No. 343 December 2, 1983

WfJRNERS ,,IN(;O,I,, 25¢ .:~~: No. 343 X_"523 2 December 1983 • , m fl II u.s. Out of Grenada! Central America is at the crossroads of revolution or bloody counterrevolu tion. There is no in-between. Reagan is getting readv to invade and evervbodv knews it. BU"t '\'icafflgl1a~~ Oteflml"i. ~"icaraguan p The peupk lost 50,000 r· , in the struggle to overthrow the bloody tyrant Somoza, and they won't submit without a fight. It is that prospect which has thus far stayed Reagan's hand. But at precisely this moment when revolu tionary will and internationalist solidar ity are in greatest need in Central America, we hear the suicidal din for "negotiated solutions." The more Rea gan escalates his threats, the more the petty-bourgeois nationalists try to accommodate Yankee imperialism, And every attempt to appease Reagan just makes the U.S. capitalists more bloodthirsty. It is the nationalism of the popular front which threatens to disarm the Central American masses before the con/ras and Yankee invaders. Looking for a deal with Reagan, the 1\icaraguan Sandinistas have told Salvadoran rebel leaders to get out. They have thrown out Cuban teachers and military advisers. They are trying to appease Washington with offers to the "democratic" counter·· Big Pine II "war games" prepare invasion of Nicaragua. U.S. troops wade ashore in Honduras. revolutionary opposition within-at for much of its population... For precisely the time when revolutionary suggesting the leadership of Nicaragua Eden Pastora. Nodoubt the Kremlin in Nicaragua then to forswear smuggling measures should be taken against or the EI Salvador guerrillas could sell turn is telling Castro not to upset the arms or otherwise aiding rebels in EI Reagan's confederates. While the peo out. Now the New York Times is writing status quo in the Caribbean and Central Salvador or Guatemala would be no ple dig trenches, the leaders are digging editorials demanding that the Sandinis America, lest Reagan vent his wrath concession at all." Their conclusion: tas dismantle their army and set up a against the Soviet Union. their graves. The only deal Reagan and "If the United States is to swallow its the contras want is to leave a trail of coalition with the contras in order to The nationalists and reformists, from disappointment over the betrayal of death all the way to Havana. then be "allowed to manage their own Managua to Moscow to New York City, genuine democrats in Nicaragua it can The reformists' and nationalists' talk society." have had as their major plan reliance on hardly be asked to give up the right to Reagan's rape of tiny Grenada has the liberal Democrats in the U.S, So assist democrats elsewhere. If there is to of "negotiated solutions" with the be a deal, it should be one that contains Yankees and their "democratic" contras put the Yankee imperialists on a "high." what about the liberals? The New York the Sandinistas in return for their being, can only mean defeat. As revolutionary The Sandinistas are pressuring the Times (29 November) editorialized: if not welcomed, allowed to manage communists we have clearly posed the Salvadorans to accept a "political "The Sandinista leftists are broke and their own society." choices facing the Central American solution" which would leave the masses beleaguered by rebel forces supplied by What shameless imperialist arrogance! defenseless before the death squads. the United States. In piling offer upon masses. When we called for "military promise, the Managua regi:ne seems to The "deal" is. the U.S. continues to arm victory," the reformists called for a Castro, in turn, declares that Cuba will be asking that it be allowed to survive." Salvadoran death squads while Nica "political solution" and chanted back not militarily aid Nicaragua if the U.S. ragua dismantles its army and disarms What should be the terms fOl capitula the classic popular-front slogan, "The invades and is reportedly trying to its people!! And all the imperialists. tion. asks the Times. Since "Nicaragua people united will never be defeated." broker a deal between the Sandinistas would retain an army of 25.000 and guns continued on page 5 They called us CIA agents for even and the CIA's "liberal" contra terrorist. I.. ~ ~ ,I Bronx Cheer for Decal City It's Mayor Koch's capitalist miracle York Times is embarrassed by Koch's on the Grand Concourse. In a neighbor decal city, as it quotes the bitter irony of hood that is part of the poorest area residents who say the city should Congressional district in the country, provide "designer clothing decals to where on countless streets the "skyline" place over the tattered apparel of consists of the shells of burned-out impoverished residents, large Mercedes tenements standing amid acres of Benz decals to strap to their sides and rubble, New York City is pasting