. class in a "color-blind" fight against bud­ suit by the ACLU and the National Organ­ with only a few. openings for youth If the racists mobilize in the streets get cuts, the WL covers up the raw ization for Women. Currently there are from Warrendale." Then comes his against the Malcolm X school, the racism spewing from opponents of the 422 boys and 39 girls enrolled in the "evenhanded" cover for his campaign multiracial Detroit labor movement Malcolm X Academy. In dozens of pages Malcolm X school, and despite the WL's pitch to Warrendale: ''1 am opposed to should be organized to defend those denouncing the black Democratic Party claim that Warrendale residents cannot segregated schools, whether they are wanting to attend the school. No reliance liberals as "racialist," there is not a sin­ send their children there, 160 slots are proposed by David Duke or by Deborah on the cops or the state! An integrated gle mention of the largely white crowd reserved for neighborhood children. McGriff' (Bulletin, 11 September). labor battalion from the nearby and his­ of several hundred that turned out for a These "African-centered" schools are This revolting "blind eye" to racism torically militant Ford River Rouge auto school board meeting on August 3 and a national phenomenon, a response by is nothing new for the Workers League. plant should be dispatched to dissuade shouted down speakers with racist slurs: liberal nationalist educators and politi­ From its inception, the WL has tailored the segregationists from any provoca­ Of course, there are whites in cians to the destruction of the lives of its program to the most reactionary prej­ tions-including those of the misnamed Warrendale who aren't racists. However, black and Hispanic youth in the cities. udices of the union bureaucracy. Rather Workers League.• unlike the Workers League, they can rec­ But this "voluntary" segregation is a ognizethe racist nature of the opposition dangerous accommodation to the racist to the school. One white woman whose status quo. As opposed to the schemes of black elected officials and black son attends Malcolm X spoke out against Partial contents: protestors at the school opening: "It's nationalists who accommodate to the rollback of black rights with "Afrocent­ • Racist Cop Terror U.S.A. ridiculous, I'm just interested in getting • L.A. Racist Cops Walk­ my son into a good school. The school ric" school proposals, the Spartacist There Is No Justice in is mostly black, but so what?" One letter League has consistently championed the the Capitalist Courts! writer to the Detroit Free Press wrote: fight for integrated education. In an • Outrage Over Racist exchange last year with jailed Black Pan­ Acquittal of Cops in ther Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, Rodney King Case we pointed out: • For Black Liberation There Is No Justice Spartacist League "White schoolchildren as well as black Through Socialist schoolchildren need to learn about Den­ Revolution! in Capitalist America Public Offices L.A. Upheaval mark Vesey, Frederick Douglass, John Shakes America -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ Brown, and Karl Marx.But we're Marx­ ists, not idealists, and understand that • Education U.S.A.­ Bay Area education is a class question. True qual­ Separate and Unequal Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. ity education for the masses will be pos­ • For Quality, Integrated 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) sible only with the expropriation of the Education for All! Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 bourgeoisie and the establishment of • Clarence Thomas: working-class rule." . Anti-Abortion Hanging Chicago - "On Integrated Education Judge Confirmed­ Tues.: 5:00-9:00p.m., Sat.: 11:00a.m.-2:00p.m. and Black Liberation," Sex, Race and Reaction 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor WV No. 526, 10 May 1991 Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 Conditions for children in the Detroit $1 (56 pages) New York City schools mirror the devastation that cap­ Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. italism has wrought on the working class Order from: 41 Warren St. (one block below Spartacist Pub. Co. Chambers St. near Church St.) of the city. The Detroit district's 170,000 August 1992 Box 1377 GPO Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPQ. New York, NY 10116 New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 students are 90 percent black. According New York, NY 10116 to the Children's Defense Fund, Detroit 12 WORKERS VANGUARD assassinated and her word dismissed, it Workers has become an article of faith in the "stop-rape movement" that the victim never lies. Russo says the Curtis defense League ... campaign must be fought because it (continued from page 5) • How did the police know "How did the police, or how "betrays the already shaky alliances be­ that Curtis was going to did Demetria and Jason or tween the feminist, civil rights, labor, Incidentally, the first use of the term abruptly leave his house in the their family, know that the "PC," to our knowledge, comes from defendant was going to and progressive movements," since middle of the night to buy "trust. ..cannot be assumed when a white J. Edgar's how-to chapter on "The Com­ food? abruptly leave his home, some­ munist Front": "Don't just 'slap' slogans time between 8:30 and 9:00, man's