®~759.C A Spartacist Pamphlet $1 Black History i! and the Class Struggle No. 18

Page 24

~iI~i~·:~:f!!iI'!lIiAI_!Ii!~1_&i 1·li:~'I!l~~.I_ :lIl1!tl!llti:'1!):~"1i:'S:':I'!mf\i,ri£~; : MINt mm:!~~!!)rI!t!!i\i!Ui\}_~ How the Liberals and Reformists Derailed the Struggle for Integration For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution! Page 6

VVorkers protest manager's use of "N" word and fight for union recognition, demanding: "Stop the Plantation Mentality," University of Virginia at Charlottesville, , 21 November 2003.

I '0

;, • ,:;. i"'l' \'~ ,1,';; !r.!1 I

I -- - 2 Introduction Mumia Abu-Jamal is a fighter for the dom chronicles Mumia's political devel­ Cole's article on racism and anti-woman oppressed whose words teach powerful opment and years with the Black Panther bigotry, "For Free Abortion on Demand!" lessons and rouse opposition to the injus­ Party, as well as the Spartacist League's It was Democrat Clinton who put an "end tices of American capitalism. That's why active role in vying to win the best ele­ to welfare as we know it." the government seeks to silence him for­ ments of that generation from black Nearly 150 years since the Civil War ever with the barbaric death penaIty-a nationalism to revolutionary Marxism. crushed the slave system and won the legacy of slavery-,-Qr entombment for life One indication of the rollback of black franchise for black people, a whopping 13 for a crime he did not commit. The frame­ rights and the absence of militant black percent of black men were barred from up of Mumia Abu-Jamal represents the leadership is the ubiquitous use of the voting in the 2004 presidential election government's fear of the possibility of "N" word today. In this country, the "N" because of felony convictions (mainly militant struggle against a system that has word has historically been a program of through the racist "war on drugs"). But stripped black youth of a future in this racist violence. The fact that "gangsta" as our article, "Black Disenfranchisement society, condemned them to prison in rappers and black intellectuals use it and American 'Democracy'" spells out, unprecedented numbers in the racist "war today doesn't change the truth that the the Democratic Party is no alternative to on drugs," or recruited them to the impe­ word symbolizes the dehumanization of George Bush and the RepUblicans. The rialist armed forces carrying out a bloody black people in this country, which has Democrats supported the Iraq war and colonial occupation of Iraq. Our review of its origins in chattel slavery. Black oppres­ campaigned for a more effective "war on Mumia Abu-Jamal's book We Want Free- sion is the bedrock of American capital­ terror," which, since the September 11 ism, and as Marxists we oppose any con­ attacks, has particularly targeted immi­ cession to the pervasive racist ideology, grants. The centrality of the fight for black which is an. obstacle to the conscious freedom in relation to immigrant rights is mobilization of labor and the oppressed explained in the 1999 article, "Full Citi­ Table of Contents in their own interests. zenship Rights for All Immigrants! Down "How the Liberals and Reformists With Capital ist Rulers' War Against Blacks, From Death Row, This Is Mumia Abu-Jamal Derailed the Struggle for Integration," a Immigrants!" In the post-September 11 In the Shadows speech by Spartacist cadre Don Alexan­ climate, the perspective of mobilizing the of Abu Ghraib Prison ...... 2 der, examines the reasons why there is an labor movement and black people in all-sided attack on black rights today, and defense of immigrants is an urgent focus motivates our fight to link the segregated of work for the Spartacist League and Finish the Civil War! and ghettoized black masses to the power Labor Black Leagues, and central to our Black Disenfranchisement and of a labor movement in struggle against task of forging a revolutionary work­ American "Democracy" ...... 3 the whole system of class exploitation and ers party. The previous issue of Black His­ the racist oppression which helps prop it tory and the Class Struggle (No. 17) was How the Liberals and Reformists Derailed up. This must be a struggle on behalf of devoted to this subject, and we urge read- the Struggle for Integration all the oppressed, as explained by Karen ers to order a copy.. . For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution! ...... 6

The "N" Word in Racist America ...... 17

A Life in the Black Panther Party We Want Freedom Review of a Book by Mumia Abu-Jamal ... 24 In the Shadows Join the Labor Black Leagues! ... 31 of Abu Ghraib Prison Racism and Anti-Woman Bigotry The color photos coming out of the women, is the height of humiliation, and For Free Abortion on Demand! dreaded Abu Ghraib prison on Baghdad's tells everyone who can see, that Ameri­ Stop Bipartisan Attack on outskirts are racing around the world, cans hold the Iraqis, and by extension, Women's Rights! ...... ; 32 silent yet eloquent testament to what other Arabs, in utter contempt. Americans really think about the people "This is not America," a politician Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! they allegedly came here to "liberate." huffs. Down With Capitalist Rulers' War The photos, especially in the age of "I am appalled!," yet another exclaims. Against Blacks, Immigrants! ..... 39 the internet, are racing through the Arab Yet, what is truly appalling, and and Muslim world, and showing a side perhaps more chilling than the naked, of the American character that seldom human pyramids shown, is the sheer glee Spartacist Publishing Co. gets to be seen, especially abroad. shown in the faces of the Americans. Box 1377 GPO The photos of naked Arab men, The photos flashed in British tab­ New York, NY 10116 some posed with laughing, jeering US continued on page 5 January 2005 3 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 833, 1 October 2004

1965: In Selma, Alabama state troopers attack black civil rights demonstrators marching against registration procedures. 2000: Protesters against racist intimidation of black voters in Florida.

" Black. Disenfranchisement and American "Democracy" In the 2000 elections, Florida made General, f.or a seat in the U.S. Senate in other oppressed minorities, we are intran­ headlines across the globe as its electoral a stinging repudiati.on.of Ashcroft's fanat­ sigent defenders of the hard-won right to machinery worked to spit out a result fav.or­ ical oonservatism-and with a heavy vote. The bloody Civil War that smashed able to George W. Bush-an outcome sub­ turn.out .of black v.oters. chattel slavery won black men the right sequently assured by the blatantly partisan Florida was not alone. In many black of the franchise, which was then largely intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court, precincts in Chicag.o, as many as one in stripped from them in the South dur­ whose chief justice, William Rehnquist, six ballots were tossed out. The Republi­ ing the Jim Crow era. Black people in launched his career 40 years ago by purg­ cans have forgotten none of this and are the South regained voting rights through ing blacks from Arizona's voter rolls. hatching new plans to prevent black peo­ the courageous struggles of the civil rights While confusing ballots that led many ple, who overwhelmingly vote Dem­ movement-struggles that faced brutal old Jewish women to vote for sinister ocrat, from voting. A RepUblican state police repression and KKK nightriding rightist Patrick Buchanan dominated the legislator in the bitterly contested state of terror. Civil rights activists Andrew news, black people were the target of a Michigan, John Pappageorge, has stated Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James concerted effort to rob them of their right bluntly, "If we d.o not suppress the Chaney, whose bodies were dredged to vote. Police roadblocks barred the Detroit vote [in a city that is over 80 per­ from a muddy dam in Neshoba County, ways to polling places, and many black cent black], we're going to have a tough Mississippi in 1964, were am.ong those people who managed to get through found time in this election" (New York Times, lynched for fighting for black people's themselves barred from voting even if 13 September). Florida election officials right to the franchise. they carried a voter registrati.on card. drafted a list of th.ose disqualified due to In a throwback to that era, Florida's Nearly 140,000 black men in Florida 'past felony convictions; of some 48,000 Department of Law Enforcement has sent were denied suffrage in the last presi­ felons, roughly 22,000 were blacks. armed state troopers into elderly black dential electi.on due to felony convic­ Strikingly, the list included only 61 His­ voters' homes on an "investigation" .of tions, many of them resulting from the panics, who in .s.outhern Florida are voter fraud--despite the department hav­ racist, bipartisan "war on drugs." In Jack­ largely anti-Castro gusano reactionaries, ing decided in May that the charges were sonville, an astounding 9 percent of bal­ a key Republican c.onstituency. baseless! The president of the Florida lots cast were invalidated, over a third .of These are n.othing less than a frontal V.oters League. (a group that w.orks to them cast by black people. Meanwhile, attack on the basic democratic right of increase black electoral turnout), Eugene over in Miss.ouri, the c.orpse of Democrat blacks to vote. While there is not a candi­ Poole, stated: Mel Carnahan beat the still breathing date in this election who represents the "These guys are using these intimidating J.ohn Ashcroft, n.ow Bush's Att.orney interests of w.orkers, black people and methods to try and get these folks to stay .--...... ~----

4

away from the polls in the future. And you know what? It's working. One woman said, 'My God, they're going to put us in jail for nothing: I said, 'That's not true'." -New York Times, 20 August "Not true"? In 1985, longtime Alabama civil rights activist Spiver Gordon was convicted of "voter fraud" for the "crime" of assisting elderly black people to file absentee ballots, which allowed blacks to vote without fear or intimidation in the privacy of their own homes. The prosecu­ tion and conviction of Gordon were part of a concerted campaign by the Reagan administration to disenfranchise black voters, particularly in the South. Today, a national law, ironically named the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), has significantly tightened ID requirements for those newly registering and voters across the country, making it easier to tum voters away. In a test run of these requirements in Chicago, 95 percent of Con'gress of the provisional ballots cast by those Fort Wagner, July 1863: Heroic conduct by black Massachusetts 54th whose "identity" was in question were regiment galvanized support for black troops in Civil War that smashed invalidated. In an amusing twist, Sena­ slavery and won franchise for black men. tor Kit Bond. of Missouri, who pushed through the HAVA, found himself struck Beyond dicey electronic voting systems vote believe they cannot. from the rolls in his hometown and had to and police intimidation, though, and far All of this emphasizes the tenuousness go through a tedious rigmarole to vote more instrumental in the purge of black of basic democratic rights in capitalist for himself. The Spartacist League stands people from the rolls, is the racist "war on America-especially for black people. opposed to any and all restrictions on the drugs." We have long declared that this The Republicans know that they are not rights of citizens to vote and for the right "war" is a war against black people. Over going to get the black vote; they are a of all immigrants (documented or not) two million people are in state and federal party of plutocrats, racist bigots and to full citizenship rights-including the prisons, largely on drug charges. This bible-thumping yahoos and make no right of franchise. attack focuses on black people, whether bones about it. But what of the Demo­ Many states are moving toward elec­ through cop rampages through the ghettos crats, the party that stands to lose from tronic balloting. The companies that pro­ of the inner cities or through the depreda­ the purge of black voters? At first blush, vide these machines have close links to tions of regional narcotics task forces, like one would think that they would vigor­ the Republican Party: Election Systems the one in rural Texas that framed up ously defend black voting rights, if only and Software (its predecessor company 46 people in 1999 (see "Tulia Victims for the obvious electoral advantage. was headed by current Republican Sena­ Freed, Finally," WV No. 813, 7 Novem­ But no. Even after their betrayal of the tor Chuck Hagel), Sequoia Voting Sys­ ber 2003). While the white population in black masses following Reconstruction, tems (whose products were rejected as prison for drug offenses incrcased by the RepUblicans, guaranteed the black insecure against fraud in the 1990s by 306 percent between 1985 and 1995, the vote given that the Democrats were the New York City), Hart InterCivic (one of number of black people incarcerated for party of choice for the KKK, were quite whose main investors was an early finan­ the same period shot up by 707 percent willing to let the Democrats terrorize and cial backer of Bush's business schemes) under mandatory sentencing schemes sup­ disenfranchise the black populace­ and Diebold Election Systems (also ported by both Republicans and Demo­ which generally voted Republican until linked to the GOP). These systems elim­ crats-including John Kerry. We are for the era of the New Deal, an alliance inate any paper trail and, as the Nation the decriminalization of drugs. between Northern liberals and Southern (16 August) put it, could be used "to The war on drugs has a direct effect on Dixiecrats that did nothing to enfran­ invisibly falsify the outcomes" of elec­ who votes and who doesn't. Five states chise the majority of black people, most tions. With a little finagling with the soft­ permanently ban felons and ex-felons of whom then lived in the Jim Crow ware, these "innovations" could render from voting (including Florida), while South. In the aftermath of the civil rights old methods of stealing an election, like only two states allow prisoners to vote legislation of the I 960s, and with the leaving dead people on the rolls and stuff­ (Maine and Vermont-both of which Republicans' strategic drive to become ing ballots, superfluous. And there would have tiny black populations), and the rest identified as the party of right-wing reac­ be no gravestones to check. have policies that to one degree or tion, the Democrats have been guaran­ Stealing elections is nothing new, and another fall between these two poles. The teed the lion's share of the black vote. it's hardly limited to the Republicans. In result is clear. Felony convictions bar 4.6 Democrats have been at most tepid in fact, one could say that this old Ameri- ' million Americans from voting (some 2.3 their defense of the franchise for black can "art" was perfected by Democratic percent of the electorate), of whom over people. According to the New York Times Party machines in cities like New York a third are black men. Indeed, 13 percent (26 September), there has been a big (Tammany Hall) and Chicago (the Daley of black men are currently barred from increase in the registration of new voters, machine-"vote early, vote often"). voting, and many more felons who could mainly black and minority, in swing 5

Many of the Americans working in the As we have suggested above, many of Abu Ghraib ... prisons of Iraq, especially in the reserves, those who are there in Iraq, and hundreds (continued from page 2) are cops or prison guards in their civilian of the people working in Abu Ghraib lives. Indeed, one of the men identified as prison, were reserves, and came from loids, of soldiers urinating-pissing!-on a suspect in the brutal mistreatment of jobs as prison guards and cops in civilian naked Iraqis, tells the same baleful tale. people in Abu Ghraib, indeed a corporal life. They are perhaps better trained than These are the actions of contempt, in the Army, works here, at SCI-Greene! the average M.P. hatred, disrespect-and conquest. The horrific treatment of Iraqis at Abu Don't buy it. Are the Americans and the British lib­ Ghraib has its dark precedents in the pris­ , It is somehow fitting that these depraved erators or occupiers? ons and police stations across America. acts have happened in one of the most One need look no further than the Journalist Seymour Hersh, of The New dreadful gulags of the Hussein regime; it faces in the photos of Abu Ghraib for the Yorker magazine, has alleged that there shows the continuity of torture and terror. answer. have been cases of sodomy against Iraqis Now, let us prepare for the inevitable When speaking recently with Emory there at Abu Ghraib, and even killing. whitewash. Douglas, the celebrated former Minister Does the name Abner Louima ring a bell? Those of us who know history are cer­ of Culture of the Black Panther Party, If you hate someone; if you disrespect tain-it is sure to come. and chief graphic artist of its famed them; if you fear them, how can you 3 May 2004 newspaper, The Black Panther, Emory "liberate" them? brought to mind an image that is almost As we have said from the very begin­ ©2004 Mumia Abu-Jamal lost in history. ning, the Iraq Adventure is not, and never He reminded me of a police raid on has been, about "liberating" an oppressed Send urgently needed contributions the West Philadelphia offices of the people. Indeed, a recent CNN/USA Today for Jamal's legal defense, made pay­ Black Panther Party, on August 31, 1970, poll suggests Iraqis have come to that able to "National Lawyers Guild Foun­ when the police, armed with automatic conclusion, with 71 % stating Americans dation" and earmarked for "Mumia" weapons, stripped men in the streets. are "occupiers." to: Committee to Save Mumia Abu­ I also thought of the infamous Charles Americans may call it "liberation," but Jamal, 130 Morningside Drive, Suite Stuart case, from Boston, when a white they are bringing torture, humiliation, and 6C, New York, NY 10027. man claimed a Black man killed his wife. domination. If you wish to correspond with The cops descended on Roxbury, Black Nor are these events the work of peo­ Jamal, you can write to: Mumia Abu­ Boston like a plague. They stripped men ple who are "untrained," "poorly trained," Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene, 175 in the streets of Beantown. or the always useful, "bad apples." Progress Drive, Waynesburg, PA 15370. states. But the key thing here is swing over who won. In urging Gore to back speech of the current black Democratic states. In states where a Democratic vic­ down, for example, the New York Times rising star, Barack Obama, which white­ tory is all but assured, black disenfran­ (9 November 2000) wrote: "This is a time washed the bitter reality of racist oppres­ chisement continues apace. For example, for both presidential candidates, their ad­ sion in America, went over much better.) more than 40 percent of black men in visers and their parties to proceed with But while the ballot is a fundamental several neighborhoods in south Provi­ extreme caution-a caution merited by the right, a right we tenaciously defend, fun­ dence, Rhode Island arc barred from vot­ danger that events could lurch suddenly damental change will not come through ing because of felony convictions. toward political or constitutional crisis. voting. It was not by the ballot that slavery One of the most striking scenes in The tradition of regular, reliable elections met its demise; it was not by the ballot Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 showed and orderly transition of power is one of that Jim Crow was ended. Union rights Al Gore, as President of the Senate, rul­ the glories of American democracy." did not come from Congress or the presi­ ing a series of black Congressmen out of Another "one of the glories of Ameri­ dent. All the gains working people and order as they contested the 2000 presi­ can democracy" is the oppression of black people have made came through dential election results due to the events black people, which forms a key struc­ their seizing them, by mass struggles on in Florida-the very events that almost tural component of American capitalism; the battlefields, in the factories and on the certainly cost him the presidency. Be­ the ruling class wields racism to main­ streets, from the racist rulers. cause of the black constituencies that tain a pernicious division in the work­ These gains, though real, are also, as these Congressmen represented (or mis­ ing class. Whether it be "ending welfare one can see· from the erosion of black represented), they felt even more robbed as we know it" under Clinton, con­ voting rights, reversible, and the racist, by the election outcome than the man signing already poverty-stricken families warmongering Democratic Party is n.o from whom the election was actually to greater privation, lining up behind the defense against the racist, warmongering stolen. But in ruling out these Congress­ racist "war on drugs" or throwing them­ Republican Party. Working people need men, Al Gore was not acting out of faint­ selves foursquare in support of the "war their own party, a revolutionary party heartedness. Rather, it was due to the on' terror," the Democrats have proven, that recognizes that the fight for black class nature of the Democratic Party. As a and every day continue to prove, that they freedom and the fight for the emancipa­ capitalist party, the Democrats are every are no friends to black and working tion of labor are inextricably linked. We bit as committed to the maintenance of people. Even a longtime hustler for the in the SpartacistLeague seek to build the racist, capitalist order as the Republi­ Democrats (and sometime wire for the such a party to do away with the capital­ cans. They merely argue over the details. FBI), Al Sharpton, faced a barrage of hos­ ist order and create an egalitarian social­ The overriding factor for Gore and tility when he attempted to simply address ist society in which the perfidies of the· the Democratic establishment was that the the racism black people face in the United past shall be relegated to the history "sanctity" of the imperial American States at the Democratic National Con­ books and expunged from the lives of presidency not be blemished by a dispute vention in Boston this summer. (The future generations .• 6 reprinted from Workers Vanguard Nos. 830 and 831, 6 August and 3 September 2004

For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!

Spartaclst banner at rally in support of busing and school integration, Boston Common, 1974.

We print, below a forum, slightly edited ery," "segregation," "racism" weren't men­ something professor Barbara Fields of for publication, given by comrade Don tioned once. That's a pretty tall task in Columbia University wrote. She was one Alexander of the Spartacist LeaguelU.S. America, especially when you're talking of the few professors who endorsed our Central Committee at a regional educa­ about black-white intermarriage, because rally at Columbia against the Conserva­ tional inNew York City on April 3. ' it's really the question of the persistence tive Club's anti-affirmative action "bake I had to take a little time off in prepar­ of caste. They can't deal with it. It really sale." She made the point that all of ing this talk to keep from getting too goes to the heart of this racist capitalist these academic types are talking about involved in it, and comrade Karen and I system. He was a rather charming gentle­ "whiteness" and all this stuff-how the wenHo hear a Southern liberal academic, man, as they say. Irish became white-but they never talk who had written a book on the history of There is a lot of talk today about mul­ about how "African and African-Caribbean intermarriage in the U.S., particularly the ticulturalism, diversity, whiteness and immigrants became black." I thought that striking down of the laws on the books "racialized subjects" and other liberal jar­ was a very interesting comment. that culminated in the 1967 Loving case. gon that essentially attempts to erase the The Spartacist League has consistently, It was a quite interesting talk; a lot of centrality of anti-black racism and black over the years, fought for a class-struggle' anecdotes. In listening, to his preseTh­ oppression in racist capitalist America. program for black liberation as an insep­ tation, I noticed that the words "slav- Recently, in preparing this talk, I read arable part of the fight for the emancipa- 7

tion of labor from capitalist exploitation. Our program flows from a,Marxist under­ standing of the nature of class society, of the role of class struggle as a motor force of history and the necessity of working­ class rule. Capitalists like to dress up their rule in terms of general abstract slo­ gans, pretending that they represent the "general will," the "people" and the like. But in fact, they have an executive com­ mittee that runs their affairs to perpetuate their brutal class rule, and that's called the state. This hideously oppressive and unequal society has perfected the machin­ ery of deception and repression. There's a huge mountain of lies claiming that the U.S. is an "open society," a shining beacon of democracy where there are no classes and everybody is either in the, middle class or becoming middle class, WVPhoto and where racism has largely been elimi­ Norfolk, Virginia longshoremen march against segregation, for school busing nated through civil rights laws, which in 1983. Labor movement must champion black rights. have leveled the playing field. I know that if I keep on going in this vein you'll run through the revolutionary overthrow of history. His dedicated study sprang from capitalism. This means confronting the his conviction that in order to forge a pro­ me out of here, because it does make your gram for black liberation, it is necessary blood boil. unfinished business of the Civil War­ to study the social forces that created the If you read our publications, Workers finishing the Civil War, which was a American institution of racial oppres­ Vanguard, Black History, Women and social revolution that destroyed slavery; sion .... To Fraser, understanding the roots of black oppression in the United States Revolution (which continues to be incor­ but the social relations of anti-black rac­ ism were incorporated into the capitalist was no armchair activity; he carried his porated in Workers Vanguard and Sparta­ theory of Revolutionary Integration into cist) , you'll see that we apply a revolu­ mode of production. struggle." tionary program to fight against national, I want to cite part of what the veteran And that's really a very appropriate intro­ sexual, racial and all oppression because Trotskyist Richard Fraser wrote, in par­ duction to what I have to say. that is part of our fight for world socialist ticular in his lectures of November 1953, We often quote Karl Marx's statement revolution. In particular, when we raise "The Negro Struggle and the Proletarian that "Labor cannot emancipate itself in the slogan for black liberation through Revolution." We had a comment about the white skin where in the black it is socialist revolution, it sums up our strate­ comrade Fraser when we put out the bul­ branded." Fraser argued against the pre­ gic tasks. It encapsulates our fight for a letin, "In Memoriam Richard S. Fraser" vailing liberal ideology of his day that third American revolution, a workers rev­ (Prometheus Research Series No.3 [t 990]). "prejudice" is the root of black oppres­ olution that will put an end to this very We wrote: sion. He said: brutal, decadent and violent ruling class. "Although he was hampered by little "The racial division of society was born formal scholarly training, his Marxist with capitalism and will die only with The realization of the age-long dream of understanding and his broad experience black freedom, that is, the complete the death of this last system of exploita­ in militant struggles with black workers tion. Before capitalism there was no race smashing of the color bar, can only occur sharpened his insight into the lessons of concept. There was no skin color exploi­ tation, there was no race prejudice, there was no idea of superiority and inferiority based upon physical characteristics. "It was the advent of Negro chattel slav­

Marxist Bulletin;. 7 1lE'II". 1iW'9"'"g't?:..."uiiH""'''· ery in the western hemisphere which first i,!d :~ir em, ,'I divided society into races. In a measure "'~' the whole supremacy of western capital­ ism is founded upon this modem chattel WHAT STRATEGY slavery. The primary accumulation of FOR BLACK LIBERATION? In Memoriam capital which was the foundation of the Richard S. fraser industrial revolution was accrued largely Trotskyism - from the slave trade." VS. a.l ,,,reclill•• • ,d .tI.ctln This was written in 1953 and is a pow­ Black Nationalism ,tHIlWorlt erful scientific, materialist analysis that has stood the test of time. It is particu­ larly important because we hear this new­ Key documents and artiCles 1955-1978 fangled stuff about how race is somehow a "socially constructed category." Fraser also talked about how race was "socially L• PJ,O~I!~BUS ~~SBAllC~ LIB~llY ".....1190.~ ...... -... " ... _ ....~CO.1Io>1377(1fO."""-MY~1f -.- constructed" and noted that as a biologi­ - cal category, race doesn't exist. But he $1.50 (72 pages) $1.00 (108 pages, includes postage) emphasized the unique racial oppression Make checks payable/mall to: Spartacist Pub. Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 of the American blac;k population, the stigmatization of skin color, which was a ._---_._------

