Detroit Crisis Leads to Call: !Sí Se Puede! 12 Feed the Cities
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
workers.org Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite! APRIL 21, 2005 VOL. 47, NO. 157 50¢ Detroit crisis leads to call: !Sí se puede! 12 Feed the cities WW PHOTO: MONICA MOOREHEAD Starve the Pentagon UNION RIGHTS By Cheryl LaBash The money is there to guarantee everyone employees of the city out there—a private NOW! Detroit a decent life. This is the richest country in contractor got the job. the world.” Those privately contracted crews were Black workers The hundreds of billions of dollars A May 14 strategy meeting called by the a sneak peek of what to expect from the organizing the South 6 spent by the Pentagon on the illegal war Million Worker March leadership will 2005-2006 proposed City Budget, to be and occupation of Iraq have meant more take place in Detroit to take up this con- announced April 12. City workers and res- poverty, more cutbacks and a plummeting ference initiative, among other important idents will be told to pay for the budget standard of living for the workers, poor issues. deficit through layoffs, service cuts, and people of color in the U.S. There are plenty of good reasons for health and pension benefit cuts and PUBLIC HOUSING Now a national call has been issued for holding an important conference of this privatization. Boston workers a broad, multinational, united fightback kind in large cities and even small towns. Already, shortened hours at Neigh- spearhead campaign 5 movement to push back the White House Detroit, once the heartland of the auto borhood Services offices are hurting the and the military generals. industry, has come to symbolize a crisis homeless and other desperate Detroiters. This fightback response comes from that is creating a seething anger from the Layoffs have robbed almost 1,000 work- Black elected officials as well as trade workers and oppressed population in ers of their secure livelihood. The Belle Isle unionists and community activists, based many parts of the country. Aquarium, a 100-year-old cultural institu- mainly here in Detroit. The call is for a tion, has closed down. national conference to “Reclaim Our Cities Black city ready for struggle City workers and the community won’t STUDENT/ and Fight the Bush Budget that Starves the For instance, on April 6, Detroit city accept the wage and service cuts quietly. LABOR UNITY Cities to Feed the Pentagon”—to be held workers closely watched the aftermath of Resistance has already prevented or this coming fall in Detroit. a 42-inch water main break on Jefferson reduced some of the city administration’s Sit in at Washington U 3 The initial endorsers of this call range Avenue. Round-the-clock emergency attempts to balance the budget at the from unionists to community leaders to crews swung into action to restore pres- expense of the people. elected officials. sure to a hospital, four schools, residences Reflecting the mood and concerns of the They include Maryann Mahaffey, pres- and the General Motor’s headquarters in residents, half the members of the Detroit MASSIVE IRAQI MARCH: ident of the Detroit City Council; JoAnn the Renaissance Center. But it wasn’t Continued on page 4 Watson, Detroit City Council member; ‘U.S. out now!’ 11 Marian Kramer, co-president of the National Welfare Rights Union; Millie Hall, president of Metro-Detroit Coalition of Labor Union Women; Nathan Head, CHINA VS. president of Metro-Detroit Coalition of IMPERIALISM Black Trade Unionists; David Sole, presi- dent of UAW Local 2334; Maureen Taylor, What sparked chairperson of the Michigan Welfare anti-Japan protests 9 Rights Organization and Sylvia Orduno of the same group; Tom Stephens, staff attorney of the Guild/Sugar Law Center; and Clarence Thomas, national co-chair of the Million Worker March and a leader of FREE THE CUBAN 5 Local 10 of the International Longshore Political struggle and Warehouse Union. The call expresses the frustration of so needed 8 many who are burdened with the budget cuts: “Many cities are facing devastating budget crises. We are tired of accepting further cutbacks, more layoffs and pres- Subscribe to sure to privatize. We need a national movement to demand that the billions Workers World wasted on war and the occupation of Iraq Trial subscription: $2 for 8 weeks and Afghanistan be used instead to meet One year subscription: $25 the needs of the people here at home. “The new Bush budget cuts 150 domes- tic programs while it pushes the spending NAME for war to over half a trillion dollars a year! Tax breaks for the rich, attacks on our ADDRESS Social Security, and skyrocketing health care costs (with tens of millions having no CITY/STATE/ZIP health coverage at all) all add to the crisis. Debts to the big banks strangle our cities EMAIL PHONE with tens and hundreds of millions of dol- Workers World Newspaper lars in interest alone each year. 55 W. 17 St. NY, NY 10011 “It is time to launch a struggle to win our 212-627-2994 right to health care, quality education, www.workers.org decent housing, food, utilities and a job. Page 2 April 21, 2005 www.workers.org Young Harry Hay and the Wobblies In the U.S. By Leslie Feinberg etally imbued with and which remained unexamined and Feed the cities, starve the Pentagon . 