word" is taken as truth "against on cardboard. Make sure they are 'polit­ to buy food? How did they the wordsand experience of an African­ • How did they know he know? ically correct'." would drive by himself? American girl." "How did they know that the This brings to mind the Tawana Braw­ Police Aides, Vigilantes and defendant would get into a car ley case. in which a black teenager hav­ • How did they know wnich and drive by himself? Willie Horton ing family trouble invented it story about store he would go to, and what "How did they know that the What's behind the new assault on route he would take? defendant would go to the being a victim of a racist rape. This Mark Curtis is a right-wing trend that HyVee store to do his grocery became a cause celebre as it was pushed • How did they know that shopping? How did they know by black nationalists with their own might be called yuppie feminism. One he would be stopped at a par­ of the most tangible effects of the wom­ what route he would take? agenda and taken up by liberals and rad­ ticular red light, where he "How did they know that he en's movement has been the appearance icals who implicitly took the word of could be accosted by the girl? would be stopped at a particu­ of a layer of women professionals and "the victim" as good coin. And it was all lar red light, where a girl a pack of lies. executives: lawyers, professors, bank • How did they know that could approach him? How did managers. They're hostile to the left, and they know the light would be In his article, Pelka quotes Claire Kap­ he would agree to let the girl lan of the "National Coalition Against the heroines of this upwardly mobile into his car? red? strata include Democratic women poli­ "How did they know that the Sexual Assault" who sees in the Curtis case "this eternal denial on the part of ticians and lady prosecutors, from Liz • How did they know he defendant would agree to give Holtzman to Des Moines' Catherine would agree to drive her home? this girl a ride to help her out? the left to think that men among their Thune. They have a ruling-class outlook, "How did they know that he ranks couldn't possibly commit such a would agree to drive her to including seeing the state and its police • How did they know that crime." Kaplan is one of the main pro­ her home, or a home, in what ponents of the victims-don't-lie argu­ as their defenders and allies, from going when he arrived at her home, the defense has brought out ment. So much so, that in a Virginia case after rapists, child abusers and "pornog­ he would get out of his car, to be a bad or unsafe neigh­ raphy" to "protecting" abortion clinics go to the porch and then wait borhood? where the day after a Manassas man was (by clamping down on radicals who seek placidly to be arrested? "How did they know that convicted of rape the alleged victim to stop the bible bigots besieging the when he arrived at the home, (who was married with two children) clinics). . he would get out of the car, recanted, admitting the sex was "proba­ agree to go to the 'porch, and bly consensual," Kaplan told the press The politics of these self-styled "pro­ then wait calmly to be ar­ that such an incident was rare: "if a gressives" are thoroughly bourgeois, and rested? case is falsely reported ...it doesn't even can get pretty reactionary. The Pelka arti­ r------get to a conviction" (Washington Post, cle appeared in the same edition of On 9 May 1990). For her, Curtis must he the Issues (Spring 1'991) as a column by guilty, because otherwise it will damage' editor Merle Hoffman in support of the "stop-rape movement" and "groups Bush's Persian Gulf War! On the Issues will be divided wherever the SWP takes has a distinct Zionist flavor, with articles this campaign." on the "pros and cons" of the Israeli Kaplan & Co. not only work closely occupation of the West Bank. It features Moines police and their adjuncts. Pelka men and worked together in preparing with the police, but they also sanction photos of the Vigilante Queen, the quotes prosecutor Thune, Marti Ander­ the case against Mark Curtis. So the reckless vigilante action, with not the Guardian Angels' Lisa Sliwa (at the trial son of Polk County Victim Services, witchhunters call up the prosecution, slightest concern for the rights of the of the black youths who brutally Demetria Morris' rape crisis counselor and surprise, they get the prosecution accused. In 1987, a teenage boy in a assaulted the Central Park jogger). The Terry Schock. Barry Shuchter, who line. small California town sued for defama­ current (Fall 1992) issue has an article, kicked off the Boston disendorsement How could you not believe the victim, tion when his name appeared on flyers "Let's Make Rape an Election Issue," campaign, says, "We called the Des these righteous feminists ask? A piece posted around the county by the Santa which blames Dukakis' 1988 defeat Moines Rape. Crisis Center who gave of literature titled, "Rape Myths and the Cruz Women Against Rape listing sup­ on his wimpy response as to what he us quite a different story" from Cur­ Mark Curtis Case," claims: "In fact, posed rapists. The flyers included not would do if Kitty was raped-suppos­ tis' defenders (Labor Page, April/May more than ninety-eight percent of all only his name but a physical description, edly showing his "insensitivity"-while 1990). Well, we called the Des Moines rapes reported to the police actually his