8

IF THE. IS AtN 8IDOD SPILLED IN 1lE SBEETS. LET IT Be fKIR BLOOD f

Cartoon captures Martin Luther King's cringing pacifism that supported brutal repression of 1960s ghetto explosions. Above: Malcolm X, June 1963. product of the system of chattel slavery right to starve and to have their boots who spoke at the rally, and you can and was grafted onto the subsequent cap­ ground into your face. We hear a lot understand this. Among others, there was italist system. today about how opportunities are there the quintessential political hustler, black if you just have the pluck and the Democrat Al Sharpton. He railed against Black Oppression and patience to grasp them instead of whin­ the Bush administration, saying that the Capitalist Society ing for a handout. You hear a kinder, checks sent to black America have What are we fighting for? You have to gentler version of this coming from bounced and are coming back marked look at the situation in this country where black capitalist politicians and their "insufficient funds." You also had Mar­ there is not a class-conscious proletariat mouthpieces, who complain that black tin Luther King III preaching a "rev­ today. The proletariat has yet to declare people don't stick together like other olution at the ballot box" in 2004-in its political intlependence from the parties races, they engage in "self-sabotage," other words, vote Democrat. These pro­ of the capitalist ruling class, thanks to and they hold each other back. You capitalist hustlers have time and again the multiple betrayals of the reformists in also hear the N-word, which lends legiti­ led anti-racist struggles into the pigsty of this country, the petty-bourgeois liberal macy to this lie of black inferiority bourgeois electoralism and lesser-evilism spokesmen for the black masses and, and is a reflection of its internalization. precisely at the moment when . record especially, the pro-capitalist trade-union This scapegoating of the oppressed black numbers of black and Latino youth are in bureaucracy, which works overtime to masses in the name of "black power" or jail-when, as one writer describes it, derail any serious struggle. "black pride" is a reflection of petty­ the ghetto and the prisons are on a con­ It was over one hundred years after bourgeois contempt for the poor and tinuum. In sharp counterposition, we the Civil War that black people got the oppressed. It is also an expression of the fight to mobilize the power of the multi­ right to vote, and today black former fact that today the black population, no racial working class-the only class in prisoners have to fall on their knees less than the white population, is increas­ society which, because of its unique, stra­ before Florida governor Jeb Bush to beg ingly class-divided-in fact, even more tegic role in production, can smash this for their rights back. This is a reflection sO in terms of income and other inequal­ racist capitalist system and establish in of the fact that under capitalism, demo­ ities within the black population. its place a collectivized, planned social­ cratic rights are reversible and that every Recently, I read a comment made by a ist economy that produces for human step of the way we have to fight. Howard University black student who need and not for profit. This will take a The class divisions in this society are attended the commemoration of the forti­ fight to forge a revolutionary leadership increasingly sharp and hard to paper eth anniversary of the March on Washing­ of the working class that stands at the over. Therefore, the lies become more ton where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his head of the struggles of all the oppressed brazen and the repression more severe. "I Have a Dream" speech-an event that and exploited. The U.S. imperialists say that those who Malcolm X correctly dubbed the "farce In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, are resisting the imperialist occupation on Washington." What she had to say in the post-Civil War post-Reconstruction of Iraq simply don't want to see that was, perhaps, typical of a certain train of period, you had a certain conservative freedom has taken root. If you're stand­ thought: "We are tired of the struggle for black leader, Booker T. Washington, who ing in an employment line here with no equality and we are tired of the struggle came out openly for segregation,aban­ prospects for a job in sight-which is the for integration .... If the response is posi­ doning the fight for social equality. His fate of millions-this will sound pretty tive, we must organize. If the response is rise to national prominence came in Sep­ hollow because these sweet-sounding negative, we must organize." tember 1895 when he delivered a speech words of "freedom," "equality" and "de­ This despairing tone is a product of the at Atlanta's Cotton States and Interna­ mocracy" are coming out of mouths of utter absence of any militant black lead­ tional Exposition. Basically, his speech the parasitic ruling class of the most bru­ ership today and the failure of liberal told black people to stay "in their place." tal imperialist murderers in history. No, integrationist programs. It is understand­ Here is what Washington asserted that what they mean by "freedom" is the able, but it must be combatted. Consider black people are: 9

"The Ill()~t patient, faithful. law-ahiding, grated their killing machine is. This was inevitably recurring economic crises-a essential in front of black Arkansas high fight for the aholition of L.S. and world of' qllcstions of 'ollCi,li equality is the school in the hloody battle there in 1957. capitalism through international proletar­ l:xtremcst folly .... " The truth is otherwise. Dwight D. Eisen­ ian revolution. Now, the black nationalists today are howcr, who was president at the time, had Our illten~sts lie in common, intcgrated cut out of the same cloth. Their hankrupt, opposed the desegregation of the armed class ,truggk against the racist capitalist petty-bourgt~ois program of "self-help" forces in 1945. Ilis whole attitude toward rulers. The Spartacist League stands in and black capitalism is pushed to line the BroWN decision was to never publicly the tradition of the early Communist their own plKkeh and defend their own support it. He made some really gross International, the C()ll1inlern, tinder Lenin class interests against the ghetto poor. It comments ahout overgrown hlack males and Trotsky. Through insistent prodding, tells the mas,es to aL'l'ept the raeist status sitting alongside white girl~. He sent the they reoriented the American Communist quo, a prodllct of centuries of racist troops into Little Rock to prevent the Party by uprollting the colorblindness oppressiOTL and ttl stay III their so-called black masses from fif.:hti/lg back against characteristic of the early socialist movc­ place. The Million Man March, organizcd the rampaging white racist mobs. mcnt. That movement had said that it in W95 by the black,separatist, anti­ Right now, it is this same Supp('sedl), had "nothing ,-pecial" to offer to blacks woman, anti-Semitic bigot Louis Far­ integrated imperialist army lhat has and that their oppression was an eco­ rakhan and the Nation of hlam, stood in invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. rts racist, nomic problem, The Bolshevik Party this retrograde tradition. No wonder that colonial occupation has spi lied the blood under Lenin and Trotsky fought tooth and march met with favor from Hill Clinton's of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, alon'g nail against this position, and actually White House. It was an appeasement of with increasing numhers of Haitians. Wc laid the basis for the Amcrican Commu­ the capitalist exploiters. Meanwhile, the demand that the imperialist troops get nist Party to lead an aggressive fight for jails afe filled with American capitalism's out-and that the UN stay out. The hlack equality in the late 1l)20s and early victims, the so-called "surplus popula­ working class and oppressed here have a 1930s, James P. Canl1on-----a founder of tion" of black and Latino youth. In New very direct stake in opposing this coloni­ the Communist Party and early leader of York City alnne, nearly one out of two alist occupation which can only further American Trotskyi srn------w rote his seminal black men is unemployed. In the entire emholden world history's most mon­ essay "The Russian Revolution and the country, 40 percent of black children live strous imperialist power. Am~rican Negro Movement" in 1959, in poverty. Black women are the fastest­ five years after the Supreme Courl Brown growing victims of the AIDS epidemic, The Class-Struggle Road decision, as that movement was unfold­ This is a society characterized by unprec­ to Black Freedom ing. He pointed out: edented, truly monstrous c1as.-; divisions. Under capitalism---the system of pri­ "It is customary to attribute the progress This is the reality "I' color-caste oppres­ vate ownership of the means of produc­ of the Negro movement, and the shift of sion. It is not negated by the partial recon­ tion, in which the workers have only their public op~nion in favor of its elailTl'i, to the changes brought about by thc First figuration of this castc with the growth of lahor power to sell as a commodity-a World War. But the biggest thing lhat a black middle class, which finds out very handful of capitalists are the dominant came Ollt of the First World War, the quickly that then: is an invisible, but very economic class. So it's futile to appeal to event that changed everything, including real, glass ceiling. the nonexistent consciencc and morality the prospects of the Am(:ril'an Negro, was the Russian Revolution. The influ-­ It is sickening to hear Colin Powell and of the ruling class. It is not now and never ence of Lenin and the Russian Revo­ other representatives of thc U.S. impcri­ has been in their intercsts to have a soci­ lution, even debased and distorted as it alist military, which is soaked from head ety based upon genuine peace, plenty and later was by Stalin, and then filtered to f()ot in the blood of the oppressed equality, Theirs is a system of production through the ~lctivitics of thc Communiq Party in the United States, contributed around the world, talk abollt how inte- for profit and of anarchy resulting ill more than any other influence from any source to th(: recognition, and more or less general acceptance, of the Negro qucstion as a special problem of Ameri­ can socidy------a problem which canl1nt simply be subsUined under the general heading of the conflict between capital and labor, as it was in the pre-Communist radical Illovement:' --'- The Firsl Tel? Years olAmerican CUll1l?lIm;.llfI (1962) The Spartacist League's several decades of etlorts and principled struggle to mol'li­ lize the working class in the fight for black freedom and in the Iiheration of the working class as a whole stands in this tradition and is unique. As a consequence of the counterrevoltt­ tionary destruction or the Soviet Union,

National Archives which was a gigantic defeat for workers Integrated army unit during U.S. imperialism'S dirty, anti-Communist war in and oppressed around the world, the Korea, 1950. Many black soldiers came back from Korea intent on fighting to capitalists have been emboldened to overturn Jim Crow segregation in U.S. intensify their attacks against hard-won · t

10

WV Photo AP Spartacist supporter tore down Confederate flag of slavery and Klan terror at San Francisco Civic Center, 19~4. Right: Up to 50,000 demonstrators turned out in January 2000 to demand removal of Confederate flag from Columbia, South Carolina statehouse.

gains. It is 110 mere coincidence that. Housing, actually used the money that ultimate goal was to acquire more free­ beginninn in 1991. they have more ener­ was supposed to)2:o to building ncw hOlls­ dom for tl]()se black folks who already getically cpushed for resegregation of ing to build prisons in upstate New York. had a degree of class privilege however th~ relative. By the late 19()Os class-based the school system-not that they began So they were down there at City Hall sup­ racial integration disrupted the racial then, but they stepped on the pedal. There posedly trying to reform these drug laws. solidarity that oftell held black folks is no Soviet Union today to embarrass We say: Down with the racist war on together despite class difference. Pres­ U.S. imperialism about the endemic drugs! We are for the decriminalization of sured to assimilate into mainstream white culture' to increase their class racism which is inherent to this system. drugs. The so-called New Democrat Clin­ power and status. privileged black indi­ Because of the counterrevolution in the ton cesealated the bourgeoisie's attacks on viduals began to kave the underprivi­ Soviet Union, consciousness has been the ghettos and barrins "to end welfare as leged behind, moving into predominantly thrown back. And this has been in the We~ know it," expanding the racist death white neighhorhoods, taking their money making for a while. In 1983, Jesse Jack­ penalty, ane! puttin)2: about IOO,OO() more and their industry out of the segregated hlacl-, world." son, a former Jeader in King's Southern cops on the streets. ". Where WI.' Stand: Class Matters Christian Leadership Conference, helped In a recent interview, SilTllllOnS .'ipellee! (::'()()O) knife protests in defense of busing in out his program. He said his program is 40 Well, this is at) utterly fantastic Norfolk, Virginia. Coleman Young de­ acres anel a Bentley. His undisguised hos­ description of what actually happened. nounced busing jn Detroit when he was tility to integration is quite undcrstand­ Some of what she points out, such as lhe black Democratic mayor there in able in that light. This is what hc saiel: who benefited from the civil rights move­ 1l)74, agreeing with the Supreme Court "Economically, SlIme Lunilics in our nh:nt, is true. But the notion that there cOlllllJunity had more financial stability decision that struck down cross-district was ever in the past, or that there evcr busing of black schoolchildren from the during segn:gatlnl1. We had the black dell· ti,t, the black lawyer. the blae" ll'achcr. will be in the future, a significant black inner city to the white suburbs. In 1997, We had jobs. Wl' had things we had 10 capitalist rlass along the lines of the Car­ the historically integrationist NAACP cI,) for (inl' cOl1lmunity and services 10 negies, the Mellons and the Rockeldlers provide. inlcgratil)11 lore that down. It held a debate that called i 11 to question is utterly fantastic and utopian. Moreover, integration. damaged ollll'l'onomic stability in OUl' lit­ til' conllllllllitics .... They tool-, all of our there i; no such thing as ·'separate but Furthermore, this retrogression in con­ hU'iilless." equal." And that's the point: they have sciousness has also affected the so-called ··-lkmv Louis ('alc'.,. Americ{I capitulated to that. "progressive," radical black intellectuals 8eiJi,;d l/ie Co/(!r 1./11(> (2()()4) Now, there's the vcry \olubk left­ such as Robin Kelley and bell hooks, vVell, rirs!. whal johs') Cii1ell{ls are nationalist academic Robin Kclley. He rhe­ along with outright pro-Democratic Party impoverished hdlholcs, and III pniods of torically asks, "[Illegralinn: What's Left,!" hip-hop capitalists such as Russell Sim­ lahor shortage, (hey used to be ';ollle k inti (Nation, 14 Deccmher 1(911). lie deliher­ mons. Simmons, who slams integration of reserve at:my or the unelliploycd .... ··and ately con nates the struggle for racial inlc­ and also pushes black capitalism, helped I stress used /0 be. These pcoplc arc }.(fation with liberal i11legrationisill and organize a massive rally at City Hall plI.'.;hing black capitalisllI. which is really ~ubmission to white liberal gradualism: in June 2003 (some of us sold W(Jrkers ahout r;athcring their own nc,ls and flip .. "Although blacl-, civil rights activists had Vanguard at it) which was joined hy ping a bone to the rest of us. always cl11phasi/ed 'desegregation'-·--the Democrat Andrew Cuomo to call for not The so-called "lei"!" black f,: minis!' b,;1l rl'lTl()"al of all harrieTs that kept black ending, but reducing the sentences of the peopk lrom enJoyilig fldl access to pub­ hooks, harking back to a mythical g()lden lic fac·ilitics. decent hOllsing, education draconilln Rockefeller-era lll1ti-drug laws. era of cross-class black unity, argued: and ,,0 on~···~~in Illost white liberal circles This is the same Cuomo who in the Clin­ "That sense of solidarity was altcrcd by racial intCl.'.ratlOll carne to mean solving ton administration, in the Department of a class· based civil righh struggle whose the 'Negn~ problem' by bringing black 11

people into formerly all-white institu­ party's abandonment of a revolutionary day, the fastest-growing, and now the larg­ lions .... The goal was to produce fully working-class program, we have empha­ est minority atlected are Latinos. We, as assimilated blaek pc'ople devoted to the American dream. Sharing power was sized common class struggle against a fighters for a revolutionary vanguard party, rarely part of the equation .. · common class enemy. We say that there point to the common interests of all sec­ And what is his program? is an alternative to liberal integration­ tions ofthe oppressed. Our task is to com­ "Ralher than a new integralinnist move­ ism-which favors the gradual absorp­ bat not only anti-black raeism within the ment under a left-wing banner, ! would tion of "deserving blacks," one by one, immigrant milieu, but the anti-immigrant like to see a new, revitalized left laullch­ into this system--and pro-Democratic chauvinism of many black workers and ing a filII-scali: assaull on white privi­ kge-···a flew divc'stment campaign in Party capitalist politics. And that's the black people. This is critical from the which white people rd'use the benefits of program of revolutionary integrationism, standpoint of fighting for socialist revolu­ a racist society:· (he strugglc for black libcration through tion in this country. What we see is that In particular, what Kelley is saying to overturning this racist capitalist system the ruling class has thrown increasing lay­ the mass of white workers, which of hy linking the struggles of (he ghettos to ers of the population on the scrap heap. course happens to bc the most numerous the organized labor movement under a In the annals of judicial history, what class in this society, is: Prove your com­ class-struggle leadership. they call "Brown, 1" was the Supreme mitment for the poor and the oppressed [ need to point out that the ruling class Court decision in 1954 that struck down by voluntarily impoverishing yourself. today is forced to admit that increasingly Pless.\' v. Ferguson. And in "Brown II," This can only reinforce the hold of the U.S. society is being resegregated. [n a the second decision a year later, the white ruling class upon white workers. special education supplement (Nev.) York Supreme Court ordered desegregation • Moreover, if he took that to any picket 1imes, I II January) on the 50th anniversary with "all deliberate speed," i.e., slowly. In line they'd run him out on a rail. of the Brow!! decision, a writer admits that other words, they gave the green light to The League of Revolutionary Black "Million~ of black students are celebrating Southern segregationist foes of integra­ Workers, which was a radical-nationalist Brown's anniversary in schools almost as tion to obstruct the implementation of organization in Detroit in the '70s, had segregated as when it was decided. It is that decision. Consequently, by early the opportunity to actually make common now true, as the court held, that 'separate 1964, a full decade later, only 1.2 percent cause with white workers. They refused but equal facilities are inherently unequal.' of black children in the eleven Southern to pass out their leaflets to them. Their But 70 percent of black students attend states attended schools with whites. So program was for more hlaek foremen, for schools in which racial minorities are a the law is one thing, and the reality on the hlacks on the board of General Motors majority, and fully a third are in schools 90 ground is another. and the like. Our program of revolution­ to 100 percent minority." Professor Gary These legal decisions are never made ary integratioll, of class struggle, cuts Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights in a vacuum, but they are a product of across these kinds of divisive schemes. Project at Harvard, has done quite an social struggle. Thus, far from being Our program is to get rid of class exploi­ extensive investigation of the growing friends of black people, many judges tation and the brutal racial oppression resegregation in the U.S. He argues that, opposed Brown. For example, leading that props it up, not to pit sections of the pr<;lctically speaking, the U.S. today hasn't segregationist Mississippi Circuit Court oppressed and exploited against each qualitatively progressed beyond the era judge Tom Brady, in line with the white­ other so that hoth can be conquered. The of formalized segregation embodied in supremacist Citizens Counci Is, asserted depth of, the political bankruptcy is the infamolls 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson that this was "Black Monday" and that astounding, but not surprising. Supreme Court decision that sanctioned the Supreme Court was leaning toward From our inception in the early 1960s state-supported segregation in public Communism. The segregationists in Lit­ inside the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) accommodations. tle Rock wcre circulating questionnaires as the Revolutionary.Tendency, a Icft­ When YOll look at what's going on as essentially asking whether black boys wing opposition that fought against that the schools become more segregated to- would be permitted to solicit the white girls at school soirees? Would they be allowed, white girls and black boys in drama classes, to get together? Someone could really do an interesting study on when was the first time, if ever, Othello was perforrned in that part of the country. When the first Brown decision was handed down, it was trumpeted by U.S. imperialism as an expression of Ameri­ can democracy in its finest hour. In 1954 Secretary of Slate Dean Acheson under­ lined their interest in Brown: "Other peoples cannot understand how [school segregation] can exist in a coun­ try which professes to be a staullch sup­ p(lrter of freedom, justice, and democ­ racv. The sincerity of the United States in this respect will be judged by its deeds as well as bv its words." -A/z.a Salama Lavton, /illerna/ional f'oiilics alld Civil WV Photo RiRhts Pulicies in the Uniled Ford River Rouge workers in 1976 national auto strike. Detroit was center of Slaff'S, JY.Jl-/Y60 (2000) black proletarian militancy until Big Three auto bosses gutted industry while And of course, they were increasingly pro-capitalist UAW tops capitulated. embarrassed because the Soviet Union 12 reminded them quite frequently and reg­ ularly of the vicious, legalized segrega­ tion, while the U.S. rulers railed against "Soviet Communist totalitarianism." The State Department didn't waste any Emmett Till and his time in trumpeting the progress in race mother. The lynching relations: within an hour of thc Supremc of this 14-year-old Court's deci,ion, the Voice of America black youth in broadcast the news all over the world in Mississippi in 1955 35 different languages. And Carl Rowan, for the alleged a black journalist who was the face of the "crime" of whistling State Department ahroad, traveled jill' and at a white woman wide to con v ince the Third World that helped fuel civil America was finally making progress. rights movement. Of course it was bull because, in the aftermath of the Brown decision, white racist defiance quickly developed. Authe·· rine Lucy, a hlack womall who wanted to he'1I probably be 95 years old, on a respi­ ground. In other words, it was no thanks get into graduate school. wa, attacked by rator with one lung. one kidney and one to good-hearted and benevolent .iudges mobs at the University of Alahama wilen hour to live. And if it's not that, the sys­ that the walls of Jim Crow segregation she tried to attend school there in 1l)56. tem is still one of murderous legal lynch­ came tumbling down. That angered a lot of European and Afri­ ings and racist frame-ups that keeps on Robert Weisbrot, the author of Free­ can governments. keeping on . .Just look at the cases of dom Round: A History of America's Civil A year earlier. in 1955, Emmett TiU Mumia Abu-Jamal and the many other Rights Mow'menl, noted that before the fared worse. Emmett Ti II was a 14-year­ class-war prisoners in this country, like Brown decision: old black youth from Chicago visiting Jerry Dale Lowe. "Sporadic local protests also sent a mes­ relatives in Mississippi. He was lynched Every step forward for workers. black sage 01 growing Negro assertiveness. but few, black or whit\.\ received it. In Novem­ for the alleged "crime" of whistling at people, women and a\1 the oppressed has ber 1953 forty·eight black soldiers in a white woman. His horribly mutilated been won by militant struggle against the Columbia. SOLith Carolina, were anested body was shown. His mother insisted racist capitalist system. Reliance on the and fined more than $1.500 because one upon an open casket funeral, and all bourgeois courts politically disarms the sat next to a white girl on the bus. That over the world pcople saw the barbarity workers and oppressed. The unions in same year a Negro boycott of buses in Baton Rouge, Loui,iana. lasted a week of lynch law. Thousands of black peo­ this country were built by defying the before officials permitted blacks, and ple all over this country marched after bourgeoisie's laws against trade unions, whites 10 occupy sOllie scats on first­ that, and many say that the beginnings laws that called unions "criminal con­ come, first-served basis." of the civil rights movement began with spiracies," which the capitalists could Now, after several. decades of bipar­ the demonstrations around Emmett Till. revive again. tisan racist reaction and attacks on the A couple of weeks ago the New York Black youth hurled themselves against standard of living of the working masses, Times (22 March), in an editorial titled the infernal machine of the racist, segre­ sections of the ruling clas\ openly '"The Ghost of Emmett Till," said that gationist, law-and-order establishment, embrace the "ghosts of the Confederacy" there is a reinvestigation of his murder playing a very important role in shatter­ and their hcirs. for example, Attorney being planned by the Justice Department ing the McCarthyite Cold War consensus General John Ashcroft has expressed his because they have new information on and atmosphere in the South. The law admiration for th'e Confederacy. Trent Till's murder. If somebody is nailed, had to adjust to the new facts on the Lott. the Rcpublican Senator. got a slap OIl the wrist for openly stating his sup­ port for the segregationist Strom Thur­ mond. Thurmond was the rabid segrega­ tionist who led Southern racist resistance to the integration of the armed forces under President Harry S. Truman and bolted from the Democratic Party to form the Dixiecrat Party in 194R. And nonc olher than the current head of the Supreme Court. William Rehnquist. as a clerk to Supreme Court J List icc Robert Jackson, wrote a memo in support of the !'lessl' I'. Fergus()n decision. This is the ruling class thaI is in power. The Failures of the Civil Rights Movement in the North When the civil rights movement went North, it ran into a brick wall. It went up against the hedrock of the economic Ernest Richie Collection oppression of the hlack population. It Blacks in Baton Rouge, LA, organize boycott of segregated city buses, 1953. was not de jure (in law) segregation but 13

de facto segregation that they had to ghettos. What are you going to control? that regard, we have to clear the ground of contend with. The collapse of that move­ The Panthers were nationalists; they were the reformist and centrist obstacles that ment tlowed from Martin Luther King's radical nationalists. They wanted social block the road to power. and the SCLC's bankrupt, liberal pacifist revolution, hut they rejected mobilizing Don't be fooled by the occasional program of reliance on the racist federal the integrated working class to sweep socialist rhetoric. The International Social­ govcrnment and the Democratic Party. away this system: This is the key reason ist Organization (ISO) is a good example That is what crippled that struggle. for their political demise. It wasn't simply of what we're talking about. Time and As a result of the inability of the liberal­ that the state was all-powerful. There was again, they stand with the Democrats led civil rights leadership to address the sympathy among white workers in the against workers and the oppressed, On capitalist roots of black oppression, many Bay Area. In the early 1970s we had sup­ 23 October 1999, they were out there in black activists embraced a separatist road porters who worked in a General Motors the rally organized by Sharpton to defend and rejected integrated class struggle, auto plant in Fremont, California. This thc Klan's right to march. He went to court which is not only in the interest of blacks was it factory where the Panthers briefly on behalf of the Klan, whereas the Sparta­ but is in the interest of the entire working had a caucus, which they later liquidated, cist League and the Partisan Defense class. The result was that the best of an Today, the effects of the destruction of Committee, along with the Labor Black entire generation of young black mili­ the Panthers' organization and the defeats League, mobilized a mass labor-centered tants, particularly embodied in the contra­ of the movement are deeply felt. The mobilization that stopped the Klan, dictory radical-nationalist Black Panthers, black population is leaderless. Under the So what does the [SO say is the way for­ was cut down through murderous FBI conditions of relentless racist attacks ward? In a recent article called "Racism in Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTEL­ today in the name of the "war against ter­ America Today" (international Socialist PRO) repression, facilitated by murder­ ror" at home and abroad, it is vital to Review, November-December 2003), they ous internal factionalism. know who our friends and who our ene­ say that, despite the persistence of insti­ Some of this history is being revised mies are. Things didn't have to turn out tutional racism in America, in the anarchist milieu, You have, for this way. If you really look at the road "It would be wrong, nevertheless, to con­ instance, the Northeastern Federation forward, it has to be based on this pro­ clude that things are just as bad as they were before the civil rights movement. of Anarcho-Communists (NEf-"AC). They gram of class-struggle revolutionary inte­ Many of the legislative gains from that recently had an article, "A Synthesis of grationism, by forging a revolutionary period-from affirmative action to end­ Race & Class: A Look at the Black workers party that tells the bitter truth. In ing segregation---are under attack. But Panther Party & Its Goal of Liberation" (Northeastern Anarchist, Summer/Fall 2003). What the anarchists say is quite interesting because it indicates why their rejection of a Leninist vanguard party International Communist League makes them incapable of understanding (Fourth Internationalist) the fact that what really led to the demise International Center: Box 7429 GPO, New York, NY 10116, USA of the Panthers was not simply FBI Web site: www.icl-fi.org repression. It was not simply what the anarchists call the Panthers' "authoritar­ Spartacist League of Australia...... Spartacist League, GPO Box 3473 ian, top-down structure" or their advo­ Sydney, NSW, 2001, Australia cacy of a vanguard party (which was of Spartacist League/Britain ...... Spartacist League, PO Box 1041 course vanguard in name only; because London NW5 3EU, England Trotskyist League of Canada/ there was male chauvinism within that Ligue trotskyste du Canada ...... Trotskyist League, Box 7198, Station A organization). What NEFAC says is this: Toronto, Ontario, M5W 1X8, Canada 'The Black Panther Party was the most Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands .... SpAD, c/o Verlag Avantgarde important revolutionary organization in Postfach 2 35 55 America during the latc 20th century... , 10127 Berlin, Germany [The pm1y I was able to develop a truly rev­ olutionary political platform that presented Ligue trotskyste de France ...... Le Bolchevik, BP 135-10 a more just and viable alternative .... 75463 Paris Cedex 10, France "Perhaps the party woulJ have benefited Trotskyist GroMp of Greece ...... Box 8274, Athens 10010, Greece and maximized its potential as a Revolu­ tionary Black Nationalist organization by Spartacist Group Ireland ...... PO Box 2944, Dublin 1 broadening its struggles to both remedial Republic of Ireland and immeJiate programs as well as more militant activities so long as they were Lega trotskista d'italia ...... Walter Fidacaro both aimeJ at a common and revolution­ C.P. 1591, 20101 Milano, Italy ary goal: the necessity for black people Spartacist Group Japan ...... ,...... Spartacist Group Japan to gain control of the institutions in their PO Box 49, Akabane Yubinkyoku own communities, eventually transform­ Kita-ku, Tokyo 115-0091, Japan ing them into cooperatives, and of one day working with other ethnic groups to Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico ...... Roberto Garcia, Apdo. Postal No. 1251 change the system." Adm6n. Palacio Postal 1 C.P. 06002, Mexico D.F., Mexico This petty-bourgeois rejection of the working class is exactly the Panthers' Spartacist/South Africa...... Spartacist, PostNet Suite 248 type of New Left sectoralism. Thor­ Private Bag X2226 Johannesburg 2000, South Africa oughly anti-working-class, it is based upon the utopian, classless notion of a Spartacist League/U.S ...... , ... ,...... Spartacist League, Box 1377 GPO New York, NY 10116, USA "black community," or "black commu­ nities," which are really impoverished 14

