The Internationalist No. 48 May-June 2017 50¢ There Is No Justice for Black People in the Racist Capitalist Courts Black America Under the Gun Workers Revolution Will Avenge Philando Castile JUNE 25 – This proves it beyond a shadow working class. Immigrants and Muslims are of a doubt: there is no justice for the op- Pedroza/Star TribuneCourtney currently top targets. But there is always an pressed in the racist capitalist courts. The “enemy within” to be hounded. acquittal of Jeronimo Yanez, the cop who Philando Castile was a supervisor gunned down Philando Castile last July 6 in the school cafeteria of J. Hill Montes- as he sat in his car in suburban St. Paul, sori Magnet School in St. Paul. He was a Minnesota, is proof positive that the whole member of Teamsters Local 320. The kids system is rigged to guarantee that the po- called him “Mr. Phil” and he served meals lice can kill with impunity. to more than 400 kids twice a day. He knew Philando Castile did nothing wrong. all their names, and remembered who had When Yanez pulled him over, he was calm which food allergies. He was well-liked by and polite. He followed the protocol that the kids, parents and school staff. To the J.J. young black men are taught about how to Hill community, Castile was a “kind, gentle stay alive in an encounter with the police. soul,” as a parent Sally Rafowicz said, “kind Philando knew the drill: he had been stopped of like Mr. Rogers with dreadlocks” (Min- by cops at least 46 times over the past dozen neapolis StarTribune, 7 July 2016). years. Only six times was it for something Castile was pulled over as he was driv- that could be seen from outside the car ing in Falcon Heights, a tiny suburb of St. (speeding, broken muffler). He was racially Paul near the state fairgrounds, so small that profiled, targeted. And look what happened. it hired police from another suburb, St. An- Anyone who saw the heart-wrenching thony, to patrol it. A 2003 study of racial bias Facebook Live video by his girlfriend Dia- in policing by University of Minnesota law mond Reynolds, as millions did, knows. It professor Myron Orfield found that in the showed Philando in a puddle of blood as he Demonstrators with portrait of Philando Castile protest in St. Paul suburb lily-white suburbs of the Twin Cities, African lay dying after being struck five times from on June 18 against verdict acquitting the cop who murdered him. Americans and Latinos were “up to seven seven shots. Anyone who saw the horrifying Philando Castile was executed, the ulti- ery, racist American capitalism has meant times more likely to be stopped by police” police dashboard camera video and audio, as mate penalty for “driving while black.” And extermination of Native Americans, subju- (National Public Radio, 15 July 2016). the jury did repeatedly, of the frenzied cop his executioner, killer cop Jeronimo Yanez, gation of African Americans, persecution of When Yanez approached the car, he pumping bullets into Philando with his girl- walked. It’s the way the system works. Latino Americans and all-sided oppression. told Philando he had been pulled over be- friend Diamond and her four-year-old daugh- That system is capitalism. From the time Today the system is based on exploitation of cause of a cracked tail light, which was a ter in the car with him, can have no doubt. it was founded on the bedrock of chattel slav- “wage slaves,” as Karl Marx described the continued on page 6 Police Protect Vastly Outnumbered Racists Portland Labor Mobilizes to Stop Fascist Provocation Militants from 14 Area Unions Point the Way Forward PORTLAND, OR, June 8 – The rally here seven different jurisdictions turned down- on Sunday, June 4 of white-supremacist town Portland into a police state to ensure and outright fascist Trump supporters was Internationalist photo that the racist provocation proceeded. Spe- surrounded by far greater numbers of fu- cially outfitted copmobiles, each with a rious protesters outraged by this brazen dozen black-clad state police standing on provocation barely a week after the dou- the running boards circled the plaza where ble murder by a local Nazi. One of three the ultra-rightists were gathered. After a protests, a mobilization called by Portland standoff of several hours, the police un- Labor Against the Fascists, brought out leashed volleys of flash-bang grenades, several hundred union members and sup- rubber bullets and tear gas to clear anti-fas- porters who gathered to the east of Terry cist protesters out of Chapman Square just Schrunk Plaza, where the race-haters were to the north of Schrunk Plaza. As they did protected by triple lines of heavily armed on May Day, the police “kettled” the en- local, state and federal riot police. tire area, holding 200 people on the street Present at the labor mobilization as they IDed everyone and picked out in- against the fascists were members of at dividuals to be detained. Fourteen arrests least 14 area unions, including: IUPAT Several hundred unionists and supporters came out on June 4 in the first were reported. (painters) Local 10; IATSE (stage hands) significant labor action against white supremacists in decades. We demand that all antifa and other Local 28; Carpenters Local 1503 and Car- Local 29; AAUP (university professors); earlier passed coordinated motions calling protesters arrested on June 4 be released penters Northwest Regional Council; La- CWA (telecommunications workers); for “mobilizing against the clear and pres- and all charges dropped, and the same for borers Local 483; AFT Oregon (teachers); SAG-AFTRA (actors); AWPPW (pulp and ent danger that the provocations of racist those arrested on May 1 and those who were IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), paper workers); ATU (transit workers) Dis- and fascist organizations pose to us all.” protesting a prior racist rally on April 29. Seattle; SEIU Local 503; Iron Workers trict 757, and others. The first seven unions Meanwhile, an army of police from continued on page 10 Introducing Permanente Revolution, German-Language Newspaper of the LFI The following article is translated Hitler us!” They ended up pushing an un- International was Trotsky’s theory of from Permanente Revolution No. 1 (Sum- derground “people’s front” with a mythical permanent revolution, which holds that mer 2017), published by the League for the progressive wing of the bourgeoisie. After in countries with belated and uneven Fourth International. the KPD’s capitulation without a fight (not capitalist development, to win even With this first issue of Permanente to mention the SPD’s) and the complete ab- the most basic gains of the bourgeois Revolution, we are introducing the German- sence of opposition to this in the Communist revolution requires that the working language newspaper of the League for the International, it was clear to the Trotskyists class take power and extend the so- Fourth International (LFI), which fights that the Comintern was politically dead, and cialist revolution internationally. for international socialist revolution on the that building a new, fourth International was The devastation of the Second Marxist program of V.I. Lenin and Leon on the order of the day. World War and the all-round murder- Trotsky. It is precisely this perspective, pro- Founded in 1938, the Fourth Inter- ous repression to which innumerable claimed by the Bolshevik October Revolu- national stood for defense of the Soviet Trotskyists fell victim weakened tion of 1917, that is today the only hope of Union against counterrevolution from the Fourth International. Thereaf- mankind in the face of the spectacular de- within and without, and for a proletarian ter, between 1951 and 1953, it was cline of the imperialist-capitalist system of political revolution to replace the Stalinist plagued by the revisionist tendency war, economic crisis and poverty. bureaucracy with workers councils (sovi- of Michel Pablo, who denied the We take the name of our newspa- ets) under revolutionary leadership. Fol- necessity for a Trotskyist leader- per from the weekly paper of the German lowing the privations caused by the Civil ship. This led to the organizational Trotskyists in the early 1930s. The Bolshe- War and imperialist military intervention, dissolution of the Fourth Interna- vik-Leninists, as the Left Oppositionists in as well as because of demoralization due to tional. We of the League for the the Stalinized German Communist Party the absence of successful revolutions in the Fourth International seek to re- (KPD) called themselves at the time, fought economically more developed countries, forge it on the basis of the revolu- tirelessly for proletarian united-front actions the world’s first workers state degenerated tionary political continuity upheld of all workers organizations to stop the Na- under Stalin. The bureaucracy led a politi- first by the U.S. Socialist Workers zis. This stood in stark contrast to the KPD cal counterrevolution and usurped political Party under James P. Cannon, leadership, which first declared the reform- power, but had to maintain the foundations and then for three decades by the To order a copy of Permanente Revolution send ist German Social Democratic Party (SPD) of the collectivized economy from which it Spartacist tendency/International e-mail to [email protected]. a “social-fascist” twin of the Nazi party, siphoned off its privileges. Communist League. The consequences of comrades in the Spartacist League/U.S. then turned around and proclaimed, “After With its anti-Marxist, nationalist dog- counterrevolution in the DDR and USSR section of the ICL declared a faction. The ma of building “socialism in one country,” had a demoralizing effect on the ICL, which Better-Late-Than-Never Faction demanded: Stalinism opposed the internationalist poli- tenaciously fought against it, and led to a “Return to the Road of Genuine Spartacism! cies of the Bolsheviks. While the Stalinists sharp internal fight in 1995-96, beginning in Regroup with the IG/LFI on the Basis of betrayed a series of revolutions on the alter the German section, the SpAD (Spartakist Their Revolutionary Continuity!” (published of the popular front and “peaceful coex- Workers Party of Germany). In response to in a special bulletin together with the dec- istence” with imperialism, the Trotskyists the counterrevolution, which was a severe laration of former leaders of the Italian sec- fought for revolutionary class indepen- defeat for the proletariat worldwide, the tion of the ICL, “Return to Trotskyism!”). dence and proletarian solidarity. When ICL drew defeatist conclusions and claimed After the BLTN comrades internally submit- after years of undermining the conscious- that it was the Stalinist bureaucracy, not the ted their declaration of faction, they were ness of the working class, Stalinist rule imperialists, who led the counterrevolution. forthwith bureaucratically expelled on the succumbed to the imperialist offensive in The ICL thus repudiated the Trotskyist un- very next day. Leading up to a fusion a few 1989-92, genuine Trotskyists stood at their derstanding of the contradictory nature of months later, the expelled comrades made an posts and fought against the counterrevo- the parasitic bureaucratic caste. “Agreement for Common Work” with the IG lution that destroyed the bureaucratically Following this, leading members of the to “Work together exploring further opportu- deformed and degenerated workers states, French, Mexican and U.S. sections of the nities to win people from the ICL milieu to from East Germany (DDR – the German ICL were expelled, while the Liga Quarta- authentic Trotskyism.” This newspaper is in Democratic Republic) to the USSR (Union Internacionalista do Brasil (Fourth Interna- good part a result of that work. of Soviet Socialist Republics). tionalist League of Brazil) was abandoned After a period of discussions and com- At that time, and also today, the pseu- by the ICL in the midst of a sharp class mon work, for example in writing articles do-Trotskyists stood on the side of imperi- struggle. The expulsions led in 1996 to the on the European refugee crisis (see “Italy: alism with their “democratic” alibis. Today founding of the Internationalist Group in the The Refugee Crisis and Capitalist Barba- Permanente Revolution was the name the League for the Fourth International United States, and then in 1998 these cadres rism,” The Internationalist No. 44) and on of the newspaper of the German fights against the restoration of capitalist formed the League for the Fourth Interna- the anti-Palestinian witch-hunt in Germany Trotskyists in the early 1930s who rule, whether through imperialist blockade tional in order to continue the struggle for (see page 18 of this issue), the League for the fought for united-front workers action and attack or by internal counterrevolution- authentic Trotskyism, while the ICL was Fourth International is undertaking, togeth- to stop the Nazis. This issue, from ary forces, which menaces the remaining infected by the bourgeois triumphalism er with its supporters in Germany, the pub- December 1932, featured Trotsky’s deformed workers states, from China and over the “death of communism.” The ICL lication of a German-language newspaper. call, in his speech in Copenhagen, to North Korea to Vietnam and Cuba. An- withdrew into passive propagandism, blam- The goal is to intervene in class and social “Defend the October Revolution.” other key programmatic pillar of the Fourth ing this on the backward consciousness of struggles and to win cadres in left milieus to the working class, and in subsequent years the perspective of socialist revolution. The Visit the League for the Fourth International/ it abandoned one Trotskyist position after breadth of topics covered in this first issue Internationalist Group on the Internet another until in 2010 it welcomed the U.S. is intended to show what the LFI stands for. http://www.internationalist.org invasion of Haiti (as a supposed rescue mis- We hold firmly that the proletariat can only sion after the earthquake). Several months free itself when under the leadership of a later, the ICL itself had to renounce this as a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party it takes The Internationalist “social-imperialist betrayal.” on as its foremost duty the struggle for the A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism Later, after a series of internal fights rights of all the oppressed. The fight for full for the Reforging of the Fourth International against the increasingly social-chauvinist line citizenship rights for immigrants and ethnic Publication of the Internationalist Group, of the ICL leadership over the refugee crisis minorities is a strategic component of this section of the League for the Fourth International (see “Strange Encounters with the ICL,” The perspective, as well as the struggle against EDITORIAL BOARD: Jan Norden (editor), Fred Bergen, Mark Lazarus, Abram Negrete, Internationalist No. 44, Summer 2016), one the oppression of women which is inherent Marjorie Salzburg, Ines Young of the “deviationists,” a longtime member in all class societies. Thus exactly 100 years The Internationalist (ISSN 1091-2843) is published bimonthly, skipping July-August, by Mundial of the editorial board of Spartakist and of ago, the Russian Revolution was sparked by Publications, P.O. Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. Telephone: (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 E-mail: [email protected] the Berlin local leadership of the SpAD, left strikes and protests by women workers (see Subscriptions: US$10 for five issues. the ICL in December 2015, after all hopes of “International Women’s Day Sparked the No. 48 1162-M May-June 2017 some kind of self-reform of the ICL proved 1917 Russian Revolution,” in The Interna- to be definitively illusory. Shortly afterwards, tionalist No. 47, March-April 2017). n 2 The Internationalist It Will Take Workers Revolution to Get Rid of Austerity Corbyn’s Labour Party Surges, But “Welfare State” Capitalism Is Dead

For the second time in a year, British Revolt of the Youth voters delivered a wholly unexpected ver- and the Have-Nots dict that upended the established wisdom Behind the double miscalculation by about British politics and sent shock waves Conservative leaders (and virtually the around the world. On 23 June 2016, a ma- entire political elite) is a blindness to the jority went to the polls to cast a ballot to harsh economic and political realities fac- leave the European Union – “Brexit.” That ing working people, young people and led to the downfall of Conservative (Tory) much of the middle class in Britain. Be- prime minister David Cameron, who called lieving their own propaganda and phony the referendum anticipating a big vote to government statistics that the British econ- “remain.” The Brexit vote set off panic omy was on the mend since the 2007-08 fi- in certain capitalist circles, particularly nancial crash, the high and mighty ignored among the bankers of the City of London, the continued mass unemployment and who have built their speculative empires as increased poverty in the ongoing capitalist the financial linchpin of the EU. depression. Last year, economic discontent Then this past June 8, a “snap election” was diverted into the narrow English na- called by Cameron’s successor, Conservative tionalism of the Brexiteers and the anti-im- prime minister Theresa May, hoping to solid- migrant racism that dominated both sides ify her support in the House of Commons, in- in the referendum. This year it fueled the stead led to the loss of the Tory parliamentary huge increase in the Labour vote. majority and a huge increase for the oppo- The discontent is based on reality. Phil Noble/Reuters sition Labour Party. Prior to the vote, it was From 2008 to 2015, while the gross domes- Jeremy Corbyn with young supporters on June 8. Youth voted by 2-to-1 a near-universal belief among the political tic product rose by 2% a year, real wages for Labour, but this reformist party won’t and can’t end capitalist austerity. establishment and pundits of the bourgeois for British workers fell by 1% a year. Of Beyond Corbyn’s appeal as a rare case cades, starting with the Tory “Iron Lady” press that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was the G7 leading capitalist countries, Britain of a fairly honest politician, Labour owes Margaret Thatcher and continuing under “unelectable” because of his mildly leftist was the only one in which pay packets ac- its stunning advance – the largest since both Conservative (John Major, David politics. Instead, Labour went from 26% in tually declined. Of the 34 advanced capital- 1945 – to its election Manifesto which Cameron) and “New Labour” (Tony Blair, the opinion polls at the start of the campaign ist countries in the OECD (Organization of called for investing in the National Health Gordon Brown) prime ministers. But there to 40% at the ballot box, only slightly behind Economic Cooperation and Development), Service, abolishing tuition for university will be no return to the social-democratic the Conservatives’ 42%. the only one that did worse than Britain students, some renationalizations and for capitalist “welfare state” of yore, for “neo- Then, only days after the vote, came the in terms of real wages was Greece (“Fall- an end to “Tory austerity.” This struck a liberalism” is not a policy to be adopted or monstrous fire at Grenfell Tower that killed ing real wages show the British economy chord particularly among youth (one mil- discarded depending on vote totals, but the at least 79 people. This crystallized the is still struggling,” Guardian, 7 May). A lion young voters registered during the vicious expression of bankrupt capitalism mounting fury at the Tories and their poli- report of the Social Mobility Commission campaign), who voted 2-to-1 (66%) for in its epoch of imperialist decay. cies of deregulation, privatization and utter says that Britain is increasingly divided be- Labour, and among working-class voters Any illusions about overturning neo- disdain for the lives of poor and working tween “haves and have-nots.” What’s hap- in hard-hit industrial areas. But despite the liberalism at the ballot box should have people. The blaze was the result of cheap pening is a revolt of the have-nots, but La- euphoria of the reformist left, the manifes- been dispelled by the bitter experience of appliances provided in council flats (pub- bour’s call for a return to the welfare state to is not a bit radical, and the hard fact is the left-populist SYRIZA government in lic housing) and cheap flammable exterior is dead on arrival. that Labour will not and cannot end anti- Greece in 2015. Elected on an anti-auster- cladding that turned the high-rise building The situation is particularly acute for worker austerity. ity program that January, Prime Minister into a death trap, all to save the local hous- young workers, whose unemployment rate Almost the entire left in Britain, inside Alexis Tsipras held a sham referendum in ing authority, in the richest borough in the is three times the national average (of- and outside of the Labour Party, portray the July supposedly to vote down the extor- country, £300,000 (a little under $400,000). ficially 12% for ages 18 to 24, in reality enemy as “neoliberalism,” namely the poli- tionate demands of the Brussels bankers Six hundred high rises across Britain have far higher). Meanwhile, the “labor market cies of “free trade,” cutbacks and privatiza- … and a week later agreed to implement the same deadly shell, and so far every one flexibility” touted by the neoliberal capital- tion of state services, driving down wages an even more brutal austerity program. It has failed a fire safety test. This corporate ist ideologues means that young workers and destruction of trade unions. This was was all, as we wrote, “the Dictatorship of murder could bring the government down. are consigned to part-time and precarious carried out over the last three and a half de- Finance Capital.”1 Although Labour is a This was a death foretold – the tenants’ jobs. Millions of young people in Brit- reformist (or as Lenin put it, a bourgeois) organization Grenfell Action Group repeat- ain have “zero hours contracts,” meaning workers party rather than an outright capi- edly warned against just such a catastrophic that they are “on call” with no job stabil- talist party like SYRIZA, the result would fire. Meanwhile North Kensington is full ity whatsoever. It is this economic disas- be no different in a Britain governed by of unoccupied luxury buildings and apart- ter for youth that gave rise in 2011 to the Corbyn than in Greece under Tsipras. As ments held as investments. Rather than let “Arab Spring” revolts in North Africa, to we wrote in 2015: the survivors be exiled far outside of Lon- the indignados who occupied city squares “A revolutionary opposition, both out- don, a mass working-class based mobiliza- in southern Europe and to Occupy Wall tion to immediately rehouse them in such side and inside the Labour Party, would underline that fighting austerity and re- Street in the United States. Their cry was vacant properties is on the order of the day. generating the British economy can only one of desperation, and their movements At present, May’s occupancy of the be accomplished through workers revo- were short-lived. prime minister’s residence at 10 Down- lution laying the basis for international This is what led young people to ea- ing Street hangs by a thread, dependent on socialist planning. … For the workers gerly vote for Tsipras and SYRIZA in a shaky alliance with Northern Ireland’s to take power, they must bring down the Greece in 2015, only to be bitterly disap- Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), an ul- dictatorship of capital. In no way can that pointed when he inevitably capitulated to tra-reactionary, Protestant sectarian, homo- be done by the thoroughly parliamenta- the Brussels bankers. Last year youth in the phobic party opposed to women’s right to rist Labour Party, even if it resuscitates United States likewise flocked to rallies for abortion. With the loss of even a handful of Old Labour’s famous Clause IV calling Bernie Sanders in the United States, and votes threatening the government’s major- for public ownership of industry.” then despaired when this liberal Democrat ity, before long they may be wheeling in –“Corbynmania Sweeps Britain,” The who calls himself a “democratic socialist” ailing Tory Members of Parliament (MPs) Internationalist No. 41, September- inevitably endorsed Wall Street’s candi- on hospital gurneys to vote. Should there October 2015 date, Hillary Clinton. In Britain, the enthu- be a “hung Parliament,” with no party or 1 “Greece: The Naked Rule of Finance Capital” siastic youth vote won Jeremy Corbyn the coalition having a majority, a new election Grenfell Tower inferno on June 12 (18 July 2015), in The Internationalist No. 41, Labour leadership and then confounded could well put Jeremy Corbyn in No. 10. has crystallized fury at the Tories. September-October 2015 the pollsters and politicians with a huge May-June 2017 3 turnout on June 8. Tsipras and Sanders are the Militant Tendency of Labour, who pre- focus of a big struggle. Getting rid of a raft port to the leadership of the reformist La- populist bourgeois politicians, while Cor- tend that police are “workers in uniform.”3 of Tory anti-union laws could be another bour Party. The SL/B declared there was a byn is a Labour reformist. But their com- Under Corbyn, Labour continues to key battlefield. Yet these battles won’t be “class difference” between Corbyn and his mon program of a return to “welfare state” fulfill its role as “Her Majesty’s Loyal won in Parliament, but through mobilizing Blairite challenger Owen Smith, because capitalism is doomed to fail. Opposition,” pledging fealty to the mili- the power of the working class, including Corbyn (who campaigned for Remain) tary and police, the central organs of the against opposition from a Labour cabi- Labour’s Militarist, pledged to honor the vote for Brexit, while capitalist state. For the rest of the election net and back benches, where anti-Corbyn Smith continued to oppose it. Pro-Police Manifesto platform, it promises very small reforms right-wingers still have a huge majority. The gyrations continue. The Spring The Conservatives thought that they indeed. Corbyn calls for spending more Not so long ago, impressionistic 2017 issue of Workers Hammer has a could pummel Labour in the election (and on the National Health Service, which leftists wrote off Labour under Blair as front-page headline, “Shame on Corbyn maybe destroy it as a party) by stepping the Conservatives in power are running just another bourgeois party. All it took for Supporting the EU.” The article con- up their virulent immigrant-bashing, and into the ground. The Manifesto talks of a was a change of the Leader to send these tains a partial “correction.” It turns out pushing for a “hard Brexit.” But Corbyn “Public Ownership of the Railways” bill, wayward Labourites scurrying home. “there is no class difference between Smith headed off an attack from the anti-immi- but in the concrete it proposes “bringing Despite the exclusions enforced by chief and Corbyn over the EU” after all. “Cor- grant right by joining them, declaring in our railways back into public ownership, witch hunter Tom Watson, an opportunist byn betrayed when it mattered by crossing Labour’s election Manifesto that “freedom as franchises expire.” Some of those fran- hodgepodge of the Labour Representa- the class line and serving the bourgeoisie of movement will end when we leave the chises don’t expire until 2030! Even sec- tion Committee, Labour Party Marxists, in campaigning for the EU…. By covering European Union.” Meanwhile, he instruct- tors of the bourgeoisie could back this, Red Flag, Socialist Fight and assorted for Corbyn’s betrayal on the EU, we helped ed Labour MPs to vote for May’s bill to given the impending disaster in the NHS other Labour lefts looked to the Momen- to reinforce illusions in a Corbyn-led La- trigger Brexit without conditions. And by and the abysmal safety record of the priva- tum movement, set up to further Cor- bour Party.” But it says this was “counter talking in the campaign of staying in the tized railways. byn’s fight for the party leadership. Since to the otherwise correct thrust of our pro- European single market (“soft Brexit”), he Momentum leader John Lansman and No Vote for Labour Reformism – paganda” of defending Corbyn against the attracted votes from youth who were get- Corbyn’s right-hand man John McDon- For a Revolutionary Workers Party Blairite agents of the bourgeoisie. Aside ting worried that they might be stuck in an nell decided to purge “the sectarian left” from the bizarre scolding tone, all this puts insular Britain. Some were also frightened Corbyn’s leadership of Labour has and “Trots” (including the Shachtmanite the SL/B and the ICL in a pretty pickle. by May’s embrace of Donald Trump. awakened hopes, particularly among young Alliance for Workers Liberty), the oppor- If the policy is correct, then what about When Labour’s Manifesto was leaked people who have known nothing but “neo- tunists have now migrated to Grassroots “Jeremy Corbyn must be allowed to run to the press in early May, the leakers fig- liberal” austerity all their lives. But those Momentum. the Labour Party, in his own way”? That ured it would be universally condemned hopes are for a gradual, very gradual, return Almost the entire British left called to seems to be exactly what he has done. But as hopelessly radical and help them topple by baby steps to the welfare state of yore. vote for Labour. But who were they voting there is no self-criticism about that fulsome Corbyn as Labour leader after a crushing Yet that is impossible, it is fool’s gold. The for? The party machinery starting at the top political support for the reformist leader of defeat at the polls. Pundits declared it the City bankers will not tolerate that any more is still controlled by the right wing. As for a reformist party. In a May 27 statement most left-wing manifesto since Labour’s that the Brussels bureaucrats and Frankfurt the Parliamentary Labour Party, which sets on the British elections, “No Vote to the 1983 platform, recalling the description of bankers would, because the entire financial its own policy irrespective of party confer- Labour Party!” the SL/B writes: “The cen- that document by a right-wing Labour MP system is bankrupt and they have to extort ences, branch meetings and the like, a pre- tral issue in the 8 June general election is as “the longest suicide note in history.” But massive profits from the working class election tally by the New Statesman (4 May) Brexit – and Labour’s position on the EU instead of universal condemnation, the op- and slash state expenditures to survive the came up with 33 pro-Corbyn MPs. A post- is contrary to the interests of the working posite occurred. Youth heard it was radical coming meltdown. Awakening illusions in June 8 head count by Labour Party Marxists class.” But if by the ICL’s twisted logic the and even “socialist,” and rushed to regis- a return to the (capitalist) welfare state will added 13 more Corbynistas among the new class line is between pro- and anti-Brexit, ter to vote and join Labour. But the reality not lead to heightened class struggle but backbenchers, giving a total of 46 out of then mirabile dictu! hard-Brexiteer The- of the Manifesto is very different from the rather serve as an obstacle to it. 262, a little under one in six. The most viru- resa May must be fighting for the workers hype. Even the title, “For the Many, Not Revolutionaries must drive home that lent right-wingers declared in the campaign while soft-Brexiteer Corbyn is supporting the Few,” was taken from Tony Blair’s the only way austerity for working people that they would “never” vote for Corbyn as the bourgeoisie! 