The Internationalist No. 46 January-February 2017 50¢ Post-Traumatic Election Shock Defeat Trump … And the Democrats Fight for Workers Revolution

The following article was is- Internationalist contingent in sued as an Internationalist Group 2015 May Day march in NYC. leaflet on November 10, two days class against us, the workers and after the U.S. elections. oppressed. The effect of Tuesday’s elec- For many the election result tion was a thunderbolt in the was like a horror film, a scene out night sky. After all the media Internationalist photo of The Night of the Living Dead. happy talk, even into the early The message: Be afraid, be very evening, that Democrat Hillary afraid. In school Wednesday, La- Clinton was a shoo-in – the first tino students fearfully asked their woman president following the teachers: what will happen to me, first black president – suddenly it will my parents be deported? Im- was clear that Republican Donald migrants rights activists reported Trump was elected. The racist, a torrent of phoned death threats. sexist, immigrant-bashing, wom- Groups of racists yelled “time to an-molesting Trump would be get out of this country” at ran- the next CEO of the United States dom Middle Easterners. Muslim and commander-in-chief of U.S. women feared to wear the hijab, imperialism. By the next morn- the Islamic head scarf. A promi- ing tens of millions were asking, nent African American spokes- in deep shock and disbelief, how man, former Obama advisor could this happen? And in Mus- Van Jones proclaimed it was the lim, Latino, African American #Whitelash, recalling the racist and immigrant families there was backlash against the civil rights raw fear. movement. So what is to be done? The Soon protests began: thou- big business media are all praising Fight Back – But How? sands of young people across the “orderly peaceful transfer of the country have been marching. power.” President Barack Obama For Workers Action to Stop Deportations – The most common slogan was says of Trump, “We are all now “Not My President,” along with rooting for his success.” In her Build a Revolutionary Workers Party! “Dump Trump” and “Racist, sex- concession speech, Clinton said, ist, anti-gay, Donald Trump go “We owe him an open mind and the chance no! Those who are targets of the victori- league.” The Democrats hand over the reins away.” But Trump is the victor in the bour- to lead.” That tells the billionaire bully he ous race-haters and labor-haters must fight of power “graciously” because they and the geois elections – always rigged to ensure can walk all over opposition. We say hell them down the line, or else we will pay “big Republicans all represent the same capitalist continued on page 2 Cops, Feds, Pipeline Companies – Get Out of Indian Lands! The Battle Over Standing Rock JANUARY 7 – The struggle over the Dakota Now, with winter storms and the elec- Access Pipeline (DAPL) in North Dakota is tion of DAPL investor Donald Trump as not just against a profit-greedy consortium of U.S. president, the battle continues. The oil companies. It poses a battle against a rul- announcement by the U.S. Department ing class which established its sway through of the Army on December 4 that it would enslavement of African Americans and geno- not grant the pipeline builders a neces- cide against the Native American peoples, sary easement (permit) to drill under Lake and has persecuted them ever since. The Oahe, a dammed section of the Missouri 1,172-mile pipeline would cross the Missouri Terray Sylvester/Reuter Terray River, was met with elation in the three River just north of the current boundaries of camps of several thousand Native Ameri- the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, poten- can and other protesters who had gathered tially polluting the water supply to the popu- near the site at the mouth of the Cannonball lation in case of a spill. With country sheriffs River. People shouted “Mni wiconi” – wa- and state police acting as guard dogs for the ter is life – the watchword of the protest. oil companies, the standoff quickly became Standing Rock Sioux tribal authorities de- a conflict over Indian rights facing powerful clared that they and “all of Indian Coun- corporations and the racist repressive forces try will be forever grateful to the Obama of the capitalist state that does their bidding. Administration for this historic decision.” In this battle, class-conscious workers and They also urged protesters to return home Protesters face off with police near site where pipeline is slated to cross the revolutionaries must stand squarely on the as soon as possible. Other tribe members Missouri River next to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. side of the Standing Rock Sioux. continued on page 10 can’t admit this, writing off white blue- Muslims and Middle Eastern immigrants collar workers as racist, because it is their in particular may be singled out for attack. policies that are responsible. Liberal pun- Class-conscious militants should begin the dits like Thomas Friedman who pushed work now of building workers defense these policies are thrown into despair: “I guards, based on the mass organizations am in anguish, frightened for my country of the working class and oppressed, to and for our unity. And for the first time, counter this threat. Police killings of Afri- I feel homeless in America” (New York can Americans and Latinos should be met