the impact of the movement has been longstanding, fundamentally changing the attitudes and perceptions of millions of people about African American,." Where do you start, right? One thing to say is that the lic of black inferiority, the recrudescence of "scientific racism" in this Bell Curve book, which was a best­ seller at the time it was published in 1994, which preached the genetic inferiority of black pcople, struck fertile soil. 'T'hc point is that the civil rights movement failed to end black oppression because it was tied to the Democratic Party, and these fake socialists cover up lhat 1'act because they are busily tailing the Democrats today. There was nothing in that arti­ cle about breaking with the Democratic Party. [ think it is because the ISO's whole perspective is to reform this racist, March 2004: SYC initiated protest demanding "Down With Racist Provoca­ tions on Campus!" and "Defend Affirmative Action!" at Columbia University. capitalist system. And, of course, they supported every counterrevoiutional'v nationalist 1110vdment, every anti-Sovi~t accommodation to American imperialism universities, we fight for open admis­ struggle in the past, which culminated in at home on the strategic question for pl'O­ sions, free tuition and a fully paid state leturian revolution in the U.S., the fight stipend, especially to enable minority the destruction l)f the Soviet degenerated workers state. for hlack liberation. and working-class youth to uttend those So their program is vcry illustrative The kind of "integration" that the rul­ schools. V,:ry recently, the SpartaellS of what we are dealing with out there. ing class i~ interested in aims to recruit Youth Cluh mobilized actions at Colulll­ the best of those minorities whose skills bin University against an anti-affirmative We have so-called socialists in thi~ coun­ try who practically ignore the growing and training can he utilized to defend the action "bake sale" sponsored by the Con­ resegregation of the U.S. In the case capitalists' interests at home and abroad. sen'ative Club, which is in cahoots with of the League for the Revolutionarv This involves being able to intervene into an assortment of sinister ra,:ist imperi­ Party (LRP)' they adually openly cham"­ countries with large nOll-white popu­ ali,t clements, such as the pro-slavery pion segregation·-·-for example, opposing lations, silting astride regions where there idcologuc David Horowitz. The Conser­ school husing in Bostoll. Their virulent is oil, gold. diamonds ancllhe like. So the vative Club had in their noss hairs hostility to integrutiol1 is no accident white ruling class will drop the color bar hlacKs, Jews, I !ispanics, gays and others. since they arc virulently Stalinophohic, to get a Colin Powell and a ConcioleelJ.a We rnobilized against their racist provo­ anti-Soviet. Rejecting defense of the Rice to do their bidding in enslaving cation at Cnlull1bia while organizations gains of the' Russiull Revolution \cd to and murdering thousands of dark-skinned like the ISO refused to endorse the SYC­ peoples, and other oppressed peoples, initiated action because they were basi­ around the world. This has nothing to do. cally trying to pres'iure the ildministration of course, with the ohliteration of tl;e color to defend minority students. line, but rather the obliteration of horribly impoverished people around the world. So Black liberation Through the cla~s enemy has a consistently C(JUI1- Socialist Revolution! terrevolutjonary strategy and program, and We fight to huild a vanguard party that we have to have a consistently revolution­ hases its program not upon the current ary strategy and program. consciousness of the working class, hut If you want another example, look at upon its objective interests, its interests as the support from sections of the U.S. olfi­ a conscious revolutionary class. This is cer corps for rdaining affirmative action really the hallmark of what we're fighting at the University of Miehigan last year. for, a party that is a trihune of the people. Why'! They rememher their long, losing Under the leadership of Lenin and Trot­ and dirty colonial war against Vietnam--· sky's Bolshevik Party, tile workers of which was eonduded with a racially torn Russia sma.shed the outmoded capitalist military. Now, they have a Hispanic com.. system. This was the first and the onlv mander leading troops in Iraq. sliccessful workers revolution in history. The hourgeoisie wants "integration" Today, U.S. imperial ism is seekin~ to insofar as it furthers their stl'ug!2lc for dc:str:)y the remaining hureaucratiZally unbridled exploitation. We dclend affir­ deformed workers states in China, Cuba, mative action as one of the remaining Vidnarn and North Korea. Despite the 1-IErPAI\OTI'ILII:1 TONI. L\HH1I1 minimal and very inadequate gain,; of political misrule of the Stalinist bureauc­ IlU6;\Y HO )tr,\yT IIt;}'AA'iH H HH'IAfTMl' the civil rights movement, which were racies in these countries, the smashing of A. Radakov 1920 Soviet Russian poster reads: wrested from the white ruling class in capitalism there is a good thing for the "He who is illiterate is like a blind struggle. However, affirmative action workers internationally. We Trotskyists man." Today SL/U.S. calls for free, does not and cannot attack tile race and unconditionally defend those workers quality integrated education for all. class biases inherent in this system. In the states against imperialist attack and inter- 15

nal counterrevolution. It's a good thing name of Earl Ofari [Hutchinson]. who othcrs. Initially, Kennedy made some that North Korea has nukes. Otherwise, was a friend of mine. and Dick had mild support statements, and they ran his the U.S. imperialist bandits would have done some writing with him too. In the butt ofF the stage. obliterated them a long time ago. We fight early 1970s, Ofari played a role in break­ We linked this fight to the struggle for workers political revolution in those ing me from the dead end of "revolu­ for socialist revolution and a workers countries to oust the treacherous Stalinist tionary nationalism" and in telling me government. In contrast. the reformist bureaucracies whose anti-internationalist, over and over again that a woman's work Socialist Workers Party (SWP) called for anti-working-class program facilitates the is never done. He wrote a useful book federal troops to "defend" black people imperialist drive toward capitalist restora­ called The Myth ol Black Capitalism and tailed behind the petty-bourgeois tion. To be a Marxist, a Trotskyist, a which really assisted me in dcveloping a liberal NAACP. In pursuit of their cIass­ fighter for world revolution. you have e1ass perspective. collaborationist bloc with the liberals, the to be a proletarian internationalist. Our We hael a big argument in 1974-75 SWP sought to rewrite history by claim­ task here is to build that revolutionary about the demand, which Ofari sup­ ing that through mass pressure the armed Trotskyist party and finish what the ported, that the governmcnt send federal forces of imperialism could be made to Bolsheviks started in 1917 by fighting for troops to Boston to protect black school·· fight for the oppressed. They consciously new October Revolutiolls. children, who had been bused to integrate distorted history to suit their reformist The class··struggle program for black schools in South Boston, a white enclave. appetites. They tried to erase the indisput­ liberation is directly tied to the struggle At the same time, Ofari denounced the able fact that every time troops were for proletarian revolution. In this regard, Maoist Revolutionary Union, the prede­ called in, particularly in response to black every gtmeration comes to revolutionary cessors of loelay's Revolutionary Com­ rebellion, it was to suppress those who consciousness in their own way. My per­ munist Party. which capitulated to the were fighting back. The capitalist state­ sonal road was tortuous. starling as a fol­ racist anti-busing forces in Boston and its cops, its courts. its armed forces·-­ lower of the petty-bourgeois radical­ came out with an infamous headline ill is not neutral. These bodies are instru­ nationalist Frantz Fanon. who seemed to their press: "People Must Unitc to Smash ments of capitalist rule and racist be offering an uncompromising assault Boston Busing Plan" (Revolution, Octo­ repression. The Workers World Party of on the citadel of racism and imperial­ ber 1974). This was a gross capitulation to Sam Marcy was tailing bchind this black ism--··looking for the "wretched of the the racist scum from the Nazis and the Dcmocrat, Bill Owen, who opposed bus­ earth" to r,ise up spontaneously to drive Klan to Louise Day Hicks, who was a ing and was looking for a political career. off the imperialists. Only when I joined leader of the racist outfit called ROAR Marcy put out a pamphlet, Busing and the Spartacist League did I learn that (Restore Our Alienated Rights). Self-Determination, which should have Fanon's "radical" nationalism was an Ofari's main fire, however, was been titled "The Right to Tailism." In it, expression or the prevalent New Leftism directed at the so-called "sectarian" Spar­ they stated: "Separation or Assimila­ which propagated the myth that the work­ tacist League. We were in the forefront .lion-Ii's Up to the Oppressed." So they ing class was not the agent of revolution­ of fighting for mass integrated labor­ simultancously tailed the petty-bourgeois ary change, but had been "hought off' black defense to defend the bluck school­ liberals of the NAACP and the Black and integrated into the racist capitalist children against the howling racist mobs Muslims. Thcy betrayed the struggle for system. I'll skip some of the· other delu­ in South Boston. We fought for low-rent, black equality. sions that I had to discard along the way. racially integrated public housing. for Finally, the fight against the resegre­ We've learned a lot from the Bolshe­ quality integrated education for all. and gation of America cannot be separated viks. When you look at some of the for the implementation of busing and its from the unrelenting ruling-class offen­ history of what the Spartacist League extension 10 thc suburbs as a minimal-­ sive against labor and oPQressed minor­ has fought for, such as the struggle for although inadequate--step toward black ities, which has resulted in increased busing in Boston. it is really important equality. We weren't successful in getting concentration of \vcalth at one end of soci­ to see how we swam against the stream. the labor movement organized along cty and increased segregation and misery I was fortunate to spcnd some time with those lincs. However, this was in the at the other. The recent five-month-Iong. Dick Fraser, along with other comrades, interests of workers and the oppressed. bitter. sold-out UFCW grocery workers in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. We The trade-union misleaders in that city strike in Southern California indicates tried to assist him in various ways-he didn't lift a finger so as not to alienate that there are today thousands of work­ was a very sick man at the time. We the Democratic Party so-called "friends ers determined to resist the capitalist had one friend in common, a guy by the of labor," such as Teddy Kennedy and attacks. They fought, and it was not Young Spartacus Rl&&&JJ raCm$·,',·,,··'·""I·····t , People Must Unite To I Smash Boston BusingP.--Ia_n___ ----,. :,~;::.::".:=::::;c;;::::.:- ·::';:=-:::::=:;':::::::0;:~. :::.::::::~:::::. October 1974

1974: Predecessor of today's Revolutionary Communist Party sided with white racist backlash against busing (above), while reformists of Socialist Workers Party youth group pushed illusions in federal troops to defend black children. 16

impossible for them to have won. But the treacherous trade-union bureaucracy isolated that strike. rcl'used to extend it nationwide and played by the bosses' rules. That's why we say you need a elass­ struggle kadership of labor to unleash its power. Such a leadership is based upon the recognition that the fight for the eman­ cipation of the working class is insepara­ ble from the struggle against the brutaL racist oppression that is endemic to this capitalist system. How can this power be hrought to bear'? A powerful message would have he<~n sent to the bloo(bucking capitalists had there been len thousand transit workers. hospi­ tal workers, city workers downing their tools to protest the racist killings or hlack woman unionist Albcrta Spruill and black youth Timothy Stansbury. Or, a few years ago. Amadou Diallo. Or the several Latino youth killed by Ncw Yor1- 's "finest" racist killers. Or ill de!ensc of class-war prison­ Spartacist League initiated 5,OOo-strong labor/black mobilization that ers sllch as Mumia Ahu-Jamal. That social stopped KKK mar,ch in WaShington, D.C., November 1982. powcr must be mobilized. The capitalists would bc forccd to lake notice if thcre How do we get thaI kind of leadership? ing of such a rcvolutionary workers party, were a signirieant presence lli' workers By drawing the class line. By breaking a political weapon to advance a fight for out there nn hehalf of women's rights-­ with the program of class collaboration jobs for all through a shorter workweek especially in the fight for abortion, which that preaches the lie or a "community of with no loss in pay, 1',)1' free medica.1 care, is under attack. The pussibiltlics of inte­ interests" between the workers and the for free univer.;al education, for full citi­ grated class strll~:gie arc palpable and, on hosses and of "Jesser-cvilism," which is n:nship rights, for immigrant rights, for a modest :'cale. very real. While, Latino pushcd by the reformists and labor fak­ militant defense ol'lhe righls of gays. The and Asian workers were out there together er~. That party will bc buill by unmasking fight for frCl: abortion on demand. the on thc picket line!; during the rccent thc enemies of the workers and the right for freedom of all class .. war prison­ UH~'W ,trike. They fought, and their oppressed, no matter what their color or ers is a righl for a socialist America. And union wasn't broken, ,:VCll though they nationality is. A Ilcccssary la~k for thc this fight will be reali/cd through expro­ were bitterly sold oul. working class in this cOllntry is the furg- priating the capitalist class. I want to end with this quote from a black youth in Roxbury, Boston, who was inspired by the struggle for integra­ --~-.- SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. --­ tion in that city. It underscores onc \)1' thc points that we've made, namely, that in Local Directory and Public Offices the past, on most occasions, the black Web site: www.icl-fi.org • E-mail address:[email protected] population has sought every opportunity National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860 to fight for integration and equality as opposed to opting for a ~l'paratist road. Boston Los Angeles Oakland It is only ill periods of defeat and out of Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 despair that some hav.:: iluned toward Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, .CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 (617) 666-9453 (213) 380·8239 (510) 839·0851 pseudo-nationalism. Reflecting the egali­ tarian sentill1ent~ of a significant num­ Public Office: Sat. 2·5 p.m. Public Office: Chicago 3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215 Sat. 1-5 p.m. ber of black people in the c:ivil rights era, Box 6441, Main PO 1634 Telegraph an eleven-ycar-old black youth said: Chicago, IL 60680 New York 3rd Floor "Busing's just got to be. man. Clot to be. (312) 563-0441 Box 3381; Church St. Sta. We got it coming to liS. We got to open Public Office: New York. NY 10008 San Francisco up oursclves. spread Ollt. Get into the Box 77494 Sat. 2-5 p.m. (212) 267-1025 city.... Go 10 good ~chools, live in good San Francisco 222 S. Morgan Public Office: places like white folks got.. .. That's why (Buzzer 23) CA 94107 Sat. 1-4 p.m. they're busing w;" (Brolvl1 v. Hoard of 299 Broadway. Suite 318 f~'dllcati(}n 120(111l. To realize this dream of gelluine equality, YOIl must fight TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA for a socialist fl:'V()iUlil)ll. You can '( get it unlcs.s you havc it party that swims Toronto Vancouver against the stream and that bases itself Box 7198, Station A Box 2717, Main P.O. upon the lessons of the class struggle Toronto. ON M5W 1X8 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 (416) 593-4138 (604) 687-0353 and thc fi);ht 10 smash capitalism on a world scalc .•

------_._----- 17 reprinted from Young Spartacus pages, Workers Va!!:guard No. 807, I August 2003 The "N" Word in Racist America The word originated amici the horrors word in its lyrics is that of the fascists, "The white Americans have applied this of the Middle Passage, the bartering in such as the filth put out hy the nco-Nazi term to Africans, by way of reproach for human flesh, the crack of the overseer's Resistance Records. POT racist reaction­ our colour, to aggravate and heighten our whip-the systematic enslavement and aries, the one redeeming feature of hip­ miseries, because they havc their feet on dehumanization of black Africans and hop is the regular use of the "N" word. our throats." their descendants on North American In the early years of "gangsta" rap, No less today than in the past, it soil. Later, it was carved by lynch mobs, Newsweek (19 March 1990) featured a means not only race-terror and the lynch savagely intent on enforcing Jim Crow "Rap Rage" cover, which did its part to rope but also that the victims "deserve racial segregation, into the hideously muti­ encourage state repression and racist vic­ it." In Meridian, Mississippi earlier this lated bodies of their black victims. It was timization of the hip-hop music scene by month, a deranged white racist gunned and remains the white-supremacist rally­ Whipping up white fear and hatred. But down five people, including four blacks, ing cry heralding cross-burnings out­ the editors of Newsweek did hail "the at an aircraft parts plant, after having side black homes, firebombings of black disinterment of the word 'n-----'" as the repeatedly terrorized black co-workers churchcs and assaults on black people on "most visible contribution" to rap music's with how "he was going to come in one city streets. Cops hark it as they rampage "Culture of Attitude." day and kill up a bunch of n-----s" (New through the ghdtos, beating down black We revolutionary Marxists in the Spar­ York Times, 9 July). In this violent, racist youth and dragging them ofT to jail. taellS Youth Clubs have no particular atti­ society, the "N" word is a fighting word. Yet in recent years the word "n-----" tude toward hip-hop music. What one as both black and white people arc has come to he casually thrown around by listens to, watches or reads is a private aware. Recalling the intense struggles of youth of all ethnic backgrounds as a sign affair. But the word "n-----" is a program the civil rights movement, a black SL of contemporary "hipness" and a "term of for racist reactionaries, and we oppose comrade explained: endcarmcnt." It is blasted through the air­ its usc by whites and blacks alike. In his "Its lise bv whites was an assertion of waves in songs listened to by millions powerful 1R29 Appeal against slavery, white sllpl~el1lacy and the inferiority of across the world and in the routines of black abolitionist David Walker wrote: the hlack race .... My home instructions popular hlack comcdians. It screams from the shelves of bookstores and newsstands, the title of a best-selling book by black Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy last year. It has even been heard from the platforms of leftist antiwar demonstrations. In a crucl twist, the in­ creasingly promiscuous use of this racist cpithet has been driven by the hip-hop music originating in ghettos like the South 8ronx and South Central Los Angeles. For such youth, hip-hop lyrics often are an expression of defiancc in the face of the raw racist reality of American society and a ruling class that could not care less whether the besieged and impoverished ghetto masses live or die. But far from be­ ing a protest against racial oppression, as some leftist black intellectuals would have it, the pervasive use of the "N" word is a result of the racist rulers' denigration of black people. This is a form of "defiance" born of demoralization and despair, a product of the ever-worsening conditions of black life and the absence of any signif­ icant social struggle in the decades since Young Socialist the collapse of the 'civil rights movement. Beaten, gassed and jailed over the course of a 64-day strike in Memphis, It is no coincidence that the only other 1968, sanitation workers protest racist contempt for black people while march­ music today that commonly includes the ing for union recognition and improved wages. 18

NAACP, who appeal to the government or school authorities to censor "politically incorrect" language, we reject the illusion that racism can be legislated away, Such censorship only accords the capitalist gov­ ernment additional powers of repression, which are invariahly used againsl working people and the: oppressed, As one SL com­ rade observed in a pre-conference disclIs­ sion contribution: "We arc malerialisls which, with respect to the issuc at hand, mcans our interest is in changing material reality, that is, in forever destroying the social basis for racist opprcssiZm i~1 this country by weld­ ing labor/black power and effecting a proletarian socialist revolution, \\'e do not hold that Ihis can occur by sanitiz-­ AP ing social reality it ia".the adv()cal<~s of Police occupy Benton Harbor, Michigan in June 2003 after black population 'politically correct' discourse. The mirror erupted over cop terror (above). Material conditions of life have worsened for opposite of such eJl'orts is attempts to the black masses since the 1960s. make the 'N' word hip and thus, accord­ ing to the proponents of this 'strategy,' to erase its racist impact. Either of these ide­ alist pursuits shares the assumption that it is what people think that is responsible for racism and not that racist oppression is the bedrock on which the American capitali~t order is maintained," Black workers are potentially the most combative section of the proletariat; and mobilizing the labor movement in the fight for black liberation is not just one more case of championing democratic rights, hut is the key to the American socialist revolution, Likewise, the "N" word is not just one m(lrc racial or ethnic slur. but is the watchword of hardened reactionaries who would spearhead a counterrevolutionary offensive rather than accept a socialist society in which black people are truly free. Any adaptation to this word can only redound to the benefit of those who view black oppression as a w(~r(' l<' defend the race at all Ct,,(-.. -the tled North were integrated into the work­ virtue of the existing social order. Its use 'N' word was a righting word. You force 111 the bottom and fon:ihly segre-­ can only retard the development of COlll­ i"lIU),ht, period. To walk away was C(lW­ gated into inner-city ghettos. The suhjuga­ ardi"c, My [tJ(ltiwr, a Soulhern-horn munist, i.e" liberating. consciousness, Wwhite supremacy struggle against every manifestation of cans mouth the' N' word the greater will and .Tim Crow police-stalL: control or black racism and bigotry in this profoundly be the purge of Negrophobia in their souls, people reigned in the South. Blacks who racist society. Against liberals like the as if by comparison the more today's Ger- 19