1997 “New Labour” election campaign. will be ended is through international so- prime minister. Now they are begging to be For decades, various ostensibly In fact, key clauses of the 2017 Manifesto cialist revolution, and more particularly included in the shadow cabinet. This is the Trotskyist tendencies in Britain have were imposed by the right wing of Labour. through the overthrow of the capitalists’ party the left voted for. Michael Foot’s 1983 Labour Mani- European Union by continent-wide work- pushed to “make the Labour lefts fight.” festo called for unilateral nuclear disar- ers struggles leading to a Socialist United Unmoored ICL Twists But as Trotsky warned at the time of the mament. It didn’t mean it, of course, as it States of Europe. Thus in the 2016 Brit- and Turns on Corbyn British General Strike of 1926, it was the continued to call for a “strong” defense, ish referendum, the League for the Fourth One group that called for no vote for Labour lefts who were the biggest betray- was committed to the NATO imperialist International was against both Leave and Labour on June 8 was the Spartacist League, ers and the biggest obstacle to revolution. military alliance and strongly supported Remain: both options were pro-imperial- the British section of the International Com- The once-Trotskyist International Commu- the anti-Soviet Cold War drive. The 2017 ist, the former supporting Little England munist League. Having lost its Trotskyist nist League has lately been gyrating like a Manifesto, in contrast, declares that “La- nationalism and Union Jack British im- moorings in the wake of the counterrevo- top on just about every hotly disputed issue. bour supports the renewal of the Trident perialism, the latter supporting the Ger- lution that destroyed the Soviet Union, the This has led it into the embrace of the most submarine system” and that “Conservative man-dominated bankers’ cartel of the EU. ICL has been spinning around on a whole retrograde British nationalism, the very an- spending cuts have put Britain’s security Moreover, the referendum was dominated range of programmatic issues. In the first tithesis of the proletarian internationalism at risk.” It vowed to increase “defense” by anti-immigrant racism on both sides. In flush of excitement over Jeremy Corbyn be- of the Bolsheviks. Who can imagine Lenin spending to 2% of the gross domestic prod- this chauvinist circus, we wrote: ing elected Leader of the Labour Party, the and Trotsky declaring that the class line uct, as Donald Trump and his predecessors “The only possible course for proletar- SL/B climbed on the bandwagon together runs down the English channel? in Washington have long demanded. Noth- ian revolutionaries was to abstain on the with the rest of the British pseudo-Trotsky- Genuine Trotskyists, in contrast, have ing even vaguely “anti-capitalist,” much vote (including blank or spoiled ballots) ist left. It issued a leaflet titled “Jeremy Cor- remained consistent with our revolutionary less “socialist,” about it, this is the program and counterpose to it a class-struggle byn: Tony Blair’s Nightmare” (12 August program. The League for the Fourth Inter- of an emphatically pro-imperialist party. campaign for asylum for refugees and 2015), which said that “the demands raised national opposed Corbyn when he cam- The 2017 Labour Manifesto also criti- full citizenship rights for all immi- by the Corbyn campaign are supportable,” paigned to remain in the EU, and we op- cized the Tories for reducing the number of grants.” the only criticism being that “they cannot be pose him now when he calls to implement police by 20,000, declaring that “Labour –“The ‘Brexit’ Trap: British Left Caught achieved through old Labour parliamentari- Brexit. We oppose the NATO imperialist Between ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ in Euro- will recruit 10,000 more police officers” anism.” We wrote that “the ICL and SL/B military alliance, which Corbyn’s Labour pean Union,” The Internationalist No. in the name of “an effective anti-terrorism have become ‘critical’ Corbynistas.” Party supports. We called in September 44, Summer 2016 strategy.” “We will work with the police in By the next year, the “critical” veneer 2014 “For a Scottish Workers Republic in With Labour’s election platform there the performance of their duties,” it vowed. had disappeared altogether. In the face of a Socialist Federation of the British Isles” was no reason for class-conscious workers So don’t expect any criticism from Labour the attempt by Labour right-wingers to (The Internationalist No. 40, Summer to vote for this militarist, pro-police party. when police kettle and brutally beat dem- unseat him, the SL/B newspaper, Workers 2015) while Corbyn opposes Scottish inde- It was standard social-democratic fare, onstrators, as they did in the 2010 student Hammer (Autumn 2016), had the front- pendence and even promises to “tirelessly which only seems leftist when compared protests in London.2 And don’t expect op- page headline, “Let Jeremy Corbyn Run campaign” against a second referendum on with Tony Blair’s New Labour treachery. position to this point of the Manifesto from the Labour Party.” In the body of the ar- independence. The most concrete and consequential of the social democrats on the left fringe of La- ticle it proclaimed: “Jeremy Corbyn must The LFI fights to bring down both the proposed reforms, abolition of university bour, like the Socialist Party of England and be allowed to run the Labour Party, in his imperialist European Union and British im- tuition fees and the reintroduction of main- Wales of Peter Taaffe, or the Socialist Ap- own way” (emphasis in original). This was perialism through Europe-wide socialist rev- tenance grants for students, could be the peal group led by Alan Woods, both heirs of not “critical support,” as Lenin talked of olution. And that requires the leadership of a 2 See “Fury of Student Revolt Shakes Up Brit- 3 See “Her Majesty’s Social Democrats in Bed giving electoral support to Labour in some genuinely revolutionary, Leninist-Trotskyist ain,” The Internationalist No. 32, January-Feb- with the Police,” The Internationalist No. 29, circumstances “as a rope supports a hanged workers party built on the solid foundation of ruary 2011. Summer 2009. man.” This was full-throated political sup- Bolshevik internationalism. n 4 The Internationalist Mobilize NYC Labor to Smash Union-Busting De Blasio Administration Complicit in Closing of B&H Warehouses On January 12, the owners The answer is that the de of B&H Photo announced that Blasio administration wants to

the company plans to close its Internationalist Photo turn the Navy Yard into “Hol- two warehouses in Brooklyn and lywood on the East River” amid shift the work to a site in New an unprecedented boom of TV Jersey not far from Philadelphia. production in the city. The prime (The first of these closures is set tenant in the industrial park is to take place in July, the second Steiner Studios, with the largest in December.) This is a transpar- stage east of Los Angeles, nu- ent move to break the union or- merous sound stages and more ganization of the B&H workers, than 5 acres of backlot space. who won overwhelming victories Its main facility is right next to in representation elections at the the windowless hulk of Build- warehouses in late 2015, and a ing 664 where B&H immigrant few months later at the compa- workers toil. Four years ago, ny’s mid-Manhattan store. The Steiner was already expanding unionization of the largest inde- around B&H. Crain’s New York pendent supplier of photo and (20 October 2013) reported: video equipment in the United “When the company vacates its States was a stunning gain for current space in Building 664, immigrant workers in New York. Steiner Studios, the yard’s larg- But the bosses, who bitterly op- B&H workers demonstrate outside store on February 12 protesting plans to close Brooklyn est employer, will expand into posed the union drive, have been warehouses. The company move is a blatant attempt to avoid negotiating contract after the building with around 300 of working non-stop ever since to workers won union representation. its own employees.” undo their defeat. Now over 350 union the union called a protest outside the B&H cording to David Ehrenberg, the head of So the reality is that the city govern- workers stand to lose their jobs. emporium on Ninth Avenue and 34th Street the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Development ment under Democrat de Blasio is pushing The B&H owners’ brazen union-bust- in Midtown Manhattan. Some 150 demon- Corporation.” Yet the development corpo- the B&H warehouses out of their present ing plan is an attack on all NYC labor, and strators, workers from both Brooklyn ware- ration is a “real estate developer and prop- location. When the mayor named Cynthia all defenders of workers’ and immigrants’ houses and the Manhattan store along with erty manager of the Yard on behalf of its López New York City’s “film czarina” he rights. All-out mobilization of labor/immi- left, labor, student and community groups, owner, the City of New York” (brooklyn- did so at Steiner Studios, where they posed grant power is needed to stop it. marched in a cold drizzle. Workers donned navyyard.org). So the de Blasio adminis- with Bill’s pal, studio owner Doug Steiner. Facing long-standing abusive and un- t-shirts saying “I Am Union.” A USW tration knew of B&H’s plans to leave while At the ceremony López praised Steiner safe conditions on the job, B&H workers leader said that the union would follow the the company was pretending to negotiate a for “revitalizing” the area. And while de began organizing with the Laundry Work- company wherever it went. A spokesman union contract. Blasio has criticized tax breaks for other ers Center (LWC), and turned to the United for the Internationalist Group emphatically But more than that, the city could have industries, he is a fervent backer of such Steel Workers (USW) to win union repre- called to “bring out the unions, the Veri- renewed the lease for Navy Yard Build- giveaways to the film industry, which is the sentation. The LWC had earlier (in 2012) zon workers who were on strike last year, ing 664, the larger of the two Brooklyn main reason the number of TV shows shot helped win union recognition and a con- the Teamsters who came out to defend the warehouses of B&H (the other is on Ev- in NYC quadrupled over a decade, and the tract, including a union hiring hall, at a Hot Muslims at JFK [airport], the 32BJ work- ergreen Avenue in Bushwick). A company number of films increased by a factor of and Crusty bakery restaurant on Manhat- ers who clean these buildings, the hotel spokesman said “We have no choice when 10. The industry has showed its apprecia- tan’s Upper East Side. But when the con- workers, the restaurant workers” in power- it comes to our lease because it is ending tion by making contributions to de Blasio’s tract ran out, the owners suddenly closed ful labor solidarity. with no ability to extend it,” and that they favorite causes. the store (see “All Out to Stop Union-Bust- The IG speaker pointed to a crucial had worked “for several years” unsuccess- Currently de Blasio is under inves- ing at Bröd/Hot and Crusty!” The Interna- aspect of this fight for union rights and fully with Empire State Development to tigation by state and federal prosecu- tionalist, January 2016). The International- workers’ jobs: the fact that the adminis- find suitable space in NYC (Hyperallergic, tors over the financing of his 2013 elec- ist Group, Internationalist Clubs at the City tration of Democratic mayor Bill de Bla- 24 January). The idea that B&H couldn’t tion campaign. The owners of Broadway University of New York and Class Struggle sio has been complicit in the union-bust- find space in New York is hardly -believ Stages said they were asked for donations to the mayor’s Campaign for One New Education Workers actively supported the ing move. On February 13, the day after able, since the proprietor, Herman Sch- York (“The Cash Envelope, Please: Bill organizing drives at Hot and Crusty and at the protest outside B&H, de Blasio in his reiber, owns dozens of other properties in Put $queeze on Showbiz,” Daily News, B&H Photo (see “V-I-C-T-O-R-Y! B&H State of the City speech emphasized the the city. But why exactly couldn’t B&H continued on page 17 Workers in Big Win for Labor and Immi- need for “good-paying jobs,” the “kind of simply renew its lease at the Navy Yard? grant Rights,” The Internationalist No. 42, jobs that allow you to afford to live in New January-February 2016). York City.” This is also a key theme of B&H has been in contract negotiations the mayor’s reelection campaign. But the Internationalist Photo for well over a year with the USW, which city government of New York shares di- represents the workers. Yet during the pro- rect responsibility for the looming loss of tracted bargaining the company dragged its hundreds of jobs of unionized immigrant feet on presenting a wage proposal. Man- workers caused by a company that is flee- agement never mentioned the plan to move ing NYC precisely in order to avoid nego- the warehouses, which obviously was in tiating a contract that would substantially the works for months, until it dropped the raise their low pay! bombshell at a negotiating session in mid- B&H owns one of the warehouses – January. On February 13, the USW filed at 105 Evergreen Avenue – outright, which an unfair labor practice (ULP) complaint makes the union-busting nature of its plan with the National Labor Relations Board. to move warehouse operations all the more The B&H move is a transparent attempt to clear. At the time the move by B&H was avoid negotiating a contract. But NLRB announced, the company claimed it was complaints typically take years to settle, not able to find a new warehouse after its and then often end up in court, while soon lease on the building in the Brooklyn Navy enough the Trump administration will staff Yard expired this year. DNAInfo New York the agency with blatantly anti-labor ap- (13 January) reported: “The Navy Yard fa- pointees. cility will become a movie studio when the Internationalist contingent marches with B&H workers against union- The day before the USW filed its ULP, company leaves at the end of this year, ac- busting, February 12. May-June 2017 5 sought to bolster “the integrity of the pro- Dead” and “On Trial: The Sys- David Joles/Star TribuneDavid Black America... cess.” What the police murder of Philando tem. Verdict: Guilty.” Philando’s continued from page 1 Castile and its aftermath shows, however, mother, Valerie Castile, fervently is that in this capitalist system, the “rule of denounced injustice in Minne- lie. The cop later testified he stopped the law” is the embodiment of racist injustice. sota: “There has always been black man because the driver “resembled We are told that “Before Yanez, no of- a systemic problem in the state a suspect in a local convenience store rob- ficer had been charged in more than 150 of Minnesota. And me thinking bery a few days earlier.” What was the re- police-involved deaths in Minnesota since with my common sense, that we semblance? He said that as Castile drove 2000,” and that he was “the first Minne- would get justice in this case. But past, his nose reminded him of the nose sota police officer in modern history to be nevertheless the system contin- the black suspect in the robbery. His nose? charged with the shooting death of a civil- ues to fail us, the system contin- That “suspicion” was enough to pull him ian” (StarTribune, 17 and 18 June). That’s ues to fail black people and it will over and in a matter of seconds shoot him. supposed to inspire confidence in the “in- continue to fail you. When they As Philando was producing his driver’s tegrity of the process”?! The reality is that get done with us they are coming license and registration, as requested, he police are very seldom charged with any for you and you, y’all are next.” told the officer he had a gun. Reynolds told crime at all for killing a civilian, and almost That night angry protest- the officer that Philando had a permit. That never convicted. Since 2005, nationwide 82 ers headed to the I-94 highway was it. Yanez went off, began screaming and cops have been charged with manslaughter in St. Paul and shut it down for started shooting. He never saw a gun. All or murder for an on-duty shooting. That is several hours; 18 were arrested. the trigger-happy cop had to do was lie and less than half of 1 percent of the at least Last July, hundreds headed to Diamond Reynolds say he feared for his life. “Seventy-four sec- 16,000 civilians killed by police over that the Interstate to protest, and held it for six “budget” of capitalism’s police apparatus. onds after Yanez activated his squad lights, period. Of those charged, only 13 were con- hours. Over 100 were arrested as Democrat- In reality, the police are professional enforc- he fired the last of seven shots into the car,” victed, and only one for murder. ic-Farmer-Labor mayor Chris Coleman de- ers for the bourgeoisie. In 2014, Kshama Minnesota Public Radio reported. The federal government until recently nounced the protest as a “riot.” Charges of Sawant, SAlt’s city council member in Se- Even then, as Castile lay dying, the had no count of killings by cops around the third-degree unlawful assembly were later attle, praised the process of hiring a new po- cop kept screaming not to move. But the country, although it had a sketchy list of dropped, and an absurd bill to charge pro- lice chief, saying it was “positive … that a jury wouldn’t convict. Not on the minimal “justifiable homicides” by police. Since the testers in “disruptive” demonstrations with woman will be at the head of what has been charge of second-degree manslaughter (due massive protests over the police murders of the cost of overtime pay for the police who and still is a male-dominated bastion.” She to negligence), not even on lesser charges Eric Garner and Michael Brown in 2014, a arrest them was shelved. But in the end, hailed the new top cop’s “openness” and of dangerous discharge of a weapon. Hours number of independent Internet databases Philando Castile was murdered, killer cop “commitment to build a relationship with the after the acquittal, the city fired him, say- of police killings have been established, Yanez walked, and nothing has changed. community,” as well as her “tiered approach ing “the public will be best served if Of- including by the Washington Post and Not only in Minnesota. On June 21, a for policing protests,” so that riot police will 1 ficer Yanez is no longer a police officer in Guardian newspapers, and the websites jury in Milwaukee acquitted the cop who only be deployed “if absolutely necessary.” our city.” As if that would satisfy people. Mapping Police Violence, Killed by Police shot and killed Sylville Smith as he lay on So last week, when Seattle police shot So why did killer cop walk? There were and Fatal Encounters. The last is the most the ground. And on June 23, in Cincinnati and killed Charleena Lyles, 30, a pregnant some highly dubious prosecutorial decisions, complete, showing 1,760 police killings of for the second time a hung jury failed to black mother of two, fully aware that she was like not entering Yanez’ self-contradicting civilians in 2013, 1,703 in 2014, 1,545 in convict the trigger-happy cop who killed un- struggling with mental health issues, Sawant’s statement to state police authorities into 2015, 1,554 in 2016 and 749 so far in 2017. armed motorist Samuel DuBose in 2015. In response was to petition for a “community- evidence. And the jury was stacked against This is a horrendous slaughter, compa- each case, it was murder. In each case, it was based investigation.” She took the same tack conviction. A StarTribune profile listed an rable to that of an occupying military force. filmed. Cellphone cameras, police bodycams last year when Seattle cops gunned down an- older woman manager of a gas station with And it is racist to the core: the number of and dashcams have indeed changed matters – other African American, Che Taylor, calling a contract with the police who had pro-cop African American victims is proportion- now everyone can see the full horror of these for a hearing where the public could ques- posts on her Facebook page; a middle-aged ately two and a half times higher than the crimes. But it has not changed the impunity tion Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole. As if that white man who grew up around police, had a number of whites; black men are five times of the murderers in blue one iota. They have would solve anything. They can petition and nephew who is a cop and said it would be dif- as likely as white men to be killed by cops; a license to kill from their bosses, the capital- question and investigate all they want, but the ficult for him to be unbiased; a middle-aged and young black men are nine times more ist rulers, whether Republican or Democrat. racist killer cops keep on killing. It’s what they white female who had a high regard for po- likely to be gunned down than young white Various leftists and would-be socialists do, and will continue to do until the racist capi- lice; a retired white man who thought Reyn- men (Guardian, 31 December 2015). We have weighed in on the killing of Philando talist state is swept into the dustbin of history. olds’ Facebook video “seemed overly calm.” have noted before: “Like the death penalty, Castile. Socialist Alternative posted a June The Democratic Socialists of America More fundamentally, U.S. laws give the massive racist killing by U.S. police 16 statement on its website from Ginger (DSA) likewise calls for “greater commu- police “qualified immunity” from prosecu- goes back to the very foundation of Ameri- Jentzen, the SAlt candidate for Minneapo- nity control of policing,” urging that “police tion for actions in carrying out their official can capitalism on the basis of slave labor. lis City Council, who after condemning the intervention must be as restrained as pos- duties, and the Supreme Court has ruled that That bloody heritage continues to this day” verdict goes on to say, “We need restorative sible, with the use of firearms as an absolute even an imagined threat, as long as the cop (see “Democrats Are the Bosses of the justice, housing and jobs programs by taxing last resort.” And it calls for “Stronger gun “reasonably” believed it, is enough to justi- Racist Killer Cops,” The Internationalist the rich, to address the deeper social issues control policies, as well as severe restric- fy pulling the trigger. Ramsey County pros- No. 42, January-February 2016). that feed criminal and antisocial behavior, tions on police use of firearms” as part of a ecutor John Choi said “we gave it our best And this time it was not in Texas, Mis- like the violent robberies on the University “restructuring of the role of police” (state- shot” and that the jury’s decision “must be sissippi or Ferguson, Missouri – this was a of Minnesota campus last week.” How re- ment on DSA web site, 12 July 2016). To respected,” because that is the “premise of close suburb of St. Paul and its twin city, pulsive, in talking about the racist cop kill- pretend that the police can be “restructured” the rule of law.” He added that prosecutors Minneapolis. It was in the historically lib- ing of Philando to relate this somehow to a and “restrained” by a “radical democratic eral state (not so much any couple of muggings (reportedly by a “black change” is to build dangerous illusions in more) that prides itself on male and female”)! Who is SAlt appealing the reformability of capitalist rule. its reputation for congenial- to with this garbage? As for gun control, the hobby horse of ity, “Minnesota Nice.” Not On top of this, calls to “tax the rich” white liberals, this is a threat to black peo- so nice, after all, and not spread illusions that the vast inequality ple first and foremost. As Marxists we are the first time. The cop ex- of capitalism can somehow be altered by opposed to the capitalist state controlling ecution of Philando Castile tax reforms, while talk of “restorative jus- guns and are for the right of black armed came only a few months af- tice” implies that the injustice system can self-defense. A disarmed black population ter Minneapolis police shot be made more “people-friendly.” Throw would be even more vulnerable to the po- Jamar Clark in the head, in SAlt’s call for “elected civilian review lice, who are armed to the hilt. The pro- killing him, in November boards with real teeth: full powers over po- gram of social democrats like SAlt and the 2015. Fascists then shot lice department priorities, over the budgets, DSA is “color-blind” liberalism, reflected and wounded five protest- and with the ability to launch investiga- in their support for the presidential cam- ers at a Black Lives Matter tions.” It’s all a reformist pipedream, which paign of Democratic Party “socialist” Ber- encampment (see “Minne- never has been and never will be realized. nie Sanders, who never called to mobilize apolis: ‘Cops and Klan Go Why not? Because it ignores the basic char- against racist cop terror. On the acquittal of Hand in Hand’,” The Inter- acter of the capitalist state as an instrument the cop who killed Philando Castile, Sand- nationalist No. 42). of repression. Of who? Of us. Don’t believe ers said the justice system “has failed Afri- After the not-guilty ver- it? Look around, look at U.S. history. can Americans” and that “major reforms” dict was read out in court Socialist Alternative is a social-demo- were needed, “making certain that lethal on June 16, protesters went cratic outfit that incredibly holds that cops 1 See “Killer Cops, White Supremacists: Rac- CUNY Internationalist Clubs at speakout against to the state capitol with are workers. In addition, SAlt’s recipe would ist Terror Stalks Black America,” The Internai- racist terror, 30 August 2016. signs declaring, “Justice Is take responsibility for the “priorities” and tonalist No. 40, Summer 2015. 6 The Internationalist NYC Protest Against Muslim-Bashing Rally On June 10, anti-Muslim hate rallies would smash the unions and pave the way were held in 20 cities around the U.S., with for an unfettered corporate dictatorship. smaller-than-expected turnouts, ranging Craig Ruttley/AP They seek to obliterate the most basic rights from a few dozen to slightly over 100 at of everyone opposed to racism, of women, the high point in New York and Seattle. The gays and lesbians, of students and youth. rallies were called by ACT for America, an They are a threat to us all. Islamophobic outfit with close connections The city government and Democratic to the Republican Party. They featured alt- Party won’t stop them. Democratic mayor right fascists including Gavin McInnes, De Blasio has declared 170 “deportable founder of the Proud Boys frat rat fascists, offenses” for which NYC will collaborate who spoke in NYC. The New York rally with I.C.E. immigration police. He is op- was patrolled by the Oath Keepers, a viru- posing City Council bills to widen “sanc- lently anti-socialist militia mainly made up tuary city” limits on cooperation with the of ex-military and police. I.C.E. His “broken windows” policy causes In New York, the “anti-sharia” rally the arrest of over 100,000 people a year, was held in Foley Square between state and setting up thousands of immigrants for de- federal courthouses and the Federal Build- portation. And the NYPD alerts I.C.E. about ing. There were two separate NYC coun- immigrants’ court appearances. terdemonstrations, with a liberal crowd of a The fascists, Muslim-bashers and anti- couple hundred gathered in City Hall Park, immigrant racists feel they have a green several blocks away, and a leftist protest of Internationalists protest against anti-Muslim provocation in NYC, June 10. light for terror with Republican Donald several hundred directly across from the But now we are all being targeted ●● A week later, on May 20, African Trump in the White House. But don’t for- fascists. The International Socialist Orga- by outright fascists and violent race-hate American student Richard Collins was get that Democratic president Obama de- nization and the Revolutionary Communist groups of the “alt-right,” who have an- murdered by an “alt-right” fascist at the ported over 5 million immigrants (8 mil- Party shuttled in between the two protests. nounced they will hold a vicious Muslim- University of Maryland, in what has wide- lion if you include those stopped at or near The Internationalist Group, Class Struggle bashing action on June 10 at Foley Square ly been described as a lynching. the border), a record number. Education Workers and Trabajadores Inter- in Lower Manhattan. They claim the pur- ●● On May 25, nooses – a threat of lynch- In Portland, Oregon, eight area unions, nacionales Clasistas had called for a labor pose is to oppose the imposition of “sharia ing – were found at one of the main terminals including several construction workers mobilization to stop the anti-Muslim provo- law,” an entirely made-up threat. The real in the Port of Oakland in California. ILWU unions, the Carpenters regional council and cation. But no unions came out and we par- and obvious purpose of this “dog whistle” longshoremen walked off the job in protest. statewide teachers federation, have passed ticpated prominently in the leftist protest. is to attack all Muslims. As recent events ●● On the same day in New York, racists motions calling to bring out labor against the threat of reactionary racist forces. This We publish below our call for workers show all too clearly, this is a real and pres- including Islamophobe Pamela Geller, im- coming June 4, Portland labor activists are mobilization: ent danger to all working people. migrant-bashing provocateur Milo Yian- mobilizing to stop a fascist provocation It is crucial to bring out the power of nopoulos and fascists wearing body armor A Call on Labor to only nine days after last week’s double New York’s multiracial working class and and helmets staged a rally against CUNY murder. That should spur NYC labor to use Mobilize Against June 10 opponents of racist, anti-immigrant bigotry, for allowing well-known Arab American its power to shut down the June 10 Mus- rights activist Linda Sarsour to give a com- Anti-Muslim Hate Rally to shut down the fascists and their June 10 lim-bashing event. mencement speech. The fascists violently From the Internationalist Group, Class provocation. Already in February, Teamsters Joint Struggle Education Workers and Tra- Fascist rallies are not exercises in free assaulted counter-protesters. Council 16 set an important example when bajadores Internacionales Clasistas speech, they are staging grounds for lynchings. ●● On May 26, less than a month after a it demonstrated at JFK airport in defense of Sisters and brothers: That stopping fascist provocations is a matter race-hate rally was held in Portland, Or- Muslims. The Taxi Workers Alliance shut New York City is a union town, where a of life and death has been shown yet again by egon, a fascist who had prominently at- down airport service to protest Trump’s quarter of all workers are members of a labor escalating racist terror in recent weeks: tended it murdered two men and seriously Muslim ban. In strikes and organizing drives union. New York City is an immigrant town, ●● On May 13, “alt-right” fascist leader injured a third for standing up to him as he from Verizon and Spectrum Cable to B&H where over 40% of the entire population was Richard Spencer led a mob of hundreds screamed anti-Muslim insults and death Photo and AT&T Mobility, NYC workers born in another country. We have enormous rallying to “save Confederate monuments” threats against two young women on a train. have fought back in defense of our rights. potential power. Workers – black and white, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Imitating the NYC’s powerful labor movement must Now is the time to bring out the united Latino and Asian, Muslim and Jewish, born German Nazis, they marched with flam- not stand by while fascists try to bring their power of the working class in a massive la- here or abroad – make every wheel turn. ing torches, while waving the Confederate racist terror to our town. Fascists are the bor/immigrant mobilization to stop the fas- Nothing moves without our labor. battle flag of the slave-owners and KKK. deadly enemies of the working class. They cists here in New York on June 10. n force is the last response, not the first re- black police chiefs, black mayors, women for a few hours – the Twin Cities should to make a “popular front” with the Demo- sponse.” Where have we heard that before? police and police chiefs, gay police, dash- be shut down tight by strike action in the crats, chaining black people to the party Finally, the fact that the police who cams, bodycams, calls to jail killer cops, face of such racist atrocities. And the same whose mayors preside over police murder murdered Philando Castile, Sylville Smith etc. – are “not only utterly worthless in con- everywhere else in this nation blighted by across the country. Changing which capi- and Samuel DuBose were not convicted, trolling police violence, they actually serve murderous racism from before it was born. talist party is in office will not alter things. all in the space of one week, underscores to legitimize it” (see “Killer Cops, White It can happen. On May Day 2015, the We must fight instead to build the nucleus the disorienting effect of calls by various Supremacists: Racist Terror Stalks Black International Longshore and Warehouse of a multi-racial and multi-ethnic revolu- reformist leftists to “jail killer cops.” Cer- America,” The Internationalist No. 40, Union Local 10 shut down the Port of Oak- tionary workers party that can attack the tainly Jeronimo Yanez and the rest of them Summer 2015). The Internationalist Group land, California and marched on City Hall at scourge of racial oppression at its roots. should be locked up behind bars for the rest doesn’t peddle illusions of impossible re- the head of thousands behind a union ban- Kill-crazy cops are an expression of the of their lives. But as they go free along with forms to the nucleus of the capitalist state. ner demanding “Stop Police Terror.” What’s fact that American capitalism is based on the killers of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, We look to the working class, calling for la- key in bringing out the full power of labor to black oppression, the forcible subjugation Alton Sterling, Akai Gurley, Freddie Gray, bor/black/immigrant mobilization against smash this racist system is the understanding of the African American population which Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Terence Crutch- racist attacks, cop terror and deportations. that the police are the iron fist of the ruling has continued from the days of chattel slav- er and so many others, it should dawn on the Following the June 16 verdict, the class. These are the special bodies of armed ery through Jim Crow segregation to today’s pseudo-socialists that the ruling class is not St. Paul Federation of Teachers put out a men enforcing the dictates of capital that, as mass incarceration. Professional police in the about to lock up the snarling guard dogs that statement saying, “We are outraged that Marx, Engels and Lenin explained, are at the U.S. began as slave-catching patrols. The it depends on to uphold its rule. In the rare the justice system failed today, yet again.” core of state power. If there is outrage and racism that pervades every facet of cop activ- instances where some kind of verdict comes The teachers and other unions also pro- protest, their job is to repress it. The courts ity – from “stop and frisk” and “broken win- down against one, as with the Bay Area cop tested over the killing of Jamar Clark. This are part of the same machinery of the capital- dows” policing to rampant murder of black, who murdered Oscar Grant on New Year’s is important, but expressions of outrage ist state. Their role is to ensure that the cops Latino and immigrant “suspects” – is inher- Day 2009, it will be a slap on the wrist and alone will accomplish little. The Interna- can repress with impunity. ent in their function. The police “protect and they will be out in no time. tionalist Group has insisted on the need to Today the police kill with abandon un- serve” exploiters and oppressors by repress- It is the task of genuine revolutionar- mobilize the power of labor together with der Republican Trump. Yesterday they did ing the exploited and oppressed. Nothing ies to warn that all these supposed reforms all those targeted by police violence – Af- the same under Democrat Obama. Various short of workers revolution will change that. – community control, community policing, rican Americans, Latinos, immigrants and liberals and opportunist pseudo-socialists It is our job to cohere the most con- civilian review boards, disarming and de- all the oppressed to put a stop to this racist call to join together all protests in a broad scious and committed defenders of all the militarizing the police, more black police, terror. Not just shutting down the Interstate “resistance” to Trump. Meaning they want oppressed to organize that revolution. n May-June 2017 7 Enough is Enough: Stop the Scabs! Defeat the Cable Bosses! June 10 marked the the middle of the street to