address, place of employment and Bush at least was addressing the "issue" Rape Crisis Center, too, and they occurred as described by the victim." what kind of car he drove. The young with the Willie Horton ad! answered the phone, "Victim Services." Yet, as the SWP points out, the source man commented bitterly, "It's a vigilante In the Mark Curtis case, it's striking We confirmed that all of these are of this assertion can only be the police thing-they're the Lone Ranger and all how the people lined up in the witchhunt Polk County, Iowa, official agencies: themselves. In reaction to the whole his­ of a sudden they started getting out of against him all base themselves on the Catherine Thune, Marti Anderson and tory of rape trials, in which the woman hand with it." The young woman who story being disseminated by the Des Terry Schock are all government spokes- victim was placed on trial, her character initially named him to the Women Against Rape settled out ofcourt, putting in writing that "I was not raped by you ...on the night described in the flyer, Would-Be Prosecutors Can't Get Their Stories Straight or at any time." Kaplan, however, justi­ A couple ofdocuments are being circu­ activist committed to the rights of the and bigotry; get your self beat up ...and fied this vigilantism, saying "the whole lated by the campaign to get supporters oppressed, could commit such a crime: you've got yourself a defense." anti-violence movement got started by of Mark Curtis' defense to "dis-endorse." "Mrs. Thune explained that she had han­ But, interestingly, on some of the key guerrilla tactics and this is just one "Labor Defense and the Mark Curtis dled many rape cases and that unfortu­ facts about the case, these two accounts of them" (Los Angeles Times, 10 Decem­ Case" was written in 1989 by Charles nately is the profile very often. Mark is contradict each other. Take the question ber 1987). Adams. Adams is 'a former member of a very gentle passive person.... They do of dog hairs. The forensic expert testified Working as adjuncts of the police, vig­ Socialist Action who was expelled by lots of little kind things for people but Demetria Morris had dog hairs all over ilantism, slander, anything goes in this the group for conducting a private there's an inner rage that may come out her sweatshirt, yet no dog hairs were milieu. And don't forget Oneof the favor­ "investigation" into the Curtis case; they only once in a lifetime." So Curtis is found on Mark Curtis. How can this be, ite themes of the new Mcf.arthyism, noted his "secret contact with the Work­ deemed prone to rape because he's a if, according to the story, Curtis wrestled child abuse. The current uproar against ers League." quiet person! Demetria to the ground and attempted and police investigation of Woody Allen, "The Case Against Mark Curtis" was Then there's Adams' dismissal of the to rape her? The anti-Curtis people in retribution for leaving Mia Farrow, is written by Greg McNaghten, a Seattle time discrepancies in Demetria Morris' attempt to explain this, for instance the worst kind offrame-up, designed and official of Brakemen's Local 1024, in testimony-he "explains" that black Adams asserts that "The dog is never guaranteed to destroy his reputation and the form of a 29-page open letter to people can't tell time, are guided by kept on the front porch." But McNaghten his life. Here also, some enraged femi­ his "fellow UTU [United Transportation "Colored People's Time," and the only states flatly, "Demetria testified that nists are making common cause with the Union] members." reason the defense attorney pushed the they often let the dog on the front porch." Republican right in their vicious crusade These documents are cited as showing time question was that he "was view­ Curtis says that after work on March over "family values." how a "leftist" and a "unionist" under­ ing the conception of time from white 4, he attended and spoke, in Spanish, at took "independent investigations" and cultural perspective." This is blatant a large meeting (which was videotaped) Boston Feminist Witchhunters supposedly found that the evidence racism. called to protest the INS raid and arrest In Boston the anti-Curtis campaign proved Mark Curtis guilty. But some of UTU official Greg McNaghten also of 17 fellow workers at the Swift plant. has taken on a particular frenzy. Here this "evidence" is more than suspect: for says he "spent several hours on the Adams says he uncovered the fact that the Workers League found fertile ground instance, Adams' account that after phone with Mrs. Kathy Thune, the pros­ "Nobody remembers him [Curtis] even for its frame-up campaign against Curtis Demetria Morris was attacked, "blood ecuting attorney in this case," as well at the meeting," the meeting was small and the SWP. A center of the "dis­ was running down her face." This is as the Iowa State Parole Board, Polk and the media wasn't present. But endorsement" campaign is the Boston repeated as fact by other accounts, yet County prosecutors and others, and "as McNaghten says that he spoke with a Area Rape Crisis Center. which is the at the trial it was never stated that Morris a result of all this digging" concluded member of Curtis' union local who "said parent outfit of Pelka's MESA. In pass­ was bleeding. Where does this come that "Mark Curtis was given a fair it was true that Curtis spoke and in Span­ ing. let us note that this