I Ohio University Left-wing intellectuals Manning Marable, Robin D. G. Kelley, Michael Eric Dyson despair of integrated social and class struggle, accommodate racist status quo and use of "N" word by blacks. mans mouth the K-word the greater will derstand the difference between blacks good community police officer by 'act­ be the eventual purging of Jewish-phobia calling each other 'n---a' and whites and ing the role' and by presenting himself in others calling us 'n---er.' Only a heady a manner close to the persons he serves." in German society," moral 'insolence could feign such inno­ Kennedy's book "was tantamount to ccnce. So l-Lo, herc's the deal: Puffy can The Politics of Despair tossing a match at a gasoline-soaked build­ say 'n---a'; you can't. Now that's rcal." ing," wrote Kilson, pointing to a series Responding to the likes of Dyson, In an essay titled "Kickin' Reality, of racist provocations unleashed by the Ron Scott wrote in the Amsterdam News Kickin' Ballistics: 'Gangsta Rap' and book at Harvard Law School last spring, (9 August 20(1): Postindustrial Los Angcles" (reprinted in including a Web posting using the slur "Well, if you really want to keep it real, Race Rebels [1994 D, Robin Kelley notes, "n-g" and an e-mail by a white student try reading' 100 Years of Lynchings' by "The generation that came of age in the crowing, "I have actually begun using the Ralph Ginzburg and 'Without Sanctuary, 1980s was the product of devastating 'n-----' word more often than before." In Lynching Photography in America: by lames Allcn and Hilton Als, which graph­ structural changcs in the urban economy a reply to Kilson, Kennedy confessed, "It ically depict the hideous lynchings of that date back at least to the late 1960s." so happens that the students involved African-Americans in America. The lat­ As the rubber and steel factories that had were my students" (Black Commentator, tcr has some photographs that show the N formerly provided jobs for black youth 22 August 20(2). word, which was carved on thcir chests." disappeared, South Central L.A. experi­ Kennedy's service on behalf of the As for the supposed distinction between enced a 50 percent rise in uncmployment forces of racist reaction was widely the term of affection and the slur in end­ and an almost one-third drop in median hailed by the American bourgeois media. ing the word with an "-er" rather than an income. The ghettos "wcre turned into Typical was the review in Newsweek "-a," this is, as Scott observed, a distinc­ war zones," housing projects "were reno­ (14 January 20(2): "I-Ie's made his case: tion without a difference: "Remember, vated along the lincs of minimum secur­ that this 'troublesome' word is only a many white people weren't that educated, ity prisons" and "police helicopters, com­ word. And that words---like people-can just racist as hell, so in many cases, it was plex electronic surveillance, even small always change." What purpose can a spelled the latter." tanks armed with battering rams became "changed" definition of the "N" word As Scott remarked, "When a word is part of this increasingly militarized urban serve in capitalist America? None other placed in the public domain the way the landscape." It was these conditions that than to legitimize the continuing degrada­ hip-hop community has somewhat reck­ gavc rise to the massive 1992 upheaval tion of black people. lessly dropped the N word, it's evident provokcd by thc acquittal of four white Kennedy's vile little tract is a slap in the that one can no longer define who uses cops who had bcaten and tormcnted black face to every black person. But attempts it." Witness the case of white Cincinnati motorist Rodney King. to legitimi/,e the growing usc of the "N" cop Thomas Haas, who gunned down 21- South Central was emblematic of every word in public discourse extend to more year-old Rickey Moore only months after ghetto in America. From the time of the left-wing black intellectuals like Robin the cop killing of another black youth, first mass migration of Southern blacks to D. G. Kelley and Michael Eric Dyson. Timothy Thomas, touched off a long­ the Northern cities in the early decades of Commenting on the controversy sur­ simmering explosion of outrage in April thc twcntieth century, the ghetto popula­ rounding Jennifer Lopez's use of "n---a" 200 I. Fivc years earlier, a complaint was tion was used by the capitalist rulers as a in her ''I'm Real" remix single with rap­ filed against this same cop for calling a "last hired, first fired" reserve army of per Ja Rule, self-described "hip-hop intel­ black prisoner "n---a" while beating him labor, brought in when their labor was lectual" Dyson wrote in the Chicago Sun­ into submission. According to the police needed and cast aside in economic down­ Times (31 July 2(01): report of the incident. quoted in the Cin­ turns. Witness current uncmployment fig­ "One of the few privileges blacks may cinnati Enquirer (5 August 20(1): ures, which for black teenagers today derive from their oppression is the abil­ "Officer Haas claims he used the term in hover at 40 percent. As the capitalists took ity to linguistically subvert its corrosive a friendly manner and that he was not the wrecking ball to the steel works, shut meanings .... attempting to be disrespectful.. .. He also "And it is one of the consequences of claims this is an acceptable term uscd by down the auto factories and cut millions black freedom that white folk-and other persons on the strect, primarily drug of manufacturing jobs beginning in the non blacks-must not pretend not to un- dealers. He states that he is trying to be a 1970s, the population of the inner cities 20 came to be seen as a surplus population grams were implemented, the unemploy­ struggle, milch less integrated workers not "worth" providing with even the most ment rate among black youth is twice that struggle, and instead glorify "cultural em­ basic needs of subsistence. The "war on among white youth, and an astounding 28 powerment;' which posits that black op­ poverty"' of the 1960s was replaced by the percent of all black men are destined to pression exists in people's minds rather "war on drugs," a concerted onslaught on ,pend some time behind bars. Poverty, than being inherent to American capital­ the ghetto masses leading to the imprison­ chronic joblessness and jail, schools that ism. Now as in the '60s, this is a program ment of up to a million young black men are no more than holding pens, AIDS, for capitulation to the racist status quo and and women at any given time. While the crime and cop terror-these are standard is simply another means tl) blame the 13th Amendment abolished chattel slav­ aspects of life for the black population oppressed for their oppression. This gains ery, it excluded prisoners from protection under decaying American capitalism. literal expression with the prominent polit­ against enslavement. The mainstream use Focused as' it was on winning legal ical influence of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of the "N" word, a symbol of slavery, reforms, the liberal-led civil rights move­ of Islam (NOI) on the hip-hop scene. recurs at a time when blacks are dispro­ ment of the 1050s and '60s was bound to portionately imprisoned. the Democratic Party and thereby the Farrakhan: Bad News [n the article "Deadly Symbiosis" capitalist order. As such, it was incapable for Black People (Bustun Review, April/May 20(2), Loi'c of addressing the desperate conditions of Fanakhan has been the keynote speaker Wacquant noted that the massive inten­ the black inner cities, which are materi­ at a number of "hip-hop summit" meet­ sification of state repression in the ghet­ ally rooted in the whole system of Amer­ ings. Many black youth who disdain the tos came as "the capacity of the ghetto to ican capitalism. A series of spontaneous "respectable" inch-at-a-time gradualism ensure caste domination was undercut in ghetto rebellions broke out beginning in of mainstream Democratic Party politicos the 1960s by economic restructuring that the mid '60s and was smashed with brute like Jesse Jackson take as good coin made African-American labor expend­ force as heavily armed police and the Farrakhan's occasional rhetorical forays able." The result was "to make the ghetto military occupied entire neighborhoods. against the racist rulers. In turn, black more like a prison" and "the prison more At the same time, widespread anger at leftists, looking for an audience that like a ghetto." The further impoverish­ the Vietnam War fueled the radicaliza­ would provide them some access to cor­ ment and all-sided degradation of the tion of youth in the army and at home. ridors of influence in this society, seek to inner-city masses has been used to inten­ Nationalist groups promoting black peddle their liberal and reformist wares in sify the exploitation of the entire working capitalism and liberal politicians like black Fanakhan's shadow. Thus Dyson extols class, axing social programs and branding Congressman Adam Clayton Powell re­ Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March as the black "underclass" as "undeserving," sponded with efforts to keep the cities "a dramatic testament to the magnitude of "indolent" and "criminal." safe for racist American capitalism, from black male hunger for racial rescue and A few decades after the mass struggles installing black front men in the mayor's moral requiremcnt." of the civil rights movement broke the office to colluding directly with the cops, Despite the just outrage at racist Amer­ back of legalized Jim Crow segregation as in the case of cultural nationalist leader ica felt by many in attendance, the Million and formal equality for black people was Ron Karenga in Los Angeles. These Man March was a reactionary, woman­ decreed in this country, the conditions of betrayals had the backing of major Amer­ hating mobilization for "atonement," life of the ghetto masses have worsened ican corporations, which were eager to· which forgavc the oppressors and exploit­ by every material standard: average fam­ fund such programs dedicated to contain­ ers for their enormous crimes against ily income has plunged, schools arc more ing black unrest and promoting husiness. black people. working people and the segregated than before civil rights pro- The government set up "war on pov­ poor, whilc blaming the oppressed for erty" programs that successfully co-opted their oppression. In an article in the Black a layer of black activists for the purpose Scholar (Winter/Spring 1996) titled "Mil­ of re-establishing control over the rebel­ lion Man March Appeases Racist Exploit­ lious ghettos. A number of hlacks like ers" (reprinted in W\I No. 047, 7 June Coleman Young in Detroit and Maynard 19(6), Bay Area Spartacist spokesman Jackson in Atlanta were installed as may­ and Labor Black League member Don ors to fire city workers, close inner-city Cane wrote: hospitals, slash funds to social programs "]n the 1960s, Tm Black and I'm Proud' and bolster racist "law and order." Once race consciousness, inlluenced bv masses the turmoil in the black communities was in struggle, was defiant of the n;cist cap­ italist rulers. Todav we witness 'I'm black tempered, in the early '70s the poverty and I'm not a crirninal' race conscious­ EnJightenmen* programs were massively cut. Soon after, ness influenced by a desperate black the deindustrialization of the 19808 rav­ middle class begging for 'understanding' Rationalism . aged the black working class. from the racist rulers. The black mis­ leaders, branded by race themselves, . . AND THE The conscious selling out of the social can barely conceal their contempt for struggles of the '50s and '60s, which po­ the black masses on whom they call to " Origins tentially could have taken a revolutionary 'atone.' I say black people have nothing direction given the proper leadership, and to atone jor! But the false prophets of the 'American Dream' blame the victim for !, ... the absence of any significant struggle 'f+LU.,~ Marxism not 'succeeding' and degrade the proud since that period have produced a climate history of black working people who of defeat and reaction in which the "NO, have struggled long and hard for freedom $2 (48 pages) word has gained wider "respectable" from the chains of racist oppression." public currency. The liberal and leftist Columbia University professor Manning Make checks payable/mail to: Marable, a leading figure in the social­ Spartacist Publishing Co. apologists for its usc arc both products Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 and promoters of that defeatist mood. democratic Committees of Correspon­ They reject any possibility of mass social dence, opposed the Million Man March at 21

behind him, and his "race pride" comes in the experiences of voung black men in the the form of vindictive denunciations of inner c'ity arc not' univ'c:rsal TO all hlack Jewish, Arab and Asian shopkeepers as people, and, in fact, they recllgnize that some Arrican Americans playa role in "bloodsuckers." perpetuating their oppressi'lll .... By link·· The idea of "black capitalism"-pred­ ing their identity to the "hood' instead of icated on the possibility of consolidating silllply skin color, gangs!a rappers im­ a significant black bourgeoisie in racist plicitly acknowledge rhl' limitations of racial politics." America-is both reactionary and utopian. But it expresses the outlook of that small Howevcr, [he "N" word does not denote layer of black entrepreneurs like Russell the wage slaves of the working class, but Simmons of thc Hip-Hop Summit Action the chattel slaves of the old South. Black Network (HSAN), who have "made it." workin)!·,class males (and females) who The glorification of criminality not infre­ identify with the word nhjectively deny quently promotcd in Simmons' produc­ their historic class interest~ and social tions is but the flip side or Farrakhan's power as workers and will never tran­ appeals for "atonernent"--both accept the seeml "the limitations of racial politics." racist stereotype of the ghetto poor as a Far from heing a sign of a subversive criminal underclass. "Many people who assault 011 the language of oppression, the are racist don't even know it. Part of our pervasive lise of the slave masters' epithet struggle is to take our advantage of that­ by black youth reflects a profound, if Reuters unconscious, demoralization and self­ Sinister demagogue Louis Farrakhan move that racism around, use it for your addresses 1995 Million Man March. business, your objectives," exhorts Sim­ hatred, an internalization of the demean­ mons in a 2002 interview with Marable. ing view of hlack people propagated by the time. But in "The Politics of Hip This attitude parallels what Ishmael Reed the capitalist rulers and the mass media. Hop" (Along fhe Color Line, Murch observed among some Bay Area rappers lts use represents a retreat from the fight 2002), Marahle compluins of the refusal who "come across as cynical, amoral cap­ against racism and within the working of "the liheral integrationist, middle class italists who know what turns on their class can only offend and divide. black establishment" to "engage in a con­ white suburban audience. This audience Oppression oppresses-when not com­ structive political dialogue with the hip seems to need their 'n-----' fix" (Los batted, it is internalized and re-directed hop nation" and enthuses over the NOI: Angeles Times, :3 Fcbn",ry 2002). against others among the oppressed. Mo­ town groups like the Temptations could at "The Nation of Islam has understood for decades that black culture is directly re­ Black OppreSSion and the least sing about when "there's plenty of lated to black politics. To transform an Bankruptcy of Liberalism work and the bosses arc paying" in 1965's oppressed community\ political behav­ "Since I Lost My Baby." Rap can some­ ior. one must first begin with the recon­ Marable's real perspective is Demo­ times capture the misery of life in racist struction (II' both ~ultllral and civic ,cratic Party pressure politics. Thus, he im3gination." applauds "respected rappers" who "em­ It is an indictment of the "black estab­ phasized the need to mobilize artists lishment" that they have written off a gen­ around progressive goals, such as sup­ eration of black youth. But here Marable porting voter education and registration retails the discredited notions of the '60s campaigns." In fact, Marable sits on the cultural nationalists. "Black art initiates, board of HSAN, itself nothing other than supports and promotcs chunge," wrote a vehicle to hustle the "hip-hop genera­ Ron Karenga in 1967, for whom this was tion" vote for the Democratic Partv. an explicit renunciation of the nl"ed for HSAN works closely with bourgeois pol­ thl" economic and political liberation of iticians like presidential hopeful Al blacks. In a retort applying equally well tn Sharpton, who has sought at every oppor.. Marable today, black scholar Robert tunity to channel ghetto anger against cop Allen exposed the real meaning of this and fascist terror into the confines of program in Black Awakening in Capita/-· bourgeois elcctoralism. is! America (1969): Kelley also partakes of the mood of "It has allowed a passiVe' retreat into defeat in promoting the lise of the "N" 'blackness' on the part or some of those who call themselves revolutionaries. word in hip-hop music, justifying this These so-called black revolutionaries with the grotesque implication that the measure' th(:ir militancv bv how much use of the word is actually an expression 'black awareness' they haw"or how 'bad' of class consciousness. Kelley argues they can talk. Verbal militance' thus re­ places adiol1, and the net result is passive that the use of the "N" word in hip-hop nonrcsi.'>tance to oppression." "speaks to a collective identity shaped Farrakhan's alternative to the fraud of by class consciousness, the character of liberal integrationism is to peddle segre­ inner-city space, police repression, pov­ Wide World gationist bigotry so that he and his coterie erty, and the constant threat of intraracial Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), 1967. Reactionary logic of cultural nation­ of like-minded petty-bourgeois followers violence." He concludes: "In fact. N---a is frequently employed to alism: Jones built black capitalist can gain the cxclusive "right" to exploit political machine and in 1968 col­ the ghetto for thcmselves. The "self­ distinguish urban black working-class males from the black bourgeoisie and luded with police to quell Newark respect" he otTers is the misogyny of a African Americans in positions of insti­ riots and mobilized followers to husband forcing his wife to walk tell feet tutional authority. Their point is simple: break teachers strike. 22

"These latter-day Booker T.'s have no solution to black oppression so instead they are reduced to secking their bona fides by defending the 'flexible' use of the word, which inflexibly denotes a peo­ ple rclegated to second-class status." As the comrade stressed. "For us the fight for black liberation is I-.ey to proletarian revolution in the U.S. All our comrades are women's liherationists and all our comrades arc black liberationists." American Workers Revolution Needs Black Leadership! The overwhelming feeling of power­ lessness that weighs down on ghetto youth sterns not mainly from the absence of objective opportunities for social struggle but especially from the Reuters betrayal of struggle by self-proclaimed HSAN founder Russell Simmons (second from right) and rapper Sean "P. black leaders and the existing trade­ Diddy" Combs (far right) alongside Democratic Party politicians at NYC union leadership, whose first loyalty is protest against Rockefeller drug laws. Black nationalists, liberals view hip­ to the capitalist profit system. The refu­ hop as vehicle to mobilize the youth vote for capitalist candidates. sal of the misleaders of organized labor to wage any struggle on behalf of the America, but all too much of it also glo­ derogatory and misogynous terms. ghetto and barrio poor has contributed rifies backward lumpen consciousness. Black working-class women are triply not only to the increased destitution and Retrograde language and the social atti­ oppressed under Amcrican capitalism, despair in thc inner cities but also to the tudes it betrays not only are an expression often relegated to the lowest-paying jobs devastation of the trade unions. of the reactionary ideology with which with little opportunity for advancement Today, the conditions of life for work­ the ruling class .Justifies the all-sided and demonized by the racist rulers as ing people are under increasing assault oppression endemic to capitalist class "welfare cheats" and "irresponsible" un­ as the result of a contracting economy society, whether of black people, women, wed mothers. Perhaps thc most extreme and the post··l)jll drive for "national gays or immigrants, but also reinforces form of capital ism's exploitation and unity," The situation cries out for a class­ that oppression. This finds expression degradation nf women is prostitution. So struggle right for all workers and the not only in the widespread use of the. it is symptomatic of his acceptance ot, poor~for free, quality, integrated educa­ "N" word but also in anti-gay and anti­ the inviolability of the rule of capital tion. for decent medical care and hc)Us­ woman bigotry. Hip-hop albums are lit­ that Kelley argues in Yo' Mama's Dis­ ing, for jobs for all. Despite the harden­ tered with songs·······from Jay-Z's "Big fimktional.' (1<)97) thai a prostitute i'i ing of segregation in American society Pimpin'" to Ludacris's "Move Bitch"---· "resisting what would otherwise bc her and the ems ion of union strength over referring to women in the most vilely fate in an increasingly service-oriented, the last two decades. black workers low-wage economy with shrinking op­ remain integrated into strategic scctors of portunities for working-class ghetto resi­ the industrial proletariat. including in Programmatic Statement dents." Only in a planned economy 01 the Sparlacist League/U.S. such basic services as health care, urban under a wnrkc:rs government can women transit and longshore. But to mobilize be freed from the isolation and drudgery ~ that social power in a struggle to break of the family as well a~ its accompani­ For a Workers Patty the material chains of exploitation and That Fights for a Workers GOlernment! ment~sex as a commodity. Won to the oppression requires a political struggle to cOlllmunist program, black women will break the ideological chains that bind For Socialist Revolution be in the forefront of the struggle against labor and minorities to the agencies of all aspects of capitalist oppression. in the Bastion the capitalist oppressor, chicfly the Dem­ The grotesque notion that "reclama­ Of World Imperialism! ocratic Party. As comrade Cane said in a tion" of the "N" word ameliorates racial presentation to the Bay Area Spartacus oppression speaks to the political bank­ Youth Club last year: Organizational Rules and Guidelines ruptcy of the liberal program of many of of the Spartacist League/U.S. "If we are to be the best defenders of the thc prominent black intellectuals like ghello poor. the best fighters against the Dyson and Kelley. Thcy can otTer no way Opponents of the Revolutionary prevailing conditions grinding down a Internationalist Workers Movement forward, only idealistic moralism, and it generation of black youth, we mllst face comes at the cost or disarming black reality slJuarely and combat every aspect of lurnpcn culturc that retards fnrward youth confronted by a viciolls. hostile n1l1vcIIlcnl of the work ing class. The society. Comparing such types to Booker black question is the decisive lJuestion $2 (40 pages) T. Washington, a black apologist for .lim fac:ill!~ the American workers revolu·· Crow and accommodation tn the racist tion-~the black ghetto cannot be sepa­ Make checks payable/mail to: rated out from it. Our party l1lust status quo in the late nineteenth and early Spartacist Publishing Co. sink deep roots into the working class Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 twentieth centuries. one comrade ob­ and develop a communist worker cadre. served in our pre-·conference discussion: Through the black component of this 23

have sought to bring to life the connec­ tion between labor's fight and the fight for black freedom. When some ten thou­ sand trade unionists, youth, black people and other minorities came out to ride the KKK race-terrorists out of New York City in October \999. it was a powerful display of the social power of the work­ ing class standing at the head of all the oppressed. We seek to huild a Bolshevik party in the United States~a multiracial party that fights for the liberation of the prole­ tariat and all the oppressed. Black work­ ers, specially oppressed in racist Amer­ ica and correspondingly harboring fewer illusions in bourgeois "democracy," will playa central role in this vanguard party and serve to link the anger of the down­ trodden ghetto masses to the cause of the proletariat. Only a party of the Bolshevik Photo type can lead the working class to power, During 1999 U.S. imperialist bombing of Serbia, integrated Newport News, smashing the social basis for racial op­ Virginia shipyard workers shut down production of aircraft carriers. pression and ushering in a world in which the "N" word and all the other leg­ worker cadre we seck to organize and the segregation of black people greases acies of slavery are consigned to the lead the ghetto masses in a forward march the wheels for the enslavement of the scrap heap of history. As we wrote in the against the main enemy-the capital­ ist exploiters. The tusk of revolutionary proletariat as a whole. America is a racist International Communist League "Dec­ activity is to rally thc broad milss oj" nightmare for black people, to which laration of Principles and Some Ele­ society. the widest. laYlTs, around the only the sordid history of the "N" word is ments of Program" (Sparfacist [English­ revolutionary class. the working class. testament. language edition] No. 54, Spring 1998): And hy doing so isolate the capitalists. But the racial barriers erected by the "The victory of the proletariat on a world expm,c them as social parasites. chal­ lenge their position of power and finally capitalist rulers to kcep black people "in scale would place unimagined material remove them fnlm the same." their place" and to divide black and abundance at the service of human needs, The October Revolution of 1917, led white workers can he surmounted-·in lay the basis for the elimination of by the Bolshevik Party of V. I. Lenin and the course of class struggle. In the mass classes and the eradication of social Leon Trotsky, was the greatest act of united-front anti-Klan mobilizations we inequality based on sex and the very abo­ social liberation in all history. In placing have built over the years drawing on the lition of the social significance of race, the multinational working class of Russia ~oeia! j)(\wer of thi: trade unions, we nation and ethnicity.". in power, it opened the door to the eman­ cipation of women. the many oppressed nationalities and the long-suffering Jew­ ish people. In doing so. it served as a beacon to the exploited and oppressed around the world. "Everything new on the Negro question came from Moscow:' wrote American Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon, "after the Rw.. sian Revolution began to thunder its demand throughout the world for freedom and equality for all national minorities, all subject peoples and all races .. -[or all the despised and rejected of the earth." To lead that revolution to fruition, the Bolsheviks had to forge a party free of any manifestation of the hackwardness and bigotry infecting the proletariat. Following the revolution, the workers government could begin to lift the entire population out of the material poverty and conesponding cultural mire brought on by the old order of reactioll and op­ pression. Unlike in the former Russian WV Photo tsaris! empire. a prison house of nations October 1999: Trade unionists were backbone of our NYC mobilization to into which non-Russian nationalities stop KKK race-terrorists, giving taste of social power needed to shatter were forcibly assimilated, in the U.S. capitalist system of exploitation and racist oppression. 24 reprinted from WorkeG' Vanguard No. 834, J5 Octoher 2004

A Life in the Black Panther Party A Book by Mumia Abu-Jamal

"I almost couldn't believe my eyes as I "The rewards were few. A Review by Paul Cone scanned photos of armed Black folks "Yet the freedom was hypnotic. We proclaiming their determination to fight could think freely, write freely. and act or die for the Black Revolution. freely in the world. "FOR ME, POLITICAL life beg.an with "It. would he some months before I "We knew that we were working for our the Black Panther Party. would formally join something called the people's freedom. and we loved it. "When an l)lder sister named Audrea Black Panther Party, but, in truth, I "It was the one place ill the world that it handed me a copy of The Black Panther j,oined it months before. when I saw my seemed right (0 be." newspaper around the spring. of 196X my Itrst Black Panther newspaper. mllld was promptly blown. It was as if "I joined it in my heart. Thanks to this book, the many young my dreams had awakened and strolled H! was all of fourteen years old." hlack men and women whom the FBI into my reality. We Want Freedom is ~ firsthand account warned about "succumhing to revolu­ ':I read and reread the issue, tenderly of life in the Black Panther Party (BPP) tionary teachings" are no longer "name­ IIng.enng. each pag.e as i r it were the less" and "faceless" as the racist exploit­ onion-skinned. tissue-like leaf of a holy by death row political prisoner Mumia book. My eyes drank in the images of Abu-Jamal. The story Jamal tells is that ers have tried to make them. young Black men and WOlllen, theil· slim of the Panthers' foot soldiers. the very We Wan! Freedom tells the story of and splendid bodies clothed in black young men and women, like himself, who the Black Panther Party's origins and sub­ leather. their hrcasts bedecked with hut­ devoted their lives to the cause of revolu­ sequent destruction less than a decade tons proclaiming rehellion. resistance. later through the viciolls COINTELPRO and revolution. tionary struggle against hlack oppression. Jamal dedicates this book in part "To (Counter-Intelligence Program) campaign, those young idealistic souls who wore the inflamed hy internal factionalism. Jamal black and the hlue. To those who sold gives personal reminiscences of ihe Phil­ papers in the dead of night, in smoky adelphia chapter. of which he was a found­ bars, and in the freezing grips of the wind ing member and Lieutenant of Infor­ (especially in the East). To those loving mation. Jamal descrihes with pride and women and sensitive men who rose from passion the free breakfast and other com­ their beds at five a.m. to prepare hot munity programs with which the Panthers breakfasts for schoolchildren from coast sought to "serve the people." He tells of to coast." how the Black Panthers defied the racist Jamal's book captures the finest qual­ rulers by expressing solidarity with the ities that arc emhodied in militant fighters Vietnamese and Cuban Revolutions, in­ for the oppressed and exploited. Mumia cluding their hold oller to send troops to recalls: fight alongside the Vietnamese against "The days were long. hloody U.S. imperialism. "The risks were substantial. Most compelling in this powerful book Free Mumia! Abolish the

eae Productions Racist Death Penalty! Mumia Abu-Jamal 25

Q) . are Jamal's accounts of the young men C ::J ·and especially women, born of poverty n f'= in the hellish American ghettos, who o Ol joined the fight for black freedom. There .S' .c'" was Regina Jennings, a drug-addicted U 16-year-old who after hopping a plane in Philadelphia stormed into the Oakland 1969: Chicago office demanding to join the party­ police and FBI which took her in a few days later brutally killed and helped her kick her habit. Jamal Panther leaders quotes Naima Major, who as a 17-year­ Fred Hampton old National Negro Scholar shunned col­ (inset) and Mark lege to travel to Oakland to join the Pan­ Clark. Blood­ ~I. thers. "Devoted to the hlack revolution soaked mattress t and the ten point program, I commenced on which II) with baby in sling to doing the hard com­ Hampton was sleeping (right). munity work required of all Panthers, II organizing poor women like myself, plan­ ning and supporting free schools, writing letters for people who couldn't write, demanding decent housing for people ing on their history, depending on their vised its agents that since the "purpose who Were afraid of the landlord, helping political orientation. The prosecutor knew ... is to disrupt ... it is immaterial whether get the newspaper out, health cadres, that exceedingly well .... I saw when it hit facts exist to suhstantiate the charge." food cadres, you name it. Did some dan­ the jury, it was Iikc a bolt of electricity." In 1969, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover gerous work too, and studied Hegel, To secure the death sentence for Jamal, vowed, "The Negro youth and moder­ Marx, Lenin, Panon, Mao like a religious prosecutor Joseph McGill inflamed the ate[sJ must be made to understand that if zealot." nearly all-white jury with the grotesque lie they succumb to revolutionary teachings, We Want Freedom provides a riveting that Jamal's membership in the Panthers they will be dead revolutionaries." Under account of the campaign of terror leveled as a teenager proved he was a committed the ruthless COINTELPRO vendetta 3g at Jamal and his comrades by the FBI and cop killcr who had been planning to kill a Pantbcrs were killed and hundreds more cops, who were determined to destroy the cop for 12 years. As readers of this book railroaded to scores of years in prison Panthers by any means necessary. Mumia will see, and as confirmed by M umia's hellholes. devotes a chapter to the FBI's deadly own COINTELI'RO files, it was the kill­ The young men and women Mumia COINTELPRO, noting, "The Bureau used erazy Feds and Philly cops who planned to describes lived with the awareness that its enormous power, influence, and con­ get Jamal "all tIlt' way back thcll·'---i.e., cverv day could be their last. After Fred tacts to intimidate politicians. It used the from 1 May I l)6\), when he and his COIl\­ Hampl