75th day of the bitter strike Internationalist photo block traffic. Faced with a by 1,800 cable workers hundreds-strong rally of a in International Brother- union local with close to hood of Electrical Workers MobilizeMobilize TelecomTelecom && AllAll 30,000 members, the nor- (IBEW) Local 3 against mally belligerent NYPD Spectrum, formerly Time handled the burly street- Warner Cable. That’s NYC-Area Labor to blockers with gloves (lit- two and a half months NYC-Area Labor to erally), politely requesting on the picket line, with that they move back to the the hardships that entails. sidewalk, which the strik- The determination of the WinWin thethe SpectrumSpectrum StrikeStrike ers (joined by our contin- Spectrum workers is an gent) took their time in example to all defenders of doing. workers’ rights. More than Not long afterwards, that, this battle is a test an apparently disoriented for the entire labor move- scab drove down the street ment. New York-area in a Spectrum van, which union leaders have made was pelted by water bottles speeches about solidarity, and surrounded by angry while relying on empty strikers. Our comrades’ promises by Democratic chant of “Scabs must go!” politicians. But what’s was enthusiastically picked needed – and long over- up by the crowd, and a due – is for the unions to woman striker borrowed use their collective muscle Strike rally outside Spectrum headquarters in New York City, May 18. one of our placards to make now to help the Spectrum workers win. In April 2015, Comcast’s attempt to buy Instead, bringing together AT&T Mobil- her own sign with that slogan. Showing that Telecommunications workers have a Time Warner Cable was stymied by a threat- ity and Spectrum workers, and beefing up their job is to “serve and protect” the capi- vital stake in this fight. There are tens of ened federal antitrust suit. The following picket lines with Verizon workers and big talists’ profits and system of exploitation, thousands of them in the NY-NJ area – month, Charter Communications bought (not just symbolic) contingents from build- the police moved in to escort the scab away. their power must be mobilized in united Time Warner Cable for a cool $65 billion ing trades, hotel and restaurant, hospital, Just a few minutes later, the union tops shut action now, together with other key unions, and changed its name to Spectrum (which Teamsters and other key unions can stop down the rally. to help the Spectrum strikers win. This is a makes you wonder if little Charter is some the scabs, defeat the union-busters, and “Partnership of Labor case where solidarity is not just “the right kind of stalking-horse for Comcast). win this battle in the interests of the entire thing to do” but in the immediate interest For the past four years, the Spectrum workers movement. and Capital Is a Lie” of all workers in the telecom industry. For workers have been without a union contract, Being on strike this long is no joke. years, the telecom bosses have played di- and now Donald Trump’s administration “Scabs Must Go!” Spectrum workers are determined and angry, vide and conquer against the workers, us- vows ever-bigger rollbacks of regulations to On May 18, several hundred strikers facing a company that plays hardball in its ing a range of tactics from manipulating let big companies like Comcast run rampant and supporters held a boisterous mass rally attempt to grind them into the dirt. The fact technology expansion to subcontracting even more than they did under his Democrat- in front of the company’s main office on that the company can bring in several hun- and naked union-busting. We saw this in ic predecessors. In the face of the employers’ East 23rd Street in Lower Manhattan. Giv- dred strikebreakers in a union town like New last year’s Verizon phone workers strike offensive, it’s the understatement of the year ing a glimpse of the enormous potential York is outrageous. NYC labor can and must (see “Verizon Strike: A Fight for All Work- to point out that the labor movement has got power of the NYC-area labor movement, stop it. The presence of delegations of several ers,” The Internationalist, April 2016), in to use its power – or lose it. Strikes have to be the strikers packed both sides of the street, key area unions at strike rallies reflects the which the issue of Fios (high-speed fiber waged with a strategy to win. chanting, cheering and blowing hand-held fact that the Spectrum strike is an important optics) expansion was closely related to This past May, with the Spectrum strike horns. The IBEW strikers were joined by battle for workers throughout the city and the competition with cable companies. already in its fourth week, 21,000 AT&T delegations from HERE (hotel and res- country. To win it requires more than sym- Looming in the background is Com- Mobility workers struck over healthcare, taurant), RWDSU (retail and department bolic delegations and periodic mass rallies cast, which has been called “the worst com- sick days and other key issues. “This is the store), CWA, Utility Workers and other area to express workers’ anger and blow off some pany in America” (The Verge, 19 August biggest strike in the United States since unions. A contingent of City University of steam – it requires bringing out the power 2014), which is really saying something 40,000 Verizon workers walked out last New York students and adjuncts, organized of labor in mass pickets to stop the scabs given the competition for that title. Given year, and may be the biggest strike of re- by the CUNY Internationalist Clubs and and decisively defeat the company’s union- Comcast’s use of Walmart-style tactics to tail workers at a national company in U.S. Class Struggle Education Workers, was busting plans. block union organizing drives, the IBEW history,” noted the New York State AFL- greeted with clenched fists by the raucous A noteworthy aspect of the Spectrum brands it “one of the most anti-union com- CIO in a May 18 statement. Yet leaders of and energetic picketers, who also snapped strike is the multiracial and multiethnic panies in the telecommunications industry” the Communications Workers of America up 40 copies of The Internationalist. composition of the strikers, with a signifi- (The Electrical Worker online, July 2011). (CWA) limited the strike to just three days! Spectrum has been raking in the profits cant presence of women workers, which while its workers have gone without a con- is something of a departure for the union. tract since 2013. Charter’s first moves after For the labor movement to beat back the buying the company two years ago have decades-long offensive by the employers been broad attacks on the workers’ health- (which is about to escalate as court cases care, pensions and seniority rights together against public employee unions head to with a raft of other attempted take-aways the Supreme Court), it is essential to bring (on personal days, weekend overtime pay out their power in defense of immigrants, and many other issues). In line with this,

Internationalist photo against racist police brutality, and for the the company has taken aim at the workers’ rights of us all. union through increasing use of subcontrac- This is highlighted by the stamp of tors and seeking to effectively eliminate approval given to Spectrum by none other representation by shop stewards. Local 3 than Donald Trump. Days before the Spec- members report that they have been the vic- trum strike began on March 28, Charter tims of disciplinary actions by the company Communications made the news when its as a result of customer complaints about in- CEO, Thomas Rutledge, joined Trump, the frastructure and services, which Spectrum current CEO of American capitalism, for a refuses to update. press conference in the Oval Office. Com- Spectrum strikers are fed up with the pleting this rogues’ gallery was labor- and arrogant company bosses, and the sev- immigrant-hating Texas governor Greg eral hundred scabs they’re bringing in to Abbott, who was brought in to tout a Char- try to break the strike. At one point dur- ter call center opening in his state. Trump Internationalist contingent joins with Spectrum strikers. May 18. ing the May 18 rally, strikers poured into continued on page 22 8 The Internationalist Social Democrats Organized Diversion Against Efforts to Drive Fascists Out of Portland How Do You Spell Class Collaboration? ISO Ever since the election of Donald tivists,” and claim that this “allowed anti-

Trump last November, assorted white su- Twitter racist Portland to break through their fear premacists, anti-immigrant racists and out- and terror, to stand up to bigots.” In reality, right fascists have been staging confronta- the Facebook page for the reformist/liberal tions around the country.1 In several cases, rally had so many references to people be- the result has been inconclusive brawls ing “scared,” the need for a “safe rally,” between the relatively small fascist squads to be peaceful, to have a “family-friendly and poorly organized counterprotesters. In event” (really, bring kids?), that it amount- Portland, Oregon a “Trump Free Speech” ed to fear-mongering. event was nationally advertised for June The “Open Letter” objects to the accu- 4, with several of the more violent fascist sation of collaboration with the police, say- media celebrities invited. This was a gro- ing they merely asked for (and received) tesque provocation, especially after a local a permit for a rally on the steps of City Nazi murdered two anti-racists and severe- Hall, and got an agreement that the “police ly injured a third the week before as they would not wade into our rally,” and instead came to the aid of two young black women would rely on the rally’s “trained peace- he was threatening. keepers.” In fact, the City Hall rally orga- The June 4 alt-right event brought nizers relied on the line of police around Social-Democrat/Liberal rally at Portland City Hall, June 4. several hundred reactionaries from out of the fascist/racist event as their main line of town, but it was vastly outnumbered by up that resulted in coordinated resolutions by stop the fascists or build confidence that defense. The day before the event, the main to ten times as many anti-racist demonstra- eight area unions calling for “mobilizing we could stop them, that we were in com- local newspaper, The Oregonian (3 June), tors. At least 3,000 ringed Terry Schrunk against the clear and present danger that munication with the antifa protest organiz- reported: Plaza where the race-hate rally was held the provocations of racist and fascist orga- ers, and that a planning meeting would be “Cari Luna, the chair for Portland under the protection of an army of city, nizations pose to us all.” The first motion, held the coming Wednesday, May 31. In Democratic Socialists of America, said state and federal police. There were three initiated by CSWP members in Painters response, the overwhelming majority of organizers are ‘100 percent committed separate counterdemonstrations. The first (IUPAT) Local 10, was passed the week af- those present voted to build for the protest to a non-violent rally.’ The group is one was called by antifa (anti-fascist) groups ter Trump’s election. Then when the June 4 on June 4, and agreed to “fold their orga- of several co-sponsors for the event. in Chapman Square to the north; a second, race-hate provocation was announced, we nizing into the meeting on Wednesday.” “The organizers met with Portland to the east, by Portland Labor Against the proposed that the unions take the lead in Late on the afternoon of May 26 on police and [Mayor] Wheeler to discuss Fascists, initiated by Class Struggle Work- organizing protest against it. the MAX light rail line Nazi thug Jeremy keeping the rally peaceful, Luna said. ers – Portland (CSWP), called for unions We got an enthusiastic response. Christian carried out the murder of Ricky The demonstrators will not confront the right-wing protesters and police will to stop the racist provocation; but the third, CSWPers with the backing of Local 10 Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, provide a buffer between the two groups, by social democrats and liberals on the and IATSE (stage hands) Local 28 went and the near-murder of Micah David-Cole Luna said. Peacekeepers trained in de- steps of City Hall to the west, was called to the Northwest Oregon Labor Council Fletcher. At a vigil on Saturday the 27th, escalation tactics will also be present, explicitly to avoid confrontation with the (NWOLC) on Monday, May 22 with a res- Portland Labor Against the Fascists put out Luna said.” fascists. olution for such a mobilization. The recep- a statement and hundreds of fliers for the On the day of the event, the ISO distributed A number of observers and partici- tion from the labor bureaucrats was chilly. upcoming labor mobilization were handed an update for those who wanted to pants wondered why there were three dif- Still, we were able to make the case and out. Many in the crowd catcalled when “peacefully stand in opposition” to the ferent protests and if it wouldn’t have been the Council agreed to distribute the call to Mayor Ted Wheeler spoke. But after giv- bigots, complete with “our pledge to possible to prevent the fascist provocation all 52 affiliates of the NWOLC, which was ing in to having a rally against the racists non-violence” saying participants would from taking place at all. The International done. This was important in bringing out on June 4 instead of their original proposal be “nonviolent under all circumstances” Socialist Organization (ISO), the main or- members of at least 14 different unions at for the day after, the ISO then called for which would be read to the rally. ganizer of the reformist/liberal “Portland the labor mobilization on June 4. a meeting to plan a separate rally at the But this commitment to “non-vio- Stands United Against Hate” event at City However, barely an hour after the La- same time but at a different location, on the lence” had a sinister side to it. On June 1, Hall, wrote that: “Our counterdemon- bor Council meeting ended on May 22, Ja- steps of City Hall, deliberately dividing the the City Hall rally organizers e-mailed a stration was based on the belief that we mie Partridge, a retired Letter Carrier who forces of those opposing the fascists. letter to Portland Labor Against the Fas- wouldn’t have the numbers to either oc- was at the meeting, along with two other The ISO-initiated Portland Stands Unit- cists and to antifa “asking” that: cupy the plaza where the far right was ral- prominent supporters of the ISO in Port- ed Against Hate (PSUAH) emphasized that “a. You respect our commitment to have lying or push them out once they started, as land, sent out a call for a planning meeting it would be a “peaceful event.” It eventually a totally non-violent City Hall rally. the other two counterprotests wanted” (So- for a “vigil and rally” to be held “on a sep- pulled together a typical liberal/left “coali- “b. You respect our desire to have no cialist Worker, 12 June). Against this, we arate day (possibly the next evening) from tion” with a long list of endorsers including physical contact with the Joey Gibson in the Internationalist Group, which along the far-right’s rally to avoid placing people a number of religious groups, various liberal group [of Patriot Prayer and Warriors with the CSWP played a leading role in the in the middle of any possible violence” activist groups, two or three union locals, for Freedom, the groups sponsoring the labor mobilization, wrote: (our emphasis). This was a deliberate at- immigrant rights groups and the Democratic alt-right rally]. “With the racists vastly outnumbered tempt to undercut the labor mobilization. Socialists of America (DSA) and Socialist “c. You respect our Peacekeepers (or- and the Plaza surrounded on three sides, In a post-protest wrap-up article Alternative (SAlt). They sat down to coordi- ange vests) attempt to de-escalate any if it was not for the massive police (“How Did Portland Stand United Against nate with Mayor Wheeler, who is also police harassment, intimidation, provocation presence and the diversion by the liberals Hate?” Socialist Worker, 12 June), the ISO commissioner. After trying unsuccessfully or violence from whatever source. and reformist leftists who organized “d. You respect our security arrange- the City Hall rally in coordination slams Jesse Jackson for flying into town to to get the federal government to deny a per- declare that any protest should be on an- mit to the alt-right event, the mayor “opted ments with the Portland Police, which with the mayor/police chief, the racist include shutting down part or all of 4th other day. Jackson’s move, it wrote, was a instead for massive police deployment com- provocation by white supremacists and Avenue from Madison going south a “cynical maneuver to disorganize and de- bined with the City Hall ‘unity against hate’ Nazi lovers could have been stopped.” block or two, depending on the size of mobilize” any anti-fascist protest on June love-in,” as we wrote in our article on the –“Portland Labor Mobilizes to our rally. Stop Fascist Provocation,” The 4. Yet on May 22 the ISO proposed the anti-fascist protests. “We understand that, while you may not Internationalist, 8 June exact same thing, in a cynical maneuver In a post on the PSUAH Facebook intend to provoke violence, that you may So why the division? The main reason to disorganize and demobilize the protests page, an ISO document containing an physically respond to provocations from was the bitter determination of the ISO to calling to stop the fascists! “Open Letter” complains of “an irrespon- the police or Joey Gibson’s group. We undercut any effort to drive the fascists Portland Labor Against the Fascists sible and dangerous online smear cam- ask that you attempt to direct any con- out. The call by Portland Labor Against went to the May 26 planning meeting called paign” that it claims is spreading “lies and frontations with the police or Gibson’s the Fascists for a massive mobilization to by the ISOers. Sure enough, they proposed distortions” about their actions on June 4. group away from, not into, our space.” “stop the racists and fascists in their tracks” an event for June 5. Wael Elasady went They say that they didn’t expel any masked Let’s be clear: this letter is a lawyer’s brief to was the outgrowth of months of efforts on at length in opposition to antifa strat- antifa activists and that only one person use in case their “explicitly peaceful,” police- egy of physically confronting the fascists. had an “all lives matter” sign, which may “buffered” event should experience some 1 See “Donald Trump, the ‘Alt-Right’ and Fas- cism,” The Internationalist No. 46, January- The spokeswoman for the labor mobiliza- be true. They emphasize their rally had the altercation, in which case the labor and antifa February 2017, and “Milo Yiannopoulos, ‘Free tion explained that organizing was already “explicitly stated goal rejecting a strategy protests could be blamed for the “violence.” Speech’ and the Assault on Universities,” The underway for a June 4 protest, that having of physical confrontation between the far This shameful letter is a set-up for repression. Internationalist No. 47, March-April 2017. a rally the next day would do nothing to right and a relatively small number of ac- continued on page 22 May-June 2017 9 menacing. The racist double murder shook Portland Labor... Internationalist photo liberal Portland’s smug self-image to the continued from page 1 core. Yet this is the whitest major city in The labor mobilization stood its ground the U.S. and in the not-so-distant past it to the very end, with non-stop chants and was a hotbed of fascist skinheads. The state speeches that reverberated throughout Ter- of Oregon was founded as a “racist white ry Schrunk Plaza and the surrounding area utopia,” in the words of an analyst of black for over six hours. Worker activists stood history in the Pacific Northwest, and had a proud and loud behind their union banners host of “sundown” towns with laws to keep until the last of the racist and fascist scum out black people and other non-whites (see exited on buses protected by the police. “Portland’s dark history of white suprema- This marks the first significant working- cy,” Guardian [U.S. edition], 31 May). class action in the U.S. against white suprem- On the evening of May 27, an emo- acists in decades. The importance of this tional vigil brought well over 1,000 people mobilization goes beyond denouncing the to the Hollywood transit center where the few hundred reactionaries across the street, racist lynching took place. Jackson spoke and the horrific lynch murder by one of their in the name of the CSWP, saying she had number nine days earlier. June 4 was an im- The June 4 labor mobilization in Portland stood its ground for over six just returned from the hospital and would portant first step in bringing out the power hours, until the last of the fascists departed. never forget how she saw Micah being of Portland’s labor movement in defense of people’.” Oregon Public Radio reported on gust, calling to break with the Democrats wheeled out of surgery with a deep gash working people, immigrants, Muslims and June 3: “Jackson said her group intended and Republicans and for a class-struggle from the stab wound in his neck. She said, all those targeted by the all-round reaction- to ‘stop the fascists from turning Portland workers party. An official IUPAT banner “On June 4 there are white supremacists, ary offensive coming out of Washington. It into a staging ground for even more violent with those calls was front and center in fascist organizers, coming to town. We points to the potential for organizing work- racist anti-immigrant attacks.’” the June 4 labor mobilization. This under- cannot let fascism organize in our streets ers defense guards that could send the fascist In the aftermath of the Sunday protests, scored that while nativist fascists like the [and] march in our streets. We have to say vermin scurrying back into their holes. And the bourgeois press as always focused on Ku Klux Klan and other violent racists ‘no’!” When Mayor Ted Wheeler spoke, it sharply posed the need for a workers party violence, blaming the antifas for the police have been emboldened by Trump’s win, many booed. Portland Labor Against the fighting to overthrow the capitalist system assault. Regarding the labor protest, The Or- the police power that has backed them up, Fascists and the Pacific Northwest Anti- that breeds fascism, and to replace it with the egonian reported, “Union organizers gath- in Portland and elsewhere, was greatly ex- Fascist Workers Collective passed out hun- liberating rule of the working class. ered on a Southwest Third Avenue sidewalk panded under Democrat Barack Obama. dreds of leaflets to the crowd. and chanted across the street, ‘Immigrants Months of Work Leading The motions for union action against As Portland reeled under the shock of are here to stay! Nazi scum, go away!’” The the racists and fascists and for a workers the hideous murders, thousands of Portland- Up to Labor Mobilization Washington Post noted that “labor union party were first presented by supporters of ers wanted to take action to stop the killing. The big business press “even-hand- members clad in helmets and safety vests Class Struggle Workers – Portland, a ten- However, this effort was undermined by a edly” described the hours-long confronta- screamed: ‘Racists! Murderers! Fascists dency of labor militants which works fra- diversion at City Hall organized by the so- tion as “dueling protests” (The Oregonian). out of Portland!’” The Seattle Times wrote, ternally with the Internationalist Group. The cial democrats of the International Socialist “The many extremes of Portland collide in “Meanwhile, a group called ‘Portland Labor CSWP also initiated Portland Labor Against Organization (ISO) along with various lib- protest,” said CNN. The Washington Post against Fascists’ organized a fourth rally. the Fascists in mid-May calling for unions erals in collaboration with city authorities, talked of counter-protests against a “free That protest formed just east of the free- to mobilize to stop the racist rally on June which explicitly opposed confronting the speech rally.” These mouthpieces for official speech rally as hundreds of people lined a 4, a proposal which was quickly embraced fascists. Mayor Wheeler, who is also po- ruling-class opinion peddled the white su- narrow strip of pavement.” by their and other unions. It was publicized lice commissioner, initially tried to get the premacists’ claim that they were just defend- These unions that participated in this through the Northwest Oregon Labor Coun- federal government to ban the racist rally. ing constitutional rights. Countering this labor mobilization are acutely aware of cil, although leadership of the state AFL- When that was denied, he opted instead for sinister ploy, the call issued on May 24 by how racist attacks are used to divide and CIO turned its back on the action.2 massive police deployment combined with Portland Labor Against the Fascists warned: weaken labor. As the mobilization call Racist Double Murder Shocks the City Hall “unity against hate” love-in. “They pretend to defend ‘free speech.’ This stated: “Fascists are the deadly enemies of Yet despite warnings of all-sided violence, is a lie…. The poisonous race-hatred they the working class. They would smash the Portland to the Core as noon approached on Sunday, you could spew out spawns lynchings. They must be unions and pave the way for an unfettered The urgency of labor action against see many people walking across the bridg- 1 stopped.” Two days later, the Nazi racist, corporate dictatorship. That is why Port- the racists and fascists sharply escalated es to downtown Portland with homemade well-known to Portland police, carried out a land-area labor and unions in the Pacific following the May 26 murder of two cou- signs to protest the racists. lynch murder on the MAX train. Northwest and beyond have resolved to rageous men, Ricky Best and Taliesin At the labor mobilization, organizers The major media tried to disguise the use our power to stop them.” Meanwhile, Myrddin Namkai-Meche, and near-murder emphasized the vital importance of bringing huge disparity in numbers, but Willamette as occurred after the 9/11 attacks, the esca- of Micah David-Cole Fletcher, by a local out the enormous strength of the working Week noted that “the socialists, labor unions lating hysteria is being used to step up re- Nazi, Jeremy Christian. They had come class, chanting “Drive the Nazis out! Port- and anarchists who showed up today … out- pression. The Amalgamated Transit Union to the aid of two young African American land labor has the clout!” “Portland, this is numbered the right-wing extremists by as representing workers of the TriMet system women, one of them a Muslim wearing a the hour – immigrant/black/union power!” much as 10 to 1.” The antifa mobilization in directly affected by the murders on the hijab (Islamic scarf), who the killer was and “We’re here to shut the Nazis down, Chapman Square and the “Portland United MAX light rail train issued a May 31 state- 2 Portland is a union town!” In opposition to Against Hate” rally at City Hall numbered ment opposing the city’s ominous plan to For more information on the CSWP initia- tives and program, see its publication Bridge the massive police mobilization, protest- well over 1,000 people each. The bosses’ put police officers on trains and buses. The City Militant and other articles on its web site: ers shouted, “Fascist terror we must stop – press gave little play to the labor action, bas- statement read in part: https://csw-pdx.org/. Don’t beg the mayor, don’t beg the cops!” ing themselves on the numbers of who said “In addition to our support for victims they would attend on Facebook pages. Yet and survivors, we also wish to express the labor action was not organized on the our strong opposition to the reactionary The Oregonian Internet and social media but through the proposal from TriMet management and unions themselves, and some 300 unionists others to increase the presence of armed and supporters came out, chanting for hours police officers aboard our transit system until the racists climbed on buses heading in the wake of this horrific tragedy…. back out of Portland. [E]xperience has taught us that armed As tension mounted daily in the run- police officers aboard transit vehicles intimidate the public….” up to June 4, the Willamette Week (31 May) The union called for a “demilitarized, de- published a story headlined “Organized La- criminalized public transit system” and re- bor Groups Pledge Show of Support (And iterated its position for free public transit. Muscle) on June 4.” The Oregonian (1 The June 4 labor mobilization was the June) quoted Ashley Jackson, spokeswom- result of months of work. The initial motion an for Portland Labor Against the Fascists: calling for union action against the fascists “When asked about the mayor’s calls for was passed on November 16 by Painters non-violence, Jackson said ‘we can’t rely Local 10, in response to the explosion of on the city or the government to stop these racist attacks following the election a week 1 See the Portland Labor Against the Fascists earlier of Republican Donald Trump as leaflet online at: http://www.internationalist. president. This followed the groundbreak- org/pdxlaboragainstfascistscall1705.pdf ing resolution passed by Local 10 last Au- Paramilitary police mobilization protected the fascists in Schrunk Plaza. 