center gets from? trial" and is guilty. McNaghten has a ish but he did so from the assembled almost half of its funding (Sgl,OOO Parts of these documents are bizarrely novel theory as to why the cops beat crowd and was one of a great many who out or a total of $1 n.OOf) in 1(91) revolting. Thus Adams reports his "long Curtis bloody-it was all part of Cur­ spoke up." from agencies of the Commonwealth of conversation" with Assistant D.A. Cath­ tis' plot to show he was framed up: In repeating the lines fed to them by . Massachusetts. Another chunk of their erine Thune, whom he asked to explain "Ergo: create a mysteriously disappear­ the prosecutors, the witchhunters can't mcorne comes from the Haymarket how a person like Mark Curtis, a union ing woman, throw in police racism even get their stories straight. _ People's Fund, based heavily on the continued on page 14

16 OCTOBER 1992 13 Nazi-like celebration of "Kinder, Kiiche, gap among working' women is even Georgia Republican politician observed: Kirche" (children, kitchen, church) at greater. Some wealthy women execu­ "I think that in February or March of Elections... the Houston Republican convention in tives, 'who had bankrolled right-wing last year, something clicked in with the (continued from page 1) August truly frightened people. A local Republicans since the days of Barry American public, where they said, we're ticket balancing, Clinton chose as his newspaper in Salinas, Kansas-hardly a Goldwater in the early 1960s, are now sick of the scandal of the week, that running mate a fellow white Southerner, center of the "cultural elite"-proposed big contributors to Clinton. unless it's something of cataclysmic pro­ Al Gore, a stalwart of the party's right that Bush be impeached because: "He Likewise, Republican efforts to tar portions, we don't give a damn about it. wing. Previously, Gore was best known invites the kind of bigotry and hate that Clinton as a Vietnam War draft dodger They're just concerned about the econ­ for his wife Tipper's campaign against has destroyed nation after nation." haven't stuck. And Clinton/Gore's at­ omy" (New York Times, 26 September). "obscenity" in rock music. The overwhelming majority of women tempt to out-patriot Bush by denounc­ The widespread disgust with the The Clinton/Gore campaign is aimed in all social groups regard abortion as a ing Washington's help in arming Saddam Washington establishment-Republican at the country club set, not factory bowl­ vital democratic right. While support for Hussein prior to the Gulf War has fallen and Democrat alike-found an outlet last ing teams. Jesse Jackson, the most prom­ the two candidates is about evenly split on deaf ears. These kinds of things don't spring in the candidacy of the weird and inent black Democrat and spokesman for among men, Clinton enjoys a 20 percent matter to an electorate which is strug­ sinister Texas billionaire Ross Perot, the party's so-called left wing, is playing lead over Bush among women, and the gling and failing to make ends meet. 0!1e who talked about radical solutions to the the invisible man this election season. country's sorry economic state. Perot-a At the same time, Clinton is playing up big-time federal government contractor his close ties to Fortune 500 boardrooms posturing as an anti-Washington out­ and Wall Street. This year Goldman, sider-was leading both Bush and Clin­ Sachs gave Clinton twice as much as ton in the polls. Had the "Ross for boss" they laid on Bush. campaign succeeded in cutting across the Nonetheless, the Democratic cam­ traditional two-party system, the United paign is capitalizing on the decay of States could have faced a major consti­ American capitalism, which in the pub­ tutional crisis. As it was, under pressure, lic's eye is now personified by George Perot dropped out of the race. Herbert Walker Bush III. According to Perot just re-entered but is no longer a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll treated as a serious candidate. The public in mid-September, one-third of those views him as a quitter. He got a boost opposed to Bush say it's mainly because in Sunday's debate, because he didn't his policies favor. the wealthy over the sound like a mealy-mouthed politician. average person. And in the bland Sunday But in reality what Perot wants is a cor­ night three-way debate, Bush was the porate state to impose an American ver­ big loser, mainly over the economy. sion of the "austerity" programs which The American-flag-waving, racist and international bankers inflict upon Third reactionary demagogy which worked for World countries ruled by military juntas. the Republicans in the past few elections As liberal columnist Russell Baker put is not working now. The initial move it: "Beware the millionaire calling for by Bush/Quayle to run an anti-feminist sacrifice." American working people are campaign against career woman Hillary AP already sacrificing dearly, regardless of Clinton under the rubric of "family val­ Pittsburgh Press strikers burn copies of scab paper, July 27. Hard class what the candidates for the White House ues" blew up right in their faces. The struggle is needed against bankrupt American capitalism. are calling for. They are sacrificing for

