French Revolution
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W'liKEliS,,1NfitJl1lI' 25¢ No. 486 ·e~)(-523 29 September 1989 Smash Apartheid! For Workers Revolution! South Alrica: Blacks Dely Apartheid Elections As South Africa's whites trekked to the polls on September 6 to vote for the racist candidate of their choice, the country's oppressed and disenfran chised black majority registered its vote-and its power-in the factories and streets. Mines, mills, shops and schools were shut down and buses, trains and taxis idled as some two to three million black workers-far more than the number of whites votin-g staged a massive two-day stayaway strike to protest the apartheid elections. The London Independent (7 Septem ber) reported: "With 90 per cent of urban workers estimated to be on strike, Cape Town, like Johannesburg and Durban, was as deserted as on a Sunday, eloquently demonstrating the degree to which the country's economy depends on non-white labour. ... " Once again, the black proletariat has shown it has the power, standing at the head of all the oppressed, to bring down apartheid capitalism. The general strike capped a six-week "defiance campaign" against the apart heidelections. Organized by the Mass September 15-Ten thousand at Johannesburg police headquarters protest state terror against blacks in racist Democratic Movement (MOM), which elections. includes the now-banned United Dem ocratic Front and the Congress of South emergency" imposed three years ago tors, and riot police charged into groups Desmond Tutu and Allan Boesak. Cops African Trade Unions (COSATU), this and a frenzy of murderous repression of schoolchildren -peacefully demon invaded the offices of COSA TU and was the first sustained and most wide called out by National Party president strating, Whipping them with heavy the home of its general secretary, Jay spread wave of anti-apartheid protest F. W. de Klerk. And on election day leather sjamboks. In the days leading up Naidoo, arresting eleven trade union since the brutal suppression of the town there were protests in at least 20 cities. to the elections, police stormed a cathe ists. On August 30, over 200 wom ship rebellions of 1984-85. The MOM Armored car~ terrorized the town dral to suppress an anti-apartheid rally en were arrested while on their way protests directly defied the "state of ships, cops chased down demonstra- and arrest liberal anti-apartheid leaders continued on page J2 Practicing for Racist Martial Law· Bush Flexes Military Muscle in SI. Croix Leave it to the Bush administration to Montserrat and Culebra. A newsman use even a natural disaster to whip up who flew over St. Croix told WV that hysteria for a military exercise in racist the devastation "looked like Hiroshima repression. At the direction of the for without the radioactivity." With no mer CIA director in the White House, food, water, electricity or phones, peo 16 Air Force C-141 transports landed on ple on St. Croix became desperate to St. Croix September 21 in the wake of get food and water. White merchants, Hurricane Hugo. They were bringing panicked tourists and ham radio opera not water, not food, but. .. 1,200 U.S. tors put out stories of roving bands troops, "to suppress the violence." More of machete-wielding crazies and "rat> accurately, they were sent there to pro ists" escaping from prison to imperil tect property values of white real estate white womanhood. Tabloid headlines interests, on this island which is three screamed "Anarchy" and "Island of quarters black, while pandering to arac Fear." An NBC-TV report claimed a ist media barrage. Officials in St. Croix, Coast Guard cutter had exchanged gun one otthe Virgin Islands, complained fire with "Rastafarians" on shore who that "the Bush administration was more had shouted "Leave the island to us!" interested in deploying troops than air On St. Croix, the worst stories of lifting relief supplies." Something sin "anarchy" that reporters could produce ister is going on here. were scenes of National Guardsmen The hurricane wreaked havoc from heJping in the "looting" and giving away the Caribbean to the Carolinas this things. A witness was horrified seeing week, cutting a swath through Puerto "50 people sitting on the street, trying on Rico, including San Juan, and virtually sneakers." The Times mentioned that destroying some smaller islands such as continued on page 10 Ft. Bragg military police armed with M-16s in St. Croix. Black Student Thrown Out of Class on Civil War No Jim Crow at S.F. State! Something very ugly is afoot at San black student and member of the ·Spar Francisco State University. Under the tacus Youth Club, attended the first robes of academia, professors are ped session of Professor Barbara Loomis' Cindy Nolan dling open racist lies about the history of course on the Civil War. Cindy spotted speaks at this country, the better to justify the D. W. Griffith's