10 The Internationalist And they stressed the need for labor to take spawned these murders, the double mur- up the fight against all forms of social op- der and near murder of the brave people Natalie Behring/Getty Images pression, chanting “Muslim rights, union who stood up for Muslim women. rights, same struggle, same fight, workers “It’s necessary to mobilize our power of of the world, unite!” This message was re- the working class, politically – because peated over and over for black rights, wom- this is directed against immigrants. en’s rights, gay rights, trans rights, abortion Trump says he wants to deport 11 mil- rights and immigrant rights. lion immigrants. Under Obama, the Democrats already deported 5 to 8 mil- The chants were taken up by the lion immigrants. crowd and boomed out by the mobile “We need to organize our own class par- sound system put together by union work- ty, a workers party, and it has to be in- ers. Demonstrators called out the names of ternationalist, [it] has to defend Muslims, our martyrs Ricky Best and Taliesen Nam- blacks, women, and it has to be a party kai-Meche, Mulgrew Seraw (an Ethiopian with a revolutionary program to over- student murdered by white supremacists throw this capitalist system which we in Portland in the 1980s), Richard Collins are seeing in action right now. We need a (the black student stabbed to death by a revolutionary workers party, and workers racist at the University of Maryland only united action. In the 1930s Trotsky called two weeks ago), Larnell Bruce (the young for workers united action. That is what African American run down by a white su- we need today, and not just against the premacist in nearby Gresham last August), fascists but also against the defenders of Billed as a “Trump Free Speech Rally” the plaza was chock full of neo-Nazis Matthew Shepard (the gay man tortured to the capitalist state.” and paleo-fascists who thirst for genocide, all under police protection. death in Wyoming), James Byrd (the black Then as the fascists and racists in tion Force police then moved in to arrest the the ruling class does not feel immediately man dragged to his death by white suprem- Schrunk Plaza cheered the police assault anti-racist, and the III Percenter who was threatened by a radicalized working class, acists in Texas) and Trayvon Martin, mur- on the antifascists, chanting “U.S.A., chasing him pulled a zip-tie handcuff from mainly due to the sabotage of struggles by dered by a racist vigilante in Florida. U.S.A.,” celebrating and lusting for blood the federal agent’s belt and handed it to the the pro-capitalist bureaucratic misleaders The most class-conscious union mili- after each explosion or shot rang out, the agent. This happened across the street from of labor. Still, “actual fascists are crawling tants took up the chants to “Break with the labor protesters responded chanting “Fas- the Portland Labor Against the Fascists demo out of their holes and looking forward to Democrats – Build a workers party!” and cists out! Fascists out!” and on videos you can hear incensed union the Trump years” (see “Donald Trump, the “Remember Hiroshima, remember Vietnam Sinister Fascists supporters loudly yelling, “Racists! Murder- ‘Alt-Right’ and Fascism,” The Internation- – Democratic Party, we know which side ers! Fascists out of Portland!” alist No. 46, January-February 2017). you’re on.” The fact that many protesters do in Schrunk Plaza Still, with the racists vastly outnumbered Both in the 1930s and today, the not yet understand the nature of the Demo- Many of the participants in the June 4 and the Plaza surrounded on three sides, if it growth of fascism was/is a result of capi- cratic Party underscores the need to explain, “Trump Free Speech Rally” may have been was not for the massive police presence and talist economic crisis. Since the 2007-2008 as a CSWP member did on the mike, the your run-of-the-mill white-supremacist the diversion by the liberals and reformist crash we are in an ongoing worldwide right-wingers, but the motley leftists who organized the City Hall rally in depression. Despite lying government crowd of a few hundred was shot coordination with the mayor/police chief, the statistics, there are still tens of millions through with neo-Nazis, paleo- racist provocation by white supremacists and of unemployed. This has bolstered fas- fascists and militias. The Van- Nazi lovers could have been stopped. The cist parties like Golden Dawn in Greece couver, Washington man who significant turnout of union members and and the National Front in France, and has called the rally, Joey Gibson, supporters on June 4 in a labor action against spawned new fascist outfits in the U.S. As has two fronts, Patriot Prayer the fascists, unprecedented in recent years, Trotsky wrote of Hitler’s Nazis in Germa- (which also called the April 29 shows the potential. And there will certain- ny: “Through the fascist agency, capitalism rally where the murderer Jer- ly be a next time, as decaying capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed pet- emy Christian was giving Nazi spawns the fascist gangs who would destroy ty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed salutes and calling to “kill Mus- the organizations of labor and unleash deadly and demoralized lumpenproletariat – all lims”) and his militia, Warriors violence against all the oppressed. the countless human beings whom finance for Freedom, LLC. Among the capital itself has brought to desperation Hitlerites were the Traditionalist Trotsky on the Struggle and frenzy” (“What Next? Vital Questions Bryan M. Vance/Oregon Public Broadcasting Bryan M. Vance/Oregon Workers Party with its “Diver- Against Fascism for the German Proletariat” [1932]). sity = White Genocide” signs There has been lots of loose talk on the The capitalist rulers resort to these terror and Identity Evropa, whose lo- left labeling Trump a fascist. The Maoists gangs to preserve their endangered rule. That Cops and fascists go hand in hand, literally. cal rep was photographed shak- of the utterly reformist Revolutionary Com- the fascists are not just some “fringe groups” “III Percenter” militia member helps police ing hands with Christian on the munist Party (RCP) and its RefuseFascism. or “fight clubs” was underscored by the recent arrest anti-racist. April 29 march . org liberal front group call to “drive out the statement by the top Republican official in role of this capitalist party in fostering war, The self-promoting social-media fascists fascist Trump/Pence regime.” In practice Portland that his party was considering using racism and attacks on the unions. Then, just “Based Stickman” (Kyle Chapman from the that means bringing back the Democrats. militias, “like the Oath Keepers and the Three as the police moved to drive out the antifa Bay Area), “Based Spartan” (Pat Washington So the “fascist” label serves to justify an Percenters,” as a “security force” for public militants in Chapman Square with volleys of from Seattle) and “Baked Alaska” (Tim Gio- “anti-fascist popular front” with another events rather than relying on police (Guard- flash-bang grenades and tear gas, a speaker net, originally from Anchorage) flew in to sign section of the capitalist ruling class. But ian [U.S. edition], 29 May). And the fact that for the Internationalist Group declared: autographs for their alt-right fans and prance as we wrote earlier this year, “being a vi- newly formed fascist groups are forming “We have to know who are our friends around for the cameras. But there were also cious anti-Mexican, anti-Arab, anti-black squads to attack antifa groups, like Chap- and who are our enemies. We cannot sinister fascist “Patriot” militias, the “Oath race-hater, a sexist and national chauvinist, man’s “Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights” linked rely on the police to clear out the fas- Keepers” and the “III Percenters” in olive a union-basher and advocate of unfettered to the “Proud Boys,” or the “DIY Division” cists. We’re looking right now as the drab, who patrolled Schrunk Plaza on June 4. police power, does not in itself make Trump that appeared with swastikas at a pro-Trump police are attacking hundreds of people These paramilitary groups boast of many ac- a fascist.” We noted that in the U.S. today, “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) rally who came out here to say the fascists tive-duty police and ex-military, and the thugs there is not a mass fascist movement, since in Orange County, California in March, un- have no place in Portland. The people with yellow stripes on who called for a counter-demonstration

their makeshift uniforms Monad Press that was not going to try to stop the fas- worked closely together cists, collaborating with the police and with the police. with the mayor, are undercutting the necessary struggle. This is now well- “So we’re watching here today the capi- documented with mul- talist state in action. We need to mobilize tiple videos and photos. the power of our class, of the working In one case, a slightly class, to be able to throw the fascists out, built anti-racist who had to drive them out of Portland. The people ventured into Schrunk who were rallying over there [the antifa Plaza ran from a helmet- protest in Chapman Square] are on the ed III Percenter and was side of the working class. They’re op- slammed to the ground posed to the fascists, and the state has by a Warriors for Free- Threatened by Silver Shirt fascists, in August 1938 the Trotskyist-led Minneapolis truck drivers protected this racist scum over here [in dom leader. Homeland formed a Union Defense Guard (above) that drove the fascists out of town. The U.S. later charged Schrunk Plaza], the same people that Security Rapid Protec- them with “sedition” for their revolutionary opposition to the imperialists’ World War II. May-June 2017 11 derscores that they are gearing up (“Donald Trump, the ‘Alt-Right’

for violent street-fighting, and ulti- Internationalist photo and Fascism”). mately civil war. The June 4 action was a major The fascists use vulnerable achievement for class-conscious sectors as scapegoats. In Ger- workers in Portland, demonstrat- many the Nazis demonized Jews ing that workers action is possible, as the “enemy within.” In the gaining political authority and car- U.S.A. today, their prime targets rying out the political program are Muslims, immigrants and put forward by the International- African Americans. And they are ist Group of working-class mo- deadly dangerous. In November bilization against the racists. This 2015, a III Percenter shot five mobilization should spur workers people at a Black Lives Matter and those who would oppose the encampment in Minneapolis pro- race-haters and immigrant-bashers testing the cop killing of Jamar to action throughout the U.S. and Clark. This underscores the need beyond. As the first significant la- for class-struggle militants to re- bor mobilization against fascists in double efforts to build effective the U.S. in decades, it sets a starting workers mobilizations to drive point for building workers defense out the ultra-rightist racist and guards against the white-suprem- fascist thugs. As the Nazi fascists Class Struggle Workers – Portland presented motions for a workers party and for workers acist gangs. And as the banners of were threatening to seize power mobilization to stop fascist and racist provocations, as well as initiating Portland Labor the CSWP and the Painters union in Germany, the Bolshevik revo- Against the Fascists. highlighted, to unchain the power lutionary Leon Trotsky urgently of the working class it is essential called on Communists and Socialists and Hall rally on June 4 represented: an alli- Only Workers Power Can to break with the Democrats and Republicans, the unions to join in united-front actions to ance with the Democratic Party mayor Smash the Fascists and build a class-struggle workers party. stop these killers who would sweep away against trying to stop the fascists. Today, following the election of Donald June 4 is only a beginning. We were all the rights and gains won by the workers Trotsky wrote in the Transitional Pro- Trump, a new generation of fascists are rais- aided by our collective past experience in movement and with them the last vestiges gram (1938), the founding document of ing are heads. They are still small in num- organizing to stop the fascists in the U.S. in of bourgeois democracy. the Fourth International, that “‘People’s bers, and can be crushed. But sheer numbers the 1980s and to defend immigrants against Fronts’ on the one hand – fascism on the Tragically, these warnings went un- of opponents are not enough. So long as the Nazi threats in Germany in the early 1990s. other: these are the last political resources heeded, and Hitler took power in 1933, unions and black, women’s, gay and immi- We also learned a lot in the course of the in- of imperialism in the struggle against the voted in by parliament without resistance grant rights organizations are bound to the tense activity of the last two weeks. A key by the Stalinists and social democrats. proletarian revolution.” He went on: challenge in the coming struggles will be to “The struggle against fascism does not Democratic Party, they cannot defeat the fas- The next year, as provocations by fascists cists, for the violent partisans of Trump have greatly expand the core of marshals coming and other ultra-rightists erupted in France, start in the liberal editorial office but in from several unions and to undertake system- the factory – and ends in the street. Scabs the same class interests as Obama, Clinton Trotsky wrote insistently that to counter the atic training. Building an organized workers and private gunmen in factory plants and Bernie Sanders: they all defend capital- fascist gangs, “what is needed is a work- defense will be crucial not only against the are the basic nuclei of the fascist army. ism. Writing in the lead-up to the Novem- ers’ militia.” He explained: “The struggle Strike pickets are the basic nuclei of the ber elections, we called for a revolutionary fascists but also in the struggle to stop the de- against Fascism is basically a political proletarian army. This is our point of de- workers party with a program of sharp class portations of immigrants, as well as to defend struggle which needs a militia just as the parture. In connection with every strike struggle, including “for workers defense Muslims, blacks, Latinos, women, gays and strike needs pickets. Basically, the picket is and street demonstration, it is impera- guards to defeat strikebreakers and fascist lesbians against the forces that spewed their the embryo of the workers’ militia” (L.D. tive to propagate the necessity of creat- gangs” (“The Election From Hell, Whoever venom in Schrunk Plaza on Sunday. Trotsky, Whither France? [1934]). Yet, he ing workers’ groups for self-defense. It Wins, We Lose,” The Internationalist No. 45, Above all it is necessary to wage the vi- added, “The militia in itself does not settle is necessary to write this slogan into the September-October 2016). tal political struggle against the labor bureau- the question. A correct policy is necessary.” program of the revolutionary wing of the The Internationalist Group has con- cracy and reformist misleaders who would And that requires above all the leadership trade unions.” tinued to fight for workers mobilization tie the workers to the Democratic Party and of a revolutionary workers party with a pro- These were not just words on paper. against the fascists, and for building work- rely on the very police who protected fascists gram to sweep away the capitalist system The Trotskyists in Minneapolis, who at the ers defense guards. In our article written and arrested the anti-fascists, and to forge a which breeds and makes use of the fascists. head of a Teamsters local waged a success- the day after the election, we warned: “As revolutionary workers party to lead the so- Yet the policy of the Stalinists and ful general strike in 1934, formed a union violent racist and outright fascist forces are cialist revolution that alone can wipe out the social democrats was instead to form defense guard that ran the Silver Shirts, a emboldened by Trump’s victory, Muslims scourge of fascism, once and for all. The wel- “anti-fascist popular fronts” chaining the fascist gang sponsored by big business in- and Middle Eastern immigrants in particu- fare, safety and very lives of working people workers to the supposedly “democratic” terests, out of town. (A few years later, in lar may be singled out for attack. Class-con- and the oppressed in Portland and elsewhere bourgeois parties that everywhere served 1940, the government jailed the Minneapo- scious militants should begin the work now depend on successfully waging and winning as a roadblock to prevent revolution, lead- lis Teamster leaders on trumped-up charges of building workers defense guards, based this key class battle. ■ ing to bloody defeats at the hands of fas- over the defense guards, and then the next on the mass organizations of the working cists and militarists, from Spain and France year imprisoned the Trotskyist leaders for class and oppressed, to counter this threat” Just Out!Get your copy today in the 1930s to Chile in the 1970s. On a their revolutionary opposition to the impe- (“Post-Traumatic Election Shock: Defeat vastly smaller scale, that is what the City rialist Second World War.) Trump … And the Democrats, Fight for Workers Revolution!” The Internationalist No. 46, January-February 2017). As with the Trotskyists in the 1930s, our revolutionary program is not empty rhetoric but a guide to action. In the Pacific North- west, as reports circulated of plans for race-

Internationalist photo hate rallies by fascist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, members of Class Struggle Workers – Portland put forward the resolution passed by Painters Local 10 to mobilize against provo- cations by the KKK and other racist forces. As we wrote earlier this year: “Revolutionists should seek to organize mass labor-centered mobilizations to crush the fascist provoca- teurs as they attempt to make forays into ur- ban centers of the multiracial working class.” The June 4 labor action is the product of that effort. And as we noted then: “In the context of such a mobilization, a squad of demonstra- To order a copy send $5 by check or tion marshals could become the nucleus for money order to: Mundial Publications, Painters and Drywallers Union Local 10 calls to break with all the bosses’ labor-based defense guards that can effec- Box 3321, Church Street Station, New parties and for a workers party. tively disperse the lynchers and Nazi scum” York, NY 10008, U.S.A. 12 The Internationalist U.N. Get Out! Haitian, Dominican and U.S. Workers, Unite to Smash Imperialism! Haitian Workers Brave Repression in Fight Against Starvation Wages Since the beginning of the year, work- ers in Haiti have sharply stepped up strug-

gle against the wage-gouging bosses of Rapid Response Network the garment industry. They have walked out to protest firings of labor organizers and struck for a huge hike in the minimum wage, presently set at 360 gourdes (the Haitian currency), or US$5.50 a day. On May Day, garment workers unions in the four main factory areas announced that they were demanding an increase to 800 gourdes. Even that, more than double the present rate, would only raise daily pay to $12.60, not even remotely enough to live on. But just to win such minimal demands and, more broadly, to combat the starva- tion wages imposed on Haitian workers by imperialist capitalism requires active soli- darity by labor and working people in the United States. On Friday, May 19, workers in several plants in the SONAPI industrial park in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince walked out demanding 800 gourdes. They set out on a march toward the Presidential Palace, but were stopped by a wall of police. Mean- while, the bosses’ Association of Indus- Striking workers from SONAPI industrial park in Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince are blocked by police as they tries of Haiti (AIDH) unleashed a barrage march toward Toussaint Louverture Airport. They are demanding that the minimum wage be more than doubled. of anti-strike propaganda, falsely accusing beat women strikers. Workers fled from was against adjusting the minimum wage” Starvation Wages “militants and trade-unionists” of “beating the factories, fearing for their lives. Many (Le Nouvelliste, 29 May). He cynically Imposed by Washington the workers to get them to leave the plants.” were arrested, while those who could es- shifted the blame to Haitian president Jo- The next day, the bosses closed dozens cape headed to the hall of the SOTA-BO venel Moïse, who, in between jet-setting to Wages in Haitian factories are the low- of plants – a lockout – while 4,000 work- union, which organizes garment workers Miami, Ecuador and Mexico, said he had est in the Western hemisphere. And while ers blocked the road to the airport, located in Port-au-Prince and Carrefour. That same no intention of getting involved in discus- the daily minimum is supposedly for an next to the industrial park. On Monday, the day, workers at the Caracol industrial park sions about raising the wage. eight-hour workday, it is a piece-rate wage strike spread to the CODEVI industry park in the north joined the strike, led by their Moïse passed the buck to the Higher and garment workers generally have to at Ouanaminthe on the border with the Do- union, SOVAGH, the “Textile Union of Council on Wages (CSS), whose members work 12 hours or more in order to make the minican Republic, where thousands walked Valiant Workers.” he appoints. This is just another trap for la- daily quota. That works out to a miserable out, and to plants in the industrial area of SOTA-BO, SOVAGH and SOKOWA bor, to drag out the dispute while workers 45 cents an hour, not even enough to put Carrefour, just south of the capital (Rapid in Ouanaminthe are part of the PLASIT- suffer from the ravages of inflation, partic- food on the table. In reality, most Haitian Response Network, 22 May). BO coalition of garment unions affiliated ularly of sharply increased prices for trans- garment workers make considerably less In response, police stepped up repres- with the May First Union Federation led by portation and basic necessities. But Haitian than that. A U.S.-funded survey of 24 of sion, firing volleys of tear gas and rubber the leftist Batay Ouvriye (Workers Strug- garment workers do have power: their la- the main garment and textile plants (Better bullets at strikers. Workers at the SONA- gle) syndicalist group. Together the unions bor produces fabulous profits not only for Work Haiti: Garment Industry 6th Bian- PI factory complex returned on May 23, kept up “Operasyon Bra Kwaze” (Opera- the small-time Korean and Haitian factory nual Synthesis Report [April 2013]) found but many just sat at their stations with tion Folded Arms), taking to the streets by owners but for the huge “multinational” their arms folded, refusing to sew. At that

the thousands again on May 29. Feeling the corporations who buy their products. The Rapid Response Network point the bosses brought CIMO riot po- heat, the head of the AIDH industrialists 40,000 workers, overwhelmingly women, lice into the plants, where they viciously association claimed “I have never said I in the textile/garment industry produce 90% of Haiti’s exports. On June 16, the unions announced they were pausing the action in order to reorganize for the next round of struggle. That round will inevitably go up against the imperialists who rule over Haiti, and their flunkey in the presidential palace in Port-au- Internationalist photo Prince. More than almost any other country in Latin America, Haiti is run as a neo-colony out of Washington, where the fundamental decisions are made about who will be presi- dent, or how little Haitian workers will be paid. But Haiti is also the birthplace of black freedom in the Americas, where the first vic- torious slave revolution in history sparked uprisings throughout the Caribbean and in the U.S. South. Today the wage slaves of Haiti, joining with their sisters and brothers on the other side of the border that divides the island of Kiskeya/Quisqueya (Hispaniola) as well as with workers in the imperialist heart- land, can again become a beacon in the revo- CUNY Internationalists protest at NYC event honoring Hillary Clinton, lutionary struggle to bring down the capitalist Workers walk out from CODEVI in pointing to her financing sweatshops where women workers make $5 a day. masters of the world. Ouanaminthe, Haiti, June 22. May-June 2017 13 that all 24 were out of compliance with the ing corporation headed by Woong Ki Kim, Haitian Governments minimum wage law. Another report, by the a donor to the Clinton Foundation. Made in U.S.A. Worker Rights Consortium, concluded: When Donald Trump called the Caracol In addition to derailing legislative initia- “Research conducted by the WRC for park a giant sweatshop, paid by $400 million tives to raise rock-bottom wages, in order to this report found that the majority of in U.S. funds. Democrats were quick to re- keep the lucrative system of generating su- Haitian garment workers are being tort. The total paid and budgeted so far for perprofits through superexploitation rolling denied nearly a third of the wages they the park and the factory was “only” $370 along the bosses need to crush workers’ pro- are legally due as a result of the factories’ million. The Washington Post (17 October tests. For the past dozen years, that repression theft of their income.” 2016) wrote that Caracol didn’t fit “our defi- has been the task of the “blue helmet” troops –Worker Rights Consortium, Stealing nition of a ‘sweatshop’.” It claimed that “full- and cops of the United Nations Stabiliza- from the Poor: Wage Theft in the Haitian time workers are paid at least the minimum Apparel Industry (October 2013) tion Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Having wage.” Belying this, a report the Post cited Most of the factories are owned by Hai- brought international condemnation for in- by PolitFact (11 October 2016) said that of tian or South Korean capitalists, but they troducing cholera to Haiti, leading to perhaps workers paid piece-work rates (almost all), produce for some of the biggest retailers in 20,000 deaths or more and sickening hun- “only 41 percent make the government’s tar- the world. Most men’s underwear sold in dreds of thousands, 2 the U.N. finally decided get minimum wage.” In fact, the SAE-A plant the U.S. is made in Haiti (Hanes, Fruit of in April to wind down the MINUSTAH. But has consistently paid substantially less than the Loom) as are most women’s bras (Bali, it will simply be replaced by a new mission, other Haitian manufacturers. Meanwhile, Playtex, Maidenform, Hanes, Wonderbra) MINUJUSTH, to beef up Haiti’s police.3 ABC News (11 October 2016) reported: as well as many jeans (Levis, Dockers, Cal- “In April, a group called Better Work Strikers will hardly notice the change. vin Klein, DKNY, Old Navy), sports and Haiti published a report finding the factory Meanwhile, Washington has perennially Toussaint Louverture, “Black Jacobin” college apparel (Champion, Columbia), was noncompliant in the areas of sexual intervened to determine who will lead Hai- “Papa Doc”), who was ousted in a popular work clothes (Carhartt) and t-shirts (Gildan, harassment, bullying and humiliation ti. The U.S. invaded Haiti in 1915, kicking uprising in 1986. Martelly was intimately 4 Polo, Aéropostale). These brands are owned of employees. Yannick Etienne, a labor off 19 years of brutal occupation. Decades linked to the drug-trafficking Duvalierist by giant corporations with annual revenues organizer, told ABC News she received later, after the populist priest Jean-Bertrand death squads whose coup-plotting set the of tens of billions of dollars between them. reports from SAE-A workers that they had Aristide was elected president in 1990, he stage for Aristide’s removal in 2004. After But according to the information in the to provide sexual favors to supervisors in was ousted after eight months in a coup led a scandal-plagued four years in office, Mar- WRC study, at one plant (Genesis) produc- order to obtain jobs in the factory.” by CIA-financed intelligence officers under telly called legislative elections in August ing t-shirts for Gildan, which supplies U.S. So here we have the Walmart and Republican George Bush I. In 1994, Aristide 2015 that were violently broken up by his university licensees, the actual labor cost Wall Street feminist icon Hillary Clinton was reinstalled as Haitian president as Dem- thugs. An October 2015 first-round presiden- per shirt for cutting, assembling, sewing sponsoring a sweatshop paying workers ocrat Bill Clinton sent in 20,000 U.S. troops, tial election was annulled because of mas- and packaging is a little over 2 U.S. cents. starvation wages where women are sub- several thousand of whom stayed on until sive fraud. But this time, the U.S. demanded The Haitian unions are demanding that ject to sexual harassment, bullying and hu- 2000 as “U.N. peacekeepers.” During the that the second round be held anyway, as the the minimum wage be more than doubled, miliation. At a Women in the World Sum- next decade, Aristide and his successor René Obama administration supported Martelly’s to $12.60 a day, which if a worker could mit meeting in New York this past April, Préval carried out U.S. dictates of privatiza- protégé Jovenel Moïse and had invested $33 actually earn that much in an eight-hour held to honor Clinton, the Internationalist tion and suppression of labor struggles. But million in financing the vote. workday would amount to $1.57 an hour Group and CUNY Internationalist Clubs in 2004, under Republican George Bush II, Tens of thousands of Haitians took – still a starvation wage. Another study, showed up to spoil the celebration with the U.S. orchestrated a coup together with to the streets, and Haiti’s parliament, in a by the Solidarity Center of the AFL-CIO signs proclaiming “Solidarity with Striking France and Canada, sending a snatch team rare (but ultimately empty) show of defi- union federation, concluded that a “real liv- Haitian Garment Workers” and “Women that kidnapped Aristide and bundled him off ance, ordered the presidential vote to be ing wage” allowing one adult worker with Workers Make $5/Day in Hillary’s Haitian to the Central African Republic, dropping postponed and an interim government two minor dependents to meet basic needs Sweatshops.” him on the tarmac. installed. Finally, in November 2016, would be $23 a day (The High Cost of Low And now Clinton’s former chief of staff That led to 13 years of MINUSTAH Moïse, the banana exporter and candidate Wages in Haiti [May 2014]). Even that is Cheryl Mills is partnering with SAE-A chief occupation of Haiti by some 5,000 sol- of Martelly’s PHTK (bald-head) party, an outrageously low figure: a single mother Kim “to expand the textile trade in Ghana, diers and police, acting as mercenaries for won in an “election” in which barely with two children working at a Levis plant where BlackIvy [Mills’ consulting company] U.S. imperialism, which was too busy with 17% of the electorate voted and 2.4 mil- would still be living in dire poverty. But the says the country’s 23-cents-an-hour mini- its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to send lion voting cards were reported missing. figures on labor costs show that they could mum wage ‘compares favorably’ to higher troops. Even with this force to “pacify” So the U.S. keeps changing horses, it in- raise wages ten times (1000%) and it would wages in China, Bangladesh and Vietnam” the country, the U.S. paid close attention stalls and removes Haitian presidents, but raise the production cost of a t-shirt by 18¢. (New York Times, 17 October). So an SAE-A as to who was named president, or not. there are two constants: under Democrats So this issue has been studied to death, plant in Ghana could “compete” with SAE-A Despite his earlier services, Aristide was or Republicans, Washington’s candidate yet absolutely nothing has been done about plants in Vietnam and Haiti by paying half to be kept out. Following the January 2010 always wins, and Haitian working people it. With inflation, Haitian garment workers the Haitian minimum wage. That’s global- earthquake, the U.S. simply took over the always lose. They will continue to lose today are making a dollar less per day than ized capitalism for you. It’s all part of a sys- country, with thousands of troops and Bill until a revolutionary leadership is forged they were in 2014. Why? The plant owners tem: imperialism. And that system depends Clinton as U.N. “special envoy.” Haiti’s to take on and defeat the enormous forces are money-grubbing, wage-gouging cock- on state power, particularly on the dominant elected president René Préval was side- arrayed against them. And that is not the roach capitalists. The retailers they supply imperialist power: the United States. lined as “Bill and Hill” ran the show. In task of Haitian workers alone. are avaricious mega-capitalists raking in The Clinton connection to low-wage the presidential vote that October, Préval’s fabulous profits. What else is new? There misery in Haiti goes far beyond a single fac- candidate Jude Célestin came in second. From the Haitian Revolution is a lot of talk about cutthroat competitors tory in northern Haiti. In previous articles But citing corruption, the U.S. demanded to International Socialist from lower-cost producers in, say, Bangla- on Haitian workers’ struggles,1 we cited he be removed from the runoff. Hillary Revolution desh. What competition? The corporations the State Department cables released by Clinton herself flew to Port-au-Prince to who are supplied by both Haitian and Ban- WikiLeaks in 2011 showing how the U.S. lay down the law to Préval. Haiti has been beset by a seemingly gladeshi producers are near-monopolies: embassy mounted a major operation to roll The victor in the U.S.