up decals of strip sirloins for them to eat." large decals depicting louvered shutters, And then there's Charlotte Street, Venetian blinds, drawn shades and where Jimmy Carter stood on the rubble potted plants over the shattered win in 1977 and promised a housing project dows of abandoned, city-owned build (later canceled). In 1979 PopeJohn Paul ings. It's 1984 in 1983. "Perception is Urban renewal Wojtyla denounced consumerism and Reagan-style: reality," said the Commissioner of reminded the faithful to keep their federally Housing Preservation and Develop minds on "moral matters." He prayed funded fake ment. Not since Reagan turned ketchup over the rubble. Deo gratias. In 1980 windows into a vegetable have the government's candidate Ronald Reagan appeared (complete with image makers had such a field day with too, with some Republican hot air. And potted plants the lives of the ghetto poor. and louvered today there is "Charlotte Gardens," two Officials "explained" that Federal shuUers) cover heavily barred, single-family, ranch "deep funding" programs for housing abandoned style model houses, complete with white have been shelved and that there is no buildings picket fences, standing in the middle of in desolate money for rehabilitation. There isn't the South Bronx desolation. The homes South Bronx. even any cash to demolish these fire cost $53,000 in an area where average traps. Instead the government is provid family income is $8,448, less than half ing fake windows, part of a $300,000 the national average. Federal program to improve the images The bourgeoisie is wincing over the of rundown neighborhoods. The "new WV Photo look" is not intended for the black and exposure of the decay of the South Hispanic residents of the area, mind Bronx. But knowing that they are Three years ago we hailed NYC city paint. It was the Russian people's own you-the bankers and politicians don't powerless to stop the rot, the bosses seek councilman Gilberto Gerena-Valentin promise that their city, cradle of the give a damn what they think. to cover it up in the shabbiest of ways. for taking a delegation from the Soviet October Revolution, would rise again The posters, which even from 100 feet Mayor Koch claimed credit for the Peace Council up to Charlotte Street after victory. And it did. The South away look like absurd props from poster idea, stating that "In a neighbor and asking the Russians for $5 billion in Bronx however is finished under capi Sesame Street, are primarily for the hood, as in life, a clean bandage is much, foreign aid. In response, his seat was talism. It stands as a product ofterminal backs of buildings facing the Cross much better than a raw or festering redistricted out of existence. We also capitalist decay. The rotting ghettos of Bronx Expressway so that New England wound." So that's what the South recall that in 1942, during the darkest America are part ofthis racist, capitalist and New Jersey-bound motorists will Bronx got-a picture ofa bandage over hours of the Nazi siege of Leningrad, system. Not promises of presidents, nor get an upbeat view of"Fun City." But up a very real festering wound. Thecourt of false fronts were erected on buildings prayers of popes, nor decals of mayors close the first floors are covered with Catherine the Great, creators of the shelled by the Wehrmacht. Windows, can change this fact. It will take the graffiti and trash accumulates in front of original Potemkin village, have nothing doors and cupolas were faithfully socialist revolution to rebuild America's boarded-up doorways. Even the New on Koch's camarilla. reproduced in plywood, plaster and cities.• isn't so neat and "surgical" as they claim: vicious, crazed, empty youth? Costrot bloody and deeply painful, there's ing rapists won't stop rape. Just as blacks, who are the primary Slave Law Barbarism '" plenty ofthancefor infec'1rbnor death and just how "careful" do you think the victims of the violence of this sick Southern white prison administration society, are also the majority of those will be with its three black "subjects"? thrown into Death Row, so too rape The "theory" is that castration cuts laws have always been used to victimize Carolina Racist Judge: off the production of male sex hor and terrorize blacks. Since 1939, 455 mones, supposedly blocking the "male men were put to death for rape-405 of sex drive." Judge Pyle now allows them black, and 398 convicted in the maybe "chemical castration" will be Southern states. And the cry "rape!" 30 Years or Castration okay-that is, repeatedly injecting them was always the signal in white Southern with Depo-provera, a female hormone communities to bring out the lynch Southern prisons, the defendants are In a horrifying move reminiscent of that (temporarily) does the same thing.

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