Revolution No. 10 October 2013 50¢ ROTC Reinstated,CUNY: No War Tuition Criminal HiredHike! David “Death Squad” Petraeus, Out of CUNY Now! SEPTEMBER 15 – In April 2013, the Board of Trustees of the City University

of New York announced the hiring of Internationalist photo former General David Petraeus to teach “public policy” at CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College. The news was met with widespread outrage among students, faculty and workers at CUNY: Petraeus headed U.S. imperialism’s Murder Inc. – the CIA – and commanded the bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This poster boy for imperialist war is a key architect for Obama’s current drive to attack Syria. Many CUNY students’ families come from countries directly targeted by the death squads, military coups, drones, spying and mass bombing organized by the likes of Petraeus. The ex-CIA chief’s right-hand man in Iraq, Colonel James Steele, created death squads and torture centers, based on his hands-on experience organizing death squads in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua during the 1980s. The result of Petraeus’ rule in Iraq: tens of thousands of corpses and torture victims. (For more on the “bloody brotherhood” of Petraeus, Steele, and John Negroponte, see p. 4.) City University of New York (CUNY) students and supporters demonstrate outside Macaulay Honors College, The day after Petraeus’ hiring was an- September 9, demanding ouster of war criminal Petraeus. nounced, the CUNY Internationalist Clubs American Decade?”) An accompanying pe- Clubs and Class Struggle Education Work- Student Coordinating Committee (RSCC), responded with a leaflet, printed page 2, tition was widely circulated within CUNY ers participated in a picket of this public Class Struggle Education Workers, IGNITE, “War Criminal Petraeus, Out of CUNY!” demanding the appointment be rescinded. adulation of a man responsible for torture Students Without Borders and others met to It outlined Petraeus’ war crimes and called On June 27, Petraeus was interviewed by and mass murder. plan protest actions. The Ad Hoc Committee for mass protest against his “class.” (Title: TV host Charlie Rose at the 92nd Street Y. The Over the summer, members of the Against the Militarization of CUNY was “Are We on the Threshold of the North Internationalist Group, CUNY Internationalist CUNY Internationalists, Revolutionary established for this purpose shortly before the fall semester began. It is a united front of different groups which have joined together to organize the protests on the basis of two demands: “CUNY Must Not be a War Col- lege!” and “War Criminal Petraeus, ROTC, Military Recruiters and Military Contracts: Out of CUNY!” The goal is to mobilize mass protest and exposure to drive out “Death Squad” Petraeus and ROTC. As school opened this semester, activ- ists hit the campuses with a campaign of mass leafleting, class announcements, ta- bling (including the use of some hard-hitting videos on what Petraeus and Steele did in Iraq, the massacres at El Mozote and My Lai, and the history of U.S. imperialism). Internationalist activists initiated a research group at Hunter College to study the Central America/Iraq death squad connection. On September 3, the committee orga- nized a protest against a CUNY recruiting

(Left) National Defense University (Right) Gilles Perress/Magnum meeting held by the ROTC (Reserve Offi- cers’ Training Corps) in midtown Manhattan. Then, on September 9, Petraeus was greeted Beribboned Gen. David Petraeus and his Iraqi death squads (right). Special Police Commandos under his command by an angry demonstration at Macaulay on were notorious for torturing and “disappearing” prisoners in the Samara region. U.S. “advisors” in rear of photo. continued on page 2 Petraeus Out... continued from page 1 the first day of his class. About 100 students, faculty, left, labor and immigrant rights activists demonstrated, demanding “War criminal Petraeus, out of CUNY now!” Later as Petraeus left class, he was confronted by students from the RSCC and others, who loudly denounced him as the bloody mur- derer he is; the video (http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=DIbl28O99Lg) quickly went viral. More protests are planned against the presence of this war criminal and ROTC on CUNY campuses. Join us! Petraeus’ appointment is part of a CUNY-wide administration effort to further militarize the university. While pushing for Scenes from video “Collateral Murder” of wanton killing of five civilians in Baghdad by fire from Army Apache an ever longer list of lucrative contracts and attack helicopters, 12 July 2007. No one was ever tried for this crime. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning has been cosponsorships with death merchants like sentenced to 35 years in jail for releasing this and other evidence of U.S. dirty war tactics. Yet David Petraeus, who Lockheed Martin, they renamed the CCNY was then commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is now a “distinguished visiting professor” at CUNY! social sciences division for Colin Powell, United States must not become a branch of We’ve all seen the photos from Abu What’s needed, now, is mass protest. The the ROTC grad who helped cover up the My the U.S. Army War College or the infamous Ghraib. Now, an extensive report in the Internationalist Clubs call on students, Lai massacre in Vietnam, led the invasion of School of the Americas (known as “School London Guardian (6 March) based on a faculty, staff and campus workers to: Drive Panama (1989) as well as “Operation Desert of the Assassins”) where generations of Latin 15-month investigation together with the war criminal Petraeus out of CUNY with Slaughter” (1991) under George Bush Sr., American military officers and dictators have BBC, on “Pentagon’s Link to Iraqi Torture protest and exposure! and as U.S. Secretary of State brazenly lied to been trained in the techniques of torture, mass Centers,” headlined: “Exclusive: General Back in 2005, we initiated the campaign the world about supposed “weapons of mass murder and counterrevolution. David Petraeus and ‘dirty wars’ veteran which spiked the sinister “Homeland Securi- destruction” in Iraq as Bush Jr. launched the In the spirit of Karl Liebknecht – leader behind commando units implicated in de- ty” program at BMCC. At Bronx Community second Gulf war in 2003 . of Marxist campaigns against militarism tainee abuse.” The Week (London, 7 March) College we led protests that ousted military Last spring the CUNY Board and ad- before and during World War I – we “edu- summarized: “General David Petraeus, the recruiters. Today, mass protest against Pe- ministration – puppets for city and state cate, agitate and organize” to link today’s former commander of US forces in Iraq, traeus can also help root out CUNY’s war rulers displaying blatant contempt and racist struggles to the understanding that capital- [was] directly involved in a systematic contracts at CCNY (where a Colin Powell disdain for most CUNY students – brought ism is the source of endless imperialist wars campaign of torture and atrocity” carried Center was established in “honor” of the back ROTC, which was ousted in 1971 as abroad and racist repression “at home.” out by “paramilitary units connected to the commander of “Desert Slaughter” I). a result of massive protests against its role Working to win CUNY students to the com- Iraqi Ministry of the Interior.” The Petraeus appointment is the latest in the Vietnam War. One of the most popular munism of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, we say: Afghanistan war commander: As outrage committed by the CUNY adminis- slogans at this fall’s protests has been the “Not a person, not a penny for the capitalist commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in tration and Board of Trustees, and comes on Internationalist chant “ROTC: Officer corps military” and “Washington, Wall Street: the 2010-11, Petraeus was in charge of numer- the heels of the truly obscene golden (more for the bourgeoisie,” drawing the class line enemy is at home.” Join us in the fight to ous bombings in which hundreds of Afghan accurately, platinum) parachute for retiring against this recruitment operation for war and defeat U.S. imperialism once and for all civilians – including whole families attend- Chancellor Goldstein, richly rewarded by repression in the service of the capitalist rulers. through international socialist revolution. ing weddings – were slain… the ruling class after getting a $490,000/ Having initiated the campaign for mass Reprinted below is the text of a leaflet CIA chief: As head of the CIA, Petraeus year salary and $90,000 housing allowance protest and exposure to drive out Petraeus issued by the CUNY Internationalist Clubs was responsible for Obama’s program of – for presiding over the destruction of the and ROTC, the CUNY Internationalist Clubs the day after Petraeus’ appointment was “targeted killings” by drones, which in Paki- last remnants of open admissions, a string of insist that the largest public university in the announced. stan alone has killed more than 200 children. tuition hikes, poverty pay for adjuncts, and From Vietnam to Chile and Central America, the notorious Pathways program. Macaulay War College? the infamous spy agency is synonymous with Rather than plead for the Trustees to mass murder in the service of counterrevolu- “consider” the opinion of those who work tion. In line with the Democratic/Republican and study here, we say: Abolish the ad- War Criminal Petraeus, Out of CUNY! war party’s endless colonial carnage abroad, ministration and Board of Trustees; CUNY APRIL 25 – Yesterday, the news spread gunship? “The Company” helps shred the most basic should be run by democratically elected through the City University of New York Iraq war commander: The images civil liberties “at home.” councils of students, teachers and workers. like wildfire: CUNY’s Macaulay Honors shocked the world: a video (www.collateral- Widespread outrage at CUNY and It’s high time to make this happen – before College has appointed former general Da- murder.com) released by WikiLeaks showed beyond has greeted the announcement they turn the City University into one big vid Petraeus – ex-commander of the Iraq/ Apache attack helicopters mowing down of Petraeus’ Macaulay appointment. “war college”! n Afghanistan wars and former CIA chief five unarmed civilians in Iraq, including the

– as visiting professor of public policy in father of two children who were wounded Internationalist photo the university’s Macaulay Honors College. while sitting in a van, as well as two Reuters One faculty member said, “I did not realize journalists. Accused of releasing this and Macaulay is a war college.” other materials on U.S. war crimes and dirty Some asked, is this a sick joke? No: it’s tricks, PFC Bradley Manning is rotting in serious – deadly serious. David Petraeus is the brig. Gen. Petraeus was commander of a war criminal. What is he going to teach the “coalition” forces during the imperialist – seminars on “enhanced interrogation,” onslaught that produced this and innumer- drone strikes and massacre by helicopter able other war crimes.

Visit the League for the Fourth International/ Internationalist Group on the Internet http://www.internationalist.org Write to CUNY Internationalist Clubs: [email protected] Revolution Newspaper of CUNY students from the Internationalist Clubs, for the program of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, published in accord with the Internationalist Group, U.S. section of the League for the Fourth International Revolution is published by Mundial 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]

No. 10 1162-M October 2013 Internationalist protesters at June 27 picket of former spy chief Petraeus. 2 Revolution How the Bourgeoisie Brought ROTC and Petraeus to CUNY Internationalist photo The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps advantage of their large, ethnically di- educated in “winning (ROTC) is a central part of U.S. imperial- verse populations. This is particularly hearts and minds.” Eerily, ism’s military apparatus. Indeed, “Army true in the case of the City University this phrase – proclaimed ROTC produces 75% of all Army officers” of New York (CUNY), the third-largest by Lyndon Johnson, the and “has produced more than one-half public university system in the country. Democratic president million lieutenants for America’s Army” The Army does not have a single ROTC who massively escalated (“What Is ROTC?” on cuny.edu). There is program in the twenty-three-campus the Vietnam War in 1964 also an Air Force ROTC and Navy ROTC. CUNY system....” – is the title of the famous First established in 1916, ROTC enrolled its To remedy this absence, the study called to documentary on U.S. war first City College student in 1917, the year “Make restoring ROTC to the Northeast atrocities in Southeast the United States entered the first imperial- and urban areas a priority” (emphasis in Asia, Hearts and Minds. original). In line with this, it stated: “By ist World War. During the 1960s and ’70s, As for Petraeus, af- providing university presidents and high- growing opposition to the U.S. war in Viet- ter resigning from the level administrators valuable face time nam – heightened by the My Lai Massacre CIA, supposedly due to with prominent senior officers (and often personified by Army Lieutenant William an extra-marital affair, favorable publicity), the military could Calley – included mass demonstrations that Obama’s former top spy garner support for its activities....” It called drove ROTC out of CUNY in 1971. and invasion and occupa- on universities to: tion commander wanted According to the American Enterprise “Demonstrate real partnership in to restore his reputation as Institute (AEI) – which the Right Wing building new ROTC programs. While the Watch website calls “one of the oldest Pentagon must be willing to step forward, servant of U.S. imperial- and most influential of the pro-business universities can also shoulder some of the ism by heightening his right-wing think tanks” –ROTC’s absence costs involved in establishing new ROTC academic profile. Specu- from the country’s largest public univer- programs.” (emphasis in original) lation has grown that he Protesters outside Macaulay, September 16. sity has been a big problem. In May 2011, It is no coincidence that David “Death could be put forward as AEI published a “Case Study of ROTC in Squad” Petraeus figures prominently in the Republican candidate for U.S. president. signing up Petraeus meant “Look Who’s New York City,” written by Cheryl Miller, AEI study, which states on page 29: “In He would follow predecessors like bomber Teaching in CUNY” would be writ large – in previously of the White House Office of many respects, General David Petraeus, McCain or death squad leader and former letters of blood. Not only that, but as part of Presidential Speechwriting under George W. commander of the International Security head of the New School Bob Kerrey, who his new “academic” career Petraeus would Bush, with an enthusiastic introduction by Assistance Force and commander of US exterminated a village in Vietnam and went “mentor ROTC members,” as CBS News a retired Army general. The AEI called on Forces Afghanistan, is the model of a on to be governor of Nebraska, a U.S. sena- (2 May) noted in an article on his other “as- the military to target the New York region, warrior-scholar.” Highlighting his academic tor, and a (failed) presidential candidate signment...in the trenches of academia,” at and CUNY in particular: connections, it stated with open cynicism: “ Hearing the voice of its masters in the the University of Southern California, from “The absence of ROTC units on urban Of growing importance for this new breed Pentagon, White House and Wall Street, the which he is now shuttling back and forth to campuses, especially in the Northeast, of officer is so-called cultural competency,” CUNY administration snapped to attention. CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College. prevents the military from taking full and stressed the need for officers to be Not only would it bring back ROTC, but continued on page 18 CUNY Must Not Be a War College War Criminal Petraeus, ROTC, Military Contracts and Military Recruiters: OUT OF CUNY! slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Advanced Science Research Protest Petraeus’s first day of class Iraqis. Petraeus brought Col. James Steele Center, etc. Monday, September 9th, 2:30 PM – who commanded death squads in Vietnam • CUNY security’s rela- tionship with the NYPD has Macaulay Honors College, 35 West and Central America – to Iraq to organize and train death squads which carried out expanded in recent years. 67th St. (between Central Park West While campus cops work and Columbus Ave.) “the worst acts of torture” during the U.S. occupation (London Guardian, 6 March). closely with the NYPD to Below is the text of the leaflet by the Ad As CIA chief, Petraeus was the architect of repress student and worker Hoc Committee Against the Militarization almost 3,000 “targeted killings” by drones. protests, business-as-usual of CUNY. • Meanwhile, the Reserve Officers’ for the NYPD includes spy- CUNY has signed up a war criminal to Training Corps (ROTC) program is ing on Muslim students on “teach” at the Macaulay Honors College. being revived at CCNY, York, Medgar campus. CUNY campus Join with us in protesting this outrage. Evers and the College of Staten Island. “peace officers” are able The Board of Trustees has appointed ROTC was ousted from CUNY in 1971 to make arrests and to use former CIA chief David Petraeus – ex- after widespread protests against its role deadly force (included commander of the Iraq and Afghanistan recruiting and training officers for the U.S. in the CUNY admin- wars – to give a course titled “Are We On the war in Vietnam that killed an estimated 3 istration’s arsenal are Threshold of the North American Decade?” million Vietnamese. hollow-point bullets, at the Macaulay Honors College. Whether • The appointment of Petraeus fol- which even the NYPD being paid $200,000 or $1 (the amount his lows CCNY’s recent establishment of is not supposed to use (New York pay has been reduced to following wide- the Colin Powell Center, named after the Post, 6 May 1999). spread indignation at his salary), this mass Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Against this growing militarization of Internationalist Clubs, Revolutionary Stu- murderer must not be allowed to teach at the U.S. invasion of Panama (1989) and the CUNY, the time for massive protest is now! dent Coordinating Committee, Students CUNY. The importance of mass protest is first Persian Gulf War (1991). Ad Hoc Committee Against the Without Borders at Queens College, Class highlighted by the fact that many CUNY stu- • The increasing militarization of Militarization of CUNY Struggle Education Workers, Workers dents and their families come from countries CUNY is also reflected in military recruit- The September 9 protests demanding Power-US, IGNITE, Movimiento Socialista targeted by the U.S. military and dominated ers; Army and Navy “missile command” “CUNY Must Not Be a War College” and de Trabajadores-NYC, Asociación de Es- by U.S. imperialism. and “air warfare” representatives’ participa- “War Criminal Petraeus, ROTC, Military tudiantes Latinas/os y Latinoamericanas/ • As commander of U.S. forces in Af- tion in a CCNY conference on “Automatic Contracts and Military Recruiters: Out of os of CUNY, Sister Circle Collective, Dr. ghanistan, Petraeus rained death on Af- Target Sensing”; arms manufacturers Ray- CUNY!” have been endorsed by the follow- Hester Eisenstein of Queens College and the ghan civilians. As commander of “coali- theon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed ing organizations and individuals (list in Graduate Center, CUNY, Carmelina Cartei, tion” forces in Iraq, he ran the imperialist Martin’s backing for CCNY’s $198 million formation): Internationalist Group, CUNY Anakbayan-NY. October 2013 3 From El Salvador to Iraq: The Bloody Trail of Col. James Steele and David “Death Squad” Petraeus The following article by the CUNY the death squads, mainly Internationalist Clubs is based on the work recruiting from reac- of the research group on the “death squad” tionary Shia militias, connection with Gen. David Petraeus that and set them on their we initiated at Hunter College. murderous course. It has been known as far back as 2005 The mission of that the U.S. occupiers of Iraq, first under these Special Police Gilles Peress/Magnum George Bush II and now under Obama, ap- Commandos was to kill plied the “Salvador Option” there. This term suspected opponents of refers to rule by death squad: subduing the the U.S. occupation, by population through mass torture and killing either shooting them carried out by specially organized paramili- on the spot or bring- tary and military units. ing them to specially The grim strategy actually goes back established “detention to the Nazi Einsatzgruppen in World War centers” to be tortured II and the CIA’s Phoenix program in the to death. A prime torture Vietnam War. The U.S. government imple- center was the library mented this strategy in El Salvador to drown in the town of Samara, in blood the worker and peasant resistance to Iraq, where Col. James the brutal military dictatorship Washington Steele had his office. backed. In El Salvador the death squads A photographer on – whether they were paramilitary groups assignment for the New or units of the Salvadoran army (like the York Times, Gilles Per- U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion) – killed at ess, reported: “We were least 70,000 civilians. in a room in the library A new UK Guardian-BBC Arabic interviewing Steele and Special Police Commando death squad at work in Samara, Iraq investigation brought broader public aware- I’m looking around I see blood everywhere.” most responsible for creating this murder at his side, Bernie Kerik (supplied by the ness of the murderous made-in-USA The Times reporter working on the story, machine are Col. Steele and Col. James Coff- NYPD). In went the professional mass campaign of terror in Iraq, while directly Peter Maass, noted “while this interview was man and their boss, Gen. Petraeus. “Coffman murderers, led by Petraeus and John Ne- connecting U.S. “advisers” to the torture going on with a Saudi jihadi with Jim Steele reported to Petraeus and described himself in groponte. In the 1960s Negroponte was the and murder. Also, significantly, it spelled out also in the room, there were these terrible an interview with the US military newspaper chief U.S. political officer in Saigon (now the connection to General David Petraeus, screams … screams of pain and terror.” Stars and Stripes as Petraeus’s ‘eyes and ears Ho Chi Minh City), when the CIA launched who had been lionized by the “mainstream” Thousands of Iraqis were being killed out on the ground’ in Iraq,” a Guardian article its campaign of torture chambers and mass media, both conservative and liberal. in these horrific ways each month. This on the investigation reported. 2 murder known as the Phoenix program. The products of the investigation, the much had been known previously, though Petraeus, who had commanded the As Reagan’s ambassador to Honduras in documentary film James Steele, Mystery never confirmed officially (and denied by 101st Airborne Division during the U.S.’ the 1980s, Negroponte initiated a Phoenix- Man in Iraq1 and accompanying stories, War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). But the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was sent back in program-like regime there, organizing were made possible by documents released millions of classified military logs released June 2004, after the warmakers in Wash- torture centers and death squads from his to WikiLeaks by the heroic actions of to WikiLeaks documents included long lists ington realized that their imperialist army headquarters in Tegucigalpa. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. The (shown in the documentary) listing times, was meeting determined Iraqi resistance. Negroponte also coordinated a multi- Manning documents and the investigation places, and sometimes names of the victims, Petraeus’ plan for destroying the resistance national campaign of mass murder includ- reveal how the U.S. constituted and trained with a meticulousness that recalled the lists was simple: mass murder. He brought in ing the death-squad regime in El Salvador 1 The trailer for this film is on line athttp://www. kept by Nazi jailers in Hitler’s death camps. veteran U.S. operatives who in the 1980s and the “Contra” war in Nicaragua.4 This youtube.com/watch?v=eGfYfbPS6zU; the full The campaign, which is still operating were instrumental in creating the reign of bipartisan war on the population of Central film is available at http://www.youtube.com/ today, has evolved into a bloody sectarian terror in Central America. America left hundreds of thousands of watch?v=_ca1HsC6MH0 or on the Guardian war that has claimed the lives of tens of Steele and Coffman, working under Pe- corpses in its awful wake – in El Salvador, website: http://www.theguardian.com/world/vid- thousands of Iraqis. The three U.S. officers traeus, set up death squads on the model that eo/2013/mar/06/james-steele-america-iraq-video Nicaragua, and Honduras. In neighboring U.S. presidents Carter and Reagan used in El Guatemala, the U.S. helped dictators includ- Salvador, to terrorize the native population ing Efraín Ríos Montt perpetrate a holocaust into submission to the rule of Washington and against the Mayan people, killing 200,000 Col. James its puppet military dictators. When in 2004 Steele, in the 1980s. It was all done in the name Newsweek magazine reported that the “Sal- of stopping communism and ensuring U.S. right, with vador Option” was being considered for Iraq Iraqi Police domination of Latin America. by Rumsfeld, Bush’s Secretary of Defense, it Twenty or so years later the same actors Commandos was probably already in place. By early 2005 chief Gen. assembled to rerun their blood-soaked strat- the New York Times could report that the death egy in Iraq. Negroponte was reunited there Adnan squads were indeed up and running.3 Thabit, left, with his old accomplice James Steele. Steele in library at Steele, Petraeus, and had been the Pentagon’s commander on the Samara, Iraq Negroponte: A Bloody ground in El Salvador from 1984 to 1986 and as such presided over the brutal repression of which was Brotherhood torture center Salvadoran workers and peasants. No crime The Bush II team had fired their failed for death was too savage for Steele and his killers: Gilles Peress/Magnum for the New York Times York Gilles Peress/Magnum for the New commandants, including chief “administra- squads. torture of every kind on a mass scale, babies tor” L. Paul Bremer and the low-life thug There was murdered in front of their mothers, daughters 2 Mona Mahmood, Maggie O’Kane, et al., “From “blood raped before their parents, defenseless villag- El Salvador to Iraq: Washington’s Man behind ers set upon by Nazi-admiring sadists who everywhere,” Brutal Police Squads,” Guardian [London], 6 said enjoyed slitting open the bellies of animals March 2013. and drinking their blood. photographer 3 Peter Maass, “The Way of the Commandos,” Gilles Peress. New York Times Magazine, 1 May 2005; “Iraq 4 Dahr Jamail, “Negroponte and the Escalation Death Squads,” Washington Post editorial, 4 of Death,” [Hong Kong] Asia Times Online, 7 December 2005. January 2007. 4 Revolution D’Aubuisson’s security ignore Iraqi-on-Iraqi torture. This inci- chief when he was head dence, this Frago 242, came up over 1,000 of the Constituent As- times in the documents as we looked at sembly. it and we wondered why this order was Trained at the in- issued and what was the story behind it. famous School of the . . . The Wikileaks documents, because Americas in Fort Ben- they were the actual documents and what ning, Georgia, Regalado the State Department was sending back to Washington about what was going on,