-rigged February endless series of man-made “natural” all the brands cited above belong to a few back a 2009 attempt to raise the minimum 2011 “selection” was pop musician and son disasters. It is regularly depicted in the conglomerates. But beyond that, a key rea- wage to $5 a day. The U.S. chargé d’affaires of a Shell Oil executive Michel Martelly, media as a basket case country, a “failed son Haitian wages are so abysmally low is wrote to his boss (Hillary Clinton) that this Washington’s favorite, with ties to “Baby state,” its long-suffering population the that the U.S. government wants it that way. “would make the [assembly] sector eco- Doc” Duvalier (son of long-time dictator object of liberal pity or racist disdain. These disasters are not only compounded In the course of last year’s presidential nomically unviable and consequently force 2 election campaign, it became more widely factories to shut down” and “would devas- A study by the Haitian Ministry of Health re- by but directly caused by the imperialist leased last year covering 4% of the entire pop- known how Bill and Hillary Clinton wreaked tate the industry and negatively impact the ulation of the country reported that the actual system that has consigned Haiti to abys- havoc with the economy of Haiti (where benefits of the Haitian Hemispheric through number of deaths in the initial epidemic was mal poverty. After Haiti threw off French they spent their honeymoon, after meeting Opportunity Partnership Encouragement almost triple the number reported at the time colonial rule in 1804, the European colo- while crossing picket lines at a Yale workers Act (HOPE II),” which provides for duty- (New York Times, 16 March 2016). nizers and the U.S. blockaded the black strike). As U.S. president in the 1990s, Bill free imports of clothing made in Haiti. It all 3 The MINUSTAH troops were under the com- republic in order to strangle its economy. singlehandedly destroyed Haiti’s rice farm- depends on keeping Haitian wages “com- mand of Brazilian army generals. The police In 1825 France demanded that Haiti pay ing by subsidizing rice grown in Arkansas petitive” with those in Bangladesh. component of MINUSTAH was led by a Cana- 90 million gold francs (almost $29 bil- (where he had been governor). After the dian superintendent, with a contingent from the lion today) to compensate French slave 1 See “Haiti: Battle Over Starvation Wages, Sûrete de Quebec (provincial police) and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, as U.S. secretary of owners for their plantations seized in the Neocolonial Occupation,” The Internationalist Montréal police. A number of the Quebec police state Hillary siphoned millions from relief No. 30, November-December 2009; and “Hai- were involved in scandals of sexual misconduct revolution. The “debt” eventually passed funds to finance the industrial park at Cara- ti: Women Workers Strike Against Starvation and abuse. to National City Bank of New York, and col, far from the quake zone, anchored by a Wages,” The Internationalist No. 36, January- 4 See “Yankee Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934,” collecting this ransom was the excuse for garment sweatshop owned by SAE-A Trad- February 2014. Workers Vanguard No. 608, 14 October 1994. the 1915 U.S. invasion of Haiti. 14 The Internationalist In more recent years, the 2010 earth- In the face of the colossus of Yankee im- quake that flattened the Haitian capital Port- perialism, whether the immediate struggle is Tri-National Protests Denounce U.S. au-Prince, killing up to half a million people, against starvation wages, racist immigration was met with promises of some $13 billion in laws, or repression by imperialist occupiers, Exclusion and Expulsion of Haitians aid. Only a small portion of that was ever dis- the poor and working people of Haiti must bursed, mostly for tent cities and other tem- not stand alone. The small Haitian proletariat porary measures. Some $500 million donated must join with workers across the border in to the American Red Cross disappeared into the Dominican Republic and inside the Unit- administrative costs and scams. The money ed States to wage a common class struggle. that was disbursed was overwhelmingly done As the Russian Bolshevik Leon Trotsky directly by international agencies, by celebri- explained in his theory and program of per- ties (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn) manent revolution, in this epoch of decaying or through thousands of “non-governmental capitalism, even to achieve basic democratic organizations” (NGOs) that flocked to Haiti; gains, it is necessary for the working class to in this “republic of NGOs” only 1% went to take power and spread the socialist revolu- the Haitian government. Most of the 1.5 mil- tion to the imperialist centers. At every turn, lion living in camps have left, but for hun- the key is to forge a proletarian, internation- dreds of thousands that just meant moving to alist and revolutionary leadership. 5 precarious hillside slums. A fundamental principle is for total in- Since 2010, Haiti has been hit by more dependence from the capitalist state. Haitian calamities. There was the cholera epidemic, workers experience daily how every instance started by U.N. occupation troops from Nepal of the neo-colonial state power represents the and still continuing. Then in 2015 the gov- class enemy. Courts, cops, parliament and Leading up to last year’s presi- afterwards, Hurricane Matthew ernment in neighboring Dominican Republic government agencies brutally impose the dential election in the U.S., the admin- devastated southern Haiti. Nev- began implementing its racist nationality law, demands of the corrupt and criminal bosses istration of Barack Obama wanted to ertheless, the U.S. announced it expelling tens of thousands deemed to be and their imperialist masters. The CSS wage undercut Republican claims that the would resume deportations as soon of Haitian origin (many of them born in the council is a case in point. Formally a “mixed” Democrats were “soft on illegal immi- as possible. D.R.). And in October 2016, Hurricane Mat- body with representatives of the employers, grants.” So at the end of September, On 20 October 2016 demon- thew struck, causing hundreds of deaths and labor and the government supposedly rep- the Department of Homeland Security strations were held in New York City damaging or destroying the homes of half a resenting “the nation,” in reality the govern- announced that it was barring entry to (bottom); San Diego, California (top million people. As a result, in Haiti today there ment, too, represents the interests of capital. the U.S. to thousands of Haitians wait- left); Tijuana, Mexico, and Rio de Ja- are 55,000 people living in 31 camps near And now Moïse has “reorganized” the coun- ing on the Mexican border, and would neiro, Brazil (top right) demanding: the capital since the 2010 earthquake; many cil with two out of three “labor” representa- begin deporting those who had Tem- “Stop Exclusion of Haitians! Stop of the 170,000 expelled from the Dominican tives opposed to an increase in the minimum porary Protected Status after the 2010 All Deportations! Occupation Troops Republic since 2015 are living in makeshift wage, one of them a member of the party of earthquake. Out of Haiti.” This was an example camps near the border; and 175,000 people Charles Baker, a leading textile manufacturer. The League Fourth International of the kind of solidarity Haitian work- left homeless by Hurricane Matthew are in Batay Ouvriye spokeswoman Yanick immediately initiated a united-front ers need in their battle for survival temporary shelters in the south.6 Étienne rightly rejected this maneuver as a protest together with the Batay Ou- against the Haitian bourgeoisie and As we wrote at the time, the 2010 di- “delaying tactic” and denounced the presi- vriye Solidarity Network. Shortly its imperialist masters. saster was caused by capitalism: the earth- dent’s “practices of interference” in union quake was predictable and predicted, the affairs (AlterPresse, 1 June). She refused to Jacques Dessalines, who declared the Haitians already in the U.S. in January 2010 collapsed buildings due to shoddy construc- meet with the “reorganized” wage council, country’s independence. But the revolu- was recently renewed for six months by Don- tion caused by Haiti’s poverty, the swol- citing the two phony union reps. Two years tion led by Toussaint Louverture was in- ald Trump’s Homeland Security chief John len slums the result of U.S. destruction of ago, Yanick Étienne was the target of a vile spired by and part of the French Revolu- Kelly, but this only temporarily postpones Haitian agriculture.7 The League for the assassination attempt at the SONAPI indus- tion of 1789-1802, and it sparked slave the inevitable battle. Moreover, Trump’s an- Fourth International and our U.S. and Bra- trial park. But for the past period Étienne has revolts throughout the Caribbean and ti-immigrant offensive also affects many Do- zilian sections demanded from the very first herself been a member of the CSS, when the in the American South.12 In fact, it was minicans in the U.S. New York City is a key day that U.S. and “U.N.” troops get out.8 task of class-struggle unionists was to de- precisely because of its connection with place where Haitians (400,000) and Domini- We denounced Washington’s rigging of the nounce this council of class collaboration as revolution in Europe that the first slave cans (600,000) can unite in struggle against 2010 Haitian presidential elections.9 We an instrument of the bosses. The failure to revolution in history succeeded. their common oppressor, particularly I.C.E. campaigned for Haitian-Dominican work- do so before undercuts the present struggle The 1915-34 occupation of Haiti, immigration police, providing a potential ba- ers solidarity against the mass expulsions in in turn, was part of the expansion of U.S. sis for overcoming the anti-Haitian hysteria 2015.10 And in October 2016 as the Obama for the 800 gourde wage, which must be imperialism under Republican Teddy Roo- in the Dominican Republic. administration barred Haitians at the Mexi- won against the employers, the president sevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson, in- can border just as Hurricane Matthew hit, and his hand-picked council. The importance of an internationalist cluding invasions and occupations of Cuba the LFI initiated united-front protests in the It is likewise crucial to fight for the po- program is evident even at the level of basic and Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, U.S., Mexico and Brazil to demand an end litical independence of the workers and for trade-union struggles. Unionized workers at Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico and to exclusion and deportation of Haitians.11 a revolutionary workers party. For decades, the CODEVI industrial park owned by Gru- petty-bourgeois leftists in Haiti and the elsewhere in Central America and the Ca- po M, the Dominican textile giant, should 5 Haitian leftist filmmaker Raoul Peck has pro- U.S. have supported the bourgeois-populist ribbean. The second U.S. invasion of Haiti, seek to work with unionists at Grupo M duced a powerful documentary, Fatal Assis- Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas party. Pro- in 1994, was the result of Democratic Party plants in the D.R. Workers at the BKI plant tance (Assistance mortelle), exposing the disas- Aristide newspapers like Haïti Liberté have politics in Washington. The third U.S. inva- at CODEVI, which supplies uniforms to the trous disaster relief. See also Johnathan Katz, denounced U.S. meddling in Haiti, particu- sion, in 2004, by Republican George Bush city of Los Angeles, California should seek The Big Truck That Went By: How the World larly when Republicans ousted Aristide, but II, and the subsequent occupation by the ties to labor in L.A. Unionized workers at Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster MINUSTAH, were a direct result of U.S. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). they didn’t complain when Democrat Clin- the SAE-A factory in Caracol, should con- 6 U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humani- ton sent 20,000 U.S. troops to reinstall him wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the fourth tact militant trade unionists in South Korea. tarian Affairs, Haiti Humanitarian Needs Over- in 1994. To break the grip of bourgeois pop- U.S. invasion, following the 2010 earth- Potentially there could be a basis for power- view 2017. ulism, it is necessary to forge a party fight- quake, reflected Democrat Barack Obama’s ful international labor action. But to realize 7 See “Haiti Earthquake: Capitalism, Occupa- ing for the revolutionary class interests of posture of providing disaster relief to black that potential, a leadership with a proletar- tion and Revolution,” The Internationalist No. the workers. In early 2016, thousands went Haiti while assuaging racists by sending the ian internationalist program is needed. 31, Summer 2010. into the streets to stop the imposition of of Coast Guard to block Haitian refugees at sea. Haitian workers’ battle against starva- 8 “Haiti: Workers Solidarity, Yes! Imperialist In short, every turning point in Haiti’s Occupation, No!” (January 2010), in The Inter- Martelly’s flunkey Moïse, but in the absence tion wages is the fight of all labor. The Inter- of a workers party, new elections would at history was the result of events in the im- nationalist Group and League for the Fourth nationalist No. 31 perialist centers, and it is there that crucial 9 “Haiti: Occupation Elections In Times of best install another capitalist president. International have paid particular attention to fights in the next Haitian revolution will be Cholera,” The Internationalist No. 32, January- A third vital element is to wage an Haiti since our inception. In every struggle, fought. That includes the struggle against the February 2011. international class struggle, joining we seek to cohere the nucleus of a genuine 10 deportation and exclusion of Haitians from “Stop Expulsion of Haitians from the Do- with workers next door in the Domini- communist leadership, laying the basis for the U.S. The “temporary protected status” of minican Republic,” The Internationalist No. 40, can Republic and in the United States in revolutionary workers parties on both sides Summer 2015. particular. At every key juncture, events of the border that divides Haiti and the Do- 11 “Haiti Hurricane Disaster: Workers Revo- 12 See “Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian lution the Answer,” and “Stop Exclusion of in Haiti have been intimately connected Revolution,” Parts 1 and 2, Workers Vanguard minican Republic, in the heart of U.S. impe- Haitians! Stop All Deportations! Occupation to world events, beginning with the Hai- Nos. 446 and 447, 12 and 26 February 1988, rialism and internationally, in the struggle to Troops Out of Haiti!” The Internationalist No. tian Revolution of 1791-1804. Haitian available in the Marxist Readings section of reforge the Trotskyist Fourth International as 45, September-October 2016. nationalists revere the figure of Jean- www.internationalist.org. the world party of socialist revolution. n May-June 2017 15 Mobilize Labor’s Power to Bust the Union-Busters! It Will Take Hard Class Struggle to Defeat “Right to Work” The following article is reprinted from Manufacturers president John H. Kirby Bridge City Militant No. 4 (Spring 2017), CSWP photo and featuring Smith and other fascists. published by Class Struggle Workers – Two years later, Muse launched the Portland, a union tendency that works fra- Christian American Association in Texas. ternally with the Internationalist Group. According to the Texas State Historical The labor movement in the United Association’s Handbook of Texas Online, States is under full-scale attack, and its lead- “The Christian Americans worked for ers are lying down and playing dead. They passage of right-to-work laws in sixteen have no plans to fight the rightist capitalist states,” starting with Florida and Arkansas. onslaught spearheaded by Donald Trump. According to “Limiting Labor: Business Worse yet, having been burned by their sup- Political Mobilization and Union Setback port for Democrat Hillary Clinton, the pro- in the States” by Marc Dixon in the Journal fessional defender of Wall Street who didn’t of Policy History (Vol. 19, No. 3, 2007): even bother to go through the motions of “The Christian American Association pretending be a “friend of labor,” and whose was the first in the nation to champion the economic policies have led to the destruc- ‘Right-to-Work’ as a full-blown political tion of hundreds of thousands of union jobs, slogan. Vance Muse became intrigued top labor leaders are doing everything they by the use of the Right-to-Work term in can to play ball with labor-hater Trump. a 1941 Labor Day editorial in the Dallas Morning News that called for an open- In an interview with Fox Business shop amendment to the constitution. Network, AFL-CIO president Richard After traveling to Dallas and consulting Trumka praised Trump’s cancellation of with the editor, Muse was encouraged the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal Union militants picket outside event of the Freedom Foundation, which is pushing for a slave labor “right-to-work” law in Oregon, 24 June 2016. to use and promote the idea of Right-to- and his talk of rebuilding infrastructure. Work. This became their primary cause “If he does something that’s good for the class struggle, against the suicidal class col- of them is formally part of the right-wing Re- and they campaigned extensively for economy and workers, we’re going to be laboration of the present pro-capitalist labor publican Freedom Caucus it is because this Right-to-Work legislation throughout the behind him,” he summed up, adding lame- bureaucracy. There’s got to be a clean sweep, pair stands even further to the right. country, and especially within Texas.” ly: if not, not. Others were totally positive. or the unions are going down. Wilson is a Tea Party asset and a viru- Muse and the fascist forces he mobi- When Trump called construction union lent immigrant-basher whose main claim to “Right to Work” and Racist lized with industry backing opposed unions leaders to the White House in late Janu- fame was to yell “you lie” (about immigra- because, in Muse’s words, the agency shop ary, the head of NABTU (North America’s American Capitalism tion reform) at Barack Obama during a 2009 meant that “from now on, white women Building Trades Unions) Sean McGarvey A year ago, labor unionists breathed a presidential address in Congress. Steve King and white men will be forced into orga- crowed, “The respect that the President sigh of relief as the U.S. Supreme Court, by is, if anything, an even more unabashed rac- nizations with black African apes whom of the United States just showed us… was a 4-4 tie vote, killed Friedrichs v. California ist, sporting a Confederate battle flag on his they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their nothing short of incredible…. We have a Teachers Association by letting stand the desk, claiming Obama favored blacks and jobs” (Gerard Colby, Du Pont Dynasty: Be- common bond with the president.” ruling of the appeals court. Funded by deep- saying that “white people” have a “superior hind the Nylon Curtain [1984]). Muse was Laborers’ International Union presi- pocketed anti-union “think tanks,” the law- culture.” He declares that Islam is “antitheti- joined in his efforts by his older sister Ida dent Terry O’Sullivan issued a press release suit sought to cripple the unions financially cal to Americanism,” says that “we can’t re- Darden, who was notable as the publicity saying “LIUNA is ready to work with the by outlawing the “agency shop,” the require- store our civilization with somebody else’s director of the Texas Association Opposed new Administration in the coming years to ment that employees at an organized work- babies,” and wants to eliminate citizenship to Woman Suffrage in 1916, and the edi- strengthen our country.” Doug McCarron, place pay union dues or an equivalent. The for all children of undocumented immi- tor of the Southern Conservative newspa- president of the International Brotherhood target was public sector unions (represent- grants born in the U.S. in order to produce an per from 1950 to 1961, which campaigned of Carpenters, was downright fawning. Af- ing 35% of the workforce) which because of “America that’s just so homogenous that we against unions, civil rights, modern art and ter Trump declared “I love Doug,” McCar- their political connections have been able to look a lot [sic] the same.” Hollywood movies. ron gushed to the media that the president’s withstand the union-busting onslaught that It’s no wonder that spewing out such Christian American lobbying led to inaugural speech was “a great moment for has decimated labor in the private sector, garbage, King is a hero of fascist and fas- laws in Texas limiting picketing and other working men and women in the United where union membership is down to 6%. cistic “white nationalists.” He is not only union activities. But while far-right and fas- States.” But behind the love fest, working Now anti-union forces are gearing up opposed to gay marriage, but even to civil cist organizations such as Muse’s groups people will get screwed by a president who for another attempt. They are pushing ul- marriage. And its entirely predictable that were early and strident advocates of open- has declared that wages in the U.S. are too tra-rightist corporate stooge Neil Gorsuch such a race-hater would also be a labor-hat- shop laws, they were not alone. Dixon high, has fought unions at his Las Vegas – whose CV includes “joking” in his elite er. The fact is that the campaign for open- writes that by 1947, when “right to work” hotel and elsewhere, and supports union- Jesuit Georgetown Prep boarding school shop “right to work” laws, now threatening was made law in Texas, its major backer busting “right-to-work” laws. yearbook of founding a “Fascism Forever” a nationwide offensive, was championed was the Texas Manufacturers Association, Various commentators have argued club – for Supreme Court justice. If Gorsuch from its beginning by racist ideologues headed by Herman Brown of the Brown that the construction union leaders are being survives the Democrats’ softball “questions” who oppose unions because in order to be & Root construction firm. By this time, the played. For sure. But then they are also being and impotent filibustering to win confirma- effective, the unions must organize black TMA kept its distance from Vance Muse played when they regularly back the Demo- tion, ensuring a hard anti-union Court ma- and white workers together. and allied far-right groups. And the anti- crats. Labor will always get screwed so long jority, the Supremes may soon have another “Right to work” as a deceptively- labor forces were not the only ones to make as it is chained to the parties of capital. But Friedrichs case, namely Janus v. AFSCME named political movement was launched racist appeals. In opposing “open shop” forging those chains is how the sellout labor from Illinois, which is being pushed by the in the 1940s in Texas by a prolific right- laws, Harry Acreman of the Texas AFL “in- bureaucrats got in office, and how they got National Right to Work Foundation. wing political organizer named Vance voked race as an issue, arguing that Right where they are today: facing the abyss. Meanwhile, in January Kentucky en- Muse. Muse’s modus operandi was to rake to Work would end segregation in southern The paralysis of union tops in the face acted a double-whammy “right-to-work” in funds from some of America’s most workplaces,” as Dixon noted. of threatened “right-to-work” legislation, or a law coupled with a “no-right-to-strike” pro- powerful capitalist families – the Sloans The fact is that ever since Franklin D. potential Supreme Court decision that would vision for public employees. Missouri passed (General Motors), Pews (Sun Oil), and Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal, labor offi- do the same to public sector workers, is a its “RTW” law in February (it already had a Duponts, along with leading Southern cialdom has been in the Democrats’ pock- declaration of bankruptcy. It demonstrates public sector strike ban). And on February 1, grandees – while hobnobbing with fascist et. While the Republicans opposed unions again that their fundamental loyalty is to the a bill for a National Right to Work Act was groups like the Klan and “Silver Shirt” outright, FDR sought to hogtie them with capitalist system, not the working people introduced in the U.S. House of Represen- leader Gerald L. K. Smith. Muse organized government control, from the 1934 Wag- they claim to represent. What’s needed is tatives by two of the most reactionary con- a Georgia convention of a “Southern Com- ner Act to the WWII War Labor Board. The to build a fighting opposition inside the la- gressmen in the country, Steve King of Iowa mittee to Uphold the Constitution” in 1934 kept labor bureaucracy went along with its bor movement based on a program of sharp and Joe Wilson of South Carolina. If neither chaired by former National Association of wartime no-strike pledge, while the gov- 16 The Internationalist ernment jailed the Minneapolis Teamster those oppressed by capitalism. ment practices and dis- leaders and Trotskyists for opposing the In the Pacific Northwest, union mili- Ed Lederman/Brooklyn Daily Eagle crimination – includ- imperialist slaughter. Since a mainstay tants of Class Struggle Workers – Portland ing separate bathrooms of FDR’s “New Deal coalition” was the (CSWP), politically supported by the In- for whites – the im- Southern Dixiecrats, in opposing anti-la- ternationalist Group, have played a leading migrant workers have bor legislation the craven union misleaders role fighting the threat of “right-to-work” emphasized that they appealed to these racists for support. That union-busting. In September 2013, Wyatt are waging a labor, not doomed the postwar attempt to organize McMinn, vice president of Local 10 of the a religious or ethnic, the South (Operation Dixie), which could International Union of Painters and Allied struggle. Union mili- have succeeded had the CIO fought Jim Trades (IUPAT) and a CSWP spokesman, tants are vigilant against Crow segregation. was arrested and threatened with a year in any hint of anti-Sem- That was when employers’ “right-to- jail for protesting a meeting of the union- itism. Jews for Racial work” drive could have been stopped cold. hating Freedom Foundation (see “Defend and Economic Justice Instead, you got the “open shop” South, a Wyatt McMinn, Defeat ‘Right to Slave’,” has been an important bastion of anti-unionism. And under the The Internationalist No. 36, January-Feb- ally throughout the bat- Democratic administration of Harry Tru- ruary 2014). The class-struggle unionist, tle. At the February 12 man, the 1948 Taft-Hartley Act was passed a founder of the CSWP, was eventually rally, a JFREJ spokes- outlawing the closed shop and banning found not guilty, a victory for labor soli- woman reported that communists from union leadership posi- darity and the more than a dozen union and 225 rabbis had signed a tions. Although the AFL and CIO tops labor councils that endorsed his defense letter calling on B&H to claimed to oppose that “slave-labor” law, (see “Wyatt McMinn Not Guilty!” The In- negotiate in good faith they refused to strike against it, meekly ternationalist, June 2014). with the union. The submitting to the dictates of capital. Mean- Two years later, in the fall of 2015, as NYC mayor Bill de Blasio poses with city motion CUNY Internationalist while, as part of the anti-Soviet Cold War, Friedrichs loomed at the Supreme Court, pictures chief Cynthia López and studio owner Clubs initiated the chant liberal Democrats purged the unions of the members of Class Struggle Workers – Port- Doug Steiner, April 2014. that has been widely “reds” who had built them, laying the basis land, elected from their unions as delegates picked up over the recent for the subsequent witchhunting associated to the Oregon state AFL-CIO convention, period, “Jew and Arab, black and white, with Republican senator Joseph McCarthy. brought a motion that “area unions should De Blasio... workers of the world, unite!” continued from page 5 And McCarthy’s chief witch-hunter, Roy prepare a major region-wide stop-work ac- Democrats Bill de Blasio, the phony Cohn, was the mentor of Donald Trump. tion against this effort to impoverish work- 27 February). Steiner is also a generous “friend of labor,” and Hillary Clinton, ers.” The