September-October 2005 No. 22 The $2 Internationalist Katrina Aftermath: Capitalist Land Grab, Black People Flooded Out, Now Kept Out New Orleans Addario/New Times Lynsey York Police State “Ethnic Cleansing” American-Style Germany: Grand Coalition Against the Workers . 34 Lula’s Brazil: Land of Massacres . 36 Australia $4, Brazil R$3, Britain £1.50, U.S. Imperialist Torture Camp Horrors. 9 Canada $3, Europe 2, India Rs. 25, Japan ¥250, Mexico $10, S. Africa R10, Presidential Crisis in the Philippines. 50 S. Korea 2,000 won 2 The Internationalist September-October 2005 In this issue... New Orleans Police State: Order Now! “Ethnic Cleansing” American-Style ......... 4 U.S. Imperialism’s Torture Camp Horrors ... 9 Contains reports and documents from the 2nd Colonial “Constitution” Farce in Iraq ......... 11 and 4th Congress of the Communist International, What It Will Take to Win: plus articles on early An All-Out NYC Education Strike ................ 14 Communist work on the black question in the United States. NYC Teachers: Protest Arrest of Muslim High School Students! ............... 16 Racist New Orleans Cops Assault Black School Teacher ............................ 17 US$1 FEMA and U.S. Plans for “War at Home” ... 22 Order from/make checks payable to: Mundial Publications, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, New York 10008, U.S.A. Racist Hell in Tulsa, 1921 ........................... 23 New Orleans Death Trap: Visit the League for the Fourth International/ Thousands of Black Poor Left to Die ......... 26 Internationalist Group on the Internet State Terrorism: Filiberto Ojeda Ríos http://www.internationalist.org Assassinated by FBI Death Squad ......... 32 Now available on our site: Founding Statement of the For Militant Workers Internationalist Group Defense of Immigrants! .......................... 33 Declaration of the League for the Fourth International Germany: Grand Coalition Articles from The Internationalist Against the Workers .............................. 34 Articles from Vanguarda Operária Articles from El Internacionalista Articles and documents in German, Lula’s Brazil: Land of Massacres .............. 36 French and Russian The fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal How the Opportunist Left Marxist readings Embraced the Capitalist Police ................. 47 Visita la página del Grupo Internacionalista en Internet Arroyo Impeachment Dead, “People Power” Pop Front Goes On .......... 50 Visite a página da Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil Matérias de Vanguarda Operária A luta para libertar Mumia Abu-Jamal Philippines: Workers Should Sweep Out Documentos marxistas sobre a luta pela libertação do negro e da mulher All the Bourgeois Politicians .................. 51 Impeachment, the Popular Front and Trotskyism ............................................. 58 The Internationalist Filipino Working-Class Fighter Murdered .. 59 A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the Reforging of the Fourth International Defend Venezuela Against Publication of the Internationalist Group, Yankee Imperialism! ............................... 62 section of the League for the Fourth International EDITORIAL BOARD: Jan Norden (editor), Mark Lazarus, Abram Negrete, Venezuela: Workers to Power! .................. 72 Marjorie Salzburg, Socorro Valero. The Internationalist (ISSN 1091-2843) is published bimonthly, skipping July-August, 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: Subscription blank graphic based on a [email protected] Subscriptions: US$10 for five issues. poster by V.A. Rodchenko, Books (1925). No. 22 C-701 September-October 2005 September-October 2005 The Internationalist 3 New Orleans: Iraq to Guantánamo Capitalist “Ethnic Cleansing” Hunger Strike Exposes: U.S. Imperialism’s New Orleans Police Torture Camp State: “Ethnic Horrors .................... 9 Cleansing” American-Style ...... 4 Racist New Orleans Colonial Cops Assault Black “Constitution” School Teacher .... 17 Farce in Iraq ........ 11 FEMA and U.S. Plans for “War at Home” .....22 Racist Hell in Tulsa, 1921 ................................23 Presidential Crisis New Orleans Death Trap: in the Philippines Thousands of Black Poor Left to Die .............26 Arroyo Impeachment Dead, “People Power” Pop Front Lula’s Brazil: Goes On ............... 50 Philippines: Workers Land of Massacres Should Sweep Out All the Bourgeois DossierDossierDossier Politicians ............. 51 p. 36 Impeachment, the Includes: Popular Front and Trotskyism ............. 58 From Pará and Goiás to Rio de Janeiro: Capitalist Terrorism Filipino Working-Class Fighter Murdered ....... 