Susan Meiselas/Magnum was called “Dr. Death” that this was a real treasure trove that we because he was a dentist should explore.” who practiced medical – Maggie O’Kane, on “Democracy Now” torture on his victims, radio program, 22 March 2013. including ripping out Maggie O’Kane is one of the authors teeth. Dr. Death was of the Guardian documentary that exposes assigned by Steele to Petraeus and Steele as the organizers of the train Salvadoran po- Iraq death squads. Her statement that the lice units supposedly WikiLeaks documents enabled the journal- for drug enforcement. ists to confirm the death squad killings in But Celerino Castillo, Iraq underscores the selfless courage of a former agent of the Chelsea (formerly Bradley). Manning, too, U.S. Drug Enforcement was tortured and has now been condemned Agency, states that un- to 35 years in jail for exposing the lies and der Steele and Regalado crimes of U.S. imperialism. Her actions he was really training were the highest form of personal solidar- death squads (see his Site of the 11 December 1981 massacre of the village of El Mozote: nearly 800 confirmed dead, ity with the countless men, women, and book, Powderburns: mostly women and children, slaughtered by the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Brigade. Col. James Steele children who were (and continue to be) the Cocaine, Contras, and was an “advisor” to the brigade when it returned to Morazán province to kill again in 1984. victims of Petraeus’ torturers and murder- the Drug War [Mosaic ers. Chelsea Manning is an inspiration to Atlacatl and El Mozote break the story, was smeared as a communist Press, 1994]. dupe by the U.S. government and reassigned the oppressed the world over: we salute her The U.S. government under Democrat Today James Steele is a “motivational by his scornful boss Abe Rosenthal. His re- valor and fight for her freedom. Carter and Republican Reagan funded the speaker” and in his profile brags that he placement, James LeMoyne, was not above Imperialism is not a policy but a sys- killing 100%, supplied the weapons, in- “commanded the U.S. Military Group in El fabricating stories of nonexistent communist tem, the highest stage of capitalism as Lenin cluding M16s, M60 machine guns, 90mm Salvador during the height of the guerrilla atrocities in El Salvador and as such was defined it, characterized by the subjugation cannons, attack helicopters and A-37 as- war.” He doesn’t mention that he was also much more to the government’s liking.6 and superexploitation of semi-colonial na- sault aircraft, supervised the building of one of the main players in the operation The awful truth of the 1981 mas- tions and peoples by the capitalist-imperi- the torture chambers, and supplied military known as “Iran-Contra” – when Reagan sold sacre was confirmed in 1992 when at the alist powers. The history of imperialism is advisors to plan the atrocities and direct arms to the Khomeini regime in Iran and insistence of courageous survivor Rufina the history of wars of domination, almost them on the ground. Col. Steele advised in used the proceeds from those sales (and, it Amaya and supporters, hundreds of human always through mass terror against the the operations of the Atlacatl Battalion, for was later revealed, from the sale of cocaine) skeletons, including those of many children, civilian population. While U.S. leaders rail example. This unit of the Salvadoran army to fund the counterrevolutionary mercenary were dug up by an Argentine forensic team. against “terrorists,” in fact terror is a fun- was organized and trained at the “School army known as the Contras. Since then, Salvadoran politicians have damental strategy of the imperialists, not an of the Americas” – aka the “School of As- The Contras were secretly formed admitted that U.S. advisors were present aberration, whether carried out directly by sassins” – now located in Fort Benning, by the U.S. government to overthrow at the killings. The full-length account by the imperialist armed forces or by organized Georgia. the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote surrogates like Petraeus’ Iraq death squads. On 11 December 1981, the Atlacatl Bat- The Sandinistas had in 1979 toppled the (Vintage Books, 1994), is must reading for talion carried out one of the most heinous U.S.-backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza. Today, the United States remains the everyone who wants to learn the bloody crimes of the Salvadoran Civil War, the El Somoza’s brutal National Guardsmen fled most powerful imperialism in the world, and reality behind initials from CIA to ROTC. Mozote massacre in Morazán province, across the border to Honduras, where with as one of its leading officers, Gen. David where an entire village was annihilated, Enter Petraeus’ Henchman, desperados recruited from many countries Petraeus organized the murder of tens of they were organized and armed under the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan. As CIA with nearly 800 confirmed dead. In a care- James Steele fully planned operation, the soldiers fell direction of Negroponte and Oliver North. director Petraeus oversaw the drone attacks The identities of the U.S. advisers in upon unarmed villagers, torturing, raping Thousands of U.S. Marines and hundreds of which have killed thousands of civilians in the massacre at El Mozote carried out by and murdering with almost unimaginable special advisers were on the scene, to over- “targeted killings” (assassinations) from the Atlacatl Battalion have not yet been depravity. Every dwelling was burned, the see the construction of bases and an airstrip. Afghanistan to Yemen. Last year, Petraeus discovered. What is known is that Petraeus’ church was burned, the raped and tortured The Contras were designed to be every pushed hard for deeper U.S. intervention henchman Steele was “advising” the same bodies were burned. Every animal was bit as brutal as the death-squad army in El against Syria, seeking to turn the “rebel” Atlacatl killers by 1984 at the latest. When the killed and burned. Total destruction. Salvador. In their many forays into Nicara- bands fighting the Assad government more perpetrators of El Mozote were flown back to One of the murderers thought that in- gua they did what their U.S. advisers had continued on page 13 Morazán province that year to commit further stead of killing all the children, they could trained them to do: fall upon the peasant horrors, Steele was on the scene, as the New kidnap some (like the Argentine junta did in population and torture, murder, rape and York Times (19 October 1984) reported: “The Internationalist photo the 1970s and 1980s, when many children pillage at will. The Contra war was another head of the United States military group, Col. were raised by the murderers of their leftist made-in-USA atrocity, but it was secret James Steele, and two other United States parents). A fellow Atlacatl soldier is reported and secretly funded. Arms and ammo were military advisers wearing combat uniforms to have told the would-be kidnapper: not sent directly to Negroponte’s bases in and carrying semi-automatic CAR-15 rifles “We have to finish everyone, you know Honduras: instead the deadly supplies were watched the operation.” that. That’s the colonel’s order. This is sent to the military airbase in Ilopango, an operativo de tierra arrasada here [a The massacre at El Mozote was one El Salvador, where North’s accomplice scorched-earth operation] and we have horrendous episode in the long war of U.S. Colonel James Steele oversaw the transfer to kill the kids as well, or we’ll get it imperialism and its puppet dictatorship to the Contras.7 According to the Guardian ourselves.” 5 against the workers and peasants of El investigation, Petraeus visited Steele there They did indeed kill all the children, in one Salvador. The Atlacatl unit and the death at the time this operation was going on and squads of Roberto D’Aubuisson (a U.S.- place herding many preteens into a room and even stayed at his house near the airport. opening up on them with their machine-guns trained military officer and torturer known until all were dead. as “Blowtorch Bob”) committed countless War Criminal Petraeus, The U.S. government and their Salva- atrocities, backed to the hilt by the U.S. ROTC, Military Contracts and doran puppets long denied that the massacre government. One such crime was the mur- Recruiters: Out of CUNY! at El Mozote had taken place. Officials der of Oscar Romero, Catholic archbishop “When the WikiLeaks documents came sought to discredit the careful reporting of of San Salvador, on 24 March 1980. This out in December of 2011 . . . there was a the massacre by Washington Post reporter killing was organized by D’Aubuisson, and reference to Frago 242, which was a US Alma Guillermoprieto; Raymond Bonner, carried out by Héctor Antonio Regalado, military order instructing US soldiers to the New York Times reporter who helped 6 Jeff Cohen, Norman Solomon, “The War 7 David Corn, “From Iran Contra to Iraq,” Nation, Ex-CIA chief Petraeus has been 5 Mark Danner, “The Truth of El Mozote,” New Crimes Cover-Up in El Salvador,” Seattle Times, 7 May 2005; Peter Watt, “Negroponte, Honduras, pushing for bombing Syria. Defend Yorker, 6 December 1993. 17 April 1993. and Iraq,” ZNet, 9 July 2004. Syria against U.S. imperialist attack! October 2013 5 Students Today Need to Know This History U.S. Imperialism’s War Crimes and Mass Murder in Vietnam A Review of Kill Anything That Moves By Mia by capitalist imperialism. As CUNY students, faculty and work- In defeating the imperialists, the Na- ers seek to drive U.S. imperialism’s recruit- tional Liberation Front of Vietnam (NLF, ers – General David “Death Squad” Petraeus also known as the Viet Cong) also defeated and ROTC – off the campuses through their local bourgeois puppets, servants and protest and exposure, a new book provides a junior partners, establishing a workers state, look back at some of imperialism’s bloodiest albeit one that is bureaucratically deformed. crimes. For ten years the U.S. government Saluting these courageous fighters, we de- brought death and destruction to Vietnam, fend Vietnam (as well as the other bureau- killing millions, maiming millions more, cratically deformed workers states of China, torturing uncounted thousands. Kill Any- Cuba and North Korea) against imperialist thing That Moves: The Real American War attack or counterrevolution from within. in Vietnam (Henry Holt, 2013), written by Key to this is the working people of Nick Turse, should be read by every young these countries carrying out a proletarian militant seeking to understand the essence political revolution that establishes work- of capitalism in the imperialist era. ers democracy – like the soviets (workers The book documents the murderous councils) of Lenin and Trotsky’s 1917 truth of the dirty colonial war against Bolshevik Revolution – and a policy of Vietnam: that the killing and torture were revolutionary internationalism to extend routinized on a massive scale; that the revolution worldwide. Ronald L. Haeberle treatment of “noncombatants” reconfirmed The U.S. in Vietnam: Mass in every sense the depravity of the U.S. My Lai massacre, 16 March 1968. Over 500 villagers murdered by U.S. troops. The government first tried to cover up the war crime, then blamed it on a Murder in the Name of bourgeoisie that A-bombed the Japanese “Democracy” cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; that these rogue army unit. Later it was established that the massacre was part of the massive crimes were the work of both liberal Phoenix program of systematic assassinations of supposed Viet Cong cadre. The revolutionary victory in Vietnam Democrats and conservative Republicans. Then-Major Colin Powell played a leading role in the cover-up of this heinous was costly, as the imperialists killed an es- This is captured in the slogan chanted in war crime. Now CUNY renames a whole department after this war criminal timated 3 million Vietnamese. Some were the demonstrations against Petraeus, “Re- who commanded the 1991 Gulf War on Iraq (aka “Desert Slaughter”). killed by bombs, like those dropped by Air member Hiroshima, remember Vietnam echoed by Richard Nixon – said “no more by the heroic Vietnamese at the Battle of Force officer John McCain; some were – Democratic Party, we know which side Vietnams” (only because they lost), revo- Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the United States murdered by death squads led by depraved you’re on.” lutionaries proclaimed that we want “two, government directed, armed, financed and killers, like former Democratic Nebraska three, many defeats for US imperialism!” trained the puppet government and army senator and New School president Bob Ker- “Two, Three, Many Defeats The war in Vietnam was also a social of “South Vietnam” as a force for coun- rey, who got the Bronze Star for wiping out for U.S. Imperialism” revolution. As the imperialists geared up terrevolution. Starting under Republican the village of Thanh Phong in 1969. Despite the unbelievable violence di- their murder machine to stem the red tide Dwight Eisenhower, the genocidal U.S. war The U.S. accelerated its onslaught after rected against them, the Vietnamese workers in Southeast Asia, revolutionaries said “All against Vietnam revved up under Cold War the NLF’s “Têt Offensive” of January 1968. and peasants fought with great courage – Indochina Must Go Communist!” and “For Democrat John F. Kennedy, then escalated In that heroic advance, imperialist military and won. They kicked out the U.S. imperial- Workers’ Strikes Against the War!” massively under Democrat Lyndon Johnson. installations were attacked simultaneously ists, uprooted their puppet police state and This meant a struggle to mobilize the Since every imperialist war has its all over southern Vietnam. The Viet Cong overthrew capitalism. Their victory was a class power of the workers against both faked-up casus belli (official “cause” or pre- even took over the grounds of the U.S. em- victory for the oppressed of the whole world. of the capitalist parties. Taking over from text for war) – from “Remember the Maine” bassy in Saigon! Outraged at the resistance While defeated U.S. liberals – later the French colonialists who were defeated in 1898 (when the U.S. invaded Cuba) to by these incredibly courageous men and Colin Powell’s infamous “WMD” speech women determined to free their country to the UN (to justify the U.S.’ 2003 inva- from the colonialist overlords, the U.S. sion of Iraq) – LBJ fabricated one through occupiers took it out on unarmed civilians. the notorious “Tonkin Gulf Incident” in In March of that year, the My Lai mas-