resolution won significant support donor. A selling point was de Blasio’s Forge a Class-Struggle the faux friend of women, along with de- but was shot down by the state AFL leader- $2.5 billion plan to build a streetcar line porter-in-chief Barack Obama, are in fact Leadership of Labor to ship, which has repeatedly refused to fight extending from Bay Ridge to Astoria. As representatives and defenders of capital. Defend All the Oppressed union-busting with industrial action, instead City Hall lined up developers to back the While Clinton and Obama hobnob with Today, the drive to roll back the remain- devoting itself to lobbying Democrats. One BQX line, “Steiner Studios, a movie lot the Wall Street fat cats, de Blasio attends ing gains of the industrial unions that were of their main arguments is that opinion polls near a potential trolley stop at the Brook- to the retail-level wheeling and dealing born in the class struggles of the 1930s is show “the public” as being hostile to unions. lyn Navy Yard in Fort Greene, ponied up of bourgeois politics. He allies with en- intensifying in the context of a political cri- But as the experience of the 2011 labor upris- $5,000” for the Campaign for One New tertainment moguls and real-estate bar- sis of U.S. imperialism. A bogus “democ- ing in Wisconsin against an anti-labor gov- York, reported the Daily News (12 De- ons like Bruce Ratner, who promised racy” elevates a fake-populist billionaire and ernor showed, once unions began acting like cember 2016). thousands of apartments for low-income woman-hating media personality into the defenders of workers, public support soared At the same time, while de Blasio is tenants (yet to be built) in exchange for Oval Office. Once ensconced, Donald Trump … and then plummeted when protests were tight with the TV industry, he has been tearing down homes to make way for promises a skeptical Wall Street (which con- called off in favor of voting for Democrats. cultivating political alliances with various the Barclays Center sports/entertainment siders him unreliable and favored Democrat As CSWP militants wrote in Bridge constituencies. Among his key allies are arena. It’s no surprise, then, that despite Hillary Clinton) mountains of golden loot City Militant No. 2 (Winter 2016): the followers of Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, his talk of good jobs and affordable hous- from the federal treasury, while throwing a “Above all, every union needs to begin the Satmar Jewish Rebbe of Kiryas Joel, ing, Democrat de Blasio presides over few crumbs to some gullible labor fakers. preparing to fight the coming union- the Orthodox village in upstate Orange the elimination of hundreds of immigrant His arch-racist attorney general Jeff Ses- busting onslaught in the streets and in County. Millionaire B&H owner Schreiber workers’ jobs. sions vows to ratchet up police repression. the workplaces. We need to form com- and hundreds of store employees are The fight for union jobs at B&H must And whipping up anti-immigrant hysteria, mittees in every local and every work- members of the “Aaroni” sect, which is be a class struggle to win. That means place to prepare to tie up metro Portland he reinforces the key structural element of also dominant in Boro Park, Brooklyn. mobilizing the powerhouses of NYC la- like the workers in Wisconsin shut down American capitalism since it was founded Aaroni Satmar political operatives boast bor in defense of immigrant workers. On Madison in 2011 – but Wisconsin shows on chattel slavery: the division of American that their bloc of 7,500 votes won de Bla- February 16, while restaurant and shop that we can’t let the fight be diverted into sio the Democratic nomination in 2013. workers along race-color lines and the brutal the dead end of electoral support for the owners shut down for a “Day Without Im- racial oppression of black people. Democrats or any capitalist party. We Now the FBI is putting the squeeze on migrants,” B&H workers organized a col- So how do the AFL-CIO leaders plan to need a class-struggle workers party: not top Aaroni political fundraisers, including lective stay-away action to protest against fight the threat of national “right-to-work” just a vote-getting apparatus but a party Isaac Sofer, Moishe Indig and Rabbi Da- raids and deportations. Trabajadores legislation or court-ordered “open shop” to organize and lead the fight for the op- vid Niederman, to get dirt on the mayor, Internacionales Clasistas (TIC – Class rules that would cripple unions? Answer: pressed and exploited, using the power- but no one’s talking. Struggle International Workers), includ- they don’t. There are no plans for mass mo- ful weapons that our class has.” Bill de Blasio poses as a “progressive.” ing workers at B&H, calls on NYC unions bilization, besieging Congress and the Su- The AFL-CIO tops went on to throw His reelection drive kicked off with en- to bring out the ranks and take the battle preme Court or jamming Wall Street to shut millions of dollars to Hillary Clinton and dorsements from key unions including the to City Hall and Wall Street. We have the down the center of world financial capital. her pro-“right-to-work” vice-presidential United Federation of Teachers, AFSCME power to smash the union-busting attack, At most they talk of stepping up “educa- candidate Tim Kaine. This set the stage for a District Council 37 and SEIU Local 32BJ. but it will not be accomplished with paper tion” campaigns to convince workers to join demagogue like Donald Trump to reap pro- In reality he’s a straight Clinton/Obama resolutions and having a few bureaucrats the union. Even at that level union leaders test votes from workers and the unemployed Democrat, who would clearly be, as we put and staffers show up. Surround B&H with remain beholden to the bosses, relying on suffering the ravages of the capitalist eco- it in 2013, nothing more than “Bloomberg thousands of workers and the bosses will dues check-offs which give management nomic crisis, and the bipartisan job-killing Lite,” a lower-key continuation of the poli- get the message. the power to turn off the financial spigot policies implemented by Obama that have cies of the Republican billionaire mayor. In Above all, as Karl Marx insisted a whenever it wants. In New York City, the devastated the industrial “rust belt.” Class- the political horse-trading of Democratic century and a half ago, every genuine class United Federation of Teachers won’t get struggle unionists called instead to break Party politics, de Blasio owes the Satmar struggle is a political struggle. We must union dues subtracted from salaries in Janu- the Democrats’ stranglehold on labor, and power brokers. Thus Rabbi Niederman, break the stranglehold of the Democratic ary until March. A class-struggle leadership in August 2016 Painters Local 10 passed a head of the United Jewish Organizations Party which has led to the decimation of would collect the dues itself. groundbreaking resolution calling for “No of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn, is a the unions in this country. We join with the The only way to defeat this anti-labor Support to the Democrats, Republicans, mayoral appointee to the Navy Yard De- militant Painters Union in Portland in call- onslaught is not to seek a new “New Deal Or Any Party of the Bosses,” and instead velopment Corporation board where he is ing to build a class-struggle workers party Coalition” that would continue to subordi- “call[ing] on the labor movement to break in a position to look out for the interests fighting to replace the dictatorship of capi- nate the working class to one party of rac- from the Democratic Party, and build a of B&H. tal with the liberating rule of the working ist U.S. imperialism, but to drive out the class-struggle workers party.” This, and not While B&H is one of the biggest class championing all the oppressed. Stop pro-capitalist bureaucracy that chains the belly-crawling before Congress, the courts Hasidic-owned companies in New York, the B&H bosses’ job-killing, union-bust- unions to the Democrats and forge a class- and the capitalist politicians, is the way to in fighting wage gouging, dangerous ing plan! ¡Unión, fuerza, solidaridad! – struggle leadership of labor that defends all bust the union-busters! n working conditions, abusive manage- Union, power, solidarity! ■ May-June 2017 17 Defend Leftist Lecturer Eleonora Roldán Mendívil! Germany: Anti-Palestinian Witch Hunt Targets Leftist and Jewish Activists BERLIN – In recent months, there have been of the cold-blooded murder of an incapaci- up out of constant fear several incidents of persecution of Jewish tated Arab recently received a sentence of of not receiving a new and leftist groups and individuals in Germa- only 18 months! Another charge is that contract. In the name ny’s capital for their pro-Palestinian views. Roldán Mendívil helped stop an attack by of upholding unity, the The attackers range from right-wing German “Anti-Germans” on a Maoist for carrying a initiative turned their nationalists to the peculiar self-described Palestinian flag at a refugee demo in 2015. back on a colleague (and grossly mislabeled) “Anti-Germans.”1 None of this is anti-Semitic. whose case embodies What they have in common is total support Nevertheless, the university commis- the very injustice they for whatever the Israeli government is doing, sioned a “scientific expert” on anti-Semitism supposedly set out to and virulent anti-Muslim bigotry. to carry out this witch hunt and character as- fight. A case of anti-Palestinian censorship sassination. As department head Ladwig’s Berlin teachers, that gained international attention is the statement confirms, these “charges do not re- whose union GEW exclusion of Free University (FU) Berlin late directly” to Mendívil’s course. A letter of (Union for Education lecturer Eleonora Roldán Mendívil. Dur- support, signed by 32 students who took her and Science) also in- ing the winter term she taught an undergrad class, states that her teaching reflects her op- cludes a small section Eleonora Roldán Mendívil, removed from her teaching class on “Racism under Capitalism” under position to anti-Semitism and rejects attacks of university employees, assignment on the basis of slanderous charge of anti- a teaching assignment contract which has on her qualifications: “We appreciate her dif- have repeatedly shown Semitism. to be extended before each semester (the ferentiated and scientific approach to racism their militancy. Their strike actions over the ceived a good deal of support. Her students equivalent of an adjunct in an American and capitalism, which enriches the range of past couple years to demand equal pay for started a petition, leftist and liberal groups university). On December 25, an obscure courses offered at OSI. Based on what she equal work in Berlin’s schools were shut have sent solidarity messages, and interna- blog, “Boasinfo,” run by a German na- said in class, we assess Roldán Mendívil’s down by the union bureaucracy whenever the tional scholars have expressed outrage at tionalist called Andreas Boldt (who hails political position as showing reflectiveness strikes started to hurt (i.e., to be effective). This this attack on academic freedom, among Trump’s travel ban and calls for more “ra- and being and critical of all forms of racism.” militancy must be mobilized in support of the them Israeli historian Ilan Pappé. The Is- cial profiling” of Muslims in Germany) ran This entire campaign has nothing to more vulnerable university employees, many raeli organization Academia for Equal- a hit piece on Roldán Mendívil slander- do with a concern about anti-Semitism, of whom labor under short-term contracts that ity, which represents over 250 academics, ously labeling her an anti-Semite. and everything to do with a political witch effectively prevent unionization. wrote (January 15): “As academics well Shortly after, the campus group hunt against a leftist. At a public panel The victimization of Eleonora Roldán versed in the Israel-Palestine question, “Against Every Form of Anti-Semitism” discussion at OSI on “Criticism of Israel Mendívil for her leftist political views is an some of whom also study anti-Semitism, sent a letter (January 5) to the FU president and the Limits of Academic Freedom of obvious example of all that is wrong with we hold that Ms. Roldán Mendívil’s vo- and the Otto-Suhr Institute for political sci- Debate” Ladwig confirmed this, when he the system of short-term employment. De- cal opposition to the ongoing occupation ence, calling for her dismissal. With unprec- bluntly said that he “honestly does not fending her is in the objective interest of of Palestine falls well within the range edented speed, and before even talking to care” whether Roldán Mendívil’s state- every unionist, whatever political differ- of legitimate academic speech, and thus her, the acting department head Bernd Lad- ments were anti-Semitic or not. Given his ences they may have. The social-democrat- strongly defend her right to express these wig posted a public statement (January 5) cooperation with Israeli universities, he ic sellouts who block such a perspective opinions without fear for her livelihood.” on the OSI website, announcing a decision said, “such a person has no place in my must be fought politically and be replaced Jewish Civil Rights Activists Under to exclude Roldán Mendívil from future house” (klassegegenklasse.org, 17 Febru- by a class-struggle leadership of the union. teaching assignments “at least until the ac- ary), as if he embodied the university. Throughout the controversy, the group Attack by Pro-Israeli Groups cusations are cleared up.” This at a univer- Ladwig repeatedly referred to the so- “Against Every Form of Anti-Semitism” “Anti-Germans” and Zionists willfully sity where the main building is still named called “3D test” invented by Zionist war- has been portrayed as a couple of harmless conflate Jewish religious/ethnic minorities after Hitler-lover Henry Ford, even after hawk and right-wing Israeli ideologue students. They use the cover of “fighting in various countries, the Hebrew-speaking many years of campaigning to change it! Natan Sharansky, according to which use anti-Semitism” to organize campus events nation in Israel, and the Zionist Israeli state. What is the evidence that compels a ma- of delegitimization, demonization, and for people from the milieu around the “an- This imaginary monolithic bloc is shattered jor university to publicly cast suspicion on one double standards on Israel is anti-Semitic. ti-German” rag Bahamas, which enthuses by Jewish leftists and human rights advocates of its teachers of anti-Semitism (a career-end- This former anti-Soviet spy was in charge about vile anti-Muslim racists from late Ital- who do not accept being used by Israel’s gov- ing accusation in Germany) and to mete out of Israel’s illegal settlements in the Oc- ian ex-leftist Oriana Fallaci (who declared ernment and its supporters to justify the op- the punishment before any kind of hearing or cupied Territories as minister of housing that Muslims in Italy “breed like rats, and pression of the Palestinians. Hence they are proceedings? Roldán Mendívil had signed a when he concocted this “test”, an obvious they piss in baptismal fonts”) to the fascist effectively banned from “democratic” Ger- letter along with hundreds of artists, musicians ploy to divert international outrage at the “English Defence League.” One figure who many, which asserts its legal identity as the and performers (including beloved singer decades-long Zionist occupation of Pal- was invited to speak at FU is Tjark Kunst- successor state of the Nazi Third Reich. Nina Hagen) demanding an end to Israel’s in- estinian lands. But beyond that, the FU reich who supported the war on Iraq and once For example, liberal Jewish-American discriminate bombing of Gaza in 2014, which administration is sending a message to chastised those “friends of Israel” who recoil historian Norman Finkelstein, the son of Ho- killed over 2,000 Palestinians, mostly civil- employees: you’re risking your job if you at Avigdor Liebermann’s plan to expel all locaust survivors, cannot speak in Germany ians. She also, in her discontinued personal publicly voice opinions the bosses don’t Arabs from Israel. Another is Gerhard Scheit and Austria anymore without threats against blog, called Israel a “colonial state,” compared like, even outside the workplace. who, in a recent article on the refugee crisis, him or his hosts by “Anti-Germans.” In 2010 its policies with South African apartheid and Indeed, leftist unionists, who tried to bemoaned the lack of a “European Guanta- “BAK Shalom,” an “Anti-German” group stated support for the boycott, divestment and rally support for their colleague were met namo” and called for the “reeducation” of within the Left Party (Die Linke) youth orga- sanctions (BDS) movement. with resistance in their campus union groups. refugees, “for the sake of enlightenment”. nization, successfully pressured the Die Lin- The denunciation letter expressed par- While only a minority of active unionists In case it has not yet become clear, ke’s Rosa Luxemburg Foundation to cancel ticular outrage that such language puts Isra- supported the campaign against Roldán the “Anti-Germans” have no place in the an event in Berlin with threats of disruptions. el, a supposed “democratic nation of laws”, Mendívil, they found de facto bloc partners left – in fact, they want it destroyed. They In January, an unholy alliance of “BAK Sha- 2 on a par with “regimes of injustice” . Israel in social-democratic bureaucrats who sought have no problem aligning themselves with lom,” Volker Beck and the hard-line Zionist- a “democratic nation of laws”?! Tell that to to keep the unions from taking a stand. Paired reactionary bourgeois politicians, like rightist Jerusalem Post tried to prevent an Palestinian children sentenced to years of with an element of fear for their livelihoods prominent Green Party deputy Volker Beck in-house workshop featuring Finkelstein at prison for throwing stones at heavily armed if they speak up in this matter, the majority of who recently called for an official defini- the Max Planck Institute in Halle, which was soldiers, while an Israeli army medic guilty active unionists chose to not take a side. tion of criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic able to proceed under heavy security (Mittel- 1 See “‘Anti-German” Witch-Hunters Support In the case of a campaign to fight the (Jüdische Allgemeine, 2 March), in an deutsche Zeitung, 26 January). Zionism and German Imperialism” at http:// system of contingent teaching assignment article that “Against Every Form of Anti- Other examples of this Zionist witch www.internationalist.org/germanyantipalestin- contracts (granted one semester at a time), Semitism” posted on their Facebook page. hunt abound. This past fall, the human ianwitchhunt1703.html#anti-German the group decided to not mention Roldán Such a definition serves to empty justified rights group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace 2 In German the term “demokratischer Rechtsstaat” is often used to describe imperi- Mendívil at a public event, in order to avoid charges of anti-Semitism of all meaning. in the Middle East, which includes German alist West Germany while “Unrechtsregime” a split. Yet an important reason for the sys- The German nationalist/“Anti-Ger- and Israeli citizens, had its bank account is used to equate the East German deformed tem of short-term teaching assignments is man” character assassination notwithstand- cancelled. The Bank for Social Economy, workers state with the Nazi Third Reich. that it discourages teachers from speaking ing, Eleonora Roldán Mendívil has re- where many charities, political organiza- 18 The Internationalist tions and unions have accounts, accused and Gaza, but also in neighboring countries the group of opposing Israel’s right to exist Berliner Zeitung like Lebanon and Jordan, where they and for participating in the boycott, divestment their descendants remain today, viciously and sanctions movement, which tries to oppressed at the hands of local Arab rulers. pressure Israel to withdraw from the Oc- The fact is that a Hebrew-speaking cupied Territories. The bank was tipped off nation has been forged through the dispos- by Benjamin Weinthal, correspondent for session of Palestinian Arabs, who have also the Jerusalem Post, who smeared JVJP as become a nation through their bitter experi- being “pro-Hamas” and “anti-Semitic.” As ence of oppression. The existence of these Shir Hever, a board member of the group, two nations as a result of monstrous histori- put it: “This is the first time since World cal crimes is an accomplished fact. This is War Two that a German bank has closed hardly unique. The American nation was the account of a Jewish organisation” built on the genocide of Native American (Middle East Eye, 8 December 2016). populations and the enslavement of Afri- More recently, the weekly newspa- can Americans. Marxists do not divide the per Jungle World (9 February) defamed a world into “good” and “bad” nations, we group of Israeli gay rights activists in an recognize the democratic right to self-deter- article disgustingly titled “The Lunatics mination of all nations while opposing all of Zion.” The group “Berlin Against Pink- July 2016 protest in Berlin against “pinkwashing” Israeli crimes against the nationalist ideologies with the program of washing” is portrayed as a bunch of vio- Palestinian people. revolutionary internationalist class struggle. lent savages for staging peaceful protests general and Zionist oppression in Israel/ investors failing to buy Krugerrands or the In a situation like Palestine, with in- against attempts to use Israel’s relatively Palestine in particular. Who is going to di- BBC withholding broadcasting licenses that terpenetrated populations and two nations liberal gay rights legislation to alibi (i.e., vest and sanction Israel? The working class brought down that racist regime. Rather it laying claim to the same tiny piece of land, “pinkwash”) Zionist oppression of Arabs has no investments to divert elsewhere, nor was a fundamental shift in the world bal- there can be no equitable solution to their in Israel and the Occupied Territories. One does it hold political power in any state to ance of forces and sharp social and class competing national rights under capitalism. of their actions was a “die-in” in front of impose any sanctions. Impotent consumer struggle in South Africa. A massive strike Capitalism is based on the nation-state, en- an Israeli embassy stall at a gay street fair. boycotts of Israeli goods or academics do wave forced significant concessions from suring the exploitative rule of each national The article singles out two activists by not threaten Israel’s capitalist rulers or the bosses, which combined with popular bourgeoisie. Trotskyists oppose the existence name, because they dared to voice pro- their imperialist patrons, but have the po- upheaval posed a threat to foreign invest- of a “Jewish state” and all theocratic and re- Palestinian opinions after a Jungle World tential to tighten the nationalist grip of the ments and, therefore to imperialist interests. ligion-based states, just as we oppose Islamic writer’s speech in defense of Israel. This bourgeoisie over “its” proletariat. Meanwhile, the crumbling of the Soviet republics or declaredly Christian states such could set them up for potential reactionary BDS is fundamentally an appeal to bloc meant that the “Communist threat” in as Vichy France or Franco’s Spain. attacks and reprisals by immigration offi- imperialist corporations, governments and South Africa was qualitatively lessened. Moreover, the now defunct “two-state cials. They, too, are denounced as “anti-Se- international institutions to intervene on The U.S. and other powers started to solution” of the Oslo Accords was always a mitic” supporters of the BDS movement. behalf of the Palestinians. In the first place, put pressure on their white supremacist al- formula for oppression of the Palestinians. Jungle World plays an important role this fosters illusions in bringing about a lies in South Africa to save the country for Under capitalism, the stronger state power for the “Anti-Germans” making anti-Pal- more peaceful, rational and social form of capitalism. The resulting power sharing will dominate, in this case Israel. Who con- estinian propaganda respectable among capitalism, if only enough pressure can be deal with the African National Congress trols the waters of the Jordan? Who gets the parts of the left and liberal public, as it has mounted. This illusory notion has proven did just that: While legal apartheid was oil? Might will decide. A “one-state solution” a much broader appeal than openly racist deadly in the past. Recall the 1982 mas- abolished, the black masses are still sub- of a “democratic, secular Palestine” under scene publications such as Bahamas, and is sacre of Sabra and Shatila, two Palestin- ject to superexploitation by the same local capitalism is a pipe dream, for the Zionist sold in many ordinary bookstores and news- ian refugee camps in Lebanon. Palestine white capitalist class (now with some black oppressors fear that if they are outnumbered stands. Taking a cue from right-wing dema- Liberation Organization forces had been capitalist front men) and their imperialist and overpowered, their former victims would gogues on prime-time TV who loudly com- evacuated from Lebanon under the super- overlords, as the 2012 massacre of black treat them as brutally as they have treated plain about non-existent “Sprechverbote” vision of the U.S.-led Multinational Force. miners by the ANC government showed. the Palestinians for the past 70 years. The (speech bans), the author uses his forum Instead of bringing peace, this set the stage In fact, neither South Africa nor Israel League for the Fourth International fights for of some 15,000 JW readers to whine about for Israeli occupation forces to surround is a “colonial settler state” where settlers Arab/Hebrew workers revolution. imaginary “Sprechverbote” – supposedly the camps, while sending in their allies of act as agents of colonial rulers (and could We hold that the only just solution is a enforced by a handful of Israeli immigrants! the fascistic Christian Phalange militia to return to the imperialist metropole if they socialist revolution that establishes a collectiv- At last year’s Christopher Street Day slaughter some 2,000 unarmed civilians. no longer served this purpose, as French ized economy throughout the Middle East. In parade in Berlin, the activists of “Berlin Secondly, BDS completely white- colons did following Algerian indepen- Palestine that can only come about through the Against Pinkwashing” were physically as- washes the crimes of imperialist powers dence). The South African apartheid re- joint efforts of the Arab and Hebrew workers. saulted – shoved and beaten with flagpoles such as the U.S., Germany, Britain and gime wanted to create a permanent black A separate Israeli revolution that brings the Zi- – when they protested the speech of Israel’s France, to whom this “strategy” appeals. working class to be exploited by white onist butchers to justice is inconceivable. But ambassador, holding up signs such as “No The “democratic” imperialists are respon- capitalists. The ideal of the Zionist state, acting together, the impoverished Palestinian Pride in Israeli Apartheid.” An attacker sible for unspeakable carnage all over the on the other hand, is a homogenous Jewish masses and a Hebrew-speaking working class caught on video using an Israeli flag to beat neo-colonial world, slaughtering millions, nation state, with a Jewish working class. that has tired of living in a garrison state under a woman is Andrew Walde, a bureaucrat at including in the Middle East, compared to This means excluding as many Arabs from constant threat of yet another war could pre- the DGB union federation and Social Dem- which, quite frankly, the atrocities commit- the Israeli economy as possible. vail. The first step in this direction must be a ocratic Party candidate in the last local elec- ted by Israel’s ruling class pale. Where Israel does impose an apartheid- fight to win Jewish workers to the defense of tions. Another, who used a rainbow flag as Third, the policies of the imperialists are like regime is in the occupied West Bank. the beleaguered Palestinians against the Zi- a weapon, is Left Party member and former governed by their particular economic and The fascistic Zionist settlers in the Occupied onist oppressor, demanding full democratic Berlin Parliament deputy Oliver Höfinghoff political interests, which can change. How- Territories seek to replace this by “cleans- rights for Palestinians in Israel and the with- (Berliner Kurier, 26 July 2016). ever remote a possibility right now, it is con- ing” what they refer to as Judea and Samaria drawal of troops and settlers from the occu- ceivable that the U.S. or Germany could at and driving out the entire Palestinian Arab pied West Bank. The Marxist position on BDS some point in the future pull back from their population, euphemistically called “trans- What is necessary above all is to smash The League for the Fourth International unconditional support for Israel as a regional fer.” Trotskyists call to expel the Israeli imperialism through international socialist defends the proponents of boycotts, divest- gendarme, as the U.S. did in the 1956 Suez army and all Zionist settlements from the revolution, particularly in the key imperialist ment and sanctions against right-wing and war. Should this occur, it could spark a geno- Occupied Territories, in order to defend the centers, the United States and German-dom- Zionist attacks and censorship. We denounce cidal frenzy among the bloodthirsty Zionist Palestinian people end the occupation. inated Europe. Palestine will likely not be the the recent Israeli law banning supporters of militarists, desperate to “establish facts on first place on the planet where socialism will BDS or others accused of spreading “Pales- the ground” while they can, by wholesale ex- For an Arab/Hebrew Workers prevail. However, a wave of revolutionary in- tinian propaganda” from entering Israel. We pulsion of the Palestinian population. State in a Socialist Federation ternationalist struggles in the region and else- oppose all attempts to equate opposition to In any case, Marxists are not in the of the Middle East! where may well break Israeli workers from Zionism with anti-Semitism. Where debates business of advising “their” ruling class The establishment of Israel was a result Zionism and Palestinians from Arab national- over BDS on university campuses become a about whom to ally with. We seek to de- of the genocide of six million Jews by Ger- ism. The LFI seeks to build an Arab/Hebrew referendum on Zionism, we would critically feat the imperialists through internationalist man imperialism in World War II. On top Trotskyist party to lead the fight for a bination- support such calls. workers struggle, including in alliance with of this heinous crime came the refusal of al Arab/Hebrew workers state, as part of a so- That does not mean, however, that anti-Zionist Israeli workers and leftists. the imperialist Allies to accept Jewish refu- cialist federation of the Middle East. This per- we endorse BDS politically, which is mis- Beyond that, the entire premise is gees. Israel’s 1948 “war of independence” spective lays the basis to unite the toilers from guided and wrong on several counts. Most wrong. The model is the boycott, sanctions involved the deliberate driving out of hun- the patchwork of national, ethnic and religious importantly, it is not compatible with a and divestment campaign against South dreds of thousands of Arabs. Many ended up groups in this crossroads of civilization. Then class approach to overthrow capitalism in African apartheid. Yet it was not American in refugee camps not only in the West Bank we can truly make the desert bloom. n May-June 2017 19 For the ICL: The Main Enemy Is in Brussels Latter-Day Spartacists Call for “Italexit” The following article is translated never advocate voting for this imperi- German imperialism” because we didn’t line (DAPL) not cross the Missouri River from L’internazionalista No. 2 (June 2017), alist