Davis wrote: "The Cell 16 women soon consider "their" constituencies, because Communist Party members-but photo­ realized that they'd lost control. The it undermines their political "credit"­ graphs of anti-Hussein protesters in Workers Trots had their mailing list; they had the ability. It's noteworthy that when there Britain. signature on the bank account. ..they is a major class battle, to defend minor­ Insofar as one can speak of this Healy­ League ... had most of the back issues of the jour­ ities against the fascist Duke or to protest ite outfit on a political level, its defin­ (continued from page 13) nal and the posters." cop brutality in L.A., these friends of ing characteristics have been vicious Certainly, the SWP's apolitical organ­ the police are nowhere to be seen ...or anti-Sovietism and a crude workerist inheritance of Abby Rockefeller and the izational maneuvering in the style of show up only to trash Mark Curtis! adaptation to the Cold War AFL-CIO Kellogg heirs, which underwrites vari­ the Stalinist CP leaves them open to This slander campaign has -become tops. Their catering to the labor bureauc­ ous "progressive" causes in the Boston this kind of anti-communist attack (as even more ominous now that it has been racy means mimicking every form of area. Until several months ago, NAACP occurred also in NOW at around the taken up by a "respectable" layer of anti­ racial insensitivity and political back­ official Bertin was on the Board of same time). Moreover, the by then anti­ rape feminists and wannabe bureaucrats. wardness. Or in the immortal words of Directors of the Haymarket fund. What Trotskyist SWP recruited women not to Their anti-communism is their own, but former Workers League leader Tim the WL has tapped into here is a Marxism but to socialist-flavored femi­ their ammunition comes from the pro­ Wohlforth: "the working class hates fag­ feminist/popular-front milieu in which nism. In contrast, the SL was able to fessional provocateurs of David North's gots, women's libbers and hippies and key actors have hated the SWP (and beat back the WAC redbaiting attack Workers League. This is hardly the first so do we"! These days, along with anyone they consider "Trots") for the with an up-front defense of our com­ time that North's sinister outfit has acted targeting the Curtis campaign, the Work­ last 20 years. munist program for women's libera­ as fingermen for forces hostile to the ers League's other major activity in It goes back to 1970 when the SWP tion through socialist revolution (see interests and defense of the workers Detroit is blocking with white racists split the Boston radical women's group "SL Zaps WAC Attack," WV No. 557, movement. In 1983, on the eve of the against the Malcolm X school (see arti­ Cell 16, led by Roxanne Dunbar and 7 August). But in the Mark Curtis British coal miners strike, the WL's Brit­ cle on page 12). But in order to get Mark among whose founders and funders was case, what's notable is that liberal ish mentors, the Workers Revolutionary Curtis, the Northites suddenly and cyn­ Abby Rockefeller. The history of "Rad­ witchhunters are still burning over the Party, set off an anti-red witchhunt ically "discover" black oppression and ical Feminism in America, 1967-1975" SWP, and this feeds into their desire against miners union leader Arthur Scar­ play to the bourgeois feminists and "stop by Alice Echols (Daring to Be Bad to bum Curtis at the stake. This is gill by "exposing" his forthright state­ rape" vigilantes. [1989]), notes: "Cell l6's shift from the culture medium of ex-New Leftists­ ment that Polish Solidamosc, the favorite The Curtis case is the latest install­ Marxism might have been related to the' become-social-democrats, the rad-lib "union" of Ronald Reagan, was "anti­ ment of the Northites' psychotic "Secu­ Socialist Worker's Party's (SWP) at­ Jamaica Plain crowd (more lib than rad) . socialist." The WRP "expose" was taken rity and the Fourth International" tempted take-over of the group some in which Pelka, Russo, Bertin, Shuchter up by Cold War labor bureaucrats and campaign slandering the SWPas an time after Dunbar's departure.... non­ and their friends are getting a hearing. the labor-hating Fleet Street press with organization supposedly controlled by SWP women circulated a letter through­ And the SWP can't fight it because they the aim of crushing the militant miners the U.S. government. The WL's Bulletin out the movement alerting women to the capitulate to it politically, not wanting union. (17 July) writes: "The issue has gone far SWP's efforts to 'infiltrate' feminist to "alienate" potential bloc partners in In the late 1970s, the WL tried to use beyond the guilt or innocence of Mark groups." Old history? Not at all. It's still their endless lowest common denomina­ the bourgeois courts against the SWP, in Curtis. The real question is: What is the useful in whipping up anti-communist tor pop-front coalitions. the Alan Gelfand case, demanding that Socialist Workers Party, and whose inter­ frenzy. it tum over its membership lists, finan­ ests does it serve?" The same article pro­ This summer, the New York Women's WL and the Anti-Curtis Cabal cial records and minutes to the imperi­ vides a veritable data sheet of the names Action Coalition (WAC) was a hot­ We have had our own experience with alist government which had been spying of leading SWPers and their industrial bed of controversy after abortion this crowd. In March 1991, when fascist on it for 50 years, most recently in the employers. This scurrilous McCarthyism clinic defense demonstrations against David Duke