Nick Ut/AP 1964. The massive escalation he unleashed sacre took place, in which hundreds of vil- was continued by his Republican successor lagers, mainly women, children, and elders, Richard Nixon, advised by all-purpose war were murdered by an American unit led by criminal Henry Kissinger. Captain Ernest Medina and Lieutenant Wil- In the historic struggle for the defeat liam Calley. Many of the women and girls of the imperialists and the victory of the were raped by the Americans before being Vietnamese workers and peasants, pleading murdered. Mothers threw themselves on top for “peace” was no answer. We had a side! of their children, but Calley made sure that And our side, the workers and peasants of the children did not escape alive. Vietnam – who inspired struggles against The killing went on for two days and imperialism and oppression from southern covered several hamlets. As many as 500 Africa to Central America – won. corpses were piled up, when it was finally Trotskyists understood that there is no stopped by a courageous helicopter pilot middle ground between socialist revolution named Hugh Thompson, who landed his and capitalism in all its guises. Despite the chopper and instructed his men to train their wishes of the Stalinists then, in Moscow, weapons on the killers. The story was not Famous photo of children fleeing after napalm attack on Trang Bang district Peking, and even Hanoi, the Vietnamese reported for well over a year, as the Army in June 1972. Nine-year-old Kim Phuc (naked, center) suffered extensive revolution was not just about “self-determi- engaged in a cover-up, led at one point by burns on her back. Today Washington falsely accuses Syria of chemical nation” – it was about a social revolution, then-Major Colin Powell, whose complicity attack on its own people, while in the Vietnam War the U.S. dropped over without which there could be no genuine in this atrocity helped assure his promotion. 400,000 tons of napalm on Vietnam while killing over 3 million Vietnamese. national liberation for peoples oppressed Powell is an alumnus of City College, 6 Revolution and in its drive to militarize the City Uni- used aerial bombard- versity of New York, the CUNY adminis- ment with napalm and tration in 1997 set up the “Colin L. Powell defoliants, artillery bar- Center for Leadership and Service.” What rages, death squads and an outrage, to name a program named after torture chambers known the general who wantonly killed tens of as “Tiger Cages.” The thousands of Iraqis in the 1991 “Desert object was to achieve Slaughter” and then lied about “weapons of systematic destruction, mass destruction” to justify the 2003 war on area by grid-like area. Iraq. In April, as the CUNY administration Forests, crops, vil- was announcing the return of the ROTC lages, and homes across and the appointment of Gen. Petraeus, it southern Vietnam were grotesquely renamed the CCNY Division burned; the country- of Social Sciences the “Colin L. Powell side was hit with 3,000 School for Civic and Global Leadership.” bombs per sq. km during In 1971, Vietnam veteran Charles the war. At least 12 mil- McDuff naïvely wrote a letter to Richard lion acres of forest were Nixon, apprising the mass-murderer-in- saturated with bombs. chief that “the atrocities committed in My The environmental Lai are eclipsed by similar American actions devastation was mas- throughout the country.” While McDuff sive. Survivors were re- received a predictably lying response from moved to concentration the government, many of his fellow soldiers, camps, called “strategic organized as the Vietnam Veterans Against hamlets” by the U.S. Victory! Vietnamese Communist (“Viet Cong”) troops take Saigon, 30 April 1975, bringing the War, had already convened the Winter commandants, where down the South Vietnamese puppet regime and delivering a stinging blow to imperialism. Soldier hearings in Detroit. There scores of they were crowded into Trotskyists call for “Two, three, many defeats for U.S. imperialism!” veterans told of the atrocities they commit- barbed-wire enclosures with barely any children. The Vietnamese estimate that over keep soldiers from reporting crimes. The ted or witnessed, proving that the My Lai food, shelter or basic sanitation. 500,000 babies have been born with severe American bourgeois media routinely re- massacre was not an exception, but “stan- For most U.S. officers on the ground, deformities; many do not survive infancy; fused to report U.S. war crimes until after dard operating procedure.” the “body count” was the metric of suc- countless others were aborted or born dead, Têt when it became clear that America was The “ubiquity of atrocity” commit- cess. They drove their men to kill, kill, kill. as the chemical warfare made them biologi- losing the war, and some bourgeois liber- ted against civilians is the focus of Kill “If it’s dead and Vietnamese, it’s VC (Viet cally unviable. als began to call for an end to the war by Anything That Moves. Author Nick Turse Cong)” was a common phrase. The killers The crimes of U.S. imperialism are “bringing our boys home.” This was echoed has assembled many personal and official established “free-fire zones” all over the almost unspeakable. But Nick Turse’s by reformist groups that claimed to be so- accounts of U.S. war crimes, interviewing countryside, ordering troops to “kill any- book speaks of them. He is following an cialist, but for revolutionary communists, Vietnamese, war crimes investigators, U.S. thing that moves,” especially in areas with admirable tradition of outrage and indigna- “our boys” (and girls) were the Viet Cong. generals and over one hundred veterans who a history of resistance. Whole villages were tion, including a photographic exposé of the “Civilian suffering was everywhere and had “witnessed or personally committed routinely wiped out. Since men were slated victims of America’s chemical war, among yet nowhere in the American media,” Turse terrible acts.” for 100 percent execution, they often hid at them skinless children, that appeared in laments. He stresses that it was courageous Turse combines this testimony with ex- the first sign of U.S. soldiers. The victims of Ramparts magazine in 1967 that was said antiwar (and in many cases anti-imperialist) tensive findings from his research of military these massacres were consequently mainly to contribute to the stand eventually taken U.S. GIs and veterans that came forward to records. He studied the files of the “Vietnam elders, women, and children. If villagers against the war by Martin Luther King. But help rip the mask off of “democratic” U.S. War Crimes Working Group,” a top-secret had any livestock, this too was wiped out. King didn’t speak out strongly against the imperialism and reveal the mountains of Pentagon unit. In 1994, 9,000 pages of its Remorseless killing was legitimized Vietnam war until 1967, when many liberal dead and tortured bodies it left behind. The files were declassified; Turse came upon by the racist indoctrination that was part of Democrats were concluding that the war countless atrocities that Turse details, he these files in 2003 and first wrote about them U.S. military training. Recruits and draftees was unwinnable. hopes will become “the essence of what we think of when we say ‘the Vietnam War’”: in the Los Angeles Times. were taught to have racist contempt for the Death Squad Template: The Culminating his research, Kill Anything Vietnamese, the better to engage in all man- naked imperialism in which the U.S. war That Moves demonstrates that mass killing ner of atrocities against them. Troops were Phoenix Program and My Lai machine practiced industrial mass murder. of civilians was even more central role instructed to treat Vietnamese as “little more The torture and killing of prisoners Revulsion at those atrocities gave rise to the U.S. war strategy than previously than animals who could be killed or abused was widespread and commonplace, often to massive dissent and discontent on the documented. “The real aberration” of the at will.” “That they were less than human premeditated, carried out strategically to “home front,” symbolized by the popular- My Lai massacre, Turse explains, “was the was clearly the message,” one veteran re- terrorize the local population. The CIA’s front antiwar movement, and to the subse- unprecedented and unparalleled investiga- membered. The American racism against Phoenix Program, designed to “neutralize” quent “Vietnam syndrome” of aversion to tion and exposure” it received. The war the Vietnamese was infamously expressed the NLF’s civilian base, systematically U.S. involvement in (losing) colonial wars. produced countless My Lai massacres, but by General Westmoreland, top U.S. com- targeted noncombatants for torture and mur- At the same time, it must be remembered most were not widely publicized nor known mander in Vietnam from 1964-1968, who der. Through “uncontrolled violence” and that the fundamental factor in defeating the abroad for many years. proclaimed “life is cheap in the Orient.” “wholesale killing,” as the book documents, imperialist war on Vietnam was the resis- Turse tells the story of civilian suffer- civilians suspected of having ties with the tance by revolutionary Vietnamese workers Air Force, Dow, Monsanto ing during the Vietnam War through serial NLF were identified, kidnapped, tortured and peasants. And popular opposition to vignettes that he calls “snapshots culled Bring Death and Destruction and killed. imperialist war didn’t stop the U.S. from from a vast album of horrors.” His accounts The U.S. imperialists systematically In the Phoenix Program, the U.S. bor- invading Iraq and occupying it for almost of individual atrocities serve to epitomize and massively used chemical weapons and rowed the death squad tactic from the Nazi a decade. torture in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In Einsatzgruppen (extermination squads) the large-scale U.S. military policies aimed Remember Vietnam! ROTC, at defeating the Vietnamese Revolution and addition to dropping 7 million tons of “con- and followed this template in Vietnam, El stemming the tide of revolt across Asia. ventional” bombs on Vietnam – twice as Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Petraeus: Out of CUNY! Acts of mass murder like My Lai are much as was dropped by all sides in WWII Iraq and Afghanistan. Turse does a real service by document- just one part of the story of genocidal, – they also dropped 400,000 tons of napalm Turse observes that in Vietnam the ing and retelling this history, because work- “industrial-scale slaughter” that the U.S. and more than 3 million white phosphorous “pervasiveness of brutality ... went hand- ers and students the world over need to know administered in Vietnam. Turse documents rockets. The number of anti-personnel in-hand with a culture of defensiveness, the whole truth about U.S. imperialism’s how “murder, torture, rape, abuse, displace- “cluster” bombs may have reached one bil- denial, and ultimately, impunity.” The Pen- brutal campaign in Vietnam. The chemical ment, home burnings, specious arrests, im- lion (260 million were dropped on tiny Laos tagon went to great lengths to conceal the attacks, the bombings, the torture, the death prisonment without due process” were com- alone, 80 million of which failed to explode atrocities, dismissing reports of war crimes squads – all are with us today, as U.S. im- monplace occurrences, and were “directly on impact, only to kill later). as communist propaganda. When word did perialism continues to maraud throughout attributable to deliberate policies dictated The U.S. sprayed the countryside with get out, as with My Lai, the strategy was to the world. from the highest levels of the military.” 20 million gallons of deadly poisons in portray the massacres as aberrations. The At CUNY, the re-establishment of The methodical strategy of sheer bru- “Operation Ranch Hand,” killing an esti- U.S. military’s own (secret) investigation of ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) tality and terror was intended to cut off the mated 400,000 people and destroying the My Lai detailed a “pattern of deliberate sup- on several campuses reminds us that the NLF from its key source of support, the land and food supply. These poisons, like pression and withholding of information... imperialists want a new crop of officers rural population of Vietnam. The imperial- Agent Orange, are still present in Vietnam at every command level from company to to lead new murderous campaigns. In the ists called their holocaust in the country- today, and have caused severe deforma- division.” Vietnam era, ROTC was driven off campus side “pacification.” To carry it out, they tions among a large number of babies and Threats and intimidation were used to continued on page 13

October 2013 7 Revolutionary Class Politics or “People Power” Studentism? The Struggle at CUNY: A Trotskyist View

By Abram Negrete rotting capitalist system. So a first lesson to be drawn from this La lucha educa – “Struggle educates.” struggle is that we are up against powerful It’s a point that Internationalist comrades of- class forces, and to overcome them we must ten make. The slogan was the watchword of mobilize a stronger power, which can only the massive, “illegal” Puerto Rican teachers’ be the working class. Demonstrations by strike of 2008, where we joined thousands students and faculty are very important – marching in the streets against capital’s they are necessary, but far from sufficient. international assault on public education.1 A perspective for winning the struggle Today our comrades of the Grupo Inter- means moving beyond the confines of the nacionalista have been in the forefront of university and linking up concretely with the occupying schools in and around Mexico enormous potential power of NYC’s multi- City to support the heroic teachers’ strike racial, multiethnic working class. Workers against the reactionary and racist educa- have a vital interest in defending their own tional “reform” dictated by the World Bank. daughters and sons from the billy clubs, There the chant is: “El maestro, luchando, fists and chokeholds of the racist NYPD; también está enseñando” – the teacher, in defending their right to attend CUNY, and struggle, is also teaching. Nothing educates their right to protest its subjugation to the us like struggle. imperialist war machine. The same is true of the current battle We are talking about the class power against CUNY’s appointment of ex-CIA that brought New York City to a crawl in chief David “Death Squad” Petraeus and the three-day 2005 transit workers’ strike. the reinstatement of the Reserve Officers’ This strike by a strategic, largely black and Training Corps (ROTC). One of the main Internationalist photo immigrant workforce was 100% “illegal” slogans chanted by demonstrators is “1, 2, 3, Protesters outside Macaulay College, September 9, call to oust Petraeus, defeat according to the infamous Taylor Law, but 4 – Defeat U.S. imperialist war! 5, 6, 7, 8 – imperialist war and remember massacres carried out by U.S. imperialism. it shook the world center of finance capital Petraeus out, we won’t wait!” This poses a “United front,” because the protests have been arrested and brutally beaten by police to its core, gaining massive support among key question: how to defeat imperialist war? brought together a range of groups and for protesting, as a vital part of this struggle oppressed layers of the population by defying The fact is, the imperialist system – that is, individuals with different viewpoints and we have been discussing and polemicizing billionaire Mayor Bloomberg as he hurled capitalism in its death agony – keeps gener- programs to carry out a common action. about some of the big issues and key ques- racist insults about union “thugs.” This is the ating war after war. That is certainly true for The fact that we come together to strike a tions posed for revolutionaries. kind of power that must be mobilized against the youth of today, who have hardly known blow against capitalist forces that want to That’s the way it’s supposed to be in any racist police terror like the murder of Kimani a year when the U.S. was not attacking or turn the City University of New York into a real united front. The purpose of this article Grey, Ramarley Graham and Sean Bell – and occupying some country. To uproot that feeder school for the military doesn’t mean is to dig deeper into some of the issues raised against the vile spectacle of NYPD cops entire system, the CUNY Internationalist papering over or downplaying political dif- in these debates. sadistically pummeling radical students for Clubs seek to win students to the struggle ferences. On the contrary, the counterposed It’s About Power – daring to protest Petraeus and ROTC. for international socialist revolution. programs and strategies are debated out and Under Mayor Giuliani, the police went The protests have been spearheaded by tested in the class struggle. Class Power after African American and Latino youth the Ad Hoc Committee Against the Mili- The fight to drive war criminal Petraeus Two of the main groups active in the Ad with a vengeance under the motto of “zero tarization of CUNY, which has organized and ROTC out of CUNY through mass Hoc Committee have been the Revolutionary tolerance,” arresting them on any excuse, united-front actions in the past few weeks protest and exposure has naturally come up Student Coordinating Commmittee (RSCC) in order to pin a record on them. Mayor against ROTC and outside Macaulay Hon- against determined and vicious opposition which works together with Ignite, a fledgling Bloomberg escalated this with the “stop ors College (where Petraeus “teaches”). from ruling-class forces. These people do Maoist group, and the Internationalist Group/ and frisk” program of racial profiling, with not play. They are serious about showing 1 See Internationalist articles “Puerto Rico: CUNY Internationalist Clubs which stand on almost 90% of those subjected to this blatant the world that they stand by their war crimi- All Out to Defend the Teachers’ Struggle!” the program of revolutionary Trotskyism. victimization being black and brown. Both nals; and that they will brook no opposition (at http://www.internationalist.org/defend- While we and others have come together in mayors have tried to suppress political dis- to their drive to militarize CUNY, which is fmprstruggle0802.html) and “Puerto Rican rallies, marches and meetings to plan actions sent with massive police presence, forcing part of a broader program to regiment the Teachers: Unbought and Unbowed,” The against the ominous militarization of CUNY, demonstrators to march in a “cop sand- universities to better serve the interests of Internationalist No. 27, May-June 2008. as well as in defense of comrades who have wich,” and penning protesters behind metal imperialist capital. When the Nazis purged barricades. Now liberal Democrat Bill De German universities in the 1930s they called Blasio will likely be elected mayor, but it it Gleichschaltung – “synchronization,” en- won’t check cop power. Under liberal black forced conformity. U.S. rulers, too, want to Democratic mayor David Dinkins there was “synchronize” and discipline the universities, a huge expansion of the police. so that they march in step with the Pentagon. The overwhelmingly white, petty-bour- Those who today hold the reins of