alliance. Yet when a referendum tag along with the bulk of the Greek left right next to their reservation. Echoing the published by the Nucleo Internazionalis- about EU membership is posed by com- (and the ICL) in obeying bourgeois popu- DAPL’s capitalist owners, and effectively ta d’Italia, section of the League for the peting bourgeois forces, the political list premier Alexis Tsipras’ call to vote lining up with Donald Trump, the SL ar- Fourth International. content of the referendum is a key factor. “no” in his phony July 2015 referendum. gues that the land has not belonged to the There has been a rise in racist frenzy In this case, when the battle focused on Instead, we told the masses the bitter truth, Sioux for the last century and a half – af- and nationalist chauvinism in Europe with different formulas for restricting immi- that Tsipras had already organized a sell- ter it was stolen by the U.S. government! the refugee “crisis”, the anti-immigrant in- gration, campaigns by ostensible Marx- out to the Eurobankers and that following (See “Spartacist League: Land Surveyor ists for a ‘Leave’ vote meant giving this spired campaign for British exit from the his vote call would only give cover to that. Socialists,” The Internationalist No. 46, chauvinist ‘circus’ a ‘left’ cover. The European Union (“Brexit”) and various far Instead, we put forward a program of class January-February 2017.) only possible course for proletarian rev- struggle against this farce. In fact, the “no” Now during Trump’s bonapartist mo- right and fascist forces like Matteo Salvini olutionaries was to abstain on the vote in Italy and Marie Le Pen in France call- (including blank or spoiled ballots) and vote won, and as we had warned, Tsipras bilization to round up and deport immi- ing for their countries to pull out of the EU counterpose to it a class-struggle cam- promptly made an even worse deal with grants and ban refugees, the SL refuses to and drop the euro in order to better defend paign for asylum for refugees and full the Brussels bankers. call for asylum for refugees (or even just Christian culture and deport all “illegals”. citizenship rights for all immigrants.” While the ICL loudly insists that it is to let them in) and attacks the Internation- The Lega Trotskista d’Italia (LTd’I, Ital- So the LTd’I is now calling for “Ital- an absolute principle to call for withdrawal alist Group (the U.S. section of our LFI) ian section of the International Communist exit” and distributed a leaflet titled “Italy of imperialist countries like Britain and for calling to “defend sanctuary cities.” League, ICL) has been tailing behind this Out of the European Union!” (March 25) Italy from imperialist alliances at all times, These 400 jurisdictions have been targeted chauvinist wave, the latest gambit being at a Eurostop demonstration in Rome of joining in this with bourgeois nationalists by the Trump administration for not coop- their recent call for the Italian bourgeoi- the same day. In it they write: “The exit of and fascists, it no longer demands the inde- erating with federal requests to keep un- sie to pull out of the EU and return to the Italy [from the EU] could make the entire pendence of Puerto Rico from U.S. colo- documented immigrants arrested on minor lira. The German Spartacists proclaimed EU collapse and this would be to the ad- nial rule and independence for the French charges in jail as a “courtesy” to the I.C.E. in World War I that “the main enemy is at vantage of all the workers and oppressed colonies of Guadalupe and Martinique. immigration police (which courts have home.” For the ICL today, like the reac- and be a hard blow against the bosses.” So they accept the presence of French and ruled unconstitutional), and for telling lo- tionary nationalist populists, the main en- The LTd’I, which puts out propaganda U.S. imperialism in these colonies. Lenin cal government employees not to inquire emy is in Brussels. very infrequently, chose to dedicate the called groups like the ICL “social-imperi- about or pass on information about indi- The reaction of the LTd’I to the refu- entire three page leaflet to the question of alist,” socialist in name and pro-imperialist viduals’ immigration status. This minimal gee crisis, when thousands of refugees the EU, which has virtually become their in deeds. These fake-Trotskyists would prohibition (often ignored by the cops) can were dying trying to enter into Europe, be-all and end-all. According to them, the have been barred from joining the Com- mean a lot for undocumented workers. But was to polemicize against “open bor- difference between Trotskyism and Stalin- munist International in 1920 because they while Trump is moving to slash billions of ders”. The Ltd’I refused to call for the ism in Italy is supposedly that Trotskyists violate point 8 of the famous 21 conditions dollars from education and social service right of anybody to have refugee status are the best fighters for Italexit. Perhaps necessary for adhesion. Their acceptance funds to “sanctuary cities” to punish them, in Europe who was not already there. these pseudo-Trotskyist imposters would of colonialism is in line with the ICL’s loud the SL tells workers to do nothing against Their paper Spartaco (April 2016) po- like to propose a two stage theory of revo- support for the U.S. imperialist military oc- this threat. lemicized against the right of immigrants lution; first a nationalist fight to breakup cupation of Haiti in 2010. The LTd’I/ICL, having long ago aban- and refugees to move around freely in the EU and then the fight for socialism. The ICL’s British paper Workers doned Trotskyism and retreated from the Europe (see article “The Refugee Crisis They could call it the “strategic anti-EU Hammer (Spring 2017) claimed that there class struggle into demoralized do-nothing and Imperialist Barbarism” in The Inter- united front.” was a “clear class difference” between defeatism, is now capitulating to openly re- nationalist No. 44, Summer 2016). This The same leaflet quotes and attacks voting to “leave” or “stay” in the EU. actionary forces. Its “Italexit” line is only anti-immigrant position is especially re- (from the right) a statement of the PCL There is no “clear class difference” or the tip of the iceberg. n actionary since EU citizens have the right (Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori, Work- “class line” in the Brexit to do so. The LTd’I refused then and still ers Communist Party) which reads: “The and Italexit campaigns, League for the Fourth International refuses today to oppose the Dublin III truth is that the alternative is not between as both sides of this LFI, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY fast-track deportation decree. the euro or lira, between free trade and pro- debate are reactionary 10008, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] Then the ICL screamed victory with tectionism, between the European Union and bourgeois. But we the success of the chauvinist Brexit cam- and nations. The real alternative is between note that with its posi- Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil tion the ICL places itself paign last June, calling it “a stunning de- capitalists and workers, between capital- Brazil: write to Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251-740, feat for the city of London, for the bosses ism and socialism. In every country and on on the same side of the Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil and bankers of Europe as a whole as well a worldwide scale” (“Euro or Lira, the Real class line as various far Rio de Janeiro: write to Caixa Postal 3982, CEP right racist forces such as for Wall Street and the U.S. imperialist Problem Is Capitalism,” www.pcllavora- 20001-974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil government” (Workers Hammer, Summer tori.it, 4 February). The statement is true as Matteo Salvini of the E-mail: [email protected] 2016). They fail to mention the dramatic enough, although the PCL is constantly Northern League and Ni- increase in the number of racist attacks pursuing class-collaborationist popular- gel Farage of the UKIP, LVI/Deutschland during and after the chauvinist Brexit cam- front and parliamentary-reformist policies as well as Marine Le Pen Germany: write to Postfach 80 97 21, 21007 Hamburg, paign. The campaign was marked by the rather than revolutionary struggle against of the fascist National Germany murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in Yorkshire capitalism. But the LTd’I is denouncing Front in France. From E-mail: [email protected] on June 16. Her killer reportedly shouted the PCL from an Italian nationalist point of Puerto Rico and Haiti to Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia “British first” and was in contact with fas- view, pushing for an independent imperial- Europe, and elsewhere cist circles both in the U.K. and U.S. for ist Italy in the context of capitalism. (such as Mexico, where Italy: write to Anna Chiaraluce, Casella Postale N. 6, years. They do not explain how imposing The LTd’I goes on to polemicize the ICL can’t tell the dif- 06070 Ellera Umbra (PG), Italy E-mail: [email protected] further restrictions on Polish workers en- against the Nucleo Internazionalista ference between death tering Britain (the main selling point for d’Italia, claiming that we “give a Marxist squads and a workers Grupo Internacionalista/México Brexit) and endangering the status of many veneer to the arguments of the bourgeoi- union), the latter-day México: write to Apartado Postal 12-201, Admón. workers already there furthers the interests sie against the exit of Greece and Great ICL repeatedly fails to Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, México D.F, México of the working class. Britain from the EU.” In reality, we called see the real class line E-mail: [email protected] Single-mindedly pushing Brexit instead to abstain in the June 2016 referendum, dividing the exploited counterposing to the competing bourgeois and oppressed from the Tel. Mexico City: 55-3154-7361; Guadalajara: 33-1752- of fighting for international solidarity actions 6643; Oaxaca: 951-185-6815; Tijuana: 664-112-5423 with the large contingents of the French pro- chauvinist campaigns to “Stay” or “Leave” bourgeois exploiters and letariat who were mobilized and striking at a class fight for asylum for refugees and oppressors. Internationalist Group/U.S. citizenship rights for all immigrants. We And in the U.S., the the time does not raise class consciousness, , Box 3321, Church Street opposed the bourgeois nationalist call ICL’s Spartacist League Internationalist Group but instead lowers it. In The Internationalist Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. for “Grexit,” while noting that the Greek shamefully refused to No. 44 (Summer 2016), we wrote: E-mail: [email protected] “Revolutionary Marxists are irreconcil- bourgeoisie might be forced to leave the support the demand of New York Tel. (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 able opponents of the EU – a ‘Fortress EU and the euro out of desperation. But the Standing Rock Sioux Europe’ which condemns refugees at its the LTd’I bombastically declares that we Native Americans that Los Angeles Tel. (323) 984-8590 borders to death every day – and would “are heading towards the Fourth Reich of the Dakota Access Pipe- Portland Tel. (503) 303-8278

20 The Internationalist CLASS STRUGGLE EDUCATION WORKERS L.A. “Sanctuary Clinic” Defends Immigrant Patients The following articles are reprinted from The founders wanted to ensure that there the Class Struggle Education Workers web- CSEW photo would be a community organizing depart- site, http://edworkersunite.blogspot.com/. ment within the clinic, so we’d be able to Bringing the power of labor into the tackle what we now know as the “social fight to defeat the anti-immigrant onslaught determinants of health” such as housing, has been central to the Class Struggle Educa- immigration, food scarcity, mental health tion Workers’ work in the past period. This is issues, you name it. reflected in materials on the CSEW site, such Over the last 34 years we have transi- as “NYC Schools Must Be a Sanctuary for tioned to having a staff of 183, and we’re Immigrant and All Students – Keep I.C.E. now a federally qualified agency with Cops Out of Our Schools,” “NYC Health 12,000 patients. 95% of our patients are Care Workers Say: Mobilize the Power of monolingual Spanish-speaking, and 2% Labor to Defend Muslims and Immigrants,” speak a Mayan language called Kanjobal and “The Crime of Medical Deportations.” spoken in Guatemala, and others speak di- CSEW members have played a leading role alects of Náhuatl. There are now some Af- in putting into practice the call to establish rican immigrants as well. We believe that committees to defend immigrants in unions, we owe it to our immigrant patients, and schools and workplaces, while helping build our brothers and sisters in the community protests and mobilizations against attacks at large, to be working in their defense, ad- and provocations aimed at immigrants, Mus- vocating for them. lims and basic democratic rights. So the clinic was founded at the height So it was with great interest that of the civil war in El Salvador. CSEW activists learned that a health clinic Yes. The clinic is named Monseñor Ana Grande, organizing director for the Clínica Oscar A. Romero in Los Angeles. in Los Angeles had declared itself a sanctu- Oscar Romero partly because he lived and ary from the recent wave of raids targeting Enforcement sweeps began in earnest linking up these struggles from coast to worked at a hospital in El Salvador, El Hos- undocumented immigrants (“L.A. Health in the area in mid-February. Most of coast led to a mid-April visit to the Clínica pitalito, which we provide resources for, Clinic Protects Immigrants Against Ill- the patients who come to clinic for care Romero, where CSEW member Sándor but also because we always wanted to be ness — and Deportation,” LA Weekly, 15 were born in El Salvador, Guatemala or John interviewed Ana Grande. The edited a voice for the voiceless. Over 40% of our March). Located in the largely Central Mexico, and an estimated 40 percent and abridged interview is published below. patients are undocumented, and those that American Pico-Union neighborhood, the of them are undocumented, according * * * are legal residents or citizens come from to Ana Grande, the organizing director clinic is named after Archbishop Oscar Can you tell us a little about the clinic, mixed-status families. I was a patient here for the clinic.” Romero of El Salvador, who was assassi- its name, and the patient population? when I was a kid; I used to get my shots Grande was quoted as stating, “If agents nated in 1980 by right-wing death squads Clínica Monseñor Oscar Romero was here. I came in two years ago as community come in storming, our providers are determined to silence his denunciations of founded in 1983 by a group of Salvadoran organizing director, and I get to work di- prepared to act as human shields.” U.S.-backed army terror during the Salva- refugees and their allies. It was originally a rectly with the culture I’m from. My father doran civil war. The LA Weekly reported: Inspired by this courageous stance, we concept from a committee of the El Rescate is the cousin of Rutilio Grande, who was “Administrators for the Clínica sent her the motion passed by NYC health legal services group, who were [concerned Monseñor Romero’s best friend and the first Monseñor Oscar A. Romero declared care workers Local 768 (part of AFSCME about] health access for the new diaspora religious martyr of the civil war. One of the the sanctuary policy ... after caregivers DC 37) on the fight to “defend undocu- of Central Americans in Los Angeles. reasons why Monseñor Romero became the reported an alarming rise in the number mented immigrants in need of health care There were some nurses in the community “voice of the voiceless” was to highlight the of missed medical appointments from round-ups, jail and deportation.” who said, “Let’s start a clinic.” It started human rights atrocities in El Salvador. since the Immigrant and Customs Phone discussions on the importance of as a non-profit, volunteer-run free clinic. continued on page 22 Protest Anti-Communist Witch Hunt in NYC School For the past several months, the Office litical group. Nevertheless, in early May a and protect all of our immigrant students. federal district judge refused to grant a pre- We say – I.C.E. out of the schools, I.C.E. of Special Investigations of the New York CSEW photo City Board of Education has been conduct- liminary injunction blocking the OSI snoop- out of New York! And finally, here we ing an ominous “investigation” in the Park ing on grounds that it violated First Amend- are 60-plus years after Brown v. Board of Slope Collegiate school in Brooklyn. The ment rights and the Civil Rights law. So the Education [the landmark Supreme Court principal, Jill Bloomberg, and four teach- bogus “investigation” continues. decision ordering school integration] and ers are charged with communist organizing Parents at Park Slope Collegiate have New York City schools are the most seg- in the school! This is a throwback to the strongly supported the principal and teach- regated schools in the country. McCarthyite witch-hunting of the 1950s ers. They called a rally to defend them on “But how are we going to stop it? My when over 1,100 teachers in the New York the steps of the DOE headquarters on May group, Class Struggle Education Work- ers, thinks it’s not just a question of the City public schools were investigated and 31. Marjorie Stamberg, a delegate of the schools, not just a question of Trump. close to 400 were fired or forced to retire United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in I’m a proud member of the UFT and the over accusations of communist associa- District 79 and a supporter of Class Strug- 100,000-plus teachers. But we need a tions. People asked, how could this be hap- gle Education Workers, spoke at the rally. change in leadership there, and we need pening in this day and age? But it is, and it Here are excerpts from her remarks: to know that the UFT itself was forged has to be fought tooth and nail. “I was at the court a couple of weeks ago – that outrageous thing that was in anti-communism, in the anti-commu- The OSI is a sinister cabal that goes nist purge of left-wing teachers in the after teachers the administrators want to called a hearing –and it gave us some education about what the capitalist original Teachers Union. get rid of. Its specialty is framing educa- “So we need a fighting class-struggle tors on sex charges of the sort that tabloids courts in America will do. We have to defend Jill Bloomberg and stop the leadership in the unions that can bring like the New York Post feast on. Bloom- CSEW joined protest against D.O.E. McCarthyite witch hunt. The fact that a revitalization of all of labor. And most berg has long complained of segregation of witchhunt, May 31. we have a red-baiting witch hunt going important, we need a class-struggle word “segregation,” instead using the de- NYC schools. She was singled out because on in the D.O.E., the likes of which has workers party! No support for Demo- liberately ambiguous term “diversity.” of her official complaint to the D.O.E. in not been seen since the Cold War, is crats or Republicans, because [Obama’s January of race discrimination against the The 21st century Savanarolas in Tweed certainly connected to what is going on “education czar”] Arnie Duncan paved girls’ basketball team on the John Jay HS Courthouse (the D.O.E. headquarters be- in Washington and it has to be stopped. the way for [Trump’s education secre- campus. Although New York schools are hind City Hall) have accused Bloomberg “We have another big challenge in front tary] Betsy DeVos! All honor and de- the most segregated in the country, accord- and other teachers of “belonging to the Pro- of us, and that is to defend our immigrant fense of not only Jill Bloomberg but all ing to a 2014 study by the University of gressive Labor Party,” an ex-Maoist group students. In my school we have formed a of the teachers and students there who California, Los Angeles Civil Rights Proj- (New York Times, 5 May). Yet there is noth- UFT committee of students and parents are fighting against the sinister inquisi- ect, Mayor Bill de Blasio refuses to use the ing illegal in being supporters of a leftist po- and teachers and all school staff to defend tors of the OSI.” n May-June 2017 21 time where the best of us is being called to announce plans to close the company’s that its policy of “challenging the far right, L.A. Clinic... forth. So how are we going to be humane unionized Brooklyn warehouses. As we but not physically confronting them or at- continued from page 21 with the rest of humanity that is being have reported, the union-busting owners tempting to deny them the space,” was In the mid-1980s, a large number of tackled, marginalized, oppressed? And it is have gotten a helping hand from the Dem- only “tactical,” and “was a way to build people from the Salvadoran diaspora moved up to us to really be at that forefront, and ocrats in City Hall (see “De Blasio Ad- confidence and organization, and break to this part of Los Angeles, as well as Hon- to not give up. Giving up is not a choice ministration Complicit in Closing of B&H through the fear barrier that was being durans and Guatemalans. At that time, we right now. It is really our responsibility to Warehouses,” on page 5 of this issue). fanned by the media.” It pretends that “our had what we called sanctuaries, which were change the course of history. We’re proud As the B&H workers chanted in their aim should be to build our numbers and churches that became a network of solidarity of the position we’ve taken. Becoming a courageous walkout on May Day, echoing confidence so that we not only protest the and a community of support for one another. “safe clinic,” or a “sanctuary clinic,” has a slogan previously popularized during im- far right, but ultimately are able to drive I started being trained as an organizer at that allowed our patients to feel safer, and our migrant workers’ unionization battle at the them from our streets.” This is nonsense, time, and now we’re taking up that concept staff to become more united. When you are Hot and Crusty bakery: “Jugar con reglas perhaps to assuage any of their own mem- with what we’re living through right now. in solidarity, that is what happens. n del patrón es segura perdición” (Play by bers who may be uneasy about the dirty The thing is, we’ve always been liv- the bosses’ rules and you’re sure to lose). tactics they used in Portland. ing through mass deportations, even in Spectrum... To unchain the power of labor we have The grotesque actions of the ISO in the Obama era. Everyone was like, “Oh, continued from page 8 to free it from subservience to the bosses’ Portland did not come out of the blue. They it’s not going to be horrible, because it’s sought to take credit for a $25 billion in- parties and politicians. Breaking from the are not an aberration or exception; on the Obama, he’s not going to go into clinics or vestment that Charter had already an- Democrats, along with all the parties and contrary these actions are a vivid example schools.” Well, yes and no. But nobody did nounced last August, together with plans to politicians who represent a system based of what the ISO’s politics means when ap- anything, other than the “Dreamers,” who close overseas call centers (Dallas News, on the merciless drive for profit, is crucial plied in a situation of sharp struggle with were really at the forefront of being undoc- 23 March). Meanwhile, the list of call cen- if we are to win strikes, bust the union- real stakes. Its effort to help Portland’s umented and unafraid. Now when Trump ters being closed in Indiana, Kentucky and busters, and defend the most basic rights rulers head off militant mobilization to came into power, there was now a major elsewhere in the U.S. continues to grow. and gains of the working class. n stop the fascists, while seeking to preempt scare; it was going to up the ante, and we This is a vivid warning for workers not blame for “confrontations” by casting it on knew that no place was going to be safe. only at Spectrum but throughout the coun- ISO... other leftists, is a stark illustration of what So now we see raids happening not only at try facing viciously anti-worker employers continued from page 9 Trotskyists mean when we characterize the workplaces, which they always have, but who wrap their war on labor in the stars and In the ISO’s post-demo articles it nev- ISO as a social-democratic organization. we see them more in neighborhoods, ev- stripes. The union-busting Charter CEO join- er calls for dropping all charges against the Behind these actions is the ISO’s entire po- erywhere, during daylight time. ing the billionaire grifter president in “Amer- arrested protesters. It only has a brief men- litical method of adapting its “socialism” Because we’ve been very vocal about ica First” propaganda is a blatant example of tion that the Portland police used “exces- to bourgeois liberalism and Democratic our undocumented population, we felt it how politicians of both bosses’ parties (and sive force” and that its attacks on the antifa Party “progressives.” It is the politics of would behoove us to have policies in place all too many labor “leaders”) try to set work- activists were “unwarranted.” But in the class collaboration. that not only protected the organization, ers in the U.S. against those in other coun- next breath it claims that when the police The social democrats pretend that the but those within it, and of course our pa- tries, when our real enemy is right here “at launched a full-scale attack on this year’s only alternatives are small-group skirmish- tients. We talk about being a part of the home,” on Wall Street and in Washington. May Day demo with tear gas, flash-bang es with the fascists or “peaceful legal” pro- sanctuary network or the “safe space” net- Meanwhile, the liberal Democratic grenades and rubber bullets, “Black Bloc tests protected by the police. Not only will work now. We’re not providing sanctuary version of class collaboration has been protesters undermined a march of some such reformist/liberal love fests not pre- in the sense that it used to have; we’re not promoted by Mayor Bill de Blasio as well 1,000 people by provoking police” (“Anti- pare for more militant action later – in fact, housing people here. We’re now part of a as Public Advocate Letitia James, who Racists Show Their Strength In Numbers,” they undermine that potential – it is a false more extensive network... wrote a letter (signed by many city council Socialist Worker, 6 June). On that occasion dichotomy. The organizers of Portland La- Your point about deportations under members) calling on Charter/Spectrum to it also did not call for freeing the more than bor Against the Fascists, including Class Obama is a very important one, which “be a good corporate actor” by providing two dozen people arrested that day. Struggle Workers – Portland and mem- we’ve raised in articles like the one about an example of “partnership.” (James was a While the ISO, DSA, SAlt and other bers of several area unions, put forward a medical deportations. A lot of the institu- featured speaker at a previous Local 3 rally social democrats frequently talk of united very different strategy, of mobilizing mass tional and policy structures that Trump is on April 5.) But as James P. Cannon, the fronts as a cover for their class-collabora- labor-centered action that can vastly out- ramping up go back to that. The LA Weekly founder of the Trotskyist movement in the tionist popular-front blocs with Democrats, number and overpower the fascists, who article said that if I.C.E. came storming in, U.S., wrote back in the 1930s: “The part- from Bernie Sanders to local officials, in today are still quite small in number. clinic personnel would be human shields. nership of labor and capital is a lie.” this case they justify their splitting tactics by This is the strategy put forward by Yes, because they would be breaking Cannon stressed that every strike is blaming militants for “provoking” police. Leon Trotsky in Germany and France in the law, because this is private property. “a bullheaded struggle between two forces An earlier (May 4) Socialist Worker article the 1930s, and carried out by the American We are hoping to continue with that mes- whose interests are in constant and irrecon- about May Day reported that “local and na- Trotskyists who led the Minneapolis Team- sage, but obviously that is not the route we cilable conflict.... The only strike strategy tional media laid the blame on protesters for sters in organizing workers defense guards would like to go... that is worth a tinker’s dam is the strategy a march that had ‘turned violent,’” and then and who surrounded a Nazi rally in Madi- At the City University of New York, the that begins with this conception. The prob- proceeded to do exactly the same thing, say- son Square Garden with 80,000 workers campus presidents have made various dec- lem of the strikers consists in estimating ing that Black Bloc protesters were “incred- and youth determined to shut it down. The larations with an escape hatch, where they what their strength is, and then mobilizing it ibly irresponsible,” that they “give the po- key is to mobilize the power of the workers say if I.C.E. comes with a legal order, they in full force and pressing against the enemy lice an excuse for attacking protesters,” etc. movement, that can not only promote public will comply. We’ve been calling on people until something cracks...” (“The Maritime On June 4, the ISO didn’t wait to put the safety by sweeping the fascists off the street to say, “No, we won’t comply,” and if they Strike,” November 1936). But mobilizing finger on militants after the fact, but did so but can defend against the racist police ter- raid a campus or go to the home or work- the full force of labor is precisely what has before the event, which it deliberately split ror and anti-immigrant raids that are the place of a student or campus worker, and not happened, so far, in the Spectrum strike. in order to have nothing to do with anyone greatest immediate danger today. The initia- threaten them or their family with deporta- A winning strategy at Spectrum is who sought to actually drive out the fascists. tive by Portland Labor Against the Fascists tion, we would shut down the campus and counterposed to the labor tops’ reliance on In its June 12 wrap-up article it claims was an historic first step in that direction. n spread that to the rest of the University. Democratic politicians. Where this leads We’ve also talked about comparisons to can be seen by what happened when sub- the fight against the Fugitive Slave Act in way and bus workers in Transport Work- Internationalist photo the period before the U.S. Civil War. ers Local 100 brought the city to a halt Well, as Monseñor Romero would say, in 2005: then-mayor Michael Bloomberg “No man is obliged to abide by the law that (Republican) and state attorney general is contrary to the laws of God.” Elliot Spitzer (Democrat), backed by their One of the things that the CSEW em- respective parties, used the “slave-labor” phasizes is that we think the labor move- Taylor Law to try to bust the strike, fining ment – and more broadly the working the workers thousands of dollars apiece class, which has such a key immigrant and jailing the union president. component – has the power to actually shut The need to unite workers in a pow- down these raids. [The Clínica Romero’s erful class struggle is shown by the ongo- staff is unionized in the SEIU.] I wanted ing battle to stop union-busting at B&H to end the interview by asking if you have Photo. After an intensive organizing cam- any message for health workers in the New paign that won union recognition for the York area, or the students and faculty that mostly Latino immigrant workers with are organizing around these issues. United Steelworkers, B&H dragged con- Hundreds of union members and supporters in Portland, OR came out on I think right now we are living in a tract negotiations out for over a year, only June 4 to oppose rascist/fascist rally.