included on the Security Index." Jamal was targeted for more than sur­ veillance. His name was placed on two government hit lists: The FBI's Secur­ Philadelphia: ity Index (SI) of those deemed a "threat" to Black Panthers "national security" and the Administrative dragged onto Index (AD EX) of those to be rounded up the street, and thrown into concentration camps in forced to strip and searched case of a "national emergency." Many of at gunpoint in the documents hear the notation "Smith 1970 raid under Act," the notorious "thought crimes" legis­ notorious police lation under which first Trotskyists and commiSSioner, then Communist Party members were sent later mayor, to prison for "advocating" revolution. Frank Rizzo. Despite the FBI's acknowledgement that lamal "has not displayed a pro­ pensity for violence" and was not once Black Panther Party leadership meetilig and many documents withheld outright, found with a gun throughout this period in Oakland. From the prosecutors' ollice, over 700 pages of FBI files obtained for of intense surveillance, the files regularly to the august judges' chambers up to the Jamal by the Partisan Defense Commit­ labeled him "Armed and Dangerous"-a governor's mansion, many high-ranking tee make it clear that the FBI and cops license for the cops and G-men to shoot California officials in the I 970s-S0s built were on a mission to use any "dirty trick" first and ask questions later. And they and maintained their careers on the war to silence the man who would become finally did shoot him, in the early morn­ against the Panthers and the frame-up of known as the "voice of the voiceless." ing of 9 December 1981. History is not Geronimo, who was then America's fore­ Using its wiretaps, its informants and a conspiracy, but there are conspiracies most elass-war prisoner. police spies, the government relentlessly in history. We are not saying that the lamal quotes Philadelphia Panther pursued him at demonstrations, news­ cops who were at the scene the night of leader Reggie Schell describing one of paper sales, political meetings and fund­ the cop raids on the Philty Panther raisers-even at picnics. They knew offices. Mumia recalls his arrl~st and days when he was to leave town and when he in jail for jaywalking on his way to sell was to n:turn, intercepting him as he the Black Panther newspaper in the boarded a flight and engaging in physical streets of Oakland; how the Feds were ohservation of returning flights. The Feds waiting for him as he was ahout to board interrogated school officials, contacted a plane for California, (lnly to be frus­ employers, harassed .Jamal's mother. trated when their sl'arch revealed he had In one typical four-week period in the nothing that could even he claimed to be summer of 1969, the FBI files include: a a weapon. (.Iamal was once reprimanded memorandum dated August 11 reporting by a Panther cadre for falling asleep duro that Jamal spoke at a Hiroshima Day rally ing guard duty.) Mumia also citcs an in Philadelphia; a Civil Disobedience account by L.A. Panther Flores Forbes of Unit (CDU) report on the same rally, also frequent "faux attacks" hy the LAPD, dated August 11; two "ainels" to the FBI complete with hovering police helicop­ director, dated August 14; an August 14 ters designed to shatter the nel ves of indi· "FBI Notice"; an August 19 "Government vidual Panthers: "The house started to Memorandum," again on the Hiroshima George Fencl (right), head of Phil­ rattle. The trees in our yard and across the Day rally; and a September 4 FBI report adelphia Police Department's Civil street started to swirl." And, as lamal on a Socialist Workers Party campaign Disobedience Unit, which aSSisted describes, the cops had their ()wn special rally where Mumia "spoke against the FBI COINTELPRO operation against targets. One of those in I .. A. was Paul 'pigs' ," followed by a cover note dated Panthers. Redd, a talented artist whose highly Septcmber 5 specillcally identifying "Wes­ praised work graced the pages of the ley Cook. aka Wes Mumia." 9 December 19S I knew Jamal was going Black Panthl'!" newspaper. When the The files are replete with clippings of to he there. But they were there and had LAPD realized who he was upon arrest, Black Panther articles written by .Iamal thc chance they had long awaited. The they broke the fingers of his right hand. and reports of his public speeches. It was subsequent triaL conviction and death Without doubt Jamal. identil'ied in the Jamal's noticeable talent as a young rev­ sentence was a political frame-up pure FBI files as llllC of Ihc top three lead­ olutionary journalist and propagandist and simple, the culmination of a decade ers in the Philadelphia BPI', was a prime that attracted so much FBI attention. A of efforts to "neutralize" Jamal. target of Frank Rizzo's racist thugs in bluc. 14 October 1969 report on .Iamal urged The FBI reeords arc only the tip of the The Feds decided to open a dossier on that he he placed under high-level surveil­ ieeherg. During the 1960s and '70s the Jamal when he participated in the I May lance: '''In spite of the subject's age (15 Philly cops kept their own voluminous 1969 "Free Huey', demonstration. From years), Philadelphia feels that his contin­ files-none of which have been made that day on a steady stream of memoranda, ued participation in BPI' activities in the availahle-on some 18,000 people! There letters, "airtels" and "nitels" between FRI Philadelphia Division, his position in the was extensive collusion hetween the FBI headquarters and its field agents tracked Philadelphia branch of the 13PP, and his and Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia Police MUl1lia's every political move. past inclination to appear and speak at Department. Document after document in Even with much of the text blacked out public gatherings, the subject should be the FBI files lists as its source unidentified 27 cops from the CDU or Intelligence Divi­ lived in a collectivc home with other social equality within the confines of sion. According to Rizzo's biographer, Panthers, workcd long and hard days racist American' capitalism-revolution­ (and sometimes nights) doing necessary S.A. Paolantonio, the Philadelphia CDU Party work without pay, and owned noth­ ary integrationism is premised on the led by George Fencl "had a steady stream ing .... The average Panther rose at dawn understanding that black freedom re­ of informers paid by the Federal Bureau and retired at dusk and did whatever job quires smashing the capitalist system and of Investigation. In fact, when the FBI needed to be done to keep the programs constructing an egalitarian socialist soci­ began its counterintel1igence program going for the people, from brothers and ety. As we elaborated in "Black and Red sisters cooking breakfast for the school (COINTELPRO), the agency used Fencl's kids, to going door-to-door to gather sig­ -Class Struggle Road to Negro Free­ CD squad as a model." natures for petitions, to gathering clothes dom," adopted at the founding confer­ Though COINTELPRO supposedly for the free clothing program, to procur­ ence of the Spartacist League in 1966: ended in the mid 1970s, the government ing donated supplies from neighboring "The vast majority of black people­ merchanb." vendetta against Geronimo, Dhoruba bin both North and South-arc today work­ ers who, along with the rest of the Amer­ Wahad, Assata Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, We Want Freedom is a must read, not ican working class, must sell their labor Mondo we Langa, Ed Poindexter, Mtulu only as a necessary aid in mobilizing power in order to secure the necessities Shakur, Sekou Odinga, Delbert Orr Africa support for Jamal's fight for freedom. We of life from those who buy labor power and many others never ended. As much as pay tribute to this book on the only radi­ in order to make proHI.. .. Ultimately their the prosecutors, Democratic and Repub­ cal black organization in our times that road to freedom lies only through strug­ gle with the rest of the working class to lican governors, press corps and judges didn't crawl to the capitalist oppressors. abolish capitalism and establish in its try to pass off Jamal's case as a simple At the same time, we state our fundamen­ place an egalitarian, socialist society. criminal trial, its real basis is captured in tally counterposed proletarian revolution­ "Yet the struggle of the black people of a brief exchange in the trial transcript. ary program as distinct from even the this country for freedom, while part of Anyone who has sat through a criminal most "just" nationalism, as Y.I. Lenin, the struggle of the working class as a whole, is more than that struggle. The trial is aware that it is highly irrcgular leader of the October 1917 Russian Rev­ Negro people are an oppressed race­ for the judge to stop the proceedings olution, put it. color caste, in the main comprising the to answer the phone. In June 1982, The Black Panther Party represented most exploited layer of the American when Jamal was on trial for his life, the best of a generation of black mi litants working class .... Because of their posi­ the proceedings were interrupted just as tion as both the most oppressed and also who courageously stood up to the racist the most conscious and experienced sec­ the prosecution's key witness, prostitute ruling class and its kill-crazy cops. They tion, revolutionary black workers are Cynthia White, was about to testify: embodied the hopes and aspirations for slated to play an exceptional role in the "'TilE COURT: Just a minutc. "cncl is black freedom of an entire generation coming American revolution." on thc phonc. who sought to strip away the sense of -reprinted in Spartacist No. 10, "MR. McGILL: Off the rccord. May-June 1967 "(A discussion was held off the record.) powerlessness and hopelessness of the "TilE COURT: Did you work it out? oppressed black masses, particularly in The Black Panther Party "MR. McGILL: There's no problem." relation to the impunity of the cops in Formed in 1966 by Huey P. Newton As the Partisan Defense Committee gunning down blacks on the streets of and Bobby Seale, the BPP was a direct wrote in a special Jamal campaign issue Oakland, and throughout America. But, response to the failure of the liberal, pro­ of Class-Struggle DeFense Notes (No.1 0, from its inception, the BPP was based Democratic Party civil rights movement April 1989): upon a contradiction: on the one hand, a to seriously challenge the nature of black "The death sentence for Mumia is the subjective identification with the most oppression when that movement went long arm or COINTELI'RO terror reach­ oppressed black people (the working poor, North in the mid '60s. It was clear to all ing into thc courtroom. This time they the unemployed, welfare recipients, etc.), got him. Mumia has been sentenced to that the ghetto uprisings of the mid 1960s death because of his political beliefs, whose fundamental oppression under cap­ because of what he wrote, because of italism clearly could not be solved or even what he said, because of who he 'associ­ much alleviated by a few small and rever­ ated' with-and because of who he is." sible liberal reforms; and on the other The capitalist rulers want to see hand, the ideology of black nationalism, Mumia dead because they see in this elo­ which denied the class basis of society quent journalist, MOVE supporter and and social struggle and opened the door former Panther spokesman the spectre of to the BPP becoming merely another black revolution, defiant opposition to pressure group seeking to play the ethnic their system of racist oppression. They politics game of competing for a bigger seek to execute Jamal in order to send a "slice of the pie" within the status quo. ehil1ing message to al1 those who chal­ Black people in the U.S. are not a lenge vicious cop repression in the ghet­ nation .. They are an oppressed race-color tos, who stand up for labor's rights on caste segregated at the bottom of society, the picket lines, who protest imperialist while forming a strategic part of the mass murder from the Balkans to Iraq. working class. The fight for black free­ Trade unionists, opponents of racist op­ dom is the strategic question of the Amer­ pression and al1 opponents of the Jim ican revolution. There will be no social Crow death penalty must mobilize to revolution in this country without the Free Mumia Now! united struggle of black and white work­ The Best of a Generation ers led by their multiracial vanguard party, of Black Militants As revolutionary Marxists we stand on $.50 (32 pages) the perspective of revolutionary integra­ Order from/pay to: "The average young man or woman in Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, the Black Panther Party was between tion. Counterposed to liberal integration seventeen and twenty-two ycars old, -the false view that blacks can achieve Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013

-----~..._..."' __ ,__ "'~ .... ""''''''.'''''' ... ·.'''·.''''''''._.'"'I""'''''''''.",°"'111""'''11 111,,,,,,," "'''' ''I''l ' , 28

when it suited their current appetites. They were shaped by a unique histori­ cal conjuncture both within the U.S. and internationally-a period that saw Afri­ can nations winning their formal inde­ pendence, Castro's peasant guerrilla forces toppling the U.S. puppet Batista regime and the heroic Vietnamese battlefield victories against the American military behemoth. In their public and internal communica­ tions, the Panthers compared themselves to Mao's peasant-based guerrilla army in the Chinese civil war and to the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front. In Panthers hold particular, they looked to the writings of armed demonstration Frantz Fanon, a West Indian intellectual against Mulford and champion of the Algerian independ­ gun control bill in ence struggle. Fanon's emphasis on the Sacramento, cathartic role of violence became for the May 1967. Panthers the basis of their talk of urban guerrilla warfare. Jamal quotes Kathleen Cleaver: Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth became essential reading for Black revo­ lutionaries in America and profoundly influenced their thinking. Fanon's analy­ sis seemed to explain and to justify marked the end of the old civil rights Sacramento. The Panthers came to protest the spontaneous violence ravaging Black movement, with the most militant blacks the Mulford Bill, which was referred to in ghettoes across the country, and linked embracing the call for '"Black Power" the local press at the time as the "Panther the incipient insurrections to the rise of a seeking to lInd a way out of the racist hell bill." Before that it was legal in Califor­ revolutionary movement." of American capitalism. Jamal is explicit: nia to carry a loaded weapon in public as Rather than recognizing the ghetto out­ "The Black Panther Party came into exis­ long as it wasn't concealed. bursts for what they were-the final spasm tence, not to support or supplement the Uncertain of how much support the of frustration and fury in the wake of a major civil rights organizations, but to Panthers had in the ghetto, the cops at movement that had raised great hopes supplant them." He describes "ghetto first demurred. But beginning with the and activated enormous energy only to youth who had simmered under the glare wounding and jailing of Newton in Octo­ accomplish little-wishful-thinking left­ of overtly racist cops. They longed to join ber 1967, and gaining steam with the' ists saw in the ghetto-police battles the the swelling Civil Rights movement, but killing of Bobby Hutton in April 1968, beginning of mass revolutionary violence had not because they could not bear to local cops and the FBI, operating in many which presumably had merely to be organ­ join any group which would meekly sub­ cases with the assistance of "cultural ized to be made effective. The notion that mit to racist violence, as demanded by nationalist" groups (for example, the 1969 the ghetto was a base for urban guerrilla some civil rights organizations." Many of murder of Los Angeles Panthers by mem­ warfare was common not only among these militants were inspired by Mal­ bers of Ron Karenga's US organization), black nationalists, but was accepted by colm X. Although not a Marxist basing launched a coordinated national cam­ most of the left. What distinguished the himself upon working-class struggle, Mal­ paign to wipe out the Panthers. The FBI's Panthers was their willingness to face jail cohn advocated armed black self-defense J. Edgar Hoover labeled the Panthers the and even death for this theory. against racist attacks, and opposed the "greatest threat to the internal security of The ghetto uprisings did not give the deceitful, venal and treacherous Demo­ the U.S." To kill Panthers the FBI revived black masses a sense of their own power. cratic and Republican politicians. COINTELPRO, the counterintelligence They did just the opposite. It was black The Panthers gained notoriety for their program that was originally implemented peoples' own homes that were burned armed police monitoring patrols, in in 1956 against the Communist Party, and down. The cops went on a killing ram­ which Panthers bearing loaded weapons, unleashed the most savage and systematic page. These proved that police brutality law books, cameras and tape recorders campaign of racist state terror in modern was not an isolated injustice that could would approach traffic stops to make sure American history. Some 233 of295 COIN­ be eliminated through militant action. the cops didn't brutalize their black vic­ TELPRO actions against black organiza­ The cops are an essential part of the tims and that the latter were informed of tions were against the Panthers. armed force of the capitalist state; if their rights. In April 1967, the Panthers In comparison to other black national­ defeated locally, they came back with the held an armed rally in Richmond, Cali­ ist organizations of the 1960s, the Pan­ National Guard or Army. To drive and fornia, to protest the killing of 22-year­ thers sought to organize independently of keep out the cops from the ghettos is old Denzil Dowell by a white deputy the Democrats and Republicans. But as equivalent to overthrowing the American sheriff and faced the cops down. National eclectic and contradictory radical nation­ state. As long as the majority of white attention came later that year when, dem­ alists, their outlook was variously influ­ workers remained loyal or only passively onstrating their defiance of the racist enced by the teachings of Malcolm X, hostile to the government, black activism bourgeois order, the Panthers showed up Che Guevara, Marx, Lenin, Stalin and could not liberate the ghetto. armed at the California state capitol in Mao-a grab bag from which to choose Fanon's writings played a significant 29

part in the Panthers' belief that the wealth, which is only possible with the lumpenproletariat, especially street-wise expropriation of the bloodsucking capi­ ghetto youth, were the vanguard of the talist class as a whole and the creation of American revolution. We warned at the a workers state in which those who labor time that "a political movement which rule-a workers state where production isolates itself in a social milieu hostile to is based on human need, not profits. normal work-a-day society must become This can only be accomplished through irresponsible, individualistic, and ulti­ a socialist revolution to overthrow the mately cynical and contemptuous of the capitalist order and its state, which exists mass of working people" ("Rise and Fall to defend the class dictatorship of the of the Panthers: End of the Black Power' bourgeoisie. And only the multiracial Era," WV No.4, January 1972). In the working class has the power to do that. end, the Panthers were destroyed not Based on its role in producing the wealth only by police terror from without but a of this society, it is only the industrial murderous internal factionalism inflamed proletariat which has both the social interest and power to bring down this rot­ by COINTELPRO provocations. Time The Panthers never found the only road Frantz Fanon. His book, T,he Wretched ten capitalist order. leading to the destruction of the racist of the Earth, had strong influence on The crackdown on the Panthers did not bourgeois order-the multiracial prole­ Panther leaders. provoke mass ghetto rebellions, but a tariat. As self-described "revolutionary rapid lurch to the right. Isolated, with nationalists" the Panthers shared with the the ruling class." Jamal attributes its "fail­ repression bearing down on them, the predominantly white New Left a rejec­ ure" to the fact that white radicals weren't Panthers shifted their focus to legal tion of the centrality and strategic social prepared to make a revolution. Mumia defense work in an effort to gain the power of the integrated labor movement asks: "Were millions of white youth, no broadest possible support. The Panther in the struggle against brutal racial op­ matter what they claimed their political or alliances with white radicals were not pression and imperialist war as well as ideological persuasions, really ready to motivated by the realization that Ameri­ capitalist exploitation. embark on a revolution, one that did not can society could only be revolutionized There was a palpable basis to link the prize whiteness?" This notion of white by an integrated working-class move­ ghetto to the factories to wage a mili­ skin privilege, which was the common ment, but because they sought support for tant struggle against the killer cops. This coin for the New Left's rejection of the their defense campaign. In 1968 Eldridge required a class-struggle leadership of the American proletariat as a revolutionary Cleaver ran for president on the liberal labor movement. In 1970 the postal work­ factor, wears pretty thin after 25 years of Peace and Freedom Party ticket. A key ers had the first national strike against attacks on the living standards of all role in the rightward degeneration and the federal government. Auto plants were workers in the U.S .. ushered in by the fir­ demise of the BPP was played by the cyn­ seething with rebellions. In 1969, the Pan­ ing of the entire PATCO air traffic con­ ical operators of the Communist Party thers briefly formed a caucus at the Fre­ trollers union in 1981, and exemplified by (CP). Beginning in 1969, the CP influ­ mont, California OM plant and even put the imprisonment of steel worker Bob enced the Panther leadership in launching out a few issues of a plant newspaper. Buck and coal miner Jerry Dale Lowe. a "united front against fascism," an attempt Panther Chief of Staff David Hilliard had The Panthers' ten-point program of to create an alliance of everyone to the left been a longshoreman for a while, and his mildly liberal reforms called on the gov­ of the Nixon-Agnew administration on an brother June, a party member, was a city ernment for reparations, wanted the edu­ essentially civil libertarian basis. A few bus driver. The Panthers knew there were cational system to teach the "true history" years later, Newton & Co. were talking white workers at a union oil facility of black and oppressed people in this about the relevance of the black church whose heads were being beaten by the country, and yxpressed the Panthers' illu­ and black capitalism. In 1973 Bobby Seale scabherding cops, workers who took up sions in the United Nations den of impe­ ran for mayor as a Democrat and in 1976 the Panthers' characterizations of the rialist thieves and their victims. Just a Newton joined the NAACP. cops as "pigs." But, instead, the Panthers 'few years after the UN's well-known dirty In 1971 the Panthers suffered a split turned to "community work"-Iocal pro­ role in the assassination of Congo nation­ between the more overtly reformist, pro­ grams which seek at best to partially ame­ alist leader Patrice Lumumba, the Pan­ Democratic majority Newton wing and liorate some of the deprivations of ghetto thers' program called for a UN-supervised the urban guerrilla warfare Cleaver wing life without challenging the material basis plebiscite for black people to determine -a split characterized by murderous for black oppression-a substitute for the "their national destiny." The Panthers also internal factionalism, and inflamed by fight to win the working class to take up called for an end to police brutality and COINTELPRO provocations. Both of the the struggle for black freedom. In doing petitioned for community control of the factions sent their supporters onto the so, they ceded the terrain to the reformist police, combining liberal illusions over streets to murder each other. Jamal's book black misleaders and the labor lieutenants the nature of the bourgeois state with cites Panthers who went underground for of capital, the trade-union bureaucracy. black nationalist illusions that the oppres­ safety not just from the state, but from The genuine radicalism and personal sion of black people can be ended through other Panthers. courage of many Panthers were combined "control" of ghetto institutions. with illusions in the reformability of the Even if it could be accomplished, black For a Revolutionary racist capitalist system. One example is "control" of the impoverished ghettos Workers Party to Fight for the 1970 Revolutionary People's Consti­ could not put an end to the endemic a Workers Government! tutional Convention, a meeting in Phila­ poverty, joblessness, crime, dilapidated Though the Panthers self-consciously delphia called to bring together a variety housing, broken-down schools and drug fashioned themselves as a vanguard party, of left organizations and activists to adopt addiction born of despair. This requires they were not. The Panthers were New a "constitution that serves the people, not a massive reallocation of resources and Left sectoralists. Their program was that 30 blacks would liberate blacks, Hispanics would liberate Hispanics, and so on. As opposed to sectoralism, which is a strat­ egy for dividing the ranks of the future proletarian army fighting for state power, a Leninist vanguard party is a tribune of the people, which fights against all as­ pects of social oppression on the basis of an internationalist revolutionary program. Jamal describes the Panthers as a woman's party, and gives compelling por­ traits of women who played leading roles and were the key to running the party in various capacities in spite of the obstacles in their way. However, just because New­ ton issued a proclamation of the necessity for women's and gay liberation didn't mean that the Black Panther Party was a tribune of the people. The Panthers were heavily influenced by lumpen ideology. Some women chose to leave the Panthers because the male chauvinism was suffo­ cating. This is not to deny the heroic role Philadelphia, 14 July 1990: POe-initiated united-front rally in defense of Jamal. played by women who chose to remain in the ranks of the Panthers and function as not build a revolutionary party on the cratic Party. [n an "Open Letter to the leaders no matter what. basis of hero-worship and glorification Ranks of the Black Panther Party on the It is impossible to have a program of a street-gang mentality. It is tragic that Oakland Elections" (WV No. 18, April for the liberation of women divorced the Panthers were destroyed by bloody 1(73), we wrote that we could not from a proletarian revolutionary program state repression, and therc was no revo­ give electoral critical support to the Pan­ to abolish the roots of women's oppres­ lutionary party sizable enough to win the thers, asking, "How is it that your party, sion: the system of private property best of these radical black youth. We which once claimed to seek a revolu­ in the means of production. The Bolshe­ tried. In the late '60s and early '70s the tionary transformation of society, can viks of Lenin and Trotsky were intran­ Panthers were so sacrosanct in radical now support candidates who are mem­ sigent fighters for women's liberation circles that any criticism of them was bers of the Democratic Party-the party as an indispensable part of the fight for met with shrill accusatil)ns of raeism. In of war, racism and repression-and run the emancipation of the working class 'the face of the widespread hero-worship as Democrats yourselves"!" We offered from exploitation. The material basis of of Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and other that if the BPP broke with both the par­ women's oppression lies in the institu­ leaders, the Spartacist League polemi­ ties of capital and its own policies of tion of the family. Without an energetic cized against the Panthers' notion of class collahoration we could offer critical and implacahle struggle for women's lumpen vanguard ism and argued that support for their election campaign: "We equality the proletarian struggle against black nationalism, even in its most radi­ hope that you comrades will recognize the rule of capital cannot succeed. cal form. was a utopian dead end. We the disastrous right turn of the Black With their military posturings, the also denounced the physical gangsterism Panther Party and will struggle to replace Panthers were easy pickings for the mass against other leftists and challenged the the present BPP line of support for black murderers of U.S. imperialism. You can- BPP's rightward plunge into the Demo- Democrats, black churches, black cops and black capitalists with a revolutionary working-class perspective." rcillli ••U;'i~-;;· i.~·f.~;;;~~ I . ~ o"" •• il'.~.. Despite our political differences, we ~!~!'~~%i.dimJ~di.J#3AA:f#iH.~!.!! defended the Panthers against state re­ r . muJtt.ftli1Htitjll,,,i!i.lititltmm . pression-including after their left cheer­ The POC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal leaders had long jumped ship-and we and social defense organization which champions .Free Mumia ..Abu-Jamal! : cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the continue to do so today. The Partisan working people. This purpose is in accordance with Defense Committee provides monthly the pOlitical views of the Spartacist League. stipends to Mondo we Langa, Ed Poin­ The POC sends monthly stipends of $25 to dexter and Mumia, for whom we have class-war prisoners. waged a 17 -year campaign for his life and freedom, producing pamphlets and a POC sustainers receive Class-Struggle Defense Notes. L:.!~~~:::~~~~~j video and introducing his case to unions o I pledge $ __ per month. around the world. We seek to build the Name ______Telephone ______revolutionary party that will lead the Addrnss ______working class to power through smashing this decrepit, racist capitalist system. In ______E-mail ______an American workers state, We Want Freedom will be given the highest honor POC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, NY, NY 10013-0099 in the people's libraries and classrooms. Read this book .• 31

VJ.)~ The first Labor Black Leagues were L.1periillis~_ formed as a result of the Spartacist H£mdsOff League-initiated, 5,OOO-strong labor/ Af'lh{u{I!."h~n, black mobilization that stopped the Ku Klux Klan from marching in Washing­ -Inl"f ton, D.C. in November 1982. We stand !.AL'X'~ BLACK Uill'l!f for mobilizing the masses of minority F:->R ::'iifj,V. Dill '1St: and working people in militant inte­ grated struggle against the brutal system of racist oppression that is cap­ italist America. Initiated by and frater­ nally allied with the Spartacist League, a multiracial revolutionary Marxist organization, the Labor Black Leagues are part of the revolutionary movement of the workers and oppressed against the bosses and for socialism.