pro-slavery Birth of a defense rally inequalities of the present. Courses on Nation on the syllabus. The son of a September 18 the Civil War, the Second American Confederate_soldier, D.W. Griffith was at S.F. State. Revolution which put an end to slav a vicious racist whose film vilified ery, are introduced with KKK recruit Reconstruction, glorified the Klan and ing films like Birth of a Nation (orig fueled the revival of the terrorist KKK. cross on Stone Mountain with the said, That's the whole point. What movie's release in Atlanta and ran they're trying to do is keep whites inally titled The Clansman). Black The NAACP launched vigorous pro against blacks and vice versa'." students who challenge this crap are tests of the film and tried to block its recruitment posters in local papers next Dozens of students signed up to help abused like "uppity Negroes" and release, but President Woodrow Wil to ads for the film. One Yankee film build a protest of this racist outrage. kicked out of the classroom. One young son, who was pushing segregationist goer proclaimed, "It 'makes me want to Students announced the demonstra woman decided to fight back, and now legislation, endorsed it at a private go out and kill the first Negro I see," as tion on graffiti chalkboards in the students-black, Latin, Asian, white, scr~ening at the White House, as did "Ku-Klux fever" spread in the North as bathrooms, and filled the boards with gay-are incensed and organizing to do Edward White, the Chief Justice of the well. comments against racism on campus. something about it. Supreme Court and a "former" Klans The effect of pushing KKK propa You could hear a pin drop in the usu On September II, Cindy Nolan, a man. Klansmen timed the burning of a ganda in classrooms today while mi~ nority students are under attack on ally boisterous cafeteria when SYC campuses across the country was played members came through to announce the out in Loomis' class. Professor Loomis, demo, and students as well as campus workers grabbed up leaflets. On the East Germany and with her "Gone With the Wind" sylla bus, brooked no debate with Cindy, evening of September 18, as Barbara Political Revolution giving a green light to racists who then Loomis' shamefully segregated "His In June 1953, East Germany was the barraged Cindy with fighting words tory 424" reconvened, a very integrated scene of the first mass proletarian uprising like "black slaves were lazy and goofed demonstration of over 50 people chant against Stalinist bureaucratic rule. The off a lot," that "poor whites were the ed outside, "Protest Jim Crow 424! It's workers' protests defended the collectiv real victims of slavery," that Chinese time to finish the Civil War!" and "From ized foundations of the East German de immigrant workers, who were victims Bensonhurst to SF State, workers and formed workers state and called on their of murderous racist pogroms and re students must fight race-hate!" class brothers in the West to "clean out pression in California, were "treated Twenty years ago, minority students your crap in Bonn." Fighting against the well." Refusing to abide by Loomis' took over San Francisco State Universi TROTSKY pro-Stalinist revisionism of Michel Pablo LENIN appeal for "self-imposed censorship," ty in the militant 1969 student strike, and Ernest Mandel which destroyed the Cindy was told she "didn't belong," That spectre still haunts the admin Fourth International, the then- Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party of James P. ordered to leave the room and dropped istration today. (They tried "banning" Cannon championed the East German workers uprising as a vindication of the from the course. the Spartacists five years ago, only to perspective of proletarian political revolution, dnd called for the reunification of The Spartacus Youth Club fought be defeated when we spoofed their Germany on a socialist basis. back-and in the process found many totalitarian red hunt by going "under other students who had also been ground" as "Xandra and the Red Briefly, what did the East German uprising reveal? Avengers"!) Now director of student I. It showed that the working class was the initiating and decisive force in leading. degraded and victimized at this school. One black woman told how she had activities Russ Natson has declared the the people to revolt. anti-racist protest "an illegal demon 2. It disclosed the-cplossal power and potentialities of the workers' movement· been driven out of a class for objecting to the screening of Birth ofa Nation orr stration" and has revoked "official which united all currents of labor opinion in massive protest. Virtually the entire recognition" of the Spartacus Youth working class opposed itself to the regime and all its agencies, beginning with the the first day of her history course! Another told how she was given an Club on the campus he patrols like an SED.