Internationalist Photo Times, 9 November). Pseudo-radical left- with massive labor mobilizations against ists who spout theories of “white skin priv- police terror, such as that led by the ILWU ilege” likewise seek to make white workers dock workers in Oakland, California on responsible for black oppression, when it May Day 2015 (and the example of the La- is this racist capitalist system that profits bor Against Racist Police Murder contin- from dividing white against black workers. gent in Portland that same day). While the “neo-liberal” liberals are Education workers should prepare to in despair, various reformists and liberal stop any attempt to seize undocumented “progressives” are arguing that the prob- students and their families. If a school lem is that Hillary Clinton was the wrong should shut down, and be backed by others, Democratic candidate. They say it should in response to the seizure of an immigrant Internationalists at April 14 “Shut Down Trump” protest. have been Democratic Party “socialist” family, it would send shock waves across white workers. No one could miss Trump’s Bernie Sanders, who posed as a “friend of the country. And Marxists not only defend Defeat Trump... blatantly racist appeals, and the 50% of vot- labor” and in early opinion polls did far bet- the right of free speech and assembly, we continued from page 1 ers who voted for him at the very least went ter against Trump than friend of Wall Street stand for the right of black self-defense the selection of a defender of capital – and along with that. The Ku Klux Klan and Clinton. But Sanders (who fulsomely sup- against racist attacks, in opposition to lib- he isn’t going away because thousands or various Nazi outfits enthusiastically backed ported Clinton) didn’t have a very different eral gun control advocates. In the present tens of thousands chant it. The slogans him. But the hard-core racist vote is much economic program because “neo-liberal- atmosphere, African Americans and others showed a yearning for Clinton (sometimes smaller – maybe a quarter of the electorate ism” is not a policy it is the current phase of would be well-advised to prepare to exer- explicit, like numerous signs in New York, – and has been violently attacking Obama decaying capitalism, in which driving down cise their Second Amendment rights. “Still Stronger Together”). And they ex- since 2008. Trump also won the votes of wages is dictated by the same falling rate of All of these practical steps for resis- pressed patriotic liberal democratic illu- better-off middle class sectors (the aver- profit that set off the 2008 crash. tance against racist reaction on the march sions – the idea that this is “our country” age Trump voter had a family income of Various reformist left groups pushed can only be a partial answer and point to when in fact it belongs to the capitalists. $72,000), as the Republicans generally do. Green Party candidate Jill Stein, whose the ultimate solution: workers revolution. So the issue is posed: it is urgently nec- But what put Trump over the top were eco-capitalist program offered nothing to Whether a Donald Trump or a Hillary Clin- essary to fight back, but how? With right- the others, residents of rural towns whose workers, spelling calamity for steel and ton (or Barack Obama) is in the Oval Office, wing Republicans in control of all three youth are leaving because they have no coal workers in the name of supposedly the capitalist system will inevitably contin- branches of government (executive, legisla- future there, and workers who have seen fighting climate change. Others put- for ue to generate racism, poverty and war. We tive and judicial) – from the White House to their industries decimated and their cities ward their own candidates with a laundry denounced Clinton’s policies in Syria and both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court devastated. The rage against Washington list of illusory demands on the capitalist Ukraine for threatening military confron- and most state houses – even staid Demo- comes from victims of the 2008 crash and state (see “Left Green Dream of People- tation and even full-scale war with Russia. cratic politicians and pundits are talking continuing economic depression thrown Friendly Capitalism,” The International- Trump is making nice with Putin, but at the about electoral “disaster,” “apocalypse” and into permanent unemployment or reduced ist No. 45, September-October 2016). The same time threatening trade war and worse “resistance.” But here there is a fundamental to part-time jobs at Walmart wages. This re- Internationalist Group uniquely fought in against China. As Trotskyists, we emphati- class difference: for working people and the volt by small town America and Rust Belt the unions to break with the Democrats, cally defend the Chinese deformed work- oppressed it is necessary to oppose all parties workers is against “free-trade” policies of Republicans and all capitalist parties and ers state against imperialist attack. of capital, to dump both the Democrats and both Democrats and Republicans. They are build a class-struggle workers party. The upset election of Donald Trump The Donald. So in order to resist, we must not all racists: in fact, millions of them, 12% This program, supported by the Paint- has shocked many opponents of racism, first understand what happened, and why. of all Trump voters, also voted for Barack ers union in Portland, Oregon is what could sexism and anti-immigrant chauvinism to Ask yourself: would there be this trau- Obama. They are victims of capitalism. offer a real answer to Trump demagogy. It the core. It has dealt a body blow to the matic shock, would there be these mass To the high-flying “neo-liberal” elite, should be fought for in the labor movement Clintonite Democratic Party. It has not protests if the Democrat had been elected? these are “forgotten people,” the residents throughout the country. But now we are only thrown the capitalist political estab- Of course not, because for many of those of “fly-over” country between Wall Street going to face the attacks of the triumphant lishment into disarray, it has led many to marching, even if they didn’t vote for her, and Hollywood whose money men finance Trump forces, which pose an ominous