59 Mobilize the Working People for Worker and Peasant Self- Defense! Put an End to the Infernal Focus on Venezuela Cycle of Massacres – For Permanent Revolution! How the Opportunist Left Embraced the Capitalist Police ...... 47 Germany: CDU/SPD Grand Coalition The Struggle for Workers Revolution .............72 Against the Workers ...................... 34 Defend Venezuela Against Yankee Imperialism .. 62 And much more... State Terrorism: U.S. Assassinates For Workers Defense of Immigrants ....... 33 Filiberto Ojedai........................................... 32 New York City Teachers .......................... 14 4 The Internationalist September-October 2005 New Orleans Police State Willie J. Allen/AP Willie J. National Guard troops at the Superdome refuse to let flood survivors leave. For the U.S. government, the black poor and working people of New Orleans were the enemy. “Ethnic Cleansing” American-Style The devastation of New Orleans has highlighted as no money went to the war on Iraq; the patients trapped in public other event in the last several years the depth of racist op- hospitals without supplies while those in private hospitals were pression in the United States. Many minority and working taken out by helicopter; the “evacuation” that provided no trans- people suddenly saw “their own” bourgeois government as portation for those without cars and money. The evidence is the enemy. Reflecting the burning anger over the government’s irrefutable that race and class determined who escaped and who abandonment of the overwhelmingly black poor population didn’t, who lived and who perished there from drowning, starva- to its fate, almost 350 copies of our first article, “New Orleans tion and unbearable heat. The images of bodies floating in the Death Trap” (see page 26 of this issue) were sold at Carib- flood waters for two weeks with no one picking them up are bean Day, September 5, in Brooklyn, NY. Subsequently, on now seared into the collective memory. Together with the har- September 24, more than 1,000 copies of a special 12-page rowing photos of the torture and sexual degradation of prison- tabloid issue of The Internationalist on New Orleans and Iraq ers by their American jailers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, these were sold at an antiwar march in Washington, D.C. are an unforgettable visual indictment of the criminal nature SEPTEMBER 20 – The ravaging of New Orleans in the wake of U.S. imperialism. And the conclusion is just as inescapable: of Hurricane Katrina has deeply shocked the country and the We need a revolution! world. What horrified people was not the raw force of nature but Today the Big Easy is a police-state encampment, occu- the proof of a man-made disaster. What they saw through the pied by an estimated 14,000 heavily armed government men television lens was a monstrous crime, racist mass murder carried and their machine guns, patrolled by military trucks, “up-ar- out by the rulers of capitalist America against the downtrodden mored” Humvees, Black Hawks and Chinooks. The poor and that they exploit and oppress. By now everyone knows that working people of New Orleans, black and white, but mainly 100,000 people, overwhelmingly black and poor, were left to die in black, have been dispersed across a half-dozen states. In their the “New Orleans Death Trap”: the levees that authorities knew shelters they are wondering whether the government means couldn’t handle a big storm but weren’t repaired because the this diaspora to be temporary, or will it attempt to bar them from September-October 2005 The Internationalist 5 ment briefing that “we waited until we had enough force in place to do an overwhelming force” and that they “stormed the convention center” (al- though he admitted that “there was absolutely no opposi- tion”). The general called the whole operation “a great suc- cess story – a terrific success story.” These were not the de- mented ravings of a General Marko Georgiev for The New York Times York The New Marko Georgiev for Jack D. Ripper out of the movie Dr. Strangelove but the offi- cial spokesman for the U.S. mili- tary. The units sent into New Orleans were not search-and- rescue units but National Guard Military Police, the Army’s 82nd Airborne and 1st Cavalry divisions and the 1st New Orleans cops patrol the city in pick-up trucks and plainclothes, September 4. and 2nd Marine Expeditionary U.S. officials declared they were engaged in “combat” against “insurgents,” in Forces, back from Iraq where order to justify plans for internal war. they “stormed” Baghdad in the 2003 U.S. invasion. Many of ever returning to New Orleans. Some may be starting to feel their tactics were the same in both cities, only here they were like the Palestinians displaced by the Israeli Zionists in 1948 engaging in “combat operations” (against mythical “insurgents” who are still