If You Stand For- 8 Unconditional opposition to every attempt to abolish welfare! Down with slave-labor, union-busting "workfare" schemes! Full rights fur black people and for everyone else in jobs, 1 Fight any and every attempt of the government to take away or housing and schools! Defeat the racist assault on affirmative cut back even more social programs such as Social Security, action! For union-run minority job recruitment and training pro­ Medicare, Medicaid, public health and aid to education and grams! For union hiring halls! Open up the universities to all­ housing! For a massive program of public works-high-quality for open admissions, free tuition and a full living stipend for all integrated housing, schools, libraries, hospitals for the working students. Free, quality, integrated public education for all! people and the poor! 2 A fighting labor movement-picket lines mean don't cross! Defeat police scabherding and strikebreaking through mass 9 Down with the chauvinist poison of protectionism! For inter­ pickets and union defense guards! For sit-down strikes against national working-class solidarity! Support revolutionary strug­ mass layoffs! Fight union-busting; keep the capitalist courts out gles of working people abroad! Defend the deformed workers of the unions! Organize the unorganized, unionize the South! states-Cuba, Vietnam, China and North Korea-against cap­ Jobs for all-for a shorter workweek at no loss in pay with full italist restoration and imperialist attack! For proletarian political cost-of-living escalator clause! Cops, prison guards and security revolution to oust their Stalinist bureaucracies! For labor action guards out of the unions! against' U.S. imperialist war moves and military adventures! For the right of independence for Puerto Rico! U.S. troops out of 3 Fight for women's rights! Defend abortion clinics! Free abor­ Puerto Rico and the Caribbean! tion on demand; free. quality 24-hour childc'are! Equal pay for equal work! For free. quality health care for all! 10 Down with the Democrats and Republicans! For a revolu­ tionary workers party that champions the cause of all the Full citizenship rights for all immigrants; everyone who 4 oppressed! Finish the Civil War! Those who labor must rule! made it into this country has the right to stay and live decently! For a workers government to take industry away from its racist, Stop deportations! No to racist "English only" laws! Down with incompetent and corrupt owners! Rebuild America on a socialist anti-Hispanic, anti-Semitic, anti-Arab and anti-Asian bigotry! planned economy! 5 Defend the separation of church and state! Full democratic rights for homosexuals! Down with the anti-sex witchhunt­ -Join the Labor Black Leagues! cops and courts out of the bedroom! Down with all laws against consensual activities such as "crimes without victims" like Membership pledge is $3/year unemployed; $1 O/year employed. pornography, gambling, drugs and prostitution! For more information, contact: 6 Mass labor/black/Hispanic mobilizations drawing on the CHICAGO (312) 563-0441 power of the unions against the racist terrorists, Stop the Nazis! Stop the KKK! Labor Black Struggle League, Box 6938, Chicago, IL 60680 7 Abolish the racist death penalty! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! NEW YORK (212) 267-1025 Free all victims of racist capitalist repression! No faith in the capitalist courts! No to gun control! Defend victims of cop terror Labor Black League for Social Defense and racist police frame-up! No illusions in civilian review Box 2502, Church St. Station, New York, NY 10008 boards or community control of the police! Down with the racist and anti-labor "war on drugs'" For decriminalization of OAKLAND (510) 839-0851 drugs! For class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense; Labor Black League for Social Defense support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee! Box 29497, Oakland, CA 94604 32 reprintedj;"OIn Worker:s' Vanguard No. 824, 16 April 2004

For Free Abortion on Demand! WI' I}rinl helo\\' (/ .liml/71 givel1 hy com­ rade Karcll Colc al Collllnhia Ullil'crsilv 011 March 9. slightlv cdilcdjilrl)[lhIiClltiull. The right to an abortion is no more than a democratic right to a simple and safe medical procedure. We say it should be free on demand as part of free. 4uality health care. Providing women with the means for deciding when and if they want to have children is basic to the fight for women's e4uality. Why is such an issue so explosive in the U.S. today? AIlLlwing women sexual freedom. just like legiti­ mizing homosexual relations and allow­ ing independenee to youth in their sexual relations, is a threat to the institution of the family. a bastion of social reaction which, along with organized religion. reinforces authority and conservatism and props up the capitalist system. Any 4ues­ tion relating to sex-particularly sex and race-instantly inllames social reaction. Spartacist contingent at 20 March 2004 demonstration, San Francisco. You have to step hack and have a his­ torical materialist view to understand how concerned have heen evolved, and in the basic rights. When in October the House we got here. Otherwise. you are not polit­ light 01 which they must, therefore, he passed the ban on a seldom-used abortion explained, instead oll'ice vcrso. as had ically armed to fight against the pseudo­ procedure, grotesquely dubbed "partial­ intellectual babble you hear every day in hitherto been the casc." ---"Speech at the Graveside of birth abortion" by the anti-ahortion big­ the classroom and from the capitalist Karl Marx" ( 17 March I x:·n) ots, there wasa dearth of organized dem­ media that the cruelties and injustices of Today, marriage, the family and the onstrations by the "pro-choice" feminists society are "inevitable," that you are social role~ defined therein of men, and liberals. Predictahly, the "pro-choice" inherently at fault for being poor, that women and children arc not preordained liberals launched a court suit. playing into competition and war are a given. When but must be studied in their manmade his­ the right-wing's logic by basing the suit you touch the issue of tht: special oppres­ torical context. Everything about marriage solely on the fact that there is no excep­ sion of women. you get heavy doses of in capitalist class society has to do with tion made for saving the life of the religious claptrap with words like "moral­ "state institutions" and "legal concep­ mother, which was Clinton's position. ity" and "tradition," "natural instincts," tions"--access (0 health insurance, inher­ John Ashcroft's Justice Department and, of course. "family values'." Ilistorical itance, visitation rights, custody rights, took the cue and has ominously subpoe­ materialism must be studied. Friedrich Social Security, immigration rights and naed hundreds of private medical records Engels explained the coneept succinctly: property ownership rights in general. We of legal abortions from hospitals and "Marx discovered the law of develop­ ment of human history: the simple fact, live in the epoeh of imperialist decay Planned Parenthood clinics. Not only hitherto concealed hy an overgrowth of where in America, alongside unprece­ do they want records of any second­ ideology, that mankind must first of all dented wealth for a few, there is mass trimester abortion that may have had cat. drink, have shelter and clothing, unemployment, exploding prison popula­ medical complications, but they want the before it can pursue politics. science, art. religion. etc.; that therefore the produc­ tions, deteriorating health care, evaporat­ names of doctors who have performed tion of the immediatc material means of ing pen~i()ns and Social Security and the any type or abortions in order to further subsistencc and consequently the degree slashing of social welfare services. There­ the goal of banning all abortions-as of economic development attained hy a fore, we welcome any gains that can be part of an unremitting campaign to roll given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the ,tate in­ won from this cruelly bigoted system. back the hard-fought gains of labor, stitutions, the legal conceptions, art, and Almost every day in the news, another women and black people that sprang not even the ideas on religion, of the people front is opened to challenge women's only from the civil rights movement, 33 . but go back to the union struggles of ;;: o() the 1l)30s. n; () A Doctors and nurses who have bravely CD provided abortion services face murder­ ;,::J (l) ::J ous attacks from the woman-hating big­ if> ots all over the country. In Wichita, Kan­ () '"o sas, Dr. Georgc Tiller has been providing iii' z (l) abortions for 31 years. Tiller is one or :>; if> just four or five physicians in the entire L a U.S. to offcr late-term abortions of "via­ c 3 ble" fetuses (however brief and mal­ ec formed their lives might be) if it will save the life or protect the health of the mother. Such late-tcrm abortions are still legal on the books in most states, but even where it is legal, doctors often won't perform them. Women fly in from

" ...... ,...(...... ,..,~,«- all over to sec Tiller. In 19R6, a pipe ~ ,,~~.. "' n.« , .... bomb exploded at his clinic. In 1l)93, Tiller was shot through both arms. His Above: Charred life and the lives of his clinic staff remains of have now been chosen as priority targets Pensacola, Florida by the "right to life" bigots of Operation clinic bombed Rescue, and his clinic is ringed by right­ in 1984 by deadly wing fanatics who go through the trash "right to lifers." to find personal information about his Right: Amherst, staff so they can stalk, picket and New York clinic threaten them. While Clinton was presi­ of Dr. Barnett dent, seven abortion providers and staff Slepian, murdered in 1998 for his members were assassinated. courageous commitment to The Working Class Must Lead women's right to the Fight for Women's Rights abortion. Not only are abortion rights besieged, but also the remnants of affirmative action, desegregation of schools and We're for decriminalizing prostitution Democratic Party, the liberals and femi­ access to welfare. The imperialists' "war because we're against all "crimes without nists and the various reformists who on terror," which has meant the slaughter victims," like laws against every other claim to support legal abortion, in fact, of thousands of lnlljis, has also been a form of consensual sex, as well as gam­ have paved the way to defeat after war on immigrants, blacks, labor and bling, drug use and pornography. Our defeat. Every struggle for democratic anybody standing up against the status youth group program back in 1971 said: rights, if it is to lead to the liberation of quo. Rod Paige, the Secretary of Educa­ "Laws against gambling and various sex­ all the oppressed, must be linked to the tion, just called the National Education ual practices renect official puritanism struggle for full independence of the Association teachers union a "terrorist allied to organized religion, which acts as working class from the capitalist state organization" for tiot going along with an important ideological pillar of capital­ and the destruction of capitalist class the Bush administration's assault on pub­ ism, convincing the masses there can be rule. This means we fight for every genu­ lic education. no ha~;piness this side of the grave." We ine reform possible by using the methods This so-called "war on terror" that say that the government should get out of of class struggle that will transform the is wielded to roll back civil liberties the bedrooms. As a general framework, working class into a class conscious of has also targeted women. For example, people should be allowed to make their its historic mission to liberate humanity. recently there has been a hue and cry own decisions about what they do with I want to make this point about the cen­ raised over "international sex-trafficking." their bodies, as long as it is consensual, trality of the working class very concrete. The anti-immigrant USA-Patriot Act now and we don't make judgments on their For the last five months, upwards of sets new penalties for those convicted of morals for doing so. Just about everything 60,000 members of the United Food and "trafficking," augmenting anti-immigrant to do with sex is stifled, perverted and Commercial Workers Union were on legislation and expanding punitive meas­ degraded in the name of oourgeois moral­ strike or locked out in Southern Cali­ ures set oy the Victims of Trafficking ity and religion. fornia, fighting to defend their benefits and Violence Protection Act of 2000. Democratic rights arc indivisible; you and wages and against multi-tier pay These laws increase the already massive can't defend one without defending them schemes. The right to health care was a immigration-control police apparatus in all. But such rights are always limited, central issue in this strike and one of the order to go after anyoody deemed de­ temporary and reversible under capital­ reasons this strike was popular and sup­ viant. The prost itutes rounded up must ism and can only be secured through ported by broad sectors of the population. arduously prove they arc really "vic­ determined class struggle and, finally, Women, men, black, white, Latino and tims"-otherwise, they face jail and de­ through working-class state power. By Asian workers were determined to hold portation--and must fink on others to appealing to and relying on the reaction­ out and walked picket lines together, attain asylum. ary bourgeois state in the name of the fought off scabs and sacrificed their

IIII I ~ II I I II III I 34

Democratic president Bill Clinton signs bill gutting welfare in 1996, starving millions of single mothers and their children.

act to every manifestation of tyranny and Rickie Solinger, a feminist historian, oppression, no matter where it appears, makes the point in Wake Up LillIe 5,'usie no matter what stratum or class of the that the Supreme Court or 1973 that people it affects ... able to take advantage ruled on Roc v. Wade (which at the time of every event, however small, in order to was two-thirds Republican appointees) set forth before all his socialist convic­ was already predisposed to legalizing tions and his democratic demands, in abortion hecause of the fabricated hys­ order to clarify for all and everyone the teria about "the population bomb," which personal well-heing to struggle for a world-historic significance of the struggle really translated into fear of overpopula­ decent life. Standing side by side on a for the emancipation of the proletariat." tion of the non-white peoples of the picket line in joint action lays the basis globe. Arter the uprising in Watts in Los for transcending the divisions and preju­ Racism, Class Oppression Angeles in August 1965, government dices that the ruling class foments every and "Family Values" . hearings claimed that supposed overpop­ day. The workers were not lacking in Let's go back to the time of the pas­ ulation would "worsen the United States determination. Nonetheless, a losing con­ sage of Roe v. Wade in 1973. It did not unemployment problem, greatly increase tract was shoved down their throats a cou­ come out of the blue. The upsurge in the magnitude of juvenile delinquency, ple of weeks ago by the treacherous, pro­ social struggle in America in the 1950s exacerbate already dangerous race ten­ capitalist union leadership which played and '60s cracked the reactionary domes­ sions ... and further subvert the traditional by the bosses' rules. tic climate of the 1940s and '50s. In the American governmental system." In fear of the class struggle that would Cold War period, Jim Crow segregation Solinger also makes the point that the sweep them away in its wake, the union reigned in the South, while hardened liberals' appeal for ahortion rights hased leadership in this country has, for the last segregation in jobs, housing and educa­ solely on the harm done by "back-alley several decades, derailed militant strikes tion existed North and South. Women butchers" fed into the established notion with "corporate campaigns" and lawsuits. were forced out of the wartime factories that women are helpless victims who The workers are disarmed by their mis­ back into a very romanticized, but in must be saved by the benevolent state. leaders' acceptance of the capitalist sys­ reality isolated, existence of home and So from the get-go, the official leader­ tem of profit, their acceptance of the labor housework. "Rosie the Riveter," the icon ship of the mass struggle for the basic laws issued by the bosses' government of the women drawn into the wartime democratic right of ahortion posed their and courts and by their program of class factories, received a lot of backlash even demand in the context of begging the collaboration with the capitalists, ex­ during the war. As an example one maga­ state to be the protector. pressed chielly through political support zine wrote at that time that working In many ways, access to a safe abor­ for the Democratic Party. If the UFCW women "are rejecting their feminine tion was most orten an economic issue, strike had been won by the workers exer­ roles. They wish to control their own fer­ not a legal issue. One abortion provider cising their power to shut down all busi­ tility in marriage, and say they never wrote about thai period: "It had to do ness as usual, and if broad sections of the wanted the children they had." Black with economics ... those who could afford multiracial working class had been mobi­ women continued to work as they always it would be off to London or Puerto Rico lized to come out in solidarity, then that had in the lowest-paid menial jobs. or Mexico, although even there they'd victory would have done more for the The workers and youth who made up sometimes run into shabby practices .... fight for health care, for abortion rights, the foot soldiers of the civil rights move­ Or sometimes another out would he find­ for gay rights, black and immigrant work­ ment challenged legal segregation at the ing and paying psychiatrists to swear she ers' rights and women's rights than a same time that the U.S. imperialists were was suicidal; she would jump out the dozen Democratic Party-dominated ral­ trying to put on a "free world" face to window if the pregnancy continlled. And lies in Washington. counter the influence of the Soviet Union of course in some instances that was Our task is to build the revolutionary and to posture before the rest of the absolutely true, and in some instances it anti-capitalist leadership that is so des­ world to cover for the racist oppression wasn't. .. it was very soon obviolls to me perately needed. In 1902 the Bolshevik of American capitalism. The ruling-class that the fundamental issue here about leader V. I. Lenin explained in What Is To rhetoric against "godless communism" abortion was never legality or illegality Be Done? that a revolutionary party that was also used to label the proverbial but basically whom you knew and how can lead the working class to victory must unwed mother as "immoral" and black much you could pay" (quoted in Shirley be "the tribune orthe people ... able to re- pregnancy as "uncivilized." L. Radl, (her Our Live Bodies, \989). 35

What the liberals have never and will cute a criminal than to give him a life sen­ ogizing? Only the liberal feminists who never raise is that the real butcher then tence. [n America, where racism under­ hold the same guilt-ridden religious and today is the capitalist state. That's pins capitalist rule, the death penalty is a ideology as the right-wingers of blame what kills poor women. Transforming the legacy of slavery and represents a geno­ and sin. What is clouded over is that the fight for abortion rights into a sanitized cidal impulse toward the black popula­ liberals and their reformist hangers-on "pro-choice" movement with the catch tion. In liheral pro-choice parlance, an all embraee a eommon viewpoint-that phrase "Who decides?" represented a "unwantcd chi Id" is a code word for whethcr lobbying in Congress or march­ denial of the class and race oppression "future black criminal." ing in the streets, they can win the that makes "choice" meaningless for Since the Icgalization of ahortion, the capitalist state over to the side of the the masses of impoverished women and religious fanatics have only been embold­ oppressed. youth. NARAL Pro-Choice Amcrica, at ened by thc liberals' emhrace of reaction­ Saletan's story of the legal battles one time known as the National Aborti,)n ary "family values." In 1992, the media around abortion in 1990 in Louisiana cap­ Rights Action League, has gone through welcomcd the ruling in Planned Parent­ tures the racism of American liberalism. multiple name changes over the years, hood v. Casc\' because it didn 'f overturn [n the midst of a furious controversy over and they have consciously deep-sixed the Roe v. Wade. What it did do is legalize proposed laws to ban abortion, the state word "abortion" to appease the right­ waiting periods and parental consent laws executed Dalton Prejean, a black youth wingers, operating on their terrain and and opened the floodgates to restricting who had spent ten years on death row for seeking to be as acceptable as possible. abortion rights. Rehnquist said: "Roe killing two people when he was 17 years William Saletan 's recent book, BcarinK continues to exist, but only in the way a old. He was brain-damaged and retarded. Right; documents how the liberals and storefront on a western movie set exists: The barbaric death penalty in the U.S. bourgeois feminists of NARAL, NOW a mere fa~ade to give the illusion of real­ certainly gives the lie to all the "sanctity [N ational Organization for Women 1 and ity .... Roe v. Wade stands as a sort of judi­ of human life" rhetoric that comes up Planned Parenthood have spent 20 years cial Potemkin Village." We wrote at the around abortion. Since I <)S5 hal f of those accommodating and backtracking on full time (Saletan mentions this as well) that executed for killings committed when abortion rights, lobbying and campaign­ Planned Parenthood and the ACLU crim­ they were minors have been black. ing, paving the way for one defeat inally launched the Casey suit as a polit­ Saletan makes the point that what after another. The book, however, buries ical maneuver calculated to bring on a resounded on both sides of the abortion among the details of failed campaigns the reactionary decision. The liherals hoped issue was the image of Dalton Prejean­ fact that from the beginning the liberals this would heat up the ahortion issue and the black criminal. Here the bourgeois and reformists narrowed their demand to help elect a Democrat. The winner that feminists' resort to reactionary stereo­ solely legalizing abortion in order to pre­ time was Death Penalty Clinton. types of women as helpless victims to sell serve access to abortion for white, middle­ Saletan documcnts the defeats of the abortion rights sharply intersected the class women. They dumped poor women, strategy of attempting to elect supposedly right-wing anti-abortion forces' defense and the immediate fruit of this was the "pro-choice" candidates-the fruitless of "sacred Southern womanhood." "Pro­ 1976 Hyde amendment, supported by lobhying using PR consultants as if they choice" advocates' focus on the "vulner­ Democrats, that denied federal funds for could somehow hoodwink the right-wing able, desperate victims of rape and abortions. bigots into supporting women's rights. incest" fed into the racist argument by Planned Parenthood appealed to the However, he can only posit that the saying that abortion was the only way to anti-abortion and anti-welfare bigots by problem with liberals has something to "restore the honor" of women made preg­ raising the argument that it was more do with had tactical choices. Socialist nant by rape. expensive for the state to raise an Worker, the paper of the rnternational Everyone knew that raising rape in the unwanted child than to pay for an abor­ Socialist Organization, reviewed the South was always used to resurrect the tion. They still lost. Their slavish accom­ book (27 February), and their main con· racist myth of the white woman defiled modation to the right wing parallels an clusions regarding the feminists are that by the black rapist. Saletan writes that equally despicable and racist argument "we have to stop apologizing for ahor­ even the abortion proponents "detected ... that you see in liberal anti-death penalty tion rights and take our movement into the odor of the Seottsboro Boys." While literature: that it is more expensive to cxc- the strects." First of all, who's heen apol- the hardcore "pro-life" fanatics who sought a total ban responded that the so-called "rape" of abortion was as bad or worse than rape by a man, other anti­ abottion forces balked at forcing raped women to bear the "stain of their defile­ ment." Governor Buddy Roemer vetoed one bill against abortion because it made January 2004 rally no exception for rape and incest and in support of another because it did not adequately UFCW grocery "protect" raped women. Nevertheless, workers strike, feminists portrayed Roemer as a hero for Inglewood, California. holding out on the rape exception. Defense of health benefits was For Free Abortion on Demand! central goal of From the inception of our organization, five-month strike. leading up to the Roe v. Wade decision and since then, the Spartaeist League has actively eampaigned for free abortion on demand; free, quality health care for all;

rllllll! I III 11111 I 1IIIIIIIIIIIIU'j IIII III! I , 36 equal pay for equal work; 24-hour child­ care and for women's liberation through CITY, COUNTY COPS STAGE socialist revolution. We have also fought against forced sterilizations. At the same RAIDS ON ABORTION NESTS time, we have insisted on the necessity for the working class through the unions ~~®n~OOonmaf-~~~ to take up the fight for women's rights. We said that legal abortion was not Portland enough to address the oppression of poor newspaper working women. trumpets 1951 In the early '70s before the passage of police raids Roe, the Socialist Workers Party was the against abortion main left group trying to keep the protests providers. for abortion rights within the limits of bourgeois capitalism. Operating through their front group WONAAC (Women's National Abortion Action Coalition). they hospitals-like having separate clinics racist capitalist state. The conservative limited their demands and anybody else's for hernia operations. The number of black church, which provides fake com­ who wanted to work with them to a sin­ abortion providers in the nation has de­ fort in a brutal racist world, also weighs gle slogan, "repeal of all abortion laws." clined steeply in the last two decades, heavily in steering black women away The SWP physically excluded us com­ and the number of hospitals providing from birth control. The history of racist munists from their self-described non­ abortions has plummeted. Fewer than eugenics theories intertwining with the exclusionary mass actions because to 2,000 physicians offer abortions; nearly early birth control movement of Margaret them, the word "unity" really meant an 90 percent of counties in the U.S. have Sanger, continuing through forced steril­ alliance with bourgeois feminists, i.e., no provider. izations in the '60s and '70s (horrifyingly the Democratic Party. We fought for a known as "Mississippi appendectomies") revolutionary working-class program that Black Women Workers demonstrates that the experience for poor spoke to the deeply felt objective needs of Fight Triple Oppression women, particularly black women, has the· most oppressed women. I want to make another point about been a history of all-sided repression. The SWP, like the International Social­ being a tribune of the people. We are not Scientific research has been applied to ist Organization of today (and the ISO's sectoralists who think every oppressed increasing the ease and safety of birth predecessors then, too), had occasional group should organize independently, as control methods, but who benefits from socialist speechifying, while on the if only women should fight for women's these advances also tells another story ground they built "broad coalitions" issues or whatever group you may about medical technology and capitalism. (another buzzword for "Welcome all name. As a result of the SL-initiated, By 1939 Tennessee, North and South Democrats") so as not to frighten away 5,000-strong labor/black mobilization that Carolina were funding birth control the state Senators and Congressional stopped the KKK from marching in clinics geared toward coercing poor black representatives-but who was fooling Washington, D.C. in 1982, we initiated women to not have children, while whom? Or, as the saying goes, who is a transitional organization linked to Northern states were still banning contra­ the horse and who is the rider? By 1976, our revolutionary organization, the Labor ceptives. In the U.S. in 1990 Norplant the SWP's women leaders had become Black Leagues. There will be no socialist was introduced, which is a long-term, organizers for NOW. revolution in America unless the working surgically implanted contraceptive-cer­ Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, class takes up the rights of black people, tainly more convenient than pills. As soon we actively participated in defense of and our task is to build a bridge from the as it was approved by the FDA, the Phil­ abortion clinics that were under attack by organized working class to the ghettos. adelphia Inquirer puhlished an editorial, the fascistic shock troops of the ruling The program of the Labor Black "Poverty and Norplant: Can Contracep­ class. As we locked arms with other pro­ Leagues includes our demands for free tion Reduce the Underclass?" Immedi­ abortion defenders around the clinics abortion, defense of abortion clinics, ately judges were demanding that Nor­ and sometimes took arrests for simply down with all anti-gay laws, full citizen­ plant be inserted as a condition for parole defending a clinic's right to exist, we ship rights for all immigrants, as well as for poor women who had been convicted argued that you have to organize the defense of the remaining deformed work­ of child abuse. Funds were made avail­ social force of labor to defeat the ers states-China, Vietnam, Cuha and able to insert Norplant at puhlic hospitals, entrenched reactionaries-and all their North Korea-agai,nst capitalist restora­ but funds for removal were limited. institutions-from the church to the Amer­ tion and imperialist attack. The LBLs Depo-Provera injections, another more ican Medical Association. organize to stop racist cop brutality, like short-term form of birth control that was The feminists' strategy of begging the the cop killings of Alberta Spruill and often forced on hlack women in apart­ capitalist state has demobilized mass mil­ Timothy Stanshury Jr. and are in the heid South Africa as a condition for itant actions in favor of mass crawls to forefront of fighting for the freedom of employment, has also been forced on Washington to beg the Democrats for death row political prisoner Mumia Abu­ poor women here. These coerced birth crumbs. To this day, if you can find a Jamal. We participate in and bring to pro­ control measures have been introduced clinic, you still have to run the gauntlet tests a revolutionary program for all the for black women at the same time that of religious hate literature thrown at you. oppressed. welfare caps have been initiated-deny­ It's always been a sign of the degradation It's no surprise that hlack women ing benefits for any additional children of women's rights that clinics perform­ would be wary of any kind of fcminist­ born while receiving welfare. Mind you, ing abortions, a medical procedure, exist dominated birth control movement given there's a five-year time limit for welfare as separate physical facilities apart from the liberal feminists' confidence in the benefits already. 37