1 unchallenged. Young Harry Hay and the Wobblies. 2 The Mattachine movement for homosexual emancipa- However, the Wobblies gave Hay an IWW card that was Students sit in at Washington U . 3 tion in the United States was initiated by a core group of his ticket to work on a tramp steamer. The experience with Mumia on: A Native Nazi? . 3 five leftists in 1950 at the height of the anti-communist these militant miners gave him more than that. Anti-draft conference . 3 and anti-gay McCarthyite witch hunt. Two of the founders Timmons summed up, “Though he had already been Delivery man stuck in elevator, cops terrorize building 4 were members of the Communist Party (CPUSA), another earning money for several years, and the silver spoon of Calif. workers protest cuts . 4 had been active in the party in the Midwest after the war, his infancy had long tarnished, he now had words to iden- Boston workers spearhead campaign for justice. 5 and the other two leftists could be described as “fellow tify himself as ‘a working-class kid.’ He played down any Police brutality trial to begin. 6 travelers.” class rebellion on his part, and said that his new politiciza- Black Workers for Justice . 6 The short-lived Mattachine movement drew an esti- tion merely gave a theoretical basis for his personal hatred Black Waxx tackles censorship and racism . 7 mated 5,000 homosexuals in California to its ranks in the of his father’s staunch conservatism. early 1950s. And, Will Roscoe “The Wobblies’ praise for his Activists and artists honor Robeson. 7 noted, “its name, carrying the honest toil strengthened this new Cuban 5 still wait for justice . 8 promise of freedom, spread through- Lesbian•gay•bi political bond, and each winter he Civil rights groups denounce REAL ID Act . 8 out the United States and the world.” Wal-Mart fined–for wrong reason . 8 and trans eagerly awaited the return of summer (“Radically Gay”) and their companionship.” The political beliefs and experience of the Around the world PRIDE Hay’s first ‘bulls-eye’ Why Asians fear U.S./Japanese militarism . 9 founding members were far from incidental to SERIES organizing for homosexual emancipation. WHO calls mother/child deaths a ‘massacre’ . 10 PART Hay’s first gay experience was with someone Huge Baghdad protest says ‘U.S. out now!’ . 11 That was particularly true for Harry Hay, the key 31 who had ties to the much shorter-lived 1924 figure in launching the Mattachine movement. Society for Human Rights based in Chicago, whose Ali Kased, Palestinian activist and orator . 11 Hay had spent more than 17 years in the CPUSA. He founder, Henry Gerber, had been deeply inspired by Italy right swamped, gay communist wins seat . 11 wasn’t just a member; he had been a respected Marxist contact with the Germany Homosexual Emancipation teacher and a tireless organizer. Communist politics, a Movement. Editorials Marxist world view, a historical materialist vista of his- Hay, who never lost his early love of theater, moved to May Day. 10 tory, and immersion in the class struggle gave material Los Angeles—an urban magnet for many homosexuals— Cuba’s human rights . 10 shape to Hay’s vision of homosexual emancipation. and became a struggling actor during the depths of the capitalist economic Depression of the early 1930s. Noticias En Español Ticket to the working-class struggle It was Will Geer, perhaps best remembered today as César Chávez: la lucha continúa. 12 Hay had been born in England in 1912 with a silver “Grandpa Walton” of the 1970s television series “The spoon in his mouth. He spent his early years in Chile, Waltons,” who first introduced Hay to the left-wing WW CALENDAR where his father was a wealthy mining engineer employed current in Los Angeles and to the Communist Party. Over BOSTON. Local 8751, 25 Colgate Rd., by Anaconda Copper. The family returned to the U.S. in coffee with Geer and Maude Allen, said Timmons, Roslindale, Mass. For info Int'l. 1917, where he grew up in southern California. “They hashed over the anti-socialist Palmer Raids made Sat., April 16 Action Center (617) 522-6626. Justice for Bromley Heath Workers Hay so loved theater and opera that at the end of his by the federal government in the 1920s, the Sacco and LOS ANGELES.