tried to hold a rally at Bos­ COINTELPRO case. Meanwhile, for is then offered as "proof' that they are the combined efforts of Operation ton's Old South Meeting House, the years North's "International Commit­ police agents-because they got hired! Rescue and Cardinal O'Connor on the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense tee," then under founder-leader Gerry (Of course, for Pelka & Co., it's the eve of the Democratic Party con­ Committee initiated a united-front dem­ Healy, was on the payroll of virtually opposite, Curtis is a dishonest commie vention. Political polarization at WAC onstration and mobilized 1,500 people every Arab regime in the Near East. By because he lied to the boss!) meetings led to an exclusion attempt in the streets to stop this Klansman-in­ its own later admission, the IC received Today the Northites act as brain­ against the Spartacist League and the a-suit. The NAACP and the various over one million pounds sterling (at trusters for government prosecutors, ISO. At one meeting we found rent-a­ bureaucrats around Labor Page gave us least) from these kings, sheiks and tin­ right-wing feminists, AFL-CIO labor cops and lady goons at the door, and the run-around and refused to endorse. pot colonels. In exchange, the "IC" traitors, to get the SWP. Only a paranoid leaflets of pages from a book by Flora And a slanderous whispering campaign offered to supply the names of, and intel­ believes history is a conspiracy, but Davis, Moving the Mountain: The Wom­ was started, violence-baiting the Partisan ligence on, prominent "Zionists" in everybody knows there are conspiracies en's Movement in America Since 1960 Defense Committee and SL and claiming "finance, politics, business, the commu­ in history. And about North's organiza­ (1990) retailing horror stories about how that the communists just want to "take nications media and elsewhere" to Qad­ tion we can only warn: Beware! To par­ the Boston women's liberation move­ all the credit," to try to poison the atmos­ dafi's Libya. Financial backing from aphrase the Bulletin, "what the Workers ment was "infiltrated" by "outsiders, pri­ phere and prevent a united-front mobi­ Saddam Hussein to the "IC" bought his League is" is pretty hard to fathom, but marily by the Socialist Workers' Party," lization. Above all, this milieu of liber­ regime not only the publicity services . "whose interests it serves" are definitely which had "targeted" Cell 16. Railing als, reformists and labor bureaucrats of the Healy/Northites-i-whose press not those of women, minorities or the against "takeover attempts by the Trots," don't like reds mobilizing in what they hailed the 1978 execution of 21 Iraqi working class. _ 14 WORKERS VANGUARD Harrity/U.S. News & World Report David Ake Renato Rotolo Clinton, Bush, Perot: three faces of Wall Street rule. Capitalist candidates offer reactionary "family values," flag-waving, Big Brother government. the rapacious greed of those who own in the private capitalist sector by the cor­ lamps for light, heat and cooking. In other that he's responsible for the economic the country's productive wealth. porate raiding/leveraged buyout binge. words, in America's late 20th century misery engulfing the country, Bush But America's financial house of cards cities, people are reduced to the condi­ points out that not only the U.S. but For a Workers Government collapsed a few years ago. The main rea­ tions of mid-19th century log cabins. Last also West Europe and Japan are mired to Rebuild America! son this recession goes on and on-the winter, the Inquirer reported, at least five in a slump. In his own way and for his In the last year of the last Democratic head of Tandy computer called it a reces­ Philadelphians were killed when their own reasons, Bush is stating a funda­ presidency, .Jimmy Carter's, the U.S. sion with nine lives-is that corporate homes were set afire by gas heaters. mental truth: no bourgeois govern­ experienced both a deep recession and treasurers are using their meager profits If millions of poor try to survive the ment--even that of the most powerful near-runaway inflation. In 1980, Reagan to reduce their mountains of debt rather winter with dangerous gas heaters, capitalist state-s-can control the basic rode into the White House by combining than expand production and hire more countless others have no shelter from the economic conditions. Capitalism is an a pocketbook appeal with racist dema­ workers. And Clinton doesn't even pre­ cold at all. Todd Gitlin, a former New internationally linked system driven by gogy. The "tax revolt" promised to tend to have a program for ending the Leftist turned liberal academic, has writ­ the profit-grasping operations of multi­ increase the take-home pay oflower- and recession and putting the unemployed to ten: "There is, in America, scarcely a national corporations and banks. middle-class whites by cutting social work. downtown to be found today without its To bring down this system of poverty, programs seen as especially benefiting There's a lot of talk about job retrain­ colonies of the desperate and demented, racism and war requires hard class strug­ the black and Hispanic poor-welfare, ing programs. But where are jobs for taking their bits of space on the side­ gle, and above all a leadership with the public health and housing, aid to the cit­ even the most highly trained workers? walks;rummaging through garbage