In America, black people are a race­ color caste, forcibly segregated at the bot­ tom of society, last to be hired and first to be fired. At the same time, black workers are strategically placed in the working class, but with the de-industrialization of America, more and more they are viewed Spartacists at as an excess population. It is in the inter­ 1992 May Day march in ests of the capitalist class to split and Warsaw, weaken the working class by pitting sec­ Poland called tions against each other, using black peo­ for workers ple as scapegoats for all the miseries of to fight anti­ capitalism. The history of the regulation Semitism and of so-called "choice" for black women attacks on regarding reproduction illustrates what abortion rights .. we mean by a race-color caste. Either the state says you can't have a child or health care, or the state says you have no choice lated under Clinton. In fact, much of makes it criminal for anyone except a par­ but to have a child, but you still can't get the evidence around crack's effects on ent or legal guardian to take a child across health care. fetuses, including stories about "impaired state borders for an abortion. The FDA human interaction," have more to do with has now postponed its decision regard­ Religion and Reaction racist stereotypes of criminals than any ing offering the morning-after pill until One front in the attacks against abor­ scientific evidence. It might seem obvi­ May because supposedly it needs more tion rights has been the issue of "fetal ous that threatening a woman who uses data about 16- and 17-year-olds who have rights." The "Unborn Victims of Vio­ drugs with seizing her children and jail­ used the pills-even though this pill lence Act" is awaiting Senate approval ing her will keep her from seeking the has been available for over two decades granting embryos, fetuses, zygotes, etc. prenatal care which might improve her elsewhere. legal status. And although you will be and her child's health. Working-class You might expect in rural backwaters hearing a lot about "Laci's law" in the women are denied the means to a decent of the country where evolution, the foun­ next period, "fetal rights" laws not only life, and then criminalized. The popula­ dation of modern biology, can only be are aimed at overturning the right to tion of black women in prison has sky­ taught as an "option" that youth would he abortion but already have been used rocketed over the last decade. forcibly made ignorant. But here in New to charge poor women with homicide. I just want to touch on one other aspect York City, where the rate of HIV infec­ Women are harassed for smoking cigar­ of "fetal rights" that exposes how capital­ tion has recently been compared to Third ettes or drinking during pregnancy, while ism in its decay can truly be a brake on the World rates, the schools' sex education desperately poor women are jailed for development of science and progress in courses have not been updated for 20 using cocaine and their children are general. That is the controversy around years and the AIDS curriculum has not seized-in Chicago 95 percent of chil­ stem cell research, a promising area of been updated in 10 years. The same peo­ dren in foster care are black. Although medical research which has been denied ple who oppose funding public health women from all classes have always con­ federal funding and has actually caused care, welfare and education simply want sumed a broad variety of substances, scientists to leave the country. Bush's sin­ to tell youth that sex equals death. The. crack cocaine is the drug of poverty. ister Bioethics Council just put out a AIDS curriculum still states that gay, "Crack babies" became the centerpiece report that says that medical research that white men account for the "overwhelm­ of the racist "war on drugs" which esca- contributes to lengthening life actually ing majority" of AIDS cases, despite endangers the institution of marriage the fact that hlacks and Latinos account because people will think twice about for 82 percent of new HIY/AIDS cases saying "till death do us part" if they have among teenagers. The sex education cur­ to live 100 years. riculum was frozen after the hysterical Religion is not only a set of backward reaction to the "Rainbow" curriculum ideas to comfort people in a cruel world that included the book, Heather Has Two and encourage ignorance, but a ruling­ Mommies. class ideology which kills people. AIDS New estimates show that 15- to 24- research was set back for years because year-olds account for half of newly di­ of anti-gay prejudices, and this contrib­ agnosed sexually transmitted diseases uted to the worldwide explosion of AIDS. (STDs)-more than nine million cases­ We are for the separation of church and in 2000. Although the latest figures show state. We reject any notion-and they all a dip, the U.S. has one of the highest ultimately derive from religion or spiritu­ teen pregnancy rates of the advanced alism-that a fetus is a human with a industrial countries. Since the 1996 "sou!." "welfare reform" bill was passed under Unmarried young people are sexually the Democratic Clinton administration, active for many more years today than federal funding is granted exclusively for were previous generations. Youth trying abstinence-only-until-marriage "educa­ Victoria Hellman to obtain abortions are already saddled tion." Programs that use federal funds KKK terrorist brandishes coat hanger with parental consent laws. The pending must teach that sexual activity outside outside Dallas abortion clinic. federal "Child Custody Protection Act" of marriage "is likely to have harmful

'~~~~-"-----"""'--"""'_"'~"'II 38 psychological and physical effects." lives. They made marriage and divorce statement of anti-ahortion laws. I was in Planned Parenthood bows to the Chris­ simplc civil acts, and abolished the con­ East Berlin just before the capitalist reun­ tian right by accepting that abstinence cept of illegitimacy. They opened the pri­ ification of Germany where the Interna­ should be taught at least as an "option." vate hospitals to the masses and built pub­ tional Communist League was fighting In 2002 Judith Levine finally got her lic kitchcns and laundries. They created to defend the workers state, a~d I saw book Harmful to Minors published after residential kindergartens and "children's banners protesting the closing of puhlie years of rejections. Her simple premise colonies, where the childrcn either live kindergartens. Today the Russian popula­ is that sex for minors is not only normal permancntly, or for a considerable period, tion is devastated, infant mortality has but also positive; that there is a manufac­ away from the parcnts." This last advance soared and life expectancy rates have tured panic about pedophilia, kidnapping is describcd in The ABC of Communism, plummeted, and women who used to be and child abuse and that the state's which was uscd by the Bolsheviks as a technicians and teachers now have noth­ attempts to protect youth from sex are primer for workers and peasants. As they ing. Today we defend the gains of the actually harmful. She points out that wrote, "Hundreds and thousands, mil­ 1949 Chinesc Revolution which ended "family planning" and "birth control" lions of mothers will thereby be freed for the hideous practice of binding women's used to be polite, euphemistic terms productive work and for self-culture. They feet. The Bolshevik Party of Lenin and referring to making available means to will be freed from the soul-destroying Trotsky led the Oetoher 1917 Revolution prevent unplanned pregnancies. Por the routine of housework, and from the end­ and inspired the world working class, and last couple of decades, the terminology less round of petty duties which are our task is to fight for new October Rev­ has been transformed into prevention of involved in the education of children in olutions here and everywhere. sex altogether for youth. There have their own homes." I started with a quote on the significance been tremendous strides in research into They had this vision in a largely back­ of having a historical materialist world­ less burdensome and safer birth control ward priest-ridden peasant country. The view. It's not just a tool for historical anal­ techniques. At the same time, the gov­ Bolshevik Party under Lenif! and Trotsky ysis, hut it was developed as a weapon for ernment has distributcd warnings about knew that the only way forward to raising action, to arm the working class to take condoms' "failure rates" and total fabri­ the material conditions of the masses was power. In 1Xl)9 Lenin wrote at the begin­ cations linking abortion to breast cancer. by extending the revolution internation­ ning of "Our Programme," referring to the So who will ever see these improvements ally so that the most advanced indus­ lessons of Marx and Engels: in an era of virginity pledges? try could alleviate poverty and liberate "It taught us how to discern, beneath mankind. The ensuing isolation of the the pall of rooted customs, political For Women's Liberation first workers repuhlic paved the way intrigues, ahstruse laws, and intricate doctrines-the class struggle, the strug­ Through Socialist Revolution! for the rise of the conservative and repres­ gle between the propertied classes in all The programmatic statemen't of the sive Stalinist bureaucracy, which reversed their variety and the propertyless mass, Spartacist League/U.S. points out that many of the liberating advances thc the proletariat, which is at the head of American feminism was born as a con­ October Revolution had achieved for all the propertyless. It made clear the women and reinforced the backward ideal real task of a revolutionary socialist sciously separate movement and split party: not to draw lip plans for refashion­ from post-Civil War abolitionists. Its' of the family to inculcate subservience to ing society, not to preach to the capital­ founders embraced white supremacy and authority and social conformity. ists and their hangers-on about improv­ campaigned against voting rights for Thc Il)l) 1-92 capitalist counterrevolu­ ing the lot or the workers, not to hatch black freedmen. Feminism and all forms tion threw back living conditions in the conspiracies, but to organise the elass former Soviet Union to a level compa­ struggle of the proletariat and to lead of sectoralism share the outlook that this struggle, the ultimate aim of which the capitalist state can be pressured rable to the time of the tsars. In Eastern is the conquest of political power by the and shaped to fit the interests of the Europe, one of the first measures of the proletariat and the organisation of a oppressed; that it's just a matter of re­ restoration of capitalism was the rein- socialist society.". organizing priorities, or getting more women elected into office. But it's thc bourgeois feminists' ruling-class view­ point that seeks to make capitalism, a bru­ tal system of exploitation, work for them and their privileged position. The emancipation of women requires a socialist revolution to begin to use the sci­ [ . -- Forty Years o(Spartacist ence and technology that has been devel­ "luward RebH1b of !~j~~ ~~Utth International" oped in the most advanced capitalist The Origins of Japanese CQmmunlsm, countries to institute a worldwide planned Debate over "Two·Stage Herolutlon" Anti-Immigrant, economy that can change the material and the American Occupation Anti-Woman, Anti-Sex: conditions of humanity so that production The Meiji Restoration: A Bourgeois Non-Democratic Revolution U.S./UN Crusade Against will be for human needs. The 1917 "Sex Trafficking" Bolshevik Revolution proved that a suc­ , , cessful socialist revolution can conquer through establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, smashing capitalist class rule and laying the basis for the withering away of the state. The Bolsheviks abolished all laws Spartacist (English edition) No. 58, Spring 2004, $1.50 (60 pages) against homosexuality and abortion and Order from: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 all laws regulating people's private sexual 39 reprinted from Workers Vangyard No. 724,26 November 1999

Full Citizenship Rights for'AII Immigrants! Down With· Capitalist Rulers' War Against Blacks, Immigrants!

The labor/black mobilization that rode the KKK out of New York City on October 23 brought to hear the social power of the working class, acting in its own interests and in­ dependently of the govcrnmen1 and the Democratic and Rcpublican par­ ties of capital, in defen~e of all the oppressed. As we wrote then. "That same power, those same forces which stopped the Klan li'om riding can organize the unorganized and unem­ ployed, can mobilize in defense of the masses in the ghettos and barrios, can crack the 'open shop' South­ itself a product of KKK anti-union terror" (WV No. 722, 29 Oetober). Initiated by the Partisan Defense Committee, the class-struggle legal and social defense organization asso­ ciated with the Spartacist League, this united-front mobilization pro­ vided a glimpse of the kind of fight­ ing workers party needed to lead the working class in struggle against the New York City, 23 October 1999: Labor's power can and must be mobilized in attacks of the capitalist rulers and struggle against black oppression, anti-immigrant chauvinism. For a revolutionary against the very system of capitalist workers party that champions the cause of all the exploited and oppressed! exploitation. It brought to life the connection between labor's fight and the otry among black people. Such chauvin­ undermine the organizations of all work­ fight for black freedom. Black oppression ism is poison to the struggles of all the ers. Labor must demand: No deporta­ is the cornerstone of racist American eap­ oppressed. tions! Full citizenship rights for all work­ italism. There is no road to eliminating A workers party would fight against ers, "legal" or "illegal"! the special oppression of black people every mani festatioll of injustice, raeist We publish below a presentation on other than the working-class eonquest of discrimination and chauvinist bigotry, the fight against anti-immigrant racism power, and there will be no proletarian particularly in defense of the millions of by Spartacist League Central Committee revolution to end class exploitation unless immigrant workers who are denied legal member Joseph Seymour at SL forums the working class actively takes up the rights. making thcm prey to anti-union in New York City and the San Franeisco fight for black rights. terror and superexploitation. In "Opera­ Bay Area this fall. Just as they use anti-black racism to tion Vanguard" the Immigration and Nat­ * * divide the working class. the capitalist uralization Service has targeted thou­ In March 1991, four wh ite Los Ange­ rulers, aided and abetted by the labor sands of meatpaeking workers in the les cops brutally beat a black motorist bureaucracy. foster anti-immigrant chau­ Midwest. Similar raids against hotel named Rodney King. whom they had vinism to pit native-born workers­ and janitorial workers in the South­ stopped for a traffic violation. They black as well as white-against immi­ west resulted in the firing of some SOO repeatedly kicked him and hit him with a grants. This was clear last week when members of Serviee Employees Interna­ baton as he lay writhing on the ground. racist NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani tional Union Local IX77, including many This was in no wayan unusual LAPD seized on the despicable refusal by some involved in leading a campaign for the practice. And certainly no one would cabbies to pick up blaek passengers to first national master janitorial contract have predicted it would lead to events of launch a police vendetta against the city's (Nation, 25 October). In going after some historic importance. But it did. largely South Asian and black African immigrant workers, the eapitalists aim A bystander happened to take a video­ taxi drivers and fuel anti-immigrant big- to drive down the living standards and tape of the beating. And when it was 40

shown to millions on television through­ p Ie. In fact, more Latinos were arrested Moreover, the sense of unity between out the U.S. and, indeed, around the than blacks, though most of those killed blacks and Latino immigrants against the WOrld, the public response was one of were hlacks. Of the Latinos arrested, 80 white racist powers that he did not long shock and,. outrage. The L.A. authorities percent were foreign-born; 25 percent survive the suppression of the riots by were sufj~ciently embarrassed by this had heen in the U.S. less than twu years. the police, the National Guard and the that they prosecuted the cops for assault. A white juurnalist of far from liberal U.S. armed forces. Self-declared spokes­ However, a judge decided that the cops views described them as '"desperately men for the black and Hispanic com­ could not get a fair trial hefore a jury of poor young immigrants who had fled munities engaged in hostile competition their peers in L.A.-there wcre too many poverty or political repression in Central over government money earmarked for blacks, Latinos and Asians. So the trial America and Mexico, lived in conditions rebuilding South Central and the other was held in an affluent, very white sub­ of hideous overcrowding, and worked for damaged neighborhoods. And in doing urh called Simi Valley 40 miles north of . suhminimum wages nnder constant fear so, they used the same kinel of demagogy central L.A. of deportation. Mothers LlId not hesitate as white racists. Some hlack people from L.A. attended to take food, clothing and diapers from A black real estate operator, Danny the trial hoping to see that justice was half-looted and unguarded stores" (LOll Bakewell, headed up an outfit called done. But justice was not done. When the Cannon, Official Negligence: How Rod­ Brotherhood Crusade Black United Front, "not guilty" verdict was announced, a Iley King and Ihe Rioloi' Changed IDS which was crusading for more black­ middle-aged hlack woman who was there Angeles and the LAP!) [1997]). owned businesses. At one point Bake­ said: "I am not given to riot. But just you For the moment, a shared hatred for thl' well confronted some Latino construction watch, something's going to hreak." And cops and morc generally the "white workers cleaning up South Central. He hrcak it did. Blacks in the South Central power structure," as it was called in the physically pulled one of them off a trac­ L.A. ghctto took to the streets in what 1l)()Os, overcame the traditional antago­ tor and baited them in pidgin Span­ would he officially called the largcst nisms between rival hlad, and Latino ish: "Vdmanos (/ la casa. No trabajo. "civil disturhance" in recent U.S. history. street gangs. Spray-painted ilIl the wall of Andale." In English: "Let's go home. No AI its end, 45 people were dead, mostly a building in South Central \Va'; the slo­ work. Gct going." hlacks killed by the cops, and billions of gan: "Crips Blonds MexiL:al1s together Bakewell's opposite number was a dollars in property was destroyed. forever tOllite 4;:1,0/92." The Crips and Mexican American businessman, Fer­ At the heart of South Central is the Bloods are L.A.-based hlac" gangs. nando Oaxaca, who boasted that Latinos neighhorhood of Watts. Almost three "are people who still helieve in them­ decades earl ier, in I 'Xl 5 , the arrest of a Capitalist Exploiters selve~ and still helieve in the American black motorist in Watts triggered one of Foster Racist Divisions dream. They deserve help in building a the first of the ghetto rehellions which The recent immigration into Southern new L.A. because they will take the hall shook America in that turhulent period. California had another impact, a very and run with it. They have not thrown up Watts hecame a symhol, a synonym as it ugly one. Black and Latino lunters espe­ their hands and said, 'Feed me,' the way were, ror the angry black ghetto. Now, cially targeted shops owned by Korean so many hlacks have." once again, South Central had become an immigr'lIlts. They couldn't burn down the So just a few months after the black angry black ghetto. But it had hecome Parker Center---·(he LAI'D headquarters. and Latino poor took to the streets something else, too: an angry Latino It was too well guardl~d. They couldn't expressing their solidarity as oppressed barrio. burn down the Ban" of Amcrica or Wells peoples against their oppressor, self­ Large-scale immigration had radically Fargo headquarters. So in their anger styled blaek and Latiho leaders sought to changed the ethnic make-up of South and frustration, they turned against local pit blacks and Latinos against one another Central and adjacent neighhorhoods. The shopkeepers whom they saw as outsiders, over a handful of government-funded residents of these newly formed barrios of an alien nationality and economically jobs. And two years later, half of all black took to the streets along with hlack peo- hetter off than themselves. voters supported California Proposition

Gropp/Sipa WV Photo INS immigration cops round up Latino immigrants. Labor Black League calls for labor to fight racist deportations and fight for full citizenship rights for immigrants in San FranciSCO, April 1996. 41

187, a reactionary measure to deprive "illegal" immigrants of public health and their children of public education. This is a clear example of a basic con­ tradiction in all capitalist societies and especially this American capitalist soci­ ety. The structure and operation of the capitalist system at times impel workers to overcome racial, national and relig­ ious divisions and engage in common struggle against their exploiters. But, of course, the exploiters don't want that to happen. So the ruling class-through the educational system, the media, the churches, their political parties, Demo­ cratic and Republican, as well as the labor bureaucracy-foments divisions within the working class along racial, national and religious lines. White and also black working people are told that there will be more and better jobs available for them if "illegal" immi­ WV Photos Protests against California anti-Immigrant Prop. 187 in Los Angeles, gration is halted and immigrants who are November 1994. Sign at head of convoy of Latino truckers at Port of L.A. here illegally deported. White working reads: "Long Live the Immigrant Workers' Struggle-United Against Racism people are told that their taxes can be cut and Discrimination." 10, 20, 30 percent if the government ends welfare for the black poor. the working class toward united struggle of no color, namely, whites. It says that In many labor strikes you will see against capitalist exploitation, ultimately no significant section of the white popu­ black, white and Hispanic workers walk­ for socialist revolution. For this to suc­ lation, including white workers, can be ing the picket lines together. In some ceed, we have to fight the powerful forces expected to fight the racist oppression of cases, they'll stand shoulder to shoulder seeking to divide the working class along people of color. Secondly, it holds that confronting the cops who are trying to racial and national lines. all people in the U.S. considered to be bring scabs through the picket lines. Here is how Marx defined the differ­ nonwhite have or should have common They'll go out to a bar together and get ence between communists and other ten­ interests and a strong sense of solidarity drunk and curse the bosses, curse the cops, dencies in the workers movement in the with one another-to put it crudely, that a curse the local government officials. Communist Manifesto: black auto worker or a Mexican agricul­ Yet six months later some of these "The Communists are distinguished from tural laborer has fundamentally more in same white workers will vote for capital­ other working-class parties by this only: common with a Chinese American real ist politicians-Republican or Demo­ 1. In the national struggles of the prole­ tarians of the different countries, they estate mogul or Indian immigrant doctor crat-who openly appeal to anti-black point out and bring to the front the com­ than with a construction worker of Irish racism, who run on a platform of "welfare mon interests of the entire proletariat, or Italian lineage. reform" and "getting tough on crime." independently of all nationality. 2. In the Interestingly, there was a time when "Welfare reform" is a code word for kick­ various stages of development which exactly the opposite view was prevalent ing poor black women and their children the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they on the American left. In the early years of into the streets. "Getting tough on crime" always and everywhere represent the in­ this century, before World War I and the means putting ever larger numbers of terests of the movement as a whole." 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, most Ameri­ young black men behind bars. And many These Marxist principles are reflected in can leftists held that the working class black workers will support black Demo­ the slogan "Full Citizenship Rights for should have a colorblind proletarian crats who call for "getting tough" on All Immigrants!" on one of the Sparta­ sociiilist consciousness. The best-known "illegal" immigration. cist League signs in this room. exponent of this view was Eugene V. Which tendency-that toward working­ Debs, the most prominent and widely class unity in the struggle against capital­ Debsian Socialism and respected socialist leader of the day. ist exploitation or toward antagonistic Black Oppression I'm going to discuss Debs' position on divisions along racial and ethnic lines­ In the United States today, it is gener­ race and class in the U.S. not because I will prevail in the historic long run? For ally held that race, not class, is the most think any of you subscribe to a similar class unity to prevail it is necessary fundamental division in American soci­ view. I'm sure you don't. But because the to build a revolutionary vanguard party ety. This view is expressed on the left by old Debsian position was the polar oppo­ modeled on the .Bolshevik Party which the term "people of color," which has site of the current "people of color" notion, Lenin built in the Russian tsarist empire become fashionable among left-liberals it illuminates the basic fallacy of the latter. at the beginning of this century. and radicals over the past decade or so. Unlike many of the right-wing Social­ , Liberals tend to condemn the concept This is not simply a neutral description ist leaders of his time, Debs was in no of a vanguard party as elitism. But we are of those ethnic groups which are or are way a racist. In fact, he fought against not alien to the working class, seeking to deemed to, be nonwhite. the exclusion of black workers from the impose our goals from the outside. Rather Behind the term "people of color" is a trade unions, which was then a common we represent in a. conscious and consis­ political outlook and implicit program. practice. Debs believed the racist oppres­ tent way the powerful inner tendency of First, it says something about the people sion of black people could be eliminated ,.m",'," , "''''''. ___'''''.'_''''''''''_.' __ '' , ••".,."'_."" .. ".••• _, __, •. ____ .,, ______" ______

42

only after the socialist transformation of factor, as something that had to be over­ Revolution and the American Negro American society. And if black workers come and transcended on the road to a Movement" in his The First Ten Years of were to contribute to that transformation, socialist transformation. American Communism.) they had to think and act solely in their There was no understanding that black We often describe ourselves as the role as workers, disregarding that they workers or Mexican workers had fewer party of the Russian Revolution, the first were also members of an oppressed illusions in and ties to the existing bour­ and to date only successful proletarian racial caste. geois order. For example, many Irish revolution in history. While this revolu­ In 1903, Debs put forward a motion workers had brothers, uncles or cousins tion was made in Russia, it was not made to a Socialist Party convention, which who were cops. But this was not true of solely for Russia nor solely by Russians. stated: black or Mexican workers at the time. Non-Russians, members of the many "We declare to the Negro worker the More generally, there was no under­ oppressed peoples of the tsarist empire identity of his interests and struggles with standing that workers of an oppressed -Jews, Georgians, Poles, Latvians­ the interests and struggles of the workers of all lands, without regard to race or people were more likely to support the played an exceptional role in the leader­ color or sectional lines; that the causes overthrow of the existing social system ship of the largely ethnically Russian which have made him the victim of social not only to end their exploitation as working class and other toilers., Leon and political inequality are the effects of workers but also to end their oppression Trotsky, who with Lenin was co-leader the long exploitation of his labor power; as a distinct people. of the Bolshevik Revolution, addressed that all social and race prejudices spring this question in his History of the Rus­ from the ancient economic causes which Leninism on the Black Question still endure, to the misery of the whole sian Revolution: human family, that the only line of divi­ Underlying the Debsian concept of a "Since the intelligentsia of the oppressed sion which exists in fact is that between colorblind socialist consciousness was an nationalities---concentrated as they were the producers and the owners of the idealization of working-class conscious­ for the most part in cities-had flowed world-between capitalism and labor." ness in a more general sense. The basic copiously into the revolutionary ranks, it In explaining and motivating this posi­ is not surprising that among the old gen­ aim of a socialist party was seen as imbu­ eration of revolutionaries the number of tion, he used the following argument: ing the large majority of the working non-Russians was especially large. Their "What social distinction is there between experience, although not always of a a white and a black deckhand on a Mis­ class with a high level of socialist con­ sciousness, a level which in reality is only high quality, made them irreplaceable sissippi steamboat? Is it visible even when it came to inaugurating new social with the aid of a microscope? They are , possible in a socialist society, in fact, sev­ forms .... At a moment of deep historic both slaves, work side by side, some­ eral generations into a socialist society. change, the bulk of a nation always times a bunch of black slaves under a This is a central difference between presses into its service those elements white 'boss' and at other times a herd of Debsian socialism and Leninism. Lenin­ which were yesterday most oppressed, white slaves under a black 'boss'." and therefore most ready to give expres­ -Jean Y. Tussey, ed., Debs Speaks ists understand that the very structure of sion to the new tasks. It is not that aliens (1970) capitalism produces different levels of lead the revolution, but that the revolu­ , The kindest thing one can say about social and political consciousness within tion makes use of the aliens." this was that Debs was abysmally ignor­ the working class, ranging from commu­ In working, from his, enforced exile in ant of the social and racial realities of the nist consciousness to the most reaction­ Mexico in the 1930s, with his American American South. There were no black ary forms of racist and chauvinist bigotry supporters to build a revolutionary van­ bosses in the South at that time, or in the and religious obscurantism, with all gra· guard party in the U.S. as part of the North for that matter, ordering white dations and variations in between. And struggle for a new Fourth International, workers about. But Debsian socialists and one of the most important factors deter­ Trotsky applied the same conceptual other leftists were blinded to social real­ mining more advanced or more back­ approach to blacks in the U.S. as the ity by their dogmatic belief that the work­ ward consciousness is whether a worker Bolsheviks had to non-Russian peoples ers could not unite to overthrow capital­ is a member of an oppressed nationality in the tsarist empire. He recognized that ism unless they had an identical political or people or of an oppressor nationality. blacks were slated to play an exceptional consciousness, unless they thought of (For more on the difference between role in an American proletarian revolu­ themselves only as workers. So they Debsian socialism and Leninism in this tion. Thus in 1939 he stated in discus­ viewed what would today be called ethnic regard, you can read American Trotskyist sions with his American comrades: or race consciousness as a purely negative leader James P. Cannon's "The Russian "If the workers' aristocracy is the basis of opportunism, one of the sources of adap­ tation to capitalist society, then the most oppressed and discriminated are the most dynamic milieu of the working class. "We must say to the conscious elements of the Negroes that they are convoked by the historic development to become a Racist cop vanguard of the working class." roundup, Los Angeles, The Notion of 1992, as black "People of Color" and Latino The mass black struggles beginning poor joined In with the Southern civil rights movement explosion of in the late 1950s and culminating in the outrage over ghetto rebellions in the Northern cities acquittal of cops who beat in the 1960s in one sense vindicated black motorist Trotsky'S view that blacks were the most Rodney King. dynamic, the most radicalized section of American society, the most hostile to the existing bourgeois order. However, these