gallosophotography geois Occupy Wall Street movement fostered power in Washington and Wall Street imag- dangerous illusions in the racist police – ap- ine themselves to be the policemen of the pealing to them as supposedly part of the world and masters of the universe. While “99%” instead of seeing them for what they unable to refute the documented truth about are, the armed fist of capital. Occupy “pace- the crimes of U.S. imperialism’s killer elite, keepers” (sic) tried to shut up the Internation- they can and do deploy the brute force of alists as we chanted “We are all Sean Bell, their repressive apparatus in the attempt NYPD go to hell!” on a march (we refused to silence that truth. Eliminating the ves- to be silenced).2 But even when protesters are tiges of open admissions, “standardizing” clear-eyed about the nature of the cops, small the curriculum (Pathways), dividing the demonstrations cannot overcome massive faculty between low-paid adjuncts without displays of police power. On the other hand, job security and high-priced “stars,” raising a mass mobilization of working-class power tuition and loading students down with debt, can. As we have pointed out: privatizing whatever they can – it’s all part In Oakland, California during the 2 November 2011 “general strike” protesting of the same capitalist program. To defeat 2 See “NYPD: Guard Dogs of Finance Capital,” brutal police eviction of Occupy camp. it, we need a program to sweep away the Revolution No. 9, November 2011. 8 Revolution success of joint actions in which every participating group defends its own views

and contributes its own perspective about David King, The Commissar Vanishes how to achieve the common objective of ousting David “Death Squad” Petraeus and ROTC through protest and exposure. It has been stressed that frank and forthright debate and polemic are inseparable from the definition of the united front, which is a temporary joint action rather than an on- going “coalition.” This contrasts sharply with the practice of reformist left groups that routinely build class-collaborationist coalitions on a lowest- common-denominator program, which is invariably that of the bourgeois component. This is the staple of the International Social- ist Organization, Workers World Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Socialist When construction workers shut down Action, Socialist Alternative, etc., who have Midtown Manhattan over MTA plans to built antiwar movements (and just about use scab labor, 29 June 1998. everything they touch) as “popular fronts” “[I]n 1998, tens of thousands of with Democratic Party liberals. They put construction workers turned out to forward bourgeois reform programs (such Lenin and Trotsky (center, top) with Red Army troops on second anniversary picket the Metropolitan Transit Authority as “money for education/jobs/health care, of the Bolshevik Revolution, 7 November 1919. Stalinist falsifiers later headquarters for hiring a non-union airbrushed Trotsky out of the photo. construction firm, Roy Kay Inc. The not for war”) rather than openly calling to workers marched through Midtown defeat imperialist war. And of course they were part of Kerensky’s regime. This cleared the Comintern (1921) called for the tactic shutting down construction sites and often censor radical leftists in order not to the way for the proletarian seizure of power of the united front – common actions for blocking traffic. The NYPD mobilized upset their bourgeois allies in the October Revolution. specific, limited objectives, while waging 1,000 cops, but couldn’t stop them.” It is notable, therefore, that the ISO, Basing himself on this experience, political struggle against the opportunists. –“Mobilize New York Unions’ Power WWP, PSL et al. have been conspicuously Lenin summarized the united front in the Far from replacing the political struggle to Win the Stella d’Oro Strike!” The absent from the protests. In the case of the phrase: “March separately, strike together.” to expose the reformist leaders, who had Internationalist No. 29, Summer 2009 ISO, we can say for a fact that they have de- In other words, the united front is a tactic in supported their “own” bourgeoisies in the There are, of course, real obstacles to liberately boycotted the Ad Hoc Committee which different organizations join forces in imperialist war, the united-front tactic would mobilizing working-class power. Above all, and the struggle against the militarization of specific actions while each marches under help demonstrate in action that only the pro- the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy chains CUNY, except occasionally sending a lone its own programmatic banners. gram of Bolshevism showed how to win. So labor to the bosses’ Democratic Party under observer. Ever since the Occupy movement The October 1917 Russian Revolution, a genuine united front has nothing in com- imperialist commander-in-chief Obama. started dissolving, these social democrats led by Lenin and Trotsky, was carried out mon with a “popular front” coalition with While most of the left refuses to take on have seen the main danger as “ultra-leftism,” on the program of international socialist bourgeois sectors, nor is it a “propaganda this issue for fear of breaking with their which is pretty comical since the vast major- revolution.3 Stalin played no role in the bloc” or programmatic non-aggression pact bourgeois liberal “allies,” Class Struggle ity of the left in the U.S. is outright reformist, revolution, and earlier that year had called in which different organizations bury their Education Workers (an opposition tendency with very few centrists who (sometimes) for critical support for the bourgeois Pro- differences and pretend they agree on strat- in New York teacher unions, politically sup- pretend to be revolutionary. What is true is visional Government, a call Lenin sharply egy, program or general political outlook. ported by the Internationalist Group) has that the ISO, which all but endorsed Obama denounced in his “April Theses.” Following Internationalist comrades (and others) have uniquely fought inside the unions against in 2008, is well to the right of most of those the October victory, the end of WWI led to emphasized this point in meetings of the political support to the Democrats, Republi- protesting Petraeus and ROTC. upheavals and failed insurrections across Ad Hoc Committee Against the Militariza- cans or any capitalist party. We seek to build Genuine ultra-lefts, such as those Lenin Europe, in Hungary, Austria, Italy, Germany tion of CUNY, but we didn’t invent it. We a revolutionary workers party, and students polemicized with in his pamphlet Left-Wing and elsewhere. This showed the potential learned it from Lenin, and Trotsky. who become Leninist revolutionaries can Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920), for world revolution, but also that the key The Communist International ham- play a vital role in forging this party to lead were those who refused to work in the existing element for successful proletarian seizure mered this home in its “Theses on the United the struggle for socialist revolution. mass organizations of the working class, such of power was still lacking: Bolshevik-type Front,” in a key passage worth quoting here: as the unions. They also rejected the united parties, rooted in the workers and all strata of The Bolsheviks and “The Executive Committee of the front. The Bolsheviks used this tactic already the oppressed and exploited, and tempered Communist International considers that the United Front in 1917, fighting together with supporters of in the fire of class struggle. the chief and categorical condition, In the course of organizing protests, Provisional Government leader Kerensky to In 1919, Lenin and Trotsky founded the same for all Communist Parties, is: the question of what is – and what isn’t – a defeat the attempted military coup by reac- the Third (Communist) International to the absolute autonomy and complete united front has been discussed and fought tionary general Kornilov. At the same time, overcome this crisis of revolutionary lead- independence of every Communist Party out in fruitful and instructive ways in plan- they relentlessly exposed how Kerensky ership. Bringing together elements from entering into any agreement with the ning meetings of the Ad Hoc Committee paved the way for Kornilov, and won workers, different origins, notably former Socialists parties of the Second and Two-and-a- Against the Militarization of CUNY. This soldiers and peasants away from the Menshe- and revolutionary syndicalists, meant a Half Internationals, and its freedom to clarification has been essential for the viks and populist Social Revolutionaries, who struggle for clear conceptions of revolution- present its own views and its criticisms ary strategy and tactics. Moreover, the new of those who oppose the Communists. Communist parties were everywhere in the While accepting the need for discipline in action, Communists must at the same time minority. So long as key proletarian sectors retain both the right and the opportunity were under the leadership of the reformist to voice, not only before and after but if Second (Socialist) International and a cen- necessary during actions, their opinion trist grouping the Bolsheviks dubbed the on the politics of all the organisations “2½ International,” the Third Congress of of the working class without exception. 3 No less an authority than J.V. Stalin himself The waiving of this condition is not wrote on the first anniversary of the October permissible in any circumstances. Whilst Revolution (“The Role of the Most Eminent Party supporting the slogan of maximum Leaders,” 6 November 1918): “All the work of unity of all workers’ organisations practical organization of the insurrection was in every practical action against the conducted under the immediate leadership of capitalist front, Communists cannot in the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky. any circumstances refrain from putting It is possible to declare that the swift passing of forward their views, which are the only garrison to the side of the Soviet and the bold consistent expression of the interests of execution of the work of the Military Revolution- the working class as a whole.” ary Committee, the Party owes principally and –“Theses On the United Front” (December above all to comrade Trotsky.” Needless to say, this particular article didn’t make into Stalin’s 1921) Collected Works. See also Robert Slusser, Stalin While the Comintern resolution dealt with The Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee that organized the 1917 in October: The Man Who Missed the Revolution united fronts between mass-based workers October Revolution. Who was not there was Stalin. (John Hopkins University Press, 1987). continued on page 14 October 2013 9 Fruitvale Station and the Fight for Black Freedom Family photo via Law Offices of John Burris Internationalist photos

The CUNY Internationalist Clubs, Class Struggle Education Workers and the Internationalist Group joined with thousands of others in NYC in protesting the acquittal of the racist vigilante George Zimmerman, July 14 and 15. Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant (right) were victims of the racist capitalist system. By Marxist Study Student trial of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George – which demonstrates the inherent racism time, he is on the phone, he proceeds to get Zimmerman, which reflected the systematic embedded in this society. Systematic op- off the floor, two cops get on him to bring On July 23, participants in the Interna- racial oppression that is as much a reality of pression and police murder, spurred by this him back down, Oscar argues verbally with tionalist Clubs’ Marxist study group went our present as it is of our past. racist reality and ideology, rob communities them while on his knees, they pin him on together to see the film Fruitvale Station. of their black youth every day. the ground and he’s shot dead. It seemed This movie depicts the life of Oscar Grant, We met in Washington Square Park Melissa, a recent college graduate, almost like a video game where you shoot a young (22-year-old) worker in Oakland, afterwards to discuss the film. Many of us stated, “Often, people become desensitized the people who get in the way. California. While riding the Bay Area Rapid were silent at first as we coped with our feel- to the violence against our black youth and This cop was obviously motivated by Transit (BART) system, on his way to a New ings for the loss of Oscar Grant, especially overlook the deep injustice from the police racism to take Oscar’s life for no reason at all. Year’s Eve celebration, Grant was accosted after watching the last scene where Oscar’s force faced by our black community.” She Under the current system of capitalism, the by another passenger, who started a scuffle. daughter asks her mother where her daddy said that the film reminds everyone that inequality gap from rich to poor will always Racially profiling Grant and his friends, is the day after he is murdered. Oscar Grant was a father, a son, a boyfriend, continue to widen as the capitalists seek to BART police singled them out, made them Several members of the group men- and a member of the world community. maximize their profits. Poor and working- sit on the platform, and then shot Oscar. tioned that the film was poignant and did a A few participants in the discussion were class people continue to lose services they de- The horrifying images were captured great job showing this young man’s daily life, at first concerned that the film was painting pend on like day care, quality public schools on a cell phone and shown on the Internet. the deep connection with his daughter and a negative picture of Oscar Grant since the and access to higher education. Because of the tremendous public uproar, mother, his sometimes stormy relation with movie depicted him sometimes dealing small Oppressed communities of darker- the officer who murdered Grant was put on his girlfriend, and didn’t make him either a amounts of drugs. However, we agreed that skinned people are hit the hardest by these trial. Typically, though, the killer got off fake saint or someone to be demonized. the director Ryan Coogler gave an accurate increasing inequalities and are then faced with just a slap on the wrist. At the same time, many challenged depiction of the decisions and consequence with mass imprisonment for “crime.” In The opening of Fruitvale Station in the idea that a young black man needs to for Oscar of being a black working-class a systematic way cops profile black youth movie theaters coincided with the nation- be “humanized” before the audience can youth. This idea is clear when Grant loses his as troublesome and worthless. Racist killer wide protests against the verdict in the feel indignant at his murder by a racist cop job and turns to selling weed to pay the rent cops therefore see no injustice in eliminating and take care of his family. Viewers see and black members of society. begin to understand that Grant does not want The judicial system allows these killings to do this but is basically forced to. by letting the murderers off the hook – the Shanelle, an undergraduate student from judicial system and the police force practice Trinity College, said she believes that the racism on the institutional level, as part of everyday life for many working-class black what we’ve studied about the social function youth portrayed in the movie highlights the of what Marxists call the bourgeois state. faults of our capitalist system, such as unem- In following study group sessions we Steve Rhodes/Flickr ployment and poverty. Gian, a sophomore saw the filmDeacons for Defense, in which in college, mentioned the systematic racism Forest Whitaker – who produced Fruitvale inherent in American capitalism. “Racist Station – portrays the leader of that deter- murderers get off with practically a slap on the mined group of black workers in Louisiana wrist,” he related to the group as he connected who organized and practiced self-defense racist police to the racist justice system. against the KKK. We also read further on the Oscar Grant’s killer Mehserle received material roots of racial oppression, the fight eleven months in prison for “involuntary for black freedom and socialist revolution. manslaughter” – after claiming that he The profit-motivated system of capital- mistook his taser for his gun. Black men ism is the root of institutionalized oppres- like Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, and Tray- sion and racism. Despite what the capitalist On 13 November 2010 International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local von Martin and so many others were all distorters have taught us with miseducation 10 shut down the Port of Oakland and held mass rally (above) of hundreds victims of racist slaughter and their killers about socialism, it is the only real way to get to protest the outrageous “involuntary manslaughter” verdict of cop who all walked free. freedom. Workers and students must unite murdered Oscar Grant. Mobilizing power of the working class in defense It is chilling to watch the videos that to create a new world; we cannot depend on of African American, Latino, Asian and other oppressed sectors is key to recorded Oscar Grant’s death. On the floor capitalist politicians or others protectors of combatting racist cop violence. See “ILWU Shuts Ports Demanding Justice against the wall of the BART station, Oscar capitalism to change our life for us, we must for Oscar Grant,” Revolution No. 8, April 2011. has his hands out in front of him the whole change it for ourselves. n 10 Revolution Militant “Teacher Insurgency” Shakes Mexico El Internacionalista

Above: Burning tents as federal and local riot police retake Mexico City’s main square, the Zócalo, September 13 after it had been occupied for over three weeks by up to 40,000 striking teachers of the CNTE. Below: strikers shut down Chamber of Deputies August 21 to prevent vote of anti-teacher “reform.” Revolution is proud to present below, Palace of Justice and in slightly edited form, a series of eyewit- the Mexico City police ness reports by NYC school teacher, United headquarters. So the