cans program and determination to mobilize ies, etc. An instructor who teaches welding to for bottles, cultivating their panhandling the oppressed against their common ene­ While the poor certainly got the ax, laid-off factory workers in Missouri says routines or wandering down the streets mies. But the present "leadership" of the there was no tax cut for the so-called having this basic industrial skill doesn't looking strangely accustomed to' their labor movement has been busily disman­ middle class. The reduction in federal make them any more employable. condition" (San Francisco Examiner, 19 tling union gains won through decades income tax rates was more than offset "You've got unemployed welders all April). of struggle. And the Los Angeles riots by higher Social Security deductions, over the St. Louis area," he told a radio Gitlin, like all liberals, blames this dramatically revealed the utter political increased federal excise taxes (e.g., on call-in talk show. In California's Silicon state of affairs on "the legacy of the bankruptcy of the Democratic "black gasoline) as well as higher state and local Valley, computer programmers and hard­ Reagan-Bush years," implying that elected officials." American workers and taxes. Only the richest one percent of the ware technicians are getting pink slips. things would be fundamentally different oppressed minorities desperately need American population saw tax "relief." If skilled workers like welders and if Carter, Mondale and Dukakis had communist leadership. The federal taxes they paid fell from 32 computer techs are hurting, the plight of been elected president. However, the There will be no end to the politics percent of their multimillion-dollar those without skills, jobs or savings is Democratic-controlled Congress sup­ of misery unless the working class and incomes in 1980 to 29 percent today. truly desperate. In early September the ported all the basic economic programs poor rise up and seize the country's pro­ To finance the massive military Census Bureau reported that the number of the Reagan/Bush White House. More ductive wealth from the directors of buildup against the Soviet Union while of people living below the official gov­ fundamentally, the homeless wandering the Fortune 500 corporations and the cutting taxes for the wealthy, the Rea­ ernment poverty level soared last year the nation's cities, the black welfare Wall Street financiers. Only a globally gan/Bush regime borrowed like crazy, by two million. The federal government mothers freezing in ghetto slums, the planned socialist economy can rebuild especially from Japanese and German itself recognizes that almost 36 million laid-off factory workers trying to feed America's decaying industrial base, pro­ moneymen. Echoing Perot, Clinton is American men, women and children now their families on food stamps and unem­ vide homes for the homeless and a campaigning against the federal deficit live in poverty, the highest level in over ployment insurance are riot the victims decent life for all working people and as supposedly a burden to future gener­ a quarter century. One-third of all blacks of Reaganomics' as such but of capitalist their children. Break with the two parties ations. By far the fastest-growing item and almost 30 percent of Hispanics are decay. ofcapitalist misery-For a workers party in the federal budget has been interest below the poverty line. Defending himself against the charge to fight for a workers government! _ on the national debt, which increased With the elections focused heavily on five-fold since Reagan took office. the economy, the bourgeois media is to This year interest payments from the some degree revealing the grim condi­ who would have the power to commute U.S. Treasury to Wall Street, Tokyo and . tions of life and death in this country. death sentences if the measure passes, Frankfurt bankers will reach almost $300 The Philadelphia Inquirer (22 Septem­ Death has already declared she will not stop billion, an amount greater than total ber) ran a headline: "Heating or eating? these legal lynchings. And the "black Social Security benefits and ten times Spare poor the choice." Come winter, Penalty... elected officials" are promoting Clinton, federal spending on education. The orgy many residents of North Philadelphia who last January made a show of going of financial parasitism indulged in by (continued from page 16) cannot afford to pay their utility bills, backto Arkansas to preside over the exe­ Washington in the '80s was paralleled so they resort to lanterns and kerosene of those Dixiecrats who thinks that cution of Rickey Ray Rector, a brain­ Washington is their personal plantation. damaged black man. Shelby originally wanted to impose About the only politician openly the death penalty outright, but was campaigning against the death penalty WomeDaDd~ dissuaded from that by some of the is former mayor Marion Barry, who just Women and Revolution "moderates" of the millionaires' club. assured himselfelection to the city coun­ ..-.