22 The Internationalist del CSWP en el micrófono, el papel de que encadenaban a los trabajadores a par- contra los fascistas, así como por la cons- Movilización... este partido capitalista en el fomento de tidos burgueses supuestamente “democrá- trucción de guardias de defensa obrera. sigue de la página 24 la guerra, el racismo y los ataques con- ticos” y que sirvieron en todos lados como Como en el caso de los trotskistas en los mente con el Internationalist Group. El tra los sindicatos. Entonces, justo cuando dique para impedir la revolución, lo que años 1930, nuestro programa revoluciona- CSWP lanzó también la iniciativa Sindi- la policía se movilizaba para echar a los condujo a sangrientas derrotas a manos rio no es retórica vacía sino una guía para calistas de Portland Contra los Fascistas a manifestantes antifa de la plaza Chapman de fascistas y militaristas, desde España y la acción. En la costa del Pacífico Noroc- mediados de mayo, instando a los sindica- con descargas de granadas aturdidoras y Francia en los años 1930, hasta Chile en cidental de EE.UU., cuando empezaron a tos a movilizarse para poner alto al mitin gas lacrimógeno, un portavoz del Grupo los 1970. En una escala mucho menor, esto circular informes de que grupos fascistas racista del 4 de junio, propuesta que fue Internacionalista declaró: es lo que representaba el mitin en la alcal- como el Ku Klux Klan urdían planes para rápidamente adoptada por sus sindicatos y “Lo que estamos viendo aquí hoy es al día de Portland el 4 de junio: una alianza realizar movilizaciones racistas, miem- otros. Esta iniciativa fue publicitada a tra- estado capitalista en acción. Necesita- con el alcalde del Partido Demócrata en bros de Class Struggle Workers – Portland vés del Northwest Oregon Labor Council, mos movilizar el poder de nuestra clase, contra del intento de parar a los fascistas. presentaron una resolución aprobada por aunque la dirección estatal de la AFL-CIO de la clase obrera, para ser capaces de Los trotskistas en Minneapolis, que a el local 10 del sindicato de pintores para dio la espalda a la movilización. echar a los fascistas, para sacarlos de la cabeza del local de los Teamsters [sindi- movilizarse en contra de las provocaciones Portland. cato de los choferes de camiones] libraron del KKK y otras fuerzas racistas. Como Doble asesinato racista sacude “Necesitamos organizar el partido de una exitosa huelga general en 1934, for- escribimos a principios de este año: “Los a Portland hasta los cimientos nuestra propia clase, un partido obrero, y maron una guardia sindical de defensa que revolucionarios deben intentar organizar tiene que ser internacionalista; tiene que La urgencia de la acción sindical en corrió a los Camisas Plateadas, una banda movilizaciones de masas enfocadas en la defender a los musulmanes, los negros, contra de racistas y fascistas se intensificó fascista patrocinada por los intereses de los clase obrera para aplastar a los provoca- las mujeres, y tiene que ser un partido con agudamente tras el asesinato el 26 de mayo un programa revolucionario para derribar grandes patrones, de la ciudad. (Unos años dores fascistas cuando pretendan realizar de los valientes Ricky Best y Taliesin Myr- al sistema capitalista que estamos viendo más tarde, en 1940, el gobierno encarceló incursiones en centros urbanos de la mul- ddin Namkai-Meche, y el casi asesinato de en acción justo ahora. Necesitamos un a los dirigentes de los Teamsters de Min- tirracial clase obrera”. La acción sindical Micah David-Cole Fletcher, a manos de un partido obrero revolucionario, así como neapolis con acusaciones inventadas por del 4 de junio es producto de ese esfuerzo. nazi local, Jeremy Christian. Fueron dego- acciones obreras unidas. En los años haber organizado las guardias de defensa; Como señalamos entonces: “En el contex- llados por ayudar a dos jóvenes afroameri- 1930, Trotsky hizo un llamado a favor un año después, encarceló a los dirigentes to de una movilización así, el servicio de canas, una de las cuales portaba un hiyab de acciones obreras unidas. Eso es lo que trotskistas por su oposición revolucionaria seguridad de la manifestación podría con- (velo islámico), a las que el asesino esta- necesitamos ahora, y no sólo en contra de a la Segunda Guerra Mundial.) vertirse en el núcleo de guardias de defensa ba amenazando. El doble asesinato racista los fascistas, sino también en contra de basadas en los sindicatos que puedan dis- sacudió la petulante imagen que tiene de los defensores del estado capitalista”. Sólo el poder obrero podrá persar efectivamente a los linchadores y a aplastar a los fascistas sí mismos los liberales de Portland. Sin Trotsky sobre la lucha la escoria nazi”. embargo, ésta es la más blanca de las prin- Hoy, tras la elección de Donald Trump, La movilización del 4 de junio fue un cipales ciudades norteamericanas, y en un contra el fascismo una nueva generación de fascistas está le- importante logro de los trabajadores con pasado no muy lejano fue un hervidero de Ha habido mucha palabrería en la iz- vantando la cabeza. Aún son pocos, y pue- conciencia de clase en Portland, y demues- skinheads fascistas. quierda que tacha a Trump como fascista. den ser aplastados. Pero meras cantidades tra que la movilización proletaria es posi- Mientras Portland se bamboleaba Los maoístas del ultra reformista Partido de oponentes no son suficientes. Mientras ble, ganando autoridad política y haciendo tras el shock ocasionado por los espan- Comunista Revolucionario (RCP) y su que los sindicatos y las organizaciones de realidad el programa presentado por el tosos asesinatos, miles de sus habitantes frente liberal RefueseFascism.org, llaman negros, mujeres, homosexuales e inmigran- Grupo Internacionalista de movilización querían hacer algo para parar los asesina- a “echar al régimen fascista de Trump y tes sigan atados al Partido Demócrata, no de la clase obrera en contra de los racistas. tos. Sin embargo, este esfuerzo fue mina- Pence”. En la práctica, esto significa traer podrán derrotar a los fascistas, pues los vio- Esta movilización debe alentar a los traba- do mediante una distracción en la alcal- de vuelta a los demócratas. De modo que lentos partidarios de Trump tienen los mis- jadores y a quienes se oponen a los racis- día organizada por los socialdemócratas la etiqueta de “fascista” sirve para justifi- mos intereses de clase que Obama, Clinton tas y antiinmigrantes a movilizarse en todo de la International Socialist Organization car la formación de un “frente popular an- y Bernie Sanders: todos defienden al capi- Estados Unidos y en otros países. Como la (ISO) junto con diversos liberales en tifascista” con otro sector de la clase domi- talismo. Al escribir en vísperas de las elec- primera movilización de importancia en colaboración con las autoridades de la nante capitalista. Pero como escribimos a ciones de noviembre, llamamos a formar contra de los fascistas en EE.UU. realizada ciudad, que explícitamente se opusieron principios de año, “ser un virulento racista un partido obrero revolucionario de dura en décadas, establece el punto de partida a confrontar a los fascistas. El alcalde antimexicano, antiárabe, antinegro, un xe- lucha de clases, incluyendo la formación de para la construcción de guardias obreras de Wheeler, quien también es comisionado nófobo, un sexista, un rompesindicatos, un “guardias obreras de defensa para derrotar a defensa en contra de las bandas de supre- de la policía, intentó inicialmente que el promotor del poder policíaco irrestricto no los esquiroles y las bandas fascistas” (“Las macistas blancos. Y como subrayaban las gobierno federal prohibiera la realiza- hace de por sí que Trump sea un fascista”. elecciones del carajo: quienquiera que gane, mantas del CSWP y del sindicato de pinto- ción del mitin racista. Cuando esto fue Señalamos que, en los EE.UU. de hoy, no perdemos” en The Internationalist No. 45, res, para desencadenar el poder de la clase rechazado, optó en cambio por un enor- hay un movimiento fascista de masas, toda septiembre-octubre de 2016). obrera es esencial romper con demócratas me despliegue policíaco combinado con vez que la clase dominante no se siente El Grupo Internacionalista ha conti- y republicanos y construir un partido obre- el amoroso festival de “unidad contra el inmediatamente amenazada por una clase nuado la lucha por la movilización obrera ro clasista. n odio” en la alcaldía. obrera radicalizada, lo que se debe princi- En la movilización sindical, los organi- palmente al sabotaje de las luchas que han zadores enfatizaron la importancia vital de realizado los falsos dirigentes de la buro- la movilización de la enorme fuerza de la cracia sindical procapitalista. Aun así, “sí The clase obrera, coreando “¡Hay que expulsar a hay verdaderos fascistas que están salien- Internationalist los nazis! ¡Los trabajadores de Portland tie- do de sus agujeros y ven con esperanza los nen la fuerza!” “¡Portland, es la hora! ¡Poder años de Trump” (véase “Donald Trump, A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the inmigrante, negro, sindical!” y “¡Estamos la ‘derecha alternativa’ (Alt-Right) y el Reforging of the Fourth International aquí para poner alto a los nazis, Portland es fascismo” en The Internationalist No. 46, una ciudad sindical!” También subrayaron enero-febrero de 2017). Publication of the Internationalist Group, la necesidad de que la clase obrera asuma la Los fascistas utilizan a sectores vul- section of the League for the Fourth International lucha contra toda forma de opresión social, nerables como chivos expiatorios. En Ale- coreando “¡Derechos de los musulmanes, mania, los nazis demonizaron a los judíos Annual subscription US$10 for five issues. derechos sindicales, la misma lucha, la mis- como el “enemigo interno”. En EE.UU. ma batalla! ¡Proletarios del mundo, uníos!” hoy, su principal blanco lo constituyen los Name______Este mensaje se repitió una y otra vez con musulmanes, inmigrantes y afroamerica- Address______respecto a los derechos de los negros, de la nos. Son mortalmente peligrosos. Cuando mujer, de los homosexuales, de los transe- los nazi-fascistas amenazaban con tomar el ______Apt. #_____Tel.(___)______poder en Alemania, el revolucionario bol- xuales, del derecho al aborto y de los dere- City______State/Province______chos de los inmigrantes. chevique León Trotsky hizo un llamado ur- Los militantes sindicales con más gente a comunistas, socialistas y sindicatos Postal Code/Zip______Country______conciencia de clase repitieron la consig- a unirse en acciones de frente unido para na de “¡Romper con los demócratas! ¡Hay poner alto a esos asesinos que pretendían Make checks/money orders payable to Mundial Publications and mail to: que construir un partido obrero!” y “Re- aplastar todos los derechos y conquistas Mundial Publications cuerden Hiroshima, recuerden Vietnam, logrados por el movimiento obrero y, con Box 3321, Church Street Station New York, NY 10008 U.S.A. Partido Demócrata, sabemos de qué lado ellos, hasta los últimos vestigios de la de- estás”. El hecho de que muchos manifes- mocracia burguesa. Write the Internationalist Group at the above address, or contact: tantes no comprendan aún la naturaleza Sin embargo, la política de los estali- Tel (212) 460-0983 Fax (212) 614-8711 del Partido Demócrata subraya la necesi- nistas y socialdemócratas fue, en cambio, E-mail: [email protected] dad de explicar, como hizo un miembro formar “frentes populares antifascistas” May-June 2017 23 El Internacionalista mayo-junio de 2017 La policía protegió a los fascistas muy minoritarios Movilización obrera en Portland para poner alto a una provocación fascista Militantes de 14 sindicatos de la región muestran la vía hacia adelante Esta es una traducción testa sindical, The Oregonian in- abreviada del artículo de pri- Foto: El Internacionalista formó: “Organizadores sindicales mera plana de este número de se reunieron en una banqueta de The Internationalist. El artículo la Tercera Avenida y corearon al completo está disponible en es- otro lado de la calle ‘¡Los inmi- pañol en nuestro sitio de Internet, grantes llegaron para quedarse! www.internationalist.org ¡Escoria fascista, lárguense!’”. PORTLAND, Oregon, 8 de junio El Washington Post señaló que – El mitin que aquí realizaron el los “sindicalistas que portaban domingo 4 de junio supremacis- cascos y chalecos de seguridad tas blancos y fascistas descarados gritaban: ‘¡Racistas! ¡Asesinos! que apoyan a Trump, fue cerca- ¡Fascistas fuera de Portland!’”. do por furiosos manifestantes El Seattle Times señaló: “Entre- indignados por esta abierta pro- tanto, un grupo llamado ‘Sindi- vocación, que vino apenas una calistas de Portland Contra los semana después del doble asesi- Fascistas’ organizó una cuarta nato perpetrado por un nazi local. manifestación. La protesta se Una de las tres manifestaciones, realizó justo al oriente del mitin la movilización convocada por la por la libertad de expresión, con iniciativa Sindicalistas de Port- cientos de personas alineadas en land Contra los Fascistas, reunió una estrecha franja de la calle”. Cientos de sindicalistas se movilizaron el 4 de junio en contra de un mítin racista y fascista. a varios cientos de sindicalistas Los sindicatos que participa- El Local 10 del sindicato de pintores de Portland llamó a defender a los inmigrantes, a romper y de sus partidarios al este de la ron en esta movilización de tra- con los partidos demócrata y republicano, y a construir un partido obrero de lucha clasista. plaza Terry Schrunk, donde los bajadores están muy conscientes racistas estaban resguardados por arrestarlos. Se reportó que 14 personas fue- Meses de trabajo desembocaron de que los ataques racistas son usados para dividir y debilitar al movi- tres líneas de policías antimotines (locales, ron detenidas. en la movilización sindical estatales y federales) fuertemente armados. Exigimos que todos los antifa y otros miento obrero. Como señalaba la convo- En la movilización sindical en contra manifestantes arrestados el 4 de junio Los principales medios noticiosos in- catoria de la manifestación: “Los fascistas de los fascistas estuvieron presentes miem- sean liberados y que se retiren todos los tentaron disfrazar la enorme disparidad en son enemigos mortales de la clase obrera. bros de al menos 14 sindicatos de la región, cargos en su contra, y lo mismo con res- números entre los fascistas y los que pro- Aplastarían a los sindicatos para imponer entre los cuales se cuentan: el Local 10 del pecto a todos los arrestados el 1º de mayo testaban en su contra, pero Willamette Week una dictadura ilimitada de los patrones. Por IUPAT (pintores); el Local 28 del IATSE y a los que protestaban en contra de un señaló que “los socialistas, sindicalistas y eso, sindicatos locales de Portland y de la (tramoyistas); el Local 1503 del sindicato mitin racista realizado el 29 de abril. anarquistas que se movilizaron hoy … so- región noroeste de Estados Unidos han de- de carpinteros y el Consejo Regional del La movilización sindical se mantuvo brepasaron en número a los extremistas de cidido usar su poder para pararlos”. Noroeste de los Carpinteros; el Local 483 en su puesto hasta el final, coreando con- derecha en una proporción de hasta 10 a 1”. La movilización del 4 de junio fue el de los Laborers; la AFT de Oregon (maes- signas y lanzando discursos sin parar que La movilización antifa de la plaza Chapman resultado de meses de trabajo. La moción tros); los IWW (Industrial Workers of the reverberaban a lo largo y ancho de la plaza y el mitin “Portland Unido Contra el Odio” inicial que llamaba a favor de movilizacio- World) de Seattle; el Local 503 del SEIU; Terry Schrunk y las zonas colindantes a lo en la alcaldía, reunieron cada uno a más de nes obreras contra los fascistas fue apro- el Local 29 de los siderúrgicos, la AAUP largo de más de seis horas. Activistas obre- un millar de personas. La acción sindical no bada el 16 de noviembre por el local 10 (profesores universitarios); el Distrito 757 ros se mantuvieron orgullosamente tras sus fue organizada en el Internet ni en las redes del Sindicato de Pintores, en respuesta a la de la ATU (trabajadores del transporte), y mantas sindicales hasta que toda la escoria sociales, sino por medio de los sindicatos explosión de ataques racistas que siguió a otros. Los primeros siete sindicatos apro- fascista y racista salió en autobuses prote- mismos, y unos 300 sindicalistas y sus par- la elección una semana antes del republi- baron mociones coordinadas en las que lla- gidos por la policía. tidarios se movilizaron. cano Donald Trump como presidente. Esto maba a “movilizarse contra el peligro claro Esta es la primera acción significativa Mientras la tensión se intensifica- siguió a la pionera moción aprobada por el y presente que las provocaciones de orga- de la clase obrera norteamericana en contra ba rumbo al 4 de junio, Willamette Week mismo local en agosto pasado, en la que se nizaciones racistas y fascistas representan de supremacistas blancos en décadas. La (31 de mayo) publicó un artículo titulado llama a romper con los partidos Demócrata para todos nosotros”. importancia de esta movilización trascien- “Grupos sindicales organizados se com- y Republicano y por la construcción de un Entretanto, un ejército de policías pro- de la mera denuncia de unos cuantos cien- prometen a mostrar su apoyo (y su fuerza) partido obrero de lucha clasista. Una manta venientes de siete distintas jurisdicciones tos de reaccionarios reunidos al otro lado el 4 de junio”. The Oregonian (1º de ju- oficial del Sindicato de Pintores (IUPAT) convirtió al centro de Portland en un estado de la calle, y del espeluznante linchamiento nio) citó a Ashley Jackson, portavoz de la con estas consignas estaba al frente y al policíaco para garantizar que la provoca- asesino a manos de uno de los suyos nueve Iniciativa Sindical de Portland contra los centro de la movilización del 4 de junio. ción racista tuviera lugar. Vehículos poli- días antes. El 4 de junio es un importante Fascistas: “Cuando se le preguntó con res- Esto subraya que, aunque los fascistas na- cíacos especialmente equipados, cada uno primer paso en la movilización del poder pecto a los llamados del alcalde a favor de tivistas como el Ku Klux Klan y otros ra- con una docena de policías estatales vesti- del movimiento obrero de Portland en de- que no hubiera violencia, Jackson dijo que cistas violentos se han envalentonado con dos de negro de pie en los estribos, rodea- fensa de los trabajadores, los inmigrantes, ‘no podemos confiar en que la alcaldía o el triunfo de Trump, la verdad es que la ron la plaza en la que los ultraderechistas los musulmanes y todos los amenazados el gobierno pongan alto a esta gente’”. La fuerza policíaca que los respalda, tanto en se habían reunido. Después de un empate por la ofensiva reaccionaria generaliza- Radio Pública de Oregon informó el 3 de Portland como en otros lugares, se expan- que duró varias horas, la policía lanzó des- da que viene de Washington. Muestra el junio: “Jackson dijo que su grupo preten- dió considerablemente bajo el demócrata cargas de granadas aturdidoras, balas de potencial para organizar guardias obreras de ‘impedir que los fascistas conviertan a Barack Obama. goma y gas lacrimógeno para desalojar a de defensa que consigan que las alimañas Portland en un centro de organización de Las mociones a favor de la acción sin- los manifestantes antifascistas (antifa) en fascistas se arrastren de vuelta a sus agu- cada vez más violentos ataques racistas dical contra racistas y fascistas y a favor la plaza Chapman, justo al norte de la pla- jeros. Asimismo, subraya la necesidad de contra los inmigrantes’”. de un partido obrero fueron originalmente za Schrunk. Tal como hizo el Primero de un partido obrero que luche por el derribo Tras las manifestaciones del domingo, presentadas por miembros de Class Stru- Mayo, la policía cercó el área, reteniendo a del sistema capitalista que alimenta al fas- la prensa burguesa se enfocó, como siem- ggle Workers –Portland, una tendencia de 200 personas en la calle mientras los iden- cismo, y por remplazarlo con el gobierno pre, en la violencia, culpando a los antifas militantes sindicales que trabaja fraternal- tificaban y seleccionaban a individuos para emancipador de la clase obrera. del ataque policíaco. Con respecto a la pro- sigue en la página 23