--~---'-- 43 struggles were led not by communists but by petty-bourgeois elements espous­ ing either liberal or nationalist politics. And they took place outside of, and in some cases were counterposed to, the Right: Evicted organized labor movement. Southern share­ These struggles led to a significant croppers, change in the prevalent ideology of as 1930s American liberalism and also of much of Depression the American left, which tends to mirror made millions in a more radical form liberal ideology homeless and politics. Liberals could not, of and Jobless. course, recognize that the oppression Below: Workers and impoverishment of the black masses organized by Communist Party was. fundamentally rooted in the struc­ prepare for ture of American capitalism. Instead they demonstration blamed it on the racism of the white outside White population of all social classes and main­ House, 1930. tained that this racism reflected the economically privileged position of the white population. This view. received official sanction from the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, headed by the liberal Republican .governor of Illinois, Otto Kerner, which was set up in the late 1960s to study the underlying causes of the ghetto rebellions. Its basic conclusion was: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal." This view of American society was restated in the early 1990s by white liberal intellectual Andrew Hacker in Two Nations: Black and White, Sepa­ rate, Hostile, Unequal. In one sense, such a "two nations" view of American society logically leads to quite pessimistic conclusions as far as. blacks are concerned. After all, black people make up only IO or 12 percent of the population. If the dominant white of immigration from Latin America and white population are not such that white "nation" supports racist oppression and, East Asia, the U.S. population did not workers will oppose the racist oppression moreover, economically benefits from it, consist solely of European-derived whites of nonwhite peoples. But this·concept has then what hope is there for blacks? They and African-derived blacks. There were no more correspondence to American can either emigrate or they can accept also Asians. There were Latinos, most of social reality than the old Debsian notion and adapt to a society that is separate. whom were physically distinguishable that there were no significant differences hostile to them and unequal. The right­ from European-derived whites-in the between white and black workers in the wing nationalism of Louis Farrakhan is case of Puerto Ricans by African ancestry, American South. a logical conclusion of a "two nations" in the case of Mexicans by American I live in the Oakland-Berkeley region view of American society. In practice, Indian ancestry. And there were Native of the San Francisco Bay Area, an area Farrakhan's program consists in driving Americans. So if the concept of a "black in which all major components of "peo-

Asian shopkeepers out of the ghettos and nation" is expanded into a "nonwhite I pIe of color" are well represented. I have replacing them with blacks. This is nation," then the balance of demographic a part-time job as a bookkeeper in a called "black capitalism" or "black eco­ and presumably political forces becomes methadone clinic in the North Oakland­ nomic empowerment." more equal. Thus it's become common­ South Berkeley ghetto, where most of However, the large majority of blacks place to say that California has become or the clients are black people who work at do not support Farrakhanite right-wing is. about to become a "majority minority marginal, minimum-wage jobs or are nationalism, nor do white liberals and state," with the total number of Latinos, hustlers, prostitutes, people who are in leftists. They want a progressive solution blacks, 'Asians' and Native Americans and out of prison. My dentist is a second­ to the oppression of blacks and other exceeding non-Hispanic whites. generation Japanese American, and there nonwhites, .but within an ideological Basically, the concept of "people of are a lot of Asian Americans and Asian framework which sees race not class as color" is an ideological construct de­ immigrants in the medical profession in the basic division in American society. signed to get around the perceived California. And here, I think,is the origin of the ingrained racism of whites. Implicit and The clinic where I work and my concept of "people of color." sometimes explicit in this concept is the dentist's office are only three or four Even in the 1960s, before the big influx view that the class differences within ~he miles apart. But they constitute totally 44

different and separate social worlds. marriages. In 1990, the average annual ety. Economically, they tend to be far There is no sense of common identity income of Mexican American men in worse off than many other Hispanics in and solidarity between a Japanese Amer­ the Los Angeles area was $31,000 com­ the U.S. Politically, because all Puerto ican medical professional and a black pared to $48,000 for non-Hispanic white Ricans are U.S. citizens they tend to be ghetto youth. Likewise, there is no sense males. Thus a Chicana married to a non­ less concerned with American immigra­ of identity between a Puerto Rican wel­ Hispanic white will have a husband who tion policies and more concerned with the fare mother in the South Bronx and an earns 50 percent more on average than a future of the island colony's relations Indian immigrant computer programmer. Mexican American. Her white in-laws are with the U.S. At the other extreme politi­ likely to have accumulated three or four cally and economically are the Cubans, Latinos: Rac.e and Class times more wealth than a Latino family. centered on rich and middle-class emi­ Divisions Her children, consequently, are far more gres from the 1959 Cuban Revolution The fallacy of amalgamating blacks, likely to have the financial means for a who have been welcomed here by the Latinos and Asians as "people of color" college education. And in the present-day anti-Communist U.S. rulers. can be seen clearly if we look at rates of U.S., a college education is the main Even among the Mexican-derived Lati­ intermarriage. Intermarriage is both the social mechanism for advancement from nos who now make up about 65 percent of best index of the hardness of racial, the working class into more affluent petty­ the Hispanic population in the U.S., there national and religious divisions at the bourgeois strata (professionals, corpo­ is a clear and politically important divi­ base of society and the principal social rate managers, government burea:ucrats). sion between third- and fourth-generation mechanism for integration across those Also, in the large majority of cases such Mexican Americans (Chieanos) and Mex­ divisions. And here the difference be­ , children will not be raised.in Spanish­ ican immigrants (Mexicanos). Many of tween blacks 'On the one hand and Lati­ speaking or bilingual households and thus the descendants of the first wave of Mex­ nos and Asians on the other is striking, will not share the main common feature ican immigrants, who arrived between even among the younger generation who of the otherwise highly diverse Hispanic 1900 and 1930, do not even speak Span­ might be expected to be more liberal population in the U.S. Culturally, they ish and have few personal ties to the mil­ about marriage. will be like non-Hispanic whites. lions of post-1965 immigrants. A Mexi­ In 1990, only 6 percent of black men The opposite is the case for the chil­ can immigrant in Southern California or between the ages of 25 and 34 had non­ dren of mixed black-white marriages. Texas is far more likely to encounter a Hispanic white wives and 2 percent of There is no distinction between mulattos Chicano as a sweatshop boss than as a black women had white husbands. By and blacks in the U.S. as there is in the protective relative. contrast, 31 percent of U.S.-born Latinos Caribbean and South America. As one in this age group-both men and women left-wing Puerto Rican intellectual put it, Immigration and Nativist -had non-Hispanic white spouses, 36 on the mainland unlike the island, "one Reaction in American History percent of Asian American men had white drop of black blood makes you black." Closely related to the concept of wives and 45 percent of Asian American The children of interracial couples, how­ "people of color" is the idea that large­ women had white husbands. It is true that ever light-skinned, will be viewed and scale immigration, especially from Latin Asians and Latinos are considered not treated in this society as black. America, is going to radically alter this white in this society and suffer accord­ This points to the fallacy of the very country's ethnic make-up and conse­ ingly. But they are deemed a lot less "not notion of a cohesive pan-Hispanic minor­ quent political balance of forces. A lib­ white" than blacks. ity, much less of a "people of color," in eral Latino intellectual, Roberto SUro, Moreover, the difference in intermar­ this country. Since many Puerto Ricans recently came out with a book, Strangers riage between blacks and Hispanics is not (and Dominicans) are manifestly of black Among Us: How Latino Immigration Is only quantitative but also qualitative in its African origin, they directly encounter Trans/orming America, in which he economic effects on the children of such the hard racial divide in American soci- argues that Latino immigrants and their children will provide the demographic basis for the renewed dominance of lib­ eralism in American political life. Along similar lines, the editor of the bilingual journal Latina says that while the slogan of the civil rights movement was "We shall overcome," the slogan of Latinos should be "We shall overwhelm." This attitude is based on and bolstered by projections that over the next few generations, the Hispanic population will Los Angeles, , 1931: Mass become an ever larger percentage of the deportation of total population. For example,a study Mexican workers by the semi -official National Research amid Intense Council projects that by the middle of anti-Mexican the next century, 26 percent of the U.S. racism fueled population will be Hispanic, 14 percent by widespread black, 8 percent Asian and only slightly unemployment. over half white. How are these figures arrived at? The key assumption is that the present high level of immigration, running about 800,000 annually, will continue. In a

--""'------._._----_.. __ ...... __ ...... _._--- 45

,pamphlet in the mid-1990s, Suro pre­ immigration is seen by America's rulers sented immigration from Latin America as a potential threat-if not in the pres­ as a kind of unstoppable demographic tide: ent then in future-to their political and "Immigration to the United States now ethnic-cultural dominance. represents a huge and well-established In 1990, the average annual income of demographic force with its own dy­ namic .... Having encouraged the devel­ Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrant opment of this human flow over the past males in the Los Angeles area was thirty years, the United States will be $11,000 compared to $48,000 for non­ hard-pressed to change its direction with Hispanic whites, a difference in the rate of a one-shot overhaul of immigration exploitation of roughly 5 to 1. Through­ laws." -Watching America's Door: The out the rest of the U.S. as well, Latino Immigration Backlash and the immigrants do the hardest, dirtiest, most New Policy Debate (1996) menial jobs for minimum or subminimum This is radically false. Immigration is wages. A town supervisor in Huntington, not a demographic force with its own Long Island, a suburb of New York City, dynamic; it is a matter of government pol­ stated: "If we didn't have this population, icy which is changeable and reversible the dishes and silverware in our diners and has often been changed and reversed probably wouldn't be clean" (New York over the course of American history. For Times, 21 May). example, in two periods in modern Amer­ But Latino immigrants are not auto­ ican history-in the early 1930s and matic dishwashing machines in human again in the mid-l 950s-the U.S. govern­ form. They can and do fight back against fiif iii> ment effected the massive repatriation of their capitalist exploiters. They organize !\AN1'.~ I'IU'Z GOI,·!'>T\'. Mex;ican immigrants along with their unions and battle the cops on picket lines. American-born children. Immigration In Southern California, immigrants from policy is usually determined by the inter­ Mexico and Central America have been in play of different factions and interest the forefront of labor militancy, and they groups within the ruling class. But it can also joined with blacks in the 1992 L.A. also be affected by mass working-class upheaval. So the American ruling class is struggle against the capitalists and their worried, and rightly so, that Latino immi­ I Press state. grants and especially their American-born Chauvinist labor lieutenants of capi­ Immigration poses a basic contradic­ children can make a lot of trouble for them. tal: AFL leader Samuel Gompers There's a recurring pattern in American (right) excluded black workers from tion for the American ruling class. On the unions, while California Working­ one hand, large-scale immigration, by history that periods of large-scale immi­ men's Party formed In 1870s de­ expanding the pool of exploitable labor, gration are followed by,periods of nativist manded: "The Chinese Must Gol" especially at the low end of the wage reaction. The beginnings of industrial spectrum, enables capitalists to maximize capitalism in this country in the 1840s migrants accounted for 80 percent of the their profits. At the same time, large-scale saw mass immigration by Irish Catholics workers who built the Western branch and Germans. And this provoked a strong of the transcontinental railroad after the nativist reaction the following decade. A Civil War. This was very hard, dangerous major party called the American Party, work in which over 1,200 Chinese labor­ generally known as the Know-Nothing ers were killed. Party, emerged demanding not only a However" after the railroad was built radical reduction in immigration but an whites from the rest of the country poured 'BRill!' (IF AM{(/ n'R;1~#'(#i1 extension of the residency period re­ into California and other Western states, AND IJAR nSAN nu I',NSI C{)Mt'vlf'JrEF quired for immigrants to become citizens 0'\ BFII,\t r 01 In:':'L P.'\[)I! LA and a massive and violent anti-Chinese At-,'!) CiR.,\N! IN(i IllS JlJUrOFIIAIJ1;',-IS CORPUS from five to fourteen years. reaction set in. Mobs attacked Chinese t'NITf'D S'IATI'S t';;ll/otl' or APPFAl5 This nativist reaction was politically communities, wantonly killing men, wom­ defeated by liberal elements in the ,ruling en and children. And in 1882 Con­ 10.\! I'fomJ [\, class represented by Abraham Lincoln. gress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, Significantly, the man who assassinated cutting off further immigration of labor­ Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, had .been a ers from China. The same pattern was supporter of the Know-Nothing Party then repeated with regard to immigration before he became a supporter ,of the from Japan. slaveholding Southern Confederacy. Be­ Between the 1880s and the outbreak of F.... All MOVE Priaon.,.1 F,... Muml. Abu-J.m.1I 25th AnnIversary of Powelton Village Siege .. , .... 18 cause' the anti,-immigrant nativism of the the First World War in 1914, the United Stc!~T~h:"~:'';:'Iror:;i' 13,000 with Ellpuillona .. 22 1850s was politically defeated, there are States, became the strongest industrial a lot o~ descendants of Irisb, and German power in the world, surpassing Britain immigrants in, the U.S. today. and Germany. This required a huge Class-Struggle Defense Notes But the next time around, the outcome No. 31, Summer 2003 increase in the supply of labor, which was was very different. After gold was discov­ met by Southern and East European 50¢ (24 pages) ered in California in the late 1840s, there immigrants who were traditionally Cath­ Order from/make checks payable to: was a sudden massive ,increase in the olic. After World War I, a strong nativist Partisan Defense Committee P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station demand for labor. And California's newly reaction spearheaded by the Ku Klux New York, NY 10013-0099 wealthy capitalists met that demand by Klan developed against this new immi­ importing labor from China. Chinese !m- grant population. Most people think of 46 the Klan as a Southern-based orgltniza­ tion which targets black people. But in ~ the 1920s, the Klan grew most rapidly in -g'" the Midwest, in states like Ohio and Indi­ ::::l oil ana, agitating against South and East Immigrants '8 Europeans as well as blacks. arrive at Ellis .~ In 1924, a new immigration law estab­ Island, 1913. ~ lished so-called "national origin" quotas. As need for :5 In the following year, the number of im­ immigrant migrants fell from slightly over 700,000 labor dried up, to slightly under 300,000, a 60 percent capitalists drop, and further immigration from East stopped flow and South Europe was effectively re­ of Immigration from East and duced to a trickle. South Europe The onset of the Great Depression in In mld·1920s. the early 1930s saw an intense wave of anti-Mexican agitation in the Western states. Racist demagogues attacked Mex­ icans for "stealing" jobs. In this period, "national origin" quotas. However, the majority of the American nation. At the almost half a million Mexicans were overall quota remained fairly low. time, the first group had the upper hand. repatriated by local and state authorities The liberalization of immigration law Reagan personally shot down a proposal and the federal government. For example, occurred as American manufacturers for tamper-proof identity cards for all cit­ the county of Los Angeles organized spe­ began to face stiff competition from izens and legal residents-kind I of like cial trains to take so-called repatriados Japan and Germany and U.S. economic the old South African "" pass system. He back to Mexico. And their American-born growth slowed. In the mid-1970s, there also opposed stiff penalties for employ­ children, who were legally U.S. citizens, was a short' but quite sharp world eco­ erS who knowingly hire undocumented of course, had to go with them. nomic downturn. Profits fell, the stock immigrants. That's not I surprising since After World War II, the U.S. continued market fell. the biggest employer of undocumented to pursue a highly restrictive immigra­ In response, American capitalists Mexican immigrants is California agri­ tion policy. The 1952 McCarran-Walter launched a concerted effort to intensify business, which was a, major Reagan Immigration and Nationality Act perpet­ the rate of exploitation of labor. They financial backer. .uated the racist "national origin" quotas. demanded and got from the union bureau­ There's a hackneyed saying that poli­ The only exception was refugees from crats "giveback" contracts with lower tics makes strange bedfellows. Well, in Communist countries, which is how the wages and benefits. They established the 1980s immigration politics really did anti-Castro Cuban,counterrevolutionaries two-tier wage systems with young work­ make strange bedfellows. Latino rights got in. ers earning less for doing the same job as groups led by leftist radicals, who en­ At the same time, the U.S. government older workers. They shifted production thused over Castro's Cuba and Sandinista was very tough on illegal immigration in from the unionized' North and Midwest to Nicaragua, worked hand in hand with this period. In the mid-1950s, there was a the non-union South and to low-wage Reaganite business lobbyists to oppose military-style campaigncaHed Operation countries in East Asia and Latin America. anti-immigrant legislation promoted by Wetback, headed by a retired army gen­ From the standpoint of the American the AFL-CIO labor bureaucracy and eral. In two years, 1.3 million Mexicans ruling class, these policies were very suc­ black liberal Democrats, like the late were rounded1up and deported. cessful. A few weeks ago, the New York Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Times (5 September) ran an article, "Gap However, since the early '90s the pen­ .The New Immigration: Between Rich and Poor Found·Substan­ dulum of bourgeois politics has been Causes and Effects tially Wider." In 1977, the average after­ swinging ever more strongly toward anti­ In the 1960s, the political conditions tax income of the poorest 20 percent of immigrant nativism. Thus in 1996 Con­ affecting immigration policy changed and, American households was about $10,000. gress passed and Clinton signed into law more importantly, in the '70s the eco­ Today, adjusting for inflation, it's only the Illegal Immigrant and Immigrant nomic conditions changed. The openly $8,880, a 12 percent decline. The real Responsibility Act, which beefed up the racist character of American immigration income of the next poorest 20 percent repressive forces of the Immigration and law, along with legalized racial segrega­ of American households has fallen by Naturalization Service (INS) and sig­ tion in the South, was an embarrassment almost 10 percent. By contrast, the in­ naled a new get-tough policy. In the next for U.S. imperialism in its Cold War come of the top 20 percent has increased two years, almost 300,000 immigrants against the Soviet Union, especially in by almost 40 percent and that of the top 1 were deported, more than twice as many the newly independent countries of Asia percent by almost 120 percent! as in the prior two years, including many and Africa. The American ambassador . One of the factors behind these figures who had been living and working in the to India, for example, found it hard to has been the massive exploitation of U.S. for years. Also subject. to deporta­ explain why Indians could not become immigrant labor, legal and "illegal." In tion under the new laws are legal resi­ citizens in the bastion of the "free world" the early 1980s, there was a difference on dents convicted of crimes, even misde­ while anyone from Britain, India's former immigration policy within the right-wing meanors like driving under the influence colonial ruler, could become a naturalized Republican administration' of Ronald of alcohol. American citizen easily. So in the mid- Reagan. One group' favored large-scale Earlier this year, INS agents in Yakima, 1960s, around the same time that federal , immigration as a means of driving down Washington-a city in the central agri­ civil rights legislation was enacted, immi­ , labor costs. Another group' opposed it on cultural region of the state-forced the gration law was changed to eliminate the racist grounds, for diluting the "white" owners of food-processing plants and 47 warehouses to fire nearly 600 Mexican the course of future development, but to which details how the leadership of workers who did not have the proper legal change the world and the course of the UNITE textile and clothing workers documents. These men and women, many developments. The Illegal Immigrant and union has connived with the employers to with small children, suddenly lost their Immigrant Responsibility Act-just like perpetuate sweatshop labor in New York livelihoods and face desperate economic anti-union laws such as the Taft-Hartley City and Los Angeles. An effective strug­ straits. The INS agent in charge of the . Act-does not represent the democratic gle against the capitalist class and its state Yakima operation declared: "We want to will of the American people. These laws also requires a political struggle to oust send a message south to Mexico that represent the will of the capitalist class the incumbent trade-union bureaucracy things are not like they used to be" (U.S. and are used against the working people, and replace it with a leadership commit­ News & World Report, 15 March). even if most workers in the U.S. do not ted to fighting for the interests of the This is happening under economic now understand that. working class and all sections of the conditions of supposedly unprecedented We seek to mobilize the working oppressed. "prosperity." Imagine what will happen class, centrally through the trade unions, But our program is not limited to when the economy turns down, espe­ to defend immigrants against both gov­ defending the working class and the cially in a deep and prolonged depres­ ernment and fascist attacks. No less black and Latino poor against the efforts sion. There will be enormous pressures important is to fight against the super­ to make their conditions even worse than to completely militarize the border with exploitation of immigrant labor-both they already are. As long as the capital­ Mexico, to deport or otherwise force the legal and "illegal"-through the union­ ists have their state, their army, their repatriation of the 5.5 million "illegal" ization of these increasingly important police, their FBI and CIA, these will be immigrants now in the U.S. We're likely sections of the American proletariat. This used against the exploited and oppressed to see an increase in violent right-wing program obviously means confronting at home and abroad-the incineration of and fascist attacks on Latinos and Asians the capitalists and their political agents the Waco Branch Davidians by the FBI, as well as blacks. All of this underlines in the Democratic and Republican par­ the New York cops pumping 41 bullets that there is no scientific basis for long­ ties, the company goons, the cops, the into the young African immigrant Ama­ term or even medium-term projections National Guard, the whole repressive dou Diallo, the terror bombing of Serbia of the Hispanic population, because this apparatus of the American state. by the U.S. Air Force. is critically dependent on the level of But there is also a powerful force So we want to take the state and its immigration (or repatriation), which will opposing working-class struggle within armed forces away from them ..We're be determined through future political the labor movement-i.e., the pro­ fighting for a socialist revolution which struggle. capitalist bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO­ will smash the capitalist state and erect especially through its ties to the Demo­ in its place a workers state and an Amer­ For Class Struggle Against cratic Party. By way of example, a recent ican Red Army. That's our long-term goal. Anti-Immigrant Racism issue of Workers Vanguard (No. 719, 17 And if that sounds good to you, you To paraphrase Marx, our task is not September) contains an article, "Chinese should join us. It will be a long, hard fight, just to understand the world and predict Immigrant Workers in Racist America," but I assure you it will be challenging .•

Workers Vanguard Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League (includes English-language Spartacist and Black Histoiy and the Class Struggle) 0$10 for 21 issues 0 $2 for 6 introductory issues o International rates: $25 airmail/$10 seamail Espartaco (en espanol) Publication of the Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico (includes Spanish-language Spartacist) o $2 for 4 issues o International rates $4 airmail/$2 seamail Name ______

Address ______

Apt. # ______Poone( __ ) ______

City ______State __ Zip ______E-mail ______

Make checks payable/mall to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Black and tbe Class struggle _---:-: MO. 15 - ""'''' ,." 'free MumlaAbu.Jama'~ Order Back Issues of Abolish the Racist Death Penalty. Black SoldIers ~''Jf " Black 'History . in the .and the ..crow MIfUarv Class Struggle ~!m

I No.1 $.25 (16 pages) Includes: No.8 $1 (48 pages) Includes: No. 14 $1 (48 pages) Includes: -John Brown and Frederick Douglass: , -South Africa: Razor's Edge -Immigration and Racist Heroes of the Anti-Slavery Struggle -Smash Apartheid! "Fortress Europe" For Workers Revolution! -Courageous Fighter Against Racist No. 2 $.75 (32 pages) Includes: Terror: Robert F. Williams, 1925-1996 - Bourgeoisie Celebrates King's No. 9 $1 (56 pages) Includes: Liberal Pacifism -Outrage Over Racist Acquittal of - "Workfare": Enslaving the Poor, Busting the Unions -MalcolmX: Courageous Fighter Cops in Rodney King Case for Black Liberation - Education U.S,A,- No. 15 $1 (48 pages) Includes: -SNCC: "Black Power" and the Separate and Unequal -The Frame-Up of Mumia Abu-Jamal Democ~ats oAbolish the Racist Death Penalty! No. 10 $1 (48 pages) Death Row Speedup Targets Minorities No.3 $.75 (32 pages) Articles on Malcolm X: what's missing - Down With "English Only" Racism! Articles from Workers Vanguard from Spike Lee's movie; activists For Free, Quality Education for detailing the grotesque racist remember the civil rights movement bombing of Philly MOVE, signature and the black power era. Also "New All Children! . World Order" neocolonialism in Africa. of the Reagan years. No. 16 $1 (48 pages) Includes: -South Africa Torn by AIDS Crisis No.4 $.75 (32 pages) No. 11 $1 (48 pages) Includes: Articles dealing with the military -Stop the Klan! For a Workers America! -South African Workers Battle ANC question and black oppression. -Springfield, Illinois labor/black Union-Busting, Austerity mobilization against KKK provocation - Down With the Confederate Flag No.5 $1 (32 pages) on Martin Luther King holiday. of Slavery! Articles on the continuing struggle No. 12 $1 (48 pages) -The Fight to Unionize the to finish the Civil War and fulfill the "Open Shop" South promise of black freedom. - South Africa Powder Keg-Wave of strikes and land occupations after ANC No. 17 $1 (48 pages) Includes: No. 6 $1 (32 pages) Include~: neo-apartheid "power sharing" regime. oDefend Immigrants! Defend the Unions! - Toussaint L'Ouverture and the No. 13 $1 (48 pages) Includes: oU.S. Bloodbath in Baghdad Haitian Revolution , - Lockdown U,S.A oSouth Chicago: Snapshots of Latino NO.7 $1 (40 pages) Includes: - Racist Backlash Against and Black Life - Black Troops in Battle Against Slavery O,J. Simpson Acquittal oln Honor of Stephen Jay Gould: • FBI Rode With the Klan: How -Million Man March Appeases. Science and the Battle Against Mississippi Burning Rewrites History Racist Exploiters Racism and Obscurantism

All issues are still available. Complete set only $12, including postage and handling. Make checks payable/mall to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 USA

( . - .....! .. -...-,.,..j.~.------.------