Federation of Teachers union delegate and right honorable deputies Juan Pablo Zamoro/Cuartoscuro Class Struggle Education Workers activist had to find another place Marjorie Stamberg, about the ongoing mass to meet and try to pass “teacher insurgency” taking place in Mex- their laws. Where did ico. The militant mobilization has opposed they go? First they went and now seeks to overturn the program of to the Senate, but several draconian “evaluations,” union-busting thousand teachers were and measures targeting indigenous educa- dispatched to block- tion in particular that the government of ade that as well. Figur- President Enrique Peña Nieto has rammed ing the teachers would through under orders from the International chase them anywhere Monetary Fund and World Bank they went in Mexico City, the deputies fled Mexico City, August 22: Schools are shut the Federal District to down in Mexico City today, amid the teach- the surrounding state ers’ protest that has brought more than of Mexico, where they 40,000 teachers to occupy and sit-in in the finally held their session main square in the capital, the Zócalo. I in the Banamex Center went on a huge teachers’ march on Tuesday (owned by Citibank) in (August 20) and last night we went back to Naucalpan. Today, the the sit-in to talk to teachers. Thousands of Senate decamped to them from school districts from Oaxaca to Banamex as well. This Michoacán and Guerrero had spent the day act alone made clear to all whose interests of Education Workers, the mass movement chanting outside. I spoke about our struggles surrounding and blocking the two houses are being represented – the people or the of “dissident” teachers). They have risked in New York and across the U.S to defend of Congress to try to prevent the passage banks? Guess which. jail and death squads. She told us that teach- public education and against union-busting of the so-called “education reform.” This, Late last night, in front of the Senate, ers’ blood has already been spilled and some and privatization. A Brazilian teacher from of course, is no reform at all, but part of the we had an interview with Norma Cleyver, may give their lives in this struggle as they São Paulo also participated in our interview. global corporate assault on teachers’ rights a representative of the Oaxaca teachers. fight for their impoverished students in the Norma and Yazodara – another teacher from and attempts to impose new student and Thousands of teachers from Oaxaca [a rural and poor areas of southern Mexico, Oaxaca – stressed over and over again that it teacher evaluations that are punitive to both. largely indigenous state in Mexico’s south] and for their own rights. These are the same is not just in Oaxaca, or Mexico, or Brazil, Yesterday, with teachers blocking the have come up to Mexico City; they de- Oaxaca teachers who sparked the rebellion but a global struggle against capitalism’s congressional buildings, the legislators clared an unlimited strike at the opening of in 2006 of teachers, health workers and drive to turn the schools into test-prep in- could not even get in to the Chamber of school, for the first time in history. Norma many other unionists, as well as indigenous stitutions that serve corporations’ needs for Deputies, which was surrounded by about is regional coordinator of the Valles Cen- peoples, parents and community groups, low-level technicians; and that this drive 20,000 teachers starting at 3 a.m. in the trales of Section 22 of the Coordinadora which attracted worldwide attention. aims to push out the poorest and neediest teachers’ “Operación Hormiga” (Operation Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación We were talking on a bench in front of students. They are also fighting against the Anthill). They also surrounded the federal (CNTE–National Coordinating Committee the Senate after teachers had spent hours “corporatist” (government-controlled) fake October 2013 11 union, the SNTE, which is supporting the been systematically starved of funds for

anti-teacher, anti-education “reform.” El Internacionalista several decades, and teachers in rural and The Mexico City CNTE teachers have impoverished urban areas go through hell to a poster-sticker that I got to use in the bring education to their students, often with- classroom. Translated, it says: “Education out blackboards, let alone computers. The is about learning how to think, not to obey.” so-called reforms are an attempt to eliminate Norma told us that since the current any form of job security for teachers, and, struggle against the imposition of the step by step, to privatize as much as pos- “education reform” laws last spring, five sible. Two of the three implementation laws teachers in the most militant areas have been were passed last week, laying the basis for kidnapped and tortured. the introduction of school fees and tuition Although the change in the constitution that would gut the constitutional guarantee permitting these teacher evals was passed of free public secular education for all. in February, the current laws are for their But in the face of the teachers’ protests, specific implementation. The papers today the government has not yet been able to ram are reporting that two of the three imple- through the third law, including the punitive mentation laws were rammed through in a teacher evaluations, which is called “Profes- midnight vote, but the third, which among sional Teaching Service.” This would effec- other things will impose sanctions on teach- tively eliminate all job security for teachers. ers who refuse to implement the laws, was They would have to take a multiple-choice taken off the table. Thousands of teachers blockaded Mexico City’s international airport August test every year, in which failing scores would lead to removal from the classroom Mass Protest Blocks Airport 23. CNTE poster says: “Total Rejection of the Educational Reform.” for tenured teachers, together with firing for Mexico City, August 23: I just got back from was then asked to leave and only the union questions, and even if they only speak Mix- teachers under a new probation law. the airport, where thousands of teachers are members were allowed back in. There they tec, for example, and get the answers wrong, Teachers I have talked with at the sitting on the main access road to Mexico decided to escalate their action – hence the not only will they fail the test, but the teacher plantón and blockades have been struck by City airport. They came early this morning, airport access blockade. can be fired for this! She also said there are the parallels between our fight in the U.S. by the thousands, after a march that started This action must have seriously dis- trick questions, where all the answers are and theirs. And no accident. These reforms from the sit-in in the main plaza, the Zócalo. rupted international and national air travel wrong. This type of racist discrimination is come straight from the Organization for The teachers have cut off subway access to in Mexico, but I don’t have any figures yet. one of the main reasons the teachers are so Economic Cooperation and Development the airport, and they are occupying the main Yesterday, the papers described the central determined to smash this so-called educa- and other think-tanks of global capital. access road which stretches about a kilome- district of Mexico City as a “parking lot,” tion reform. Obviously this has nothing to do with ter up to the airport entrance. Up at the front with teachers’ tents and camp sites stretch- Oaxaca, August 27: The “Dialogue Round improving education and everything to of this blockade is a line of hundreds of riot ing down the fancy main commercial streets, Table” that the government agreed to on do with union-bashing, profit for venders cops with machine guns, so the strikers can’t and traffic blocked. August 23, as teachers blockaded the airport, and producing a “disciplined” work force get any further. Late this afternoon, Mexican president began yesterday. Over the weekend, Interior of low-level technicians to meet the needs Overhead, the noise of the planes com- Peña Nieto’s government Interior Minister Minister Osorio Chung declared that, first, of the big multinationals. The upper and ing in is deafening, and the planes are very announced that at 5 p.m. they will set up a nothing would stop the educational reform, middle classes will send their offspring to low. As I am posting this, there are rumors mesa de negociaciones (negotiating round and second, if the “dialogue” doesn’t pro- private schools. going around that the police may move in table) with the teachers. This is after the duce results acceptable to the government, With the supposed “dialogue,” which is and try to push the strikers out in the early government put full-page ads in yesterday’s it will proceed with repression. A columnist actually the doorway to massive repression, morning hours. Yesterday, the teachers’ papers saying there was no pulling back on in yesterday’s La Jornada (Mexico City, 26 the government is trying to portray teachers blocking the Senate and Congress, not passing the education “reform,” they would August) put it this way: as only out for themselves. But the teachers permitting anyone to pass – no senators, absolutely not give an inch. But now the “One of the first sessions between the have responded, as one newspaper reported, no office people, nobody – was a historic teachers’ mobilization, by virtually paralyz- leaders of the Chamber of Deputies and that they would “take whatever action they action. So is the airport access blockade. ing important commercial districts in the the Senate which will take place today considered necessary in defense of free, No cars or taxis or buses can get through capital, has led to this move. will determine the course to be taken both quality education and teachers’ rights.” to the airport to drop passengers off. Many However, the teachers are taking it by a movement determined not to let itself Faced with the government’s sinister probably did not make their flights or went with a huge grain of salt. After passing the be swindled and by the ‘reform’ powers maneuvers, the key now is to extend the back home. There is the rather comical sight constitutional changes for the reform laws, who are preparing an iron fist underneath strike and make it national. Teachers in of people shlepping up the long access road the government promised to hold forums the silken glove of dialogue.” Michoacán and here in Oaxaca are still out dragging wheelie bags behind them, trying across the country to get parents’, commu- Meanwhile the teachers say they are on indefinite strike; they’ve been out for to get to the entrance doors. Particularly nity and teachers’ input. These forums took still “on battle footing.” Yesterday they sur- six days in Tabasco; they´re walking out striking are the well-dressed elegant women place, people participated by the thousands, rounded the embassies of the United States, tomorrow in Chiapas. They may go out in in spike heels and Hermès bags trudging the and then ... their recommendations were Spain and Britain. Another 10,000 teachers Veracruz. The government is particularly kilometer, and preoccupied businessmen never passed on to the legislators – the are arriving in Mexico City today to join worried that the strikes could continue into looking worriedly at their Rolex watches government-controlled SNTE officials just the massive tent city that is stretched out September, when the so-called energy as they rush with their briefcases to their sat on the suggestions! So no wonder the across the main plaza and several blocks reform – calling for the introduction of international flights. teachers are skeptical of this new move to into side streets of the Centro Histórico. private capital into the state-owned Pemex Last night starting at 11 p.m., there was come to the table. (Tourists stepping out of the Holiday Inn oil monopoly – is coming to a vote. Mas- a meeting of all the teachers’ union districts, By the time I got off the subway to go on Cinco de Mayo street have to wend their sive protests by teachers and other workers in the local hall of Mexico City teachers’ home, I got a call. At 7 p.m., representatives way through the maze of tents.) The main blocking Pemex installations in the oil states Section 9. Many groups offered greetings from the Oaxaca teachers’ local, Section negotiator for the dissident teachers of the of Veracruz and Tabasco would have a major to the meeting, including our comrades in 22, came to the teachers blocking the air- CNTE warned the government, “You think effect on the Mexican economy. the Grupo Internacionalista, but everyone port, and reported on the negotiations. The we’re going to swallow this bait, but we One final note: On Sunday, the notori- government said it might are prepared for anything,” adding that the ous train called La Bestia (The Beast), which offer some modifications teachers had categorically no confidence carries hundreds of Central American im- but first, the teachers had to that this was leading to a solution. In fact, migrants through southern Mexico – riding move off the airport access the dialogue is a trap. on freight-car roofs in the scorching heat, road. The union said no, New York Times Echoes beset by violent gangs and corrupt police they are not moving an inch. – derailed and overturned, killing at least P.S.: Gloria [another Government Union-Bashers six and injuring many more. There is an

El Internacionalista UFT activist] mentioned in The view of business sectors, right- excellent documentary by the same name her earlier post the problems wing politicians and television monopolies (La Bestia), which shows the harrowing of students in indigenous who have demonized teachers was synthe- experience many of our students go through communities in the south sized in a particularly ignorant and snooty before they get to the U.S. It is available who don’t speak Spanish article by Karla Zabludovsky in Sunday’s on Netflix. and will find these tests par- New York Times (25 August). As she por- ticularly punitive. A teacher trayed it, the problems of Mexican education La lucha continúa I met today works in the consist of nepotism, “poorly performing This will be my last post, as I head back Mixtec areas, and she said teachers,” unions, and the “radical teachers’ to school. I want to see if we can put together Speaking with teachers from Mixtec region of that as early as pre-school, group,” the CNTE. a forum-discussion on the Mexican teachers Oaxaca during airport blockade, August 23. students will be given test In fact, Mexican public schools have strike, in New York. [The event was held 12 Revolution Hunter Internationalist Clubs Build Solidarity with Hot & Crusty Workers By Mira and Rudi faculty staff union, the Professional Staff small group was doing to Internationalist photo For many students in the United States Congress. And the workers won, including defend its right to orga- today, the class struggle is an abstract idea something almost unheard of these days: nize against exploitation. if they have heard the term at all, perhaps union control of hiring! But we also witnessed fleetingly referred to by some left-inclined The workers of Hot and Crusty launched venomous hostility from professors. This is the case as well at the City their struggle almost two years ago, deter- upper-class denizens who University of New York, where the majority mined to resist super-exploitive conditions couldn’t contain or con- come from working-class families, often at the Upper East Side restaurant, including ceal their deep hostility originating from countries with a rich his- below-minimum wage pay and up to 72- to workers they had long tory of sharp class struggle. CUNY students, hour workweeks with no overtime. As calls treated as little more than largely the daughters and sons of the working to the bosses’ Labor Department went unan- disembodied hands serv- class, study within an academic institution of swered, the workers found support from the ing them their food. the ruling class – the same capitalist class that Laundry Workers Center organizing group. We also saw students exploits and oppresses their parents, friends In May 2012, despite the bosses’ usual with a desire to oppose and coworkers beyond the university walls. vicious tricks to intimidate workers from racism and injustice gain So when immigrant workers at the Hot organizing (including threatening to call more understanding of and Crusty bakery/deli near Hunter College the migra immigration cops and bringing the importance of the began a campaign for union rights last year, in professional union-busters), the Hot and workers’ struggle. A sig- it was important to bring CUNY students, Crusty Workers Association (HCWA) won nificant episode was the the election for union representation in the 18 October 2012 Labor/ faculty and workers to the picket lines to CUNY Internationalist Clubs actively supported shop. The owners’ response was to abruptly Immigrant Rights soli- support them. Locked out by the former boss struggle to unionize Hot and Crusty bakery. after voting to establish their own union, the close down the restaurant in August. darity rally heavily built mainly Mexican and Ecuadoran workers held But the workers at Hot & Crusty were by Internationalist activists to help bring days, overtime, vacation and crucially, a firm on the picket for 55 days. During this determined not to let go of their hard-earned support from NYC unionists and immigrant union hiring hall, allowing the small work- inspiring struggle, the CUNY International- union recognition, and vowed to keep fight- rights activists for the Hot and Crusty work- ers organization to control the hiring of ist Clubs worked every day to bring students ing. As the struggle developed, class lines ap- ers’ fight. It was through fierce resolve and workers in the shop. In the super-lucrative and adjuncts to the picket line. We organized peared more sharply on the street as workers solidarity – which are key to class-struggle restaurant industry in New York City, built forums, classroom visits and tabling with Hot picketed. We saw working-class people who unionism – that the workers won. on the backs of immigrant workers, this and Crusty workers to build solidarity with keep the city running (delivery men, nan- The outcome won by the Hot and victory has the potential to be a beacon to- their struggle. Activists gained important sup- nies, utility workers, etc.) expressing interest Crusty workers was a solid union victory: wards organizing the masses of unorganized port from the Hunter chapter of the CUNY and a growing identification with what this full union recognition, a pay increase, sick workers in the city and beyond. n on September 24, at the CUNY Graduate a metro train and arrested every university ticed that they had used the carcasses of old organizing to give the boot to the recruiters Center.] I hope everyone can come, as we student in the car! monitors as planters, with very pretty plants of death. are facing the same urgent issues. The evals are very punitive. A leading growing out of them! Meanwhile, the administration has also Things here came to a head over the political scientist at Mexico’s National Uni- What is going to happen next? It’s hard infamously appointed David “Death Squad” weekend as Peña Nieto delivered his first versity, John Ackerman, denounced the law to say at this point. There is a growing cleav- Petraeus, commander of U.S. imperialism annual “State of the Union” report to Con- as one that would “literally throw out on the age between CNTE union leaders (some of in Afghanistan and Iraq, co-architect of gress. But nobody paid much attention, as street a multitude of highly trained teachers whom have tried to soften the blow by saying war against Syria, as a visiting professor the real action was pushing through the dedicated to their students, with the excuse they won the right to appeal the evals – where of Public Policy (mass murder?) at the teacher evaluations. that they had ‘failed’ slanted tests designed have we heard that before, UFT members?). Macaulay Honors College. What will he be While up to 50,000 teachers, youth and for that purpose.” “It’s a classic ‘three strikes There has also been a lot of talk that in “teaching” – waterboarding, drone attacks, other supporters were in the streets facing an and they’re out,’” he remarked. Oaxaca, the returning teachers of Sección enhanced interrogation, death squads, mass army of riot police, the three major parties Ackermann said the real danger is that 22 may fight to declare the state in rebellion electronic spying and updated version of the in Congress – the president’s Institutional the classrooms will be staffed by people and refuse to carry out the national law. Not Phoenix Program and tiger cages? Revolutionary Party (PRI), the rightist Na- who would be disposed to be uncondition- impossible, they’ve done it before. n Petraeus, it should be noted, wrote tional Action Party (PAN) and “center-left” ally obedient to supervisors who could fire his PhD thesis on the need to overcome nationalist Party of the Democratic Revolu- them at the least excuse. Or the classrooms the “conservatism and caution” among the tion (PRD) – met behind a wall of nine-foot- would be left empty as teachers are forced El Salvador... military “that springs from the lessons of high steel plates where they voted for the to abandon their school books and go drive continued from page 3 Vietnam,” and in particular the fear that “in- punitive teacher evaluations. This was even a taxi, become a dishwasher in the United directly into U.S. surrogates with more arms volvement in a counter insurgency should be as the supposed “dialogue” with the leaders States, or... (you can fill in the blank). and cash. As such, Petraeus is one of the avoided.” He wrote the U.S. Army-Marine of the dissident teachers CNTE union was Going together with the anti-teacher main architects of the current U.S. drive to Counter-Insurgency Field Manual, and taking place in a downtown hotel. “reform,” the government of the “Pact for war against Syria.8 brought to Iraq the “dirty war” techniques But today in the tent city in the main Mexico” plans to introduce sales tax (a In his gruesome work in Iraq, Petraeus and the personnel who organized the death plaza, teachers were not cowed. Wednesday whopping 16 percent) on food and medicine. drew on the services and expertise of the squads in Central America. But now he faces there is a nationwide “mega-march” to kick This will literally deprive people of life, as war criminals who set up some of the most student protests at CUNY which have drawn off what they are calling a “teacher insur- one legislator said. notorious death squads in the history of very different lessons of Vietnam. rection.” The teachers here are incredibly dedi- Latin America. In the name of his victims, The CUNY administration is pushing The PRD Mexico City government has cated. Particularly in the south of Mexico, we call for massive resistance to Petraeus’ to further militarize CUNY to better serve been under fire from the right-wing for not in Oaxaca and Chiapas, and in Guerrero, presence at the City University of New York U.S. imperialism. The CUNY International- cracking down hard enough on the teach- Michoacán and other centers of the resis- until he is driven out through protest and ist Clubs call on all students and workers at ers. New York’s own former mayor Rudy tance, they travel to small rural villages exposure. n CUNY to solidarize with the countless vic- Giuliani – who was an advisor to the Mexico every day to teach in schools that often have tims of ROTC, Petraeus and their bloody ilk 8 “White House Rebuffed Clinton-Petraeus Plan City mayor on security matters – got into the no electricity or running water. Forget about – and to join the struggle against their deadly to Arm Syrian Rebels,” Reuters (2 February act, calling for demonstrators to be jailed. computers or smart boards, many of them 2013). campaigns! “Two, three, many defeats for But yesterday there were reportedly don’t have blackboards. There are no school U.S. imperialism!” In unity with the toiling 6,000 city riot police, 2,000 federal police, lunches or breakfasts. Under the “reform,” masses in poor and “semi-colonial” coun- 3,000 bank police, 2,000 state police from the authorities are talking about introducing Vietnam ... tries who are in the gun sights of the U.S. outside Mexico City, an anti-riot squad, 8-hour school days, and lunches will be paid continued from page 7 war machine, for whom U.S. interventions – a battalion of grenadiers, a regiment of for by the parents. after campus – and was thrown out of CUNY whether self-proclaimed counterinsurgency mounted police, a helicopter and two ar- The condition of the computers in the in 1971 through mass protests exposing its or lying claims of “humanitarianism” –pose mored water cannon vehicles to keep the urban schools is notorious. Yesterday we role in Vietnam. Since the administration a real and imminent danger, we must fight demonstrators at bay. There were two dozen were walking past a school in Oaxaca City and trustees reinstated ROTC last semes- at every turn to mobilize the working class arrests – many of them when police stopped (shut down because of the strike) and no- ter, today CUNY students and workers are to defeat U.S. imperialism. n October 2013 13 “The People United”: Recipe ordered the Chi- Trotskyist View... for Defeat nese Communists continued from page 9 to subordinate The workers republic of Soviet Russia parties in the 1920s, the basic guidelines it workers’ and peas- was soon invaded by 14 capitalist coun- lays out are very important today, since they ants’ struggles to tries, among them the United States under help provide much-needed clarity in mark- the Guomindang. racist Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Backed ing out the parameters for principled joint The result was by the imperialist powers, Tsarist generals action between different organizations in the slaughter of joined with the Mensheviks and Social certain circumstances. This is key to avoid- thousands of he- Revolutionaries to form a White Army in ing the traps of unprincipled “propaganda roic Chinese revo- the attempt to overthrow the Bolsheviks. At blocs” and popular-front coalitionism, as lutionaries when Lenin’s request, Leon Trotsky founded and well as the kind of organizational sectarian- Chiang’s troops led a workers’ and peasants’ Red Army that ism that (in the case of groups like Progres- entered Shanghai defeated the imperialists and counterrevo- sive Labor Party) often provides “leftist” in April 1927. In lutionaries. In a 1923 interview in Moscow, covering for amicable coexistence with a panicked about- Claude McKay, the great poet and writer union bureaucrats and reformists. face, Stalin de- of the Harlem Renaissance, reported that The working people united with their oppressors were Trotskyists do not make a fetish of the clared a “Third Trotsky expressed great interest in learning defeated. Salvador Allende (right) with Augusto Pinochet united front. It is not a strategy but a tactic that Period” of sup- about the situation of American and African in August 1973, shortly after Chilean president appointed can be employed in different struggles. The posedly imminent black people and “said he would like to set a the future dictator head of the army. Mao’s China rushed Internationalist Group has initiated united-front capitalist collapse. practical example in his own department and to recognize the Pinochet junta, and closed its embassy’s protests on many occasions, including against In Germany this proposed the training of a group of Negroes doors to leftists trying to escape. the purge of undocumented students from translated into de- as officers in the Red Army.”5 CUNY following 9/114 and against Obama’s nouncing the Social Democrats as “social- Trotsky. The popular front means workers’ Although the imperialist and white- use of the Coast Guard against ILWU longshore fascists,” and allowing the Nazis to take blood, from France and Spain in the 1930s guard armies lost the war, they inflicted workers in January 2012. We have participated power without a shot being fired. to Indonesia in 1965, where Mao’s line of terrible damage on the world’s first work- in others, such as strike support for Stella d’Oro Trotsky fought unrelentingly for a a “bloc of four classes” with bourgeois na- ers state, in an impoverished peasant land bakery workers in 2009 and demonstrations workers united front in Germany that could tionalists (theorized as “New Democracy” already devastated by World War I. With the against the U.S. invasion of Haiti in January have smashed the fascists and opened the in some of his best-known works) directly failure of the post-WWI insurrections, the 2010 in the guise of humanitarian earthquake road to revolution in the key country of led to the slaughter of a million Communists. isolation and poverty of Soviet Russia led relief. In each case we have engaged in common Europe. This perspective was so obviously to the rise of a conservative, nationalist bu- action while continuing polemical struggle for necessary that it won wide support, far be- There Ain’t No reaucracy personified by Joseph Stalin, who the revolutionary program. yond the handful of German Trotskyists. “Power of the People” after Lenin’s death launched the doctrine of In the 1920s, the U.S. Communist In the aftermath of Hitler’s victory, Stalin This history is an important reference building “socialism in one country.” This Party’s Young Workers League raised the panicked yet again, and swung decisively point for understanding why we Trotskyists was in stark contradiction with everything slogan of “Clarity and Action.” This motto to the right with the policy of the popular sharply criticize all kinds of slogans and that Marx (and Lenin, and Stalin before was adopted by the Trotskyist youth in the front proclaimed at the Seventh Congress of rhetoric about “the people.” This came up Lenin’s death) had written about the neces- 1930s as they supported the struggle of the by-then Stalinized Comintern in 1935. at the September 3 demonstration against sarily international nature of socialism. The the Communist League of America which This was brazen class collaboration, first and ROTC called by the Ad Hoc Committee, purpose of this blatant revisionism was the led the 1934 Minneapolis Teamster strike, foremost with the imperialists of France, when a RSCC comrade (exercising the right vain attempt to induce capitalist govern- joined in defending the nine Scottsboro Britain and the United States under FDR. to put forward his programmatic views) ments to leave the USSR alone in exchange youth facing a lynch law trial in Alabama, Directly causing the defeat of the Spanish started a chant counterposing “people’s for sacrificing working people world-wide. formed united fronts against fascist attacks Revolution, the popular front has been a war” to imperialist war. An Internationalist In his search for capitalist “friends,” on the left in New York, and defended stu- formula for terrible defeats ever since. comrade took the opportunity to emphasize: Stalin embraced the nationalist Goumindang dents suspended by CCNY for anti-fascist The lessons of this history – document- We are for class war against imperialist war. in China led by the militarist Chiang Kai- protests. Then as now, the struggle for Marx- ed in our pamphlet What is Trotskyism? – are We call for workers’ strikes against the war, shek, going so far as to make it a “fraternal ist political clarity was key to upholding of the utmost importance today. For those and this struggle led to the longshore work- party” in the Comintern. In the name of a the principled Leninist tactic of the united who see themselves as communists and ers shutting down all the ports of the West supposed “anti-imperialist united front,” he front against its opportunist perversion by want to fight for the victory of revolution, Coast against the Iraq/Afghanistan wars on 5 Stalinism on the latter’s zigzag journey to Winston James reports about a cadre of “black there is no way around coming to grips with May Day 2008. Bolsheviks” who were “mainly descendants of popular-front reformism. the counterposition between Stalinism – a Under capitalism, “the people” doesn’t Africans who had settled several generations before along the Black Sea. They fought, distin- reformist and nationalist standpoint whose exist. The starting point for a Marxist un- 4 See Defend Immigrant Students – Stop CUNY’s guished themselves and rose in Trotsky’s Red centerpiece is the popular front of class derstanding of the world is that society is “War Purge”! (Internationalist Group pamphlet, Army” (Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia collaboration – and the revolutionary, inter- divided into classes whose interests are ir- December 2001). [Verso, 1999]). nationalist and proletarian line of Lenin and reconcilably counterposed. It is not enough