- .1cltItrnl1 01 the Women's CommiSSion of the SJ>artaciat l.eegue ::::; The measure will now appear as a ref­ cil representing Ward 8, the desperately Revolution erendum on the November ballot. We poor Anacostia area of Southeast D.C. oppose the death penalty because we do Barry was set up in a honey trap by the No. 41 not accord the racist, capitalist state the feds in 1991, was railroaded in court and Summer/Autumn 1992 right to decide who lives and who dies, did his time. But blacks in D.C. voted $1 (56 pages) because this legal barbarism necessarily to return him to office despite the howls enhances the brutalization of society in from the liberals at the Washington Post. 3-issue subscription $3 all respects. And in America, the primary It is a testimony to the bankruptcy of victims are black, Latino and poor. the black Democratic front men for cap­ Meanwhile, the capitalist media is italism that Barry, who was always the whipping up hysteria over crime in order willing instrument of the real estate to overcome the tradition of opposition interests against the black city unions, to the death penalty here. The proponents can posture as the champion of black Make checks payable/mail to: of death are in an all-out drive to get D.C. against the death penalty. Spartacist Publishing Co. the referendum passed-and they may The power of the multiracial labor Box 1377 GPO succeed. Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly and movement must be brought out now to New York, NY 10116 other politicians don't even oppose the stop the assembly line of death in this death penalty, only the way Congress is country. Abolish the racist death penalty! ramming it down D.C.'s throat. Kelly, No legal lynching in D.C.! _ 16 OCTOBER 1992 15 WfJlillERS "."'lil) •

Congress Decrees Executions for Black D.C. WASHINGTON, D.C.-The racist rul­ ers are trying a new tack to terrorize the 70 percent black population of "their" capital city. The death penalty was repealed here in 1"981; no one has been executed since 1957. Now the capitalist politicians want to impose the broadest death penalty law in the country-and it will be only blacks who are executed. Today, 42 percent of the city's young black males are either in jail, on parole or facing trial. But the prosecutors com­ plain that juries aren't sending enough to the pen! D.C. residents can't vote for Congress, but Congress says they can die at the hands of the state. Every year at budget time it's the same ritual. Dixiecrats in the House District Committee rail against local pol­ iticians. Whichever anti-abortion bigot is in the White House vetoes the piddling federal appropriation to D.C. until the city agrees not to spend any money to subsidize abortions for low-income women. This year Congress gutted D.C.'s "domestic partners" law, which would have allowed homosexuals (and all D.C. residents who don't have a state­ sanctioned relationship) to add their Independent photos spouses to their health insurance. And Cops' nightly reign of terror against D.C. youth under the guise of the racist "war on drugs." they're pushing the death penalty as the "answer" to the high murder rate. slaughter of tens of thousands of men, the "crime rate," while carrying out a to add D.C. to their death belt. Washington abounds in mass mur­ women and children in Iraq. Black policy of legal genocide against black The drive for the death penalty has derers-in the White House and on Cap­ life is cheap for the ruling class. They ghettos through hunger, disease, home­ been led by Alabama Senator Shelby, one itol Hill. They ordered the gratuitous sanctimoniously cluck their tongues at lessness, killer cops. And nowthey want continued on page 15 Defeat Oregon Gay-Bashing

Wojahn/Oregonian Anti-gay referendum in Oregon incites murderous terrorism against gay men Referendum! and women. On September 26, a young lesbian and on the ballot that would amend the state public facilities and rally rights; pulling terrorize them, as well as setting them a gay man, Hattie Mae Cohens and Brian constitution to classify homosexuality books off shelves and censoring public up for gay-bashing by the cops. Mock, were murdered in Salem, Oregon as "abnormal, wrong, unnatural and television shows. Teachers at all grade The same day that Cohens and Mock when a firebomb was thrown through perverse." levels would be required to "assist in ·were murdered in Salem, the anti­ the window of their apartment. Four Measure 9, also known as the "Abnor­ setting a standard for Oregon's youth" Measure 9 office in Eugene was broken skinhead punks, who have ties to a neo­ mal Behaviors Initiative"-sponsored that homosexuality is "to be discouraged into, its files with phone lists and names Nazi group, have been arrested in con­ by the Oregon Citizens Alliance, an out­ and avoided." stolen, and a sinister leaflet posted on nection with the firebombing murders. fit fronting for ultrarightist Pat Robert­ This anti-gay, anti-sex legal code its door and at the homes of two sup­ This grisly act of fascist terrorism son's Christian Coalition-would take would be the most repressive in the porters. -Jean Marchant, a lesbian living .takes place in a climate of anti-gay hys­ the witchhunt against gays and lesbians country and must be smashed. Beyond in Springfield, told the New York Times teria fueled by the bipartisan crusade to to new heights: firing schoolteachers criminalizing gays and lesbians, this of being spit on and called a "queer." In "restore family values." A band of relig­ and other state employees; taking away "legal" bigotry gives the green light to fact, .reported attacks against gays in ious bigots in Oregon has put a measure child custody rights, business licenses, skinheads and other violent vermin to continued on page 11

16 16 OCTOBER 1992