The story of the November 2001 united-front protest, initiated by the Internationalist Group, against the attempt to drive immigrant students out of CUNY as part of the “war effort” after 9/11. As a result of the mobilization, the exclusionary tuition increase was largely rolled back.

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Claude McKay, celebrated writer of the Harlem Renaissance, speaking at Send check/money order to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in 1923. In response Mundial Publications, Box 3321, to questions from Trotsky, McKay wrote series of reports and a small book Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. on Blacks in America. 14 Revolution to lay claim to this understanding or pay lip service to it: for any Marxist, this fact Internationalist photo the foundation of your political program which must be applied concretely in every aspect of political work. And the conclusion is that only a proletarian revolution can end imperialism and its wars, or make it possible to eliminate racism and racial oppression, or the oppression of women, by undertak- ing the construction of a socialist society in which for the first time social equality and the emancipation of all can be possible. “People’s” politics at CUNY has often led activists rather directly from a nationalist/Third Worldist/studentist outlook to the Democratic Party. Just look at the history of the Student Lib- eration Action Movement (SLAM) at CUNY. After helping organize some large and relatively militant student protests against tuition hikes in the early ’90s, SLAM settled into a role as “official CUNY radicals” effectively subsidized by the university through their control of the In March 2009 protests against tuition hike, cutbacks and layoffs affecting CUNY and city workers, hundreds took Undergraduate Student Government (USG) up Internationalists’ chant, “Students and labor, shut the city down!” and Student Resource Center at Hunter Col- accommodations to the racist status quo. The “power to the people” slogan could opened the road for the bloody military coup lege. After losing USG elections at Hunter in Moreover, at its height many of the BPP’s only obscure the class polarization fundamen- of Augusto Pinochet on 11 September 1973. 2004, SLAM basically disappeared. Many of most dedicated and heroic activists – like the tal to any fight to overthrow capitalism. As a Asked why he wasn’t chanting this slogan its former leaders can now be found staffing young Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton result, left-wing Panthers’ efforts were increas- at a protest last year, an immigrant worker the offices of Democrat-run NGOs like PIRG, – were grappling with issues like how to really ingly channeled into social service programs unionist replied curtly, “Because it is a lie.” “progressive” Democratic City Council mem- apply Marxism to the fight for black liberation, to “serve the people” in alliance with black As for Mao Zedong, RSCC comrades bers and pro-Democratic union bureaucracies. as part of the fight to defeat capitalism right churches and local bourgeois politicians. In should seriously investigate why his govern- Despite its demise, one of SLAM’s here “in the belly of the beast.” Such efforts July 1971 the BPP split between a wing led ment ostentatioiusly rushed to recognize the favorite slogans lives on, exemplifying the were cut short by the FBI’s infamous COIN- by Eldridge Cleaver, who went quickly from U.S.-backed Chilean military regime, lead- kind of classless outlook that is counter- TELPRO (“counterintelligence”) program, “ultra-revolutionary” posturing to Republican ing Pinochet to declare: “China has behaved posed to Marxist class politics: “There ain’t symbolized by the cold-blooded murder of reaction; and another led by Huey Newton well.” (See the pamphlet China’s Alliance no power like the power of the people, ’cuz Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in December and Elaine Brown, who (with the “help” of with U.S. Imperialism [1976], available from the power of the people don’t stop!” The 1969, as dozens of Panthers were gunned the Soviet-line reformist Communist Party) the CUNY Internationalist Clubs.) crowd is supposed to answer “Say what?!” down and many more framed up and locked made a turn to the Democratic Party. But That’s a good question, since this populist away, sometimes for decades. with its internal contradictions and nationalist Class Struggle – or “Red jingle is designed to make people feel good Yet even in its heyday, the BPP was program, the Panthers could not go forward University” Fantasies? but not think about what the vapid tautol- characterized by deep contradictions between on a path to communism. Several articles in this issue of Revolution ogy actually means, which in essence is a desire for revolution and its radical-nation- As for the characteristic slogan of the illustrate how CUNY’s reinstitution of ROTC, bourgeois politics. It may appeal to those alist ideology which blocked it from fighting popular-frontist left, “The people united will and appointment of David “Death Squad” Pe- yearning for a popular front of class col- to mobilize strategically-placed black work- never be defeated,” here the consequences of traeus, are part and parcel of the international laboration with liberals and “folks” looking ers in a revolutionary proletarian struggle for “people” politics instead of proletarian class capitalist offensive against public education. for a career as Democrats or union bureau- black liberation through socialist revolution. politics are written in blood. This motto of In Mexico, our comrades of the Grupo In- crats – but it’s the antithesis of revolutionary This is the strategy of Leninism, which fights Salvador Allende’s Chilean popular front ternacionalista (GI) have been intervening Marxism, which stands for working-class to build a communist vanguard party wield- –“El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” – is daily in the heroic teachers’ strike against the independence from the bourgeoisie. ing the power of the proletariat against every chanted in innumerable demonstrations to imperialist-dictated “education reform” on Occupy’s trademark catchphrase about form of oppression, centrally – in this country this day, summing up the politics of class the basis of a program for revolutionary class “the 99 percent” was enormously popular founded on chattel slavery – the oppression collaboration. Yet in “uniting” the workers struggle. This has meant helping lead the take- among liberals and reformist left groups. of black people that is written into the DNA and oppressed with “progressive” sectors of over of schools – like the National School of However, we in the CUNY Internationalist of American capitalism. the bourgeoisie, Allende’s Unidad Popular Anthropology and History (ENAH) that sent Clubs rejected this bourgeois populist slogan, greetings from the barricades supporting the pointing out, for example, how it was used to CUNY Six. It also means fighting to bring in appeal to cops to “join us,” when in fact the some of the “heavy battalions” of the prole- police are the professional enforcers for the tariat to buttress the teachers. bosses. (Some social-democratic groups like At CUNY, the Internationalist Clubs Socialist Alternative claim that police are part call to abolish the administration and Board of the working class, which only shows their of Trustees, and for the university to be run appetite to administer the capitalist state.) by democratically elected committees of RSCC comrades and many African Ameri- students, teachers and workers. This is a can, Latino and Asian youth have also reacted democratic rather than a socialist demand, with scorn to the grotesque idea that the racist but one that is highly unlikely to be realized police are potential allies of the oppressed. under capitalism. Moreover, it is linked to So what about “Power to the People”? our demands for open admissions with no This slogan was popularized by the Black tuition and living stipends so working-class Panther Party, founded in 1966, which students can afford to study; for free 24-hour won worldwide fame for its valiant stand childcare, equal rights for gays, lesbians for black self-defense against racist police and transgender people, and full citizenship terror. (A vivid memoir of the time – recom- rights for all immigrants. We clearly and mended for every CUNY activist’s reading explicitly tie these demands to the revo- list – is We Want Freedom: A Life in the lutionary class perspective of Trotskyism: Black Panther Party, by America’s No. 1 “What we need is to break with all class war prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal.) The bourgeois parties and build a revolutionary BPP was admired by radicalizing youth for workers party that fights to overthrow the carrying forward Malcolm X’s sharp de- capitalist system….The revolutionary nunciations of the racism and war crimes of party we need must be one that champions the Democratic Party, its bold identification the cause of all those exploited and with anti-imperialist struggles around the oppressed by capitalist society, bringing world, as well as its willingness to polemi- Internationalist photo revolutionary class consciousness to the cize sharply against “pork chop national- CUNY Internationalist Clubs at protest against cop murder of Kimani Gray in mass of workers in the course of the class ism,” “black capitalism” and other open East Flatbush, March 25. For workers mobilization against racist police terror! struggle. Students and youth can play October 2013 15 published Long Live the Victory of People’s War, in which he called to “rely on the peas- AP ants and establish rural base areas.” Now we have RSCC in effect relying on the students to create “base areas,” establish a “liberatory education,” and transform CUNY into a tool for “peoples’ struggles.” Is this some kind of peasant/student guerrilla war fantasy? Actually, what it comes down to is much more prosaic. To choose just a few of the demands in RSCC’s Platform and Points of Unity: While calling for “all police to be permanently banned from CUNY,” it adds, “We want any se- curity force to be controlled by the com- munity.” This is, quite simply, a reformist concept – and a dangerous one, promoting Stalinist betrayal: Mao Zedong feted Richard Nixon as U.S. was carpet-bombing North Vietnam in 1972. These are the illusion that the “community” (or “the the bitter fruits of “building socialism in one country.” After Mao-Nixon deal, Maoist movement hemorrhaged. people”) could somehow control campus an important role in this struggle, if we ship were obligated to do so) reach out to “the people” is one symptom of this. This security, which is by its very nature part of understand what we’re fighting for and powerful sectors of NYC labor to provide question is directly relevant to the current capitalism’s repressive apparatus. get organized, allied with the power of some real muscle in defense of CUNY struggle at CUNY. The basic Marxist point Equally reformist is the call for CUNY the working class.” students. At this demonstration, as a black that the decisive element in any real struggle to “remove” administrators and teachers – “Join the CUNY Internationalist Clubs!” transit worker – one of several TWU and is power is particularly crucial if what you who do bad things, including “suppress Revolution No. 8, April 2011 CWA (Verizon) unionists invited by the In- are up against are structures of the bourgeois progressive and revolutionary ideas.” In This revolutionary working-class ternationalist Group – was giving solidarity state itself, like the armed forces’ officer fact, the CUNY administration and Board perspective has guided our participation greetings to the crowd, a top SUFC spokes- corps, the CIA or NYPD. This might sound of Trustees have repeatedly sought to in struggles at CUNY – against budget man ostentatiously took the bullhorn away uncontroversial – but in the fight against “remove” teachers they see as radical or cuts, tuition hikes and layoffs; in support from the worker and gave it to Democratic the militarization of CUNY it has been subversive. As for the call for “liberatory of Hunter cafeteria workers’ resistance to councilman Charles Barron, a bourgeois necessary to emphasize that no dramatic education,” this can only be illusory so long union-busting bosses; against the police politician who sometimes strikes a radical spectacle or defiant gesture can take the as capitalism is not overthrown and replaced attack on students protesting the Board pose, in between campaigning for Obama. place of mobilizing real power. with a workers state. Yet conspicuously of Trustees meeting at Baruch College in RSCC members polemicize against In New York City, the crucial class absent from RSCC’s Platform and Points of November 2011, and many others. And what they rightly characterize as the “stu- power to mobilize effectively against repres- Unity is any call for proletarian revolution, although our program is far to the left of the dentist” outlook of groups like SUFC, sive attacks on student protests – and to fight socialism, or anything of the kind. other student groups’, Internationalists have which resist raising demands that go beyond the militarization of CUNY – lies outside In the late 1960s, sectors of the gotten an enthusiastic response to our slo- the limits of “student issues,” as if some the university walls: it is in the hands of the New Left launched the call for a “red gan, “Workers and Students: Shut the City kind of “student power” could somehow workers from all around the world whose university.” This call to paint the ivory Down!” (See video: http://www.youtube. fix up the university. Yet CUNY’s conflicts labor keeps everything in this city running tower red represented a self-consciously com/watch?v=JZUesdAn33M) and crises are rooted in the social reality of and who can bring it to a screeching halt. petty-bourgeois counterposition to the Violent repression by CUNY’s “secu- oppression and poverty, and reflect the ef- Mobilizing this power means fighting for real task of the day: for students radical- rity” force and the NYPD played a part in forts of the trustees and the administration a class-struggle program, and the fight to ized by imperialism’s crimes in Vietnam radicalizing a small but significant number to carry through a race and class purge of politically defeat the pro-Democratic mis- and around the world to find a path to the of activists at the City University. A number the City University. In fact, such “studentist” leaders of the workers, the fight for a revo- working class. The urgency and oppor- had participated in Students United for a Free groups provide a vehicle for budding student lutionary workers party, is key to this task. tunity to do so was vividly shown by the CUNY (SUFC), a reformist group linked to bureaucrats to advance their careers via RSCC’s failure to actually take on May-June 1968 events in France, when New York Students Rising, which in turn is foundation-funded NGOs like NYPIRG and revolutionary class politics is also demon- after student demonstrators were brutally an NGO (“non-governmental organization”) NY Communities for Change as an entrée strated in chants for a “people’s university,” attacked by police, millions of workers which receives funding, for example, from into the corridors of power where bourgeois as well as the RSCC Platform’s call: “We occupied the factories and raised the red the New York Foundation, representing some politicians do their wheeling and dealing. want to transform the schools into base areas flag in a general strike, posing the spectre of the biggest Wall Street banks.6 Seeking a RSCC members’ polemical jabs against for advancing all of the peoples’ struggles of revolution in the heart of Europe in the more militant perspective, a sector of SUFC “studentism,” their disgust with the careerist for liberation. We want CUNY to be a tool midst of the Vietnam War. split to the left to form the Revolutionary swamp of student bureaucrats and their for achieving these goals.” What is this To make this nightmare of the bour- Student Coordinating Committee. desire to identify as revolutionaries, have if not “studentism” with a Mao button? geoisie – and hope of the oppressed and On 21 November 2011, many of these not, however, yet led to a fundamental break In 1965, Mao’s right-hand man Lin Biao exploited – come to pass, a Bolshevik activists, together with other CUNY stu- from the “studentist” outlook. Their attrac- (later accused of trying to assassinate the party was the irreplaceable element. Many dents and faculty, witnessed campus cops tion to the classless Maoist rhetoric about Great Helmsman and defect to the USSR) radicalized students and young workers slamming students to the ground, dragging were fed up with the reformist passivity them by the hair, and delivering them to the and outright betrayals of the French Com- NYPD during the infamous cop attack on a munist Party. But they had to confront protest against the tuition hike being rubber- the great international, programmatic and stamped at a Board of Trustees meeting at historical dividing lines in the communist Baruch College. A week later, more than movement. Above all, they couldn’t elude 1,000 defenders of students’ rights gathered the counterposition between the program in front of Baruch to protest the police attack. of world socialist revolution, embodied This rally was called by the Professional in the Bolshevik Revolution of Lenin and Staff Congress as a result of Internationalist Trotsky, and Stalinist reformism, in both and CSEW comrades’ fight for the “CUNY its pro-Moscow and Maoist variants which General Assembly” to appeal to the faculty/ under various names (popular front, bloc of staff union to initiate the protest, and to call four classes, New Democracy, etc.) all came on other unionists to join it. down to class collaboration. The point was to gain support for the Four years later, in 1972, the interna- students from the labor organization that tional left was shaken by the sudden an- represents 25,000 faculty and staff at CUNY, nouncement that Mao Zedong – then in the and could (if its social-democratic leader- midst of his “Cultural Revolution” – was 6 And check this out, “NYSR is Looking for meeting with the biggest war criminal on Organizers for PAID Positions!” (http://nystu- the face of the planet: Richard Nixon. dentsrising.org). If you are a SUNY/CUNY While the U.S. imperialist war chief and student or recent graduate, you could be a campus his mass murderer sidekick Henry Kissinger organizer for up to $500 a semester (hardly a princely sum), or a regional organizer for $2,500 Paris, 13 May 1968: “Workers and Students, United We Will Win.” French May were carpet-bombing the heroic Vietnam- (since raised to $4,000) a semester. But you may ’68 raised spectre of red reveolution when students joined with workers. But ese, here Mao was giving them the red be too late for the last two positions, one of which general strike was sold out because key element was lacking: a revolutionary carpet treatment in Beijing. The moment has apparently been taken by a SUFC leader. leadership rooted in the factories and among the oppressed. the photos of this were published, militants 16 Revolution began streaming out of Maoist groups in YouTube video represents a “qualitative the U.S. and Western Europe. Like Soviet rupture” with existing social relations leader Brezhnev with his pipe dreams of bears an uncomfortably clear relation to the Class Struggle Against the War on Education “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism, social-media-obsessed vision of the populist Currently, as the Mexican teachers it never calls to defy it, and never ever calls Mao’s alliance with Nixon showed yet again Occupy movement which RSCC members continue to strike in resistance to the anti- for a strike. The liberals and reformists talk that the nationalist dogma of “socialism in rightly criticize. (For OWS devotees, who education “reform” law, our comrades of the of the drive to privatize public education, one country” means betrayal of revolution really do think politics is a big spectacle, “I Grupo Internacionalista have been calling but pin the blame on “corporate” education worldwide, and undermining the gains of have an iPad/MacBook Air, therefore I am,” for oil refineries to be shut by mass mobili- reform and “neoliberal” policy, not capital- revolution at home. and the revolution will be live-streamed or zation (as occurred in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca ism. In contrast, the CSEW says straight-out Any comrade who still views Maoism it will not be8.) Politically, it boils down to and is now happening in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, that this a capitalist attack supported by both as revolutionary must come to grips with a rejection of a class perspective of mobiliz- Chiapas). They are also fighting to bring bourgeois parties, and to fight it we need to this fundamental fact. ing proletarian power, of real masses of the about class-struggle mobilizations by auto mobilize working-class power, notably that workers and oppressed. From the Clouds workers at Volkswagen (Puebla) and Nissan of the transit workers. Sometimes a bold and dramatic ac- (Cuernavaca). During the historic ten-month When the largely Haitian and Domini- Back Down to Earth tion can set off a chain reaction with major occupation of Mexico’s National University, can immigrant city school bus drivers and A polemic entitled “From the Ground consequences. Such an action was the 1969 the UNAM, in 1999-2000, the fledgling GI matrons hit the bricks to defend their jobs to the Sky,”7 posted on September 24 by occupation of City College by the Black and sparked the formation of workers defense this past January and February, the CUNY the “Secretariat of the Revolutionary Stu- Puerto Rican Student Community (joined guards by the electrical workers union Internationalist Clubs and CSEW brought dent Coordinating Committee” and the by a small group of white radicals): as a (SME) to defend the strike against threats CUNY students and adjuncts to the picket “Secretariat of Ignite,” provides us with the result of three months of mass agitation of an army attack. That strike succeeded in lines day after day, putting forward a class- opportunity to make some summary remarks over the lily-white composition of CCNY, it stopping the imposition of tuition at Latin struggle program to bring out strategic sectors about how political program intersects key ultimately led to open admissions for NYC America’s largest university.1 of the working class, together with parents’ issues posed by the struggle to oust war high school graduates at CUNY. As we have In the NYC public schools, Class and community groups, to defeat Bloom- criminal Petraeus and ROTC through protest noted, the broadening of the demands to Struggle Education Workers (CSEW) has berg’s union-busting offensive. In contrast, and exposure. The subject of the article is achieve open admissions was the result not fought against the school closings carried this strike of blue-collar education workers the protests against Petraeus that took place only of the students’ action but also of the out by Bloomberg’s “puppet education pan- was all but ignored by MORE. (See “School on September 9. intervention of the powerful city unions (see el,” while emphasizing that this is a racist Bus Drivers’ Strike: Mobilize NYC Labor to It’s tough going trying to cut through the “How Open Admissions Was Won in 1969 measure that comes straight from Obama’s Win!” 21 January 2013; and “The Betrayal of thicket of high-flown phrases, that read in and Debates on the Struggle at CUNY,” White House. The union bureaucracy and the NYC School Bus Strike” in The Interna- places like a speaker trying to channel Slavoj Revolution No. 6, April 2009). the liberal/reformist opposition (which tionalist No. 34, March-April 2013.) Žižek at some kind of post-modern Maoist In the late 1960s, when talk of “red includes supporters of the ISO, Socialist And when the CSEW spokeswoman in academic symposium – instead of seeking universities” was in vogue, the context for Alternative, PLP and other left groups) shy the United Federation of Teachers delegate the hard-edged political clarity essential to student radicalization was a vast expansion away from stating the obvious fact that these assembly speaks out against endorsing struggles like the one we’re engaged in. The of higher education, mass protest against the closings are racist, for fear of alienating Democrats, Republicans or any capitalist article begins with a critical reference to Vietnam War, upheavals against cop terror in white teachers and parents, and, fearing to candidate, MORE supporters keep quiet “what we might call the revisionist protest- the northern ghettos and barrios, and growing alienate Democrats, they avoid the fact that and sit on their hands when the vote comes. structure,” based on “a unity that does not labor unrest. Today, workers are under attack the assault on public education is led by U.S. Those aligned with left groups calling affirm a rupture with all forms of power of across the board, students are weighed down imperialism’s commander-in-chief, Obama. themselves socialist or communist provide the adversary,” and other recondite phrases. with skyrocketing tuition and debt, and public The CSEW calls to shred the no-strike Tay- a textbook example of what the word “op- This is contrasted to a “demonstration of education is targeted by both major capitalist lor Law with powerful strike action, and “to portunism” means in practice: they made an essentially different type: let us call it a parties. More than ever, in order to prevail bring parents and working people together a “coalition” with liberals who voted for ruptural action.” It goes on: “To paraphrase against the powerful capitalist forces who with teachers and students for occupying Obama, and are afraid that telling the truth [Bertolt] Brecht, it was if the rain began to stand behind their war criminal, Gen. Petraeus, closing schools” (CSEW, Occupy Closing about the Democratic Party would break fall from the ground to the sky.” it is necessary to mobilize the multiethnic Schools!, 8 February 2012). it up. Now union bureaucrats and pseudo- And what caused this alleged revolu- working class along with African American, The basic question is whether to fight leftists are ecstatic at the prospect of liberal tionary weather phenomenon and herniation Latino, Asian, immigrant and other oppressed openly for a program of revolutionary class Democrat Bill De Blasio as mayor. of the time-space continuum? The “spec- sectors in a revolutionary class struggle. struggle, or to push a laundry list of reforms The union leaders in office, and the tacle we staged” on September 9. Dizzy So our challenge to the comrades from (which will never be carried out by decaying “opposition” groups based on a liberal/ with excess, the article continues: “What it RSCC is to bring it down from the clouds capitalism) keeping the struggle within the reformist coalition, share the same basic activated was precisely a qualitative rupture and back to earth. What wins struggles is bounds of the system. The reformist/lib- program – and when the reformers get into with the revisionist protest-structure, and not spectacles but power. This is only one eral opposition group in the teachers union, office, as in the Chicago Teachers Union, beyond that, with existing social relations.” front in a class war, including the fight Movement of Rank and File Educators they are no more able to resist the capitalist Not only that, it was, we are told, “a leap against racist police brutality, stop and frisk (MORE), may criticize the Taylor Law but onslaught than the old-line labor tops. From into the future.” And on and on like that. and school closings, against charterization, 1 Mexico to NYC, fighting for a program of Talk about needing to “keep it real”! privatization and standardization of cur- See “Mexico: Worker-Student Defense Guards intransigent class struggle is the most basic So what they’re referring to is what riculum (Common Core in city schools, Formed” in our pamphlet The UNAM Strike and the Fight for Workers Revolution (The Interna- task of those committed to victory for the happened after Petraeus’ first class at Ma- Pathways at CUNY) aimed at turning edu- tionalist special issue, March 2000). workers and oppressed. n caulay Honors College, when a group of cation into a commodity and skills training students spontaneously took the initiative to for the corporations. In the struggle to oust follow him and vocally proclaim the truth Petraeus and ROTC, what’s needed is to What Is Trotskyism? about his war crimes. Let’s be clear: CUNY mobilize significant numbers of students Internationalist and CSEW militants have from CUNY campuses, together with fac- Originally published under not only supported but hailed this coura- ulty and campus workers, and tap into the the title “The Stalin School of geous action, defending the comrades who working-class power capable of defeating Falsification Revisited,” this undertook it against attempts to stigmatize the class enemy. powerful pamphlet refutes them launched by the “Death Squad” David In this fight, concrete experience will the distortions and slanders fan club. This includes not only right-wing continue to put the different political con- of Trotskyism by then-Maoist nut jobs like Fox News or the racist National ceptions and strategies to the test, providing Carl Davidson, while giving Association of Scholars, but also liberals some great opportunities for the kind of po- an overview of the battle (including administration lackeys in the litical clarification, including sharp polemic between authentic Marxism University Faculty Senate) who want to and debate, needed to help transform revolu- and Stalinism. Includes show that they will stick by Barack Obama’s tionary aspirations into real advances in the chapters on the Third favorite military officer. struggle to defeat U.S. imperialism through Chinese Revolution and The students’ denunciation of Petraeus international workers revolution. n Mao’s China, from Stalin to was a very good element, and utterly justi- 8 Nixon. 56 pp. fied action, in the broader campaign of And soon you will be able to get your very own Occupy prepaid debit card, which urges you to protest and exposure of a man responsible “join the revolution” and register a “protest with US$2 for murder and torture on a massive scale, every purchase.” The issuer, the Occupy Money Send check/money order – and of the “military-academic complex” Cooperative, has a board of directors including to Mundial Publications, he personifies. But a “leap into the future”? a former Deutsche Bank director and a bank- Box 3321, Church Street The idea that a “spectacle” captured in a ing law professor who consults for the Federal Station, New York, NY Reserve Bank of New York and the International 10008, U.S.A. 7 Available at http://www.signalfire.org Monetary Fund. October 2013 17 As a CUNY Interna- Solidarity from Mexican Student Strikers tionalist Clubs militant Internationalist photo active in the anti-milita- with the “CUNY Six” rization protests pointed The following is a translation of a de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE out: “Petraeus’ backers resolution passed on the night of Septem- – National Coordinating Committee of cannot answer the docu- ber 18 by the students on the barricades Education Workers) have been in Mex- mented truth about his of the strike and occupation of Mexico’s ico City mobilizing in defense of public actions as CIA chief and National School of Anthropology and education. Last Friday, their plantón [tent war commander – so History (ENAH). The resolution, submit- city] of protest in the Zócalo [Mexico they send enforcers in ted by our comrades of the Grupo Inter- City’s central plaza] was destroyed blue to try to silence our nacionalista, was confirmed the next day in a police/military arrack so that the voice. But the truth of by an assembly of some 80 strikers. The president could carry out the annual our message will not and strike at the ENAH, located on the south ritual of the flag-waving independence cannot be silenced by side of Mexico City, began following the day commemoration. The capital city’s the NYPD’s billy clubs, police eviction of striking teachers on government solicitously participated in choke holds and fists.” Bring out labor to defend the CUNY Six! Friday, September 13, as part of the fight the repression against the teachers, also A press release about to mobilize a huelga nacional (national unleashing its granadero riot police to the September 17 arrests from the Ad Hoc of death squads and torture centers, running strike) of labor, together with students and repress us with their billy clubs and tear Committee Against the Militarization of drone attacks against civilians, and the other other sectors, in support of the “teacher gas when we blocked the Periphery Ring CUNY declared: war crimes he carried out as Iraq/Afghani- insurgency” gripping Mexico for the past roadway while the repression was taking “A broad range of CUNY students, stan war commander and then head of the several weeks. place in the Zócalo. faculty and staff members have been world’s most notorious agency of murderous carrying out a campaign of ‘protest It was against this repressive onslaught “dirty tricks,” the CIA. Comrades: and exposure’ against the Board of that we decided to start a strike of unlimited As a speaker from the Revolutionary We have been informed that yester- Trustees’ appointment of Petraeus, Student Coordinating Committee said at duration. Various schools throughout the whose documented actions as Iraq day [September 17], the New York police Valley of Mexico are joining this strike: the the September 23 protest outside Macaulay, brutally attacked the peaceful demonstra- and Afghanistan war commander and “We’re not here to take away professors’ Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, the South CIA chief include drone attacks upon tion you were carrying out in repudiation right to teach. We’re here to remove a war campus of the College of Sciences and civilians, and the creation of torture of war criminal David Petraeus at the City criminal with blood on his hands from our Humanities, the National School of Music, centers and death squads.... With the University of New York. The attempt to university.” and other parts of the UNAM (National NYPD being sent to brutalize and arrest militarize CUNY in the service of the U.S. Autonomous University of Mexico); three CUNY students on behalf of a certified As for “learning from him,” one can imperialist murderers must not and shall of the four campuses of the Universidad war criminal, organizers state that this only ask if the UFS dons in their academic not pass! The result of this violent attack Autónoma Metropolitana (Autonomous blatant use of police brutality against robes and their friends in CUNY central by the racist New York police is the arrest Metropolitan University), the four cam- peaceful protesters will not intimidate or envisage seminars in water boarding, “en- of six comrades. From the Escuela Nacio- puses of the Universidad Autónoma de la deter those who expose the truth about the hanced interrogation,” or the use of white nal de Antropología e Historia (ENAH Ciudad de México (Autonomous University actions of David ‘Death Squad’ Petraeus phosphorus in Fallujah, Iraq. Or perhaps – National School of Anthropology and of Mexico City), etc. and oppose attempts to turn the City they have in mind how-to instruction in the History), on strike since September 13, we Comrades: Your struggle inspires University into ‘a war college’.” use of extermination squads against Central send you a warm salute of internationalist us. We hope that you will also make the CUNY Administration Stands American villages under the direction of the solidarity. We demand that all the charges struggle we are carrying out here your likes of “Petraeus’ man” Col. James Steele. against you be dropped immediately. Behind Sadistic NYPD Attack own struggle too. Down with capital’s at- The key to counterinsurgency, Steele We would like you to know that here Backing up the certified war criminal tacks on education throughout the world! said to one interviewer, is “getting people in Mexico City we are mobilizing in de- they have employed as part of the concerted to talk to you” (The Guardian [London], fense of public education. Since August ENAH students on strike effort to target the university for militariza- 6 March). He had his own particular ways 20, tens of thousands of valiant education Cuicuilo, Mexico City, tion, the City University’s administration of “winning hearts and minds.” In Samara, workers from the Coordinadora Nacional 18 September 2013 and Board of Trustees unleashed the noto- Iraq, Steele ran a blood-soaked interrogation rious blue- and white-shirted thugs of the center for Petraeus in the local library where NYPD to brutalize CUNY students and must enlist in, and train themselves politi- suspects were hung upside down by their other demonstrators for the “crime” of exer- cally to help lead, the world-wide struggle feet. Luckily, the Macaulay College town- ROTC... cising their basic right to protest. Abandon- continued from page 3 for socialist revolution – the only way to put house on 67th Street doesn’t have a library. ing any hypocritical pretense of speaking for an end to imperialism once and for all. n A CUNY press blurb, “ROTC Returns what mealy-mouthed administrators like to The UFS execs were echoing an earlier to CUNY” (21 May 2013 on cuny.edu) call “the CUNY community,” interim chan- screed by Macaulay Dean Ann Kirschner, blared: Outrage... cellor William Kelly said not a word about who went on about Petraeus’ appointment “After a four-decade absence, the Army continued from page 20 the savage police violence against CUNY showing that the university is “a place... Senior Reserve Officers Training Corps officers. The only obstruction that happened students. Instead, he sanctioned the attack, where complex issues and points of view... is returning to City College, which will was from the police” (New York Daily are considered and debated.” Try telling serve as The City University of New York saying the administration will “ensure that News, 19 September). that to those whose voices were silenced headquarters for the new University-wide Dr. Petraeus is able to teach without harass- Many of the arrestees’ supporters at- ment or obstruction.” forever, from the mass graves of El Mo- ROTC program.... Maj. Gen. Jeff Smith, zote, El Salvador to those whose tortured commander of the U.S. Army Cadet tended the arraignment, and it is clear that So according to the ruling-class mouth- bodies were dumped on the roadside by Command, and Chancellor Matthew many will return on the scheduled court pieces who run CUNY on behalf of capi- Petraeus’ Special Police Commandos in Goldstein launched the program at the date of October 17. Standing up to the es- tal, protests against the ex-chief of U.S. northern Iraq! college’s historic Great Hall in a special tablishment media and the state’s attempts imperialism’s Murder Inc. constitute “ha- signing ceremony that included former to intimidate them into silence, the defense rassment” and “obstruction,” while cops’ And to see what we mean about mili- U.S. Secretary of State and retired Army of the “CUNY Six” is an important part sadistic beat-downs of CUNY students are tarization going together with privatization Gen. Colin Powell....” of the struggle against militarization and justified. Kelly’s Kover-Up goes together and corporatization of public education, In line with the proclaimed goal of “taking police-state repression. with repeated falsification – lip-synced by consider this: as reported by The Dissenter full advantage of [the] large, ethnically As stated in the call for a September administration fans in the University Faculty blog on the liberal Firedoglake website diverse populations” in NYC and CUNY 23 demonstration to “Defend CUNY Stu- Senate executive committee, which in a gro- (September 13), “Kirschner – despite serv- specifically, ROTC immediately moved on dents’ Right to Protest!”: “Students, faculty, tesque September 13 statement declaimed: ing as a Dean of a public university – also to set up shop at the predominantly African workers; labor, community, anti-racist and “Because they disagree with Professor Pe- sits on the Board of Directors of the Apollo American and Latino York and Medgar immigrant rights activists; opponents of traeus’ views, these demonstrators intend to Group. Apollo owns … the for-profit college Evers CUNY campuses. police brutality, ‘stop and frisk,’ and mili- deprive him of his ability to teach and the behemoth – and scandal-ridden – Phoenix That ROTC recruits the “officer corps tarization and imperialist war – all should ability of his students to learn from him.” University.” of the bourgeoisie” is no empty phrase. As come out... defending CUNY students’ basic This is a flat-out lie. This puts her in good company with the AEI report shows, capitalism has its right to protest.” Over 125 people came Avidly licking the general’s boots, these CUNY’s Board of Trustees, which is headed cadres, organizers and propagandists. With out, including a number of trade unionists lackeys jumped to join the storm of media by the (failed) school privatization entrepre- these cynical servants of the ruling class who held signs with messages like “NYC abuse directed against students who had neur Benno Schmidt. (See our article “Look turning CUNY into a hunting ground for im- transit workers’ kids go to CUNY too. We vocally denounced Petraeus’ war crimes Who’s Trusteeing at CUNY,” Revolution perialism’s killer elite, it is the task of revo- say: NYPD stop beating them up now!” Two when the former general left his first “class” No. 5 [September 2008].2) lutionaries to help mobilize massive protest dozen faculty members chanted “NYPD, on September 9. In fact the protests are and exposure to drive them out. To defeat CUNY Board of Trustees: Hands Off Our not about Petraeus’ “views” but about his 2 Reproduced on line at: http://free-cuny.net/ them, a new generation of revolutionaries Students!” documented acts of promoting the creation article/look-who%E2%80%99s-trusteeing-cuny 18 Revolution Stand With CUNY “O’Reilly Factor” Ambush Interview Backfires Students Who On Friday, Sep- Have Stood Up to tember 20, the right- Militarization wing TV show “The CUNY students who have O’Reilly Factor” on stood up to the onslaught of mili- Fox TV broadcast a tarism at CUNY and to Bloom- segment featuring an berg’s NYPD police state (soon “ambush interview” to be turned over to Democrat with Sándor John, Bill de Blasio’s command) an adjunct professor have a significant opportunity of Latin American to link up with students and history at the City workers who are the intended University of New targets of police repression at York who has been home and U.S. imperialism active in protesting against CUNY’s CUNY faculty, students and staff would abroad. Their actions also appointment of death squad organizer not let their university be turned into an help ensure that the fallen ex-Gen. David Petraeus. Abu Ghraib on the island of Manhattan. are not forgotten – from The “interviewer,” Jesse Watters, When Watters noted that taxpayers the NYPD’s many black is used to intimidating his prey when paid the professor’s salary, John countered and Latino victims to the he pounces on them unexpectedly, but asking if the Fox TV interviewer had mountains of corpses that this time he picked the wrong target. any idea how little adjuncts make. The Petraeus and his hench- In response to the false accusation of Fox hit-piece also reveled in the police men leave in their wake. organizing a “hate mob,” John calmly violence against arrested CUNY students, In Mexico, the Grupo Inter- explained that “Students and faculty at and raised fabrications designed to incite. nacionalista submitted a resolution of solidar- cial pow- the City University of New York are not John ended by asking if this was sup- ity with the CUNY protestors to the student er to stop Petraeus okay with this death squad organizer, and posed to be a news interview, or Senator body of the National School of Anthropology and U.S. imperialism – through somebody who organized drone attacks.” Joseph McCarthy reincarnated. Clearly, and History (ENAH) in Mexico City. ENAH class-struggle means led by a revolutionary John pointed out that the Guardian the intent was the latter, but it flopped. students went on strike and occupied their party to overthrow the capitalist order in an newspaper has amply documented how Watters and O’Reilly both demanded school in support of Mexico’s teachers, who international socialist revolution. The fight Petraeus brought to Iraq the man, Col. that Prof. John be fired, but despite the are facing massive attacks on public educa- against militarization at CUNY is part of James Steele, associated with the Atlacatl campaign of hate mail and pressure on tion there. The ENAH students took time out an international struggle to oppose the U.S. Battalion in El Salvador which carried the university, they have not succeeded. in their struggle to build a national student- imperialist war machine from Petraeus to the out the infamous El Mozote massacre, Instead they produced widespread sup- worker strike to salute their CUNY comrades: NYPD, from Syria and Iraq to New York! exterminating an entire village. Followed port for the professor for standing up to “We have been informed that yesterday into the subway, John reiterated that the Fox TV attack dog. [September 17], the New York Two important events will be held police brutally attacked the peaceful in mid-October: Outrage Spreads as a Visiting Professor at the Macaulay demonstration you were carrying out in On Tuesday, October 15, begin- Honors College of CUNY. We deplore the repudiation of war criminal David Petraeus ning at 5:00 p.m., an indoor public rally Outrage at the cowardly cop assault has use of violence and brutal tactics against at the City University of New York. The will take place demanding “Defend the quickly spread. The fact that administra- CUNY students and faculty who were attempt to militarize CUNY in the service CUNY Six! Drop the Charges Now!” tion flaks and their UFS apologists do not peacefully protesting outside the college. of the U.S. imperialist murderers must not It will be held in the New Building of speak for CUNY faculty, staff or students And we call for a formal investigation of and shall not pass! A result of this violent John Jay College,11th Avenue and 59th th was underlined by indignant protests from the use of force against the protestors.” attack by the racist New York police is the Street, Room 9.64 (9 floor). CUNY’s faculty/staff union, the Profes- The union subsequently invited two of the arrest of six comrades. From the Escuela On Wednesday, October 16, at sional Staff Congress (PSC). At a joint CUNY Six to address its “Contract Now!” Nacional de Antropología e Historia, on 5:30 p.m., the Ad Hoc Committee Against the Militarization of CUNY meeting of the Hunter College PSC chapter rally on September 30 in front of a Board strike since September 13, we send you a and campus Delegate Assembly a day after warm salute of internationalist solidarity. is calling a protest demonstration in of Trustees meeting held in Baruch College. front of a gala at John Jay College, the police attack, a resolution was passed Meanwhile a petition from CUNY We demand that all the charges against you unanimously denouncing “the assault by be dropped immediately.” where Petraeus will be “honored” as graduate students and educators has already a featured speaker on “Educating for the NYPD on Tuesday, September 17, 2013 attracted hundreds of signatories from with- The full resolution can be read on page 18 (opposite). Justice” (!). against CUNY students who were protesting in CUNY and hundreds more from students Readers are encouraged to attend. peacefully, in front of the CUNY Macaulay and educators across the United States and The workers of the world have the so- Honors College,” reaffirming students’ beyond. It reads in part: right to protest, and raising the “call for all “As graduate students and educators of charges against the students to be dropped CUNY, we express our outrage at the immediately.” violent and unprovoked actions by the The This was followed the next day by NYPD against CUNY students peace- Internationalist the Delegate Assembly of the entire PSC fully protesting the appointment of war – representing over 25,000 faculty and criminal David Petraeus as a lecturer at A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the staff – where a video clip of a student be- the Macaulay Honors College. We de- Reforging of the Fourth International ing beaten brought many delegates to tears. plore the use of violence and brutal tactics Denise Ford, one of the arrested students, against CUNY students and faculty who Publication of the Internationalist Group, addressed the body, which unanimously were protesting outside the college. It is section of the League for the Fourth International passed a “PSC Resolution in Protest of Vio- unacceptable for the university to allow lent Police Response to Peaceful Protest by the police to violently arrest students. Annual subscription US$10 for five issues. CUNY Students,” stating in part: “We emphatically support the efforts of these CUNY students to resist the Name______“Documentary video evidence shows a attempts by the U.S. government and the plainclothes police officer gratuitously Address______CUNY administration to turn the univer- kidney-punching a protester who was sity into an infamous ‘war college’ with ______Apt. #_____Tel.(___)______already held down by other police officers the appointment of Petraeus. Petraeus is and immobilized. The demonstration was responsible for countless deaths and de- City______State/Province______called by the Ad Hoc Committee Against struction in Iraq and Afghanistan as a war the Militarization of CUNY. Postal Code/Zip______Country______commander and chief of the CIA.... Most “As the union representing faculty and recently Petraeus has called on Congress Make checks/money orders payable to Mundial Publications and mail to: professional staff at CUNY – and as to back a military strike on Syria. Mundial Publications people who have dedicated our profes- “We call on CUNY to terminate Pe- sional lives to the well-being of CUNY Box 3321, Church Street Station traeus’ appointment and to ask for the New York, NY 10008 U.S.A. students – the Professional Staff Con- charges against these students to be gress/CUNY expresses outrage at the dropped immediately.” 3 Write the Internationalist Group at the above address, or contact: violent and unprovoked actions by the Tel (212) 460-0983 Fax (212) 614-8711 3 NYPD against students peacefully pro- Read the full report at http://mrzine.monthlyre- E-mail: [email protected] testing the appointment of David Petraeus view.org/2013/cuny190913.html October 2013 19 Revolution October 2013 Outrage! Brutal NYPD Assault on Students Protesting Petraeus from Internationalist video

NYPD supervisor (in white shirt) twice punches protester in face during brutal cop attack on demonstrators protesting war criminal ex-Gen. David Petraeus outside CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College on September 17.

On the evening of Tuesday, September seen holding down an unresisting student, 17, a protest against the increasing incorpo- Defend the CUNY 6 – Drop the Charges! while a plainclothes accomplice takes him ration of the City University of New York time preparing, then pulls up the student’s into U.S. imperialist war plans was suddenly Petraeus, various of the real-estate moguls ing ‘War Criminal Petraeus Out of CUNY shirt and kidney-punches him repeatedly. and viciously attacked by the racist New and capitalists who constitute the Board Now,’ I was shocked to see several police In an extended uncut segment, the Inter- York City cops. Six participants in the dem- of Trustees, and Fareed Zakaria, a war- officers grab and brutalize one of the dem- nationalist video “Police Attack CUNY Pro- onstration called by the Ad Hoc Committee mongering TV talking-head who was part of onstrators,” related one City College student test Against War Criminal Petraeus”1 shows Against the Militarization of CUNY – all George Bush II’s Iraq invasion council. New quoted in a press release issued by the Ad how students, faculty and supporters were black or Latino – were arrested on a variety York’s snarling “let-them-eat-cake” mayor, Hoc Committee. “This was completely un- peacefully demonstrating; how police of trumped-up charges, with two of the ar- Michael “Stop-and-Frisk” Bloomberg, was provoked, as demonstrators made clear that forced protesters into the street and then restees facing felony charges. The cop attack among the invitees, notwithstanding his they were there to defend our university in charged, singling out individuals; and how took place in front of the elite Macaulay obsessive hatred for public education. a peaceful protest.” police officers and supervisors brutally beat Honors College where ex-General Petraeus Protesters were punched, slammed A student from Hunter College ex- one of those arrested. The scene (see photos has been hired by CUNY’s Board of Trust- against vehicles and against the pavement plained: “Protesters were marching in a above) was eerily reminiscent of the video ees to teach a “class” on public policy. by police supervisors and officers, after the circle on the sidewalk and chanting, but of a white-shirted NYPD supervisor punch- Inside, the CUNY tops were holding NYPD forced them off the pavement and the police forced them into the street and ing an Occupy demonstrator in the face in a ghoulish fundraiser; in attendance were onto the street. “As students were chant- then charged. One of the most brutal things an October 2011 Wall Street demo. I saw was that five po- lice officers slammed Drop All Charges Now! a Queens College stu- The six arrested demonstrators were dent face down to the cuffed and brought to the 20th Precinct by pavement across the their cop attackers. Fellow protesters fol- street from Macaulay, lowed their comrades to the precinct house, put their knees on his and while inquiring about the physical safety back, and he was then of those arrested were themselves threatened with arrest, by a white-shirted captain,

Julia Reinhart/Demotix repeatedly kneed in the back.” A Latina student who had been one of the most prominent was heaved through the perpetrators of the violence. The arrestees air and slammed to the were eventually transported downtown, to ground. Many of the Central Booking at 100 Centre St. in lower victims of the police Manhattan, where they were forced to spend brutality were obviously the night and much of the next day. targeted by white-shirt- At their arraignment on September ed NYPD supervisors. 18, the cops’ fabricated charges were read: Video footage disorderly conduct, riot, resisting arrest and posted on the website obstruction of governmental administration. of the New York Daily Lamis Deek, a lawyer from the National News and gothamist. Lawyers Guild representing the students, com attests to the un- told the judge the simple if understated truth: provoked cop violence. the students “did not touch or threaten those In a particularly hor- 1 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUw7 rifying clip, a cluster 1O9XepM&feature=youtu.be At September 23 protest against Petraeus, demonstrators defend arrested students. of NYPD thugs can be continued on page 18