question the whole political structure (in- Hillary Clinton was in some way a “lesser Clinton and Obama Democrats. The arro- threat to oppressed sectors in particular. cluding the Electoral College, a bastion of evil” than the consummately evil Don- gant policy wonks of Bill Clinton Inc. see To fight the impending attacks, it is neces- the slavocracy up to the Civil War, due to ald Trump. Not so. As the International- those who voted for Trump as the “losers” sary to put forward a program to mobilize which Trump can lose the popular vote but ist Group said on our website, it was “the in the globalization of “modern” capital- the power of the workers movement. If the still end up president). But what this shock ‘choice’ between the candidate most likely ism, while the “winners” are the Silicon new regime seeks to reinstitute raids in to the body politic poses is not a phony to set off a racist pogrom (Donald Trump Valley venture capitalists. Having lost their the urban centers, there should be workers “political revolution” like Bernie Sanders for the Republicans) and the candidate most jobs, their homes repossessed by the banks, mobilizations to prevent deportations, in- and his acolytes preached, but full-blown likely to start World War III (the Russia- makes them easy prey for demagogues sell- cluding blocking them by flooding the area international socialist revolution. phobic Democrat Hillary Clinton).” ing the fool’s gold of anti-immigrant rac- with defenders of immigrant rights. That is the answer to Trump … and to So why was Trump elected? Liberal ism. The fact is that the Democrats pushed As violent racist and outright fascist Clinton, the Democrats and all the bosses’ n commentators portray it as simply the vic- millions of workers into the arms of Trump. forces are emboldened by Trump’s victory, parties and politicians! Internationalist Photo tory of rampant racism, particularly of The Democratic politicians won’t and

Visit the League for the Fourth International/ Internationalist Group on the Internet http://www.internationalist.org The Internationalist A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the Reforging of the Fourth International Publication of the Internationalist Group, section of the League for the Fourth International EDITORIAL BOARD: Jan Norden (editor), Fred Bergen, Mark Lazarus, Abram Negrete, Marjorie Salzburg, Ines Young The Internationalist (ISSN 1091-2843) is published bimonthly, skipping July-August, by Mundial Publications, P.O. Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. Telephone: (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 E-mail: [email protected] Subscriptions: US$10 for five issues. No. 46 1162-M January-February 2017 Class Struggle International Workers at immigrant NYC march, December 8. 2 The Internationalist Democrats and Bureaucrats Lament Their Defeat

The Myth of a “White Working Class” As the Democratic Party licks its nostalgically for a return to Franklin Delano wounds in the aftermath of the elections, it Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. The Demo- has sought to pin responsibility for defeat on “Identity Politics” at a Dead End crats didn’t abandon working-class interests sinister forces from the FBI to Vladimir Putin because they have never represented them. and Russian hacking. Another of its pathetic Like the Republicans, Democrats have al- attempts at self-justification is to blame the ways represented the interests of the capital- “white working class” for Trump’s victory. ist exploiters of workers. Since FDR’s New With smug condescension the liberal media YorkBoenzi/New Neal Times Deal coalition, workers mainly have been dispatch reporters to Ohio and Iowa to find bound to their class oppressors through the out why the “rubes” voted for the Donald. treachery of the Democratic Party-loyal la- Union bureaucrats, meanwhile, who tried to bor bureaucracy. But with deindustrialization force Hillary Clinton with her “free-trade” and the dramatic loss of union jobs through policies down the throats of their members, sellouts and defeats, that bond has weakened. blame the Democrats for ignoring the “white In the 1950’s one in three workers was in working class.” Now the labor tops want a private-sector union. Today it is one in twen- to work with Trump pushing protectionist ty. Even with the decline in union membership economic policies which set U.S. workers overall, public-sector unionism gained and against their class sisters and brothers abroad. now has about half of the 11% of union work- But there is no specific “white working ers in the U.S. workforce. Blue-collar black class.” There are not a multitude of work- and white male workers have disproportion- ing classes identifiable by race, gender ately lost their jobs as American industry has and ethnicity. There is a single multiracial been gutted as a result of “free-trade” policies working class in the United States, defined Postal workers in New York City struck in March 1970 and won despite no- and the global capitalist economic depression by its economic and social relationship to strike law and over objections of pro-capitalist union tops. following the 2008 crash. Today, it is mainly the means of production rather than by ra- hope to add white identity to their rainbow woman or an immigrant? Etc. Of course, through the unionized public sector that black cial or cultural identity. You can see this in of constituencies. But white identity in the for a black woman immigrant worker, for people, after the civil rights movement, have nearly every worksite and particularly in U.S. is always necessarily racist. Historical- instance, this makes no sense. So in an ef- managed to gain and hold on to some bargain- the cauldron of class struggle – on the pick- ly there was and is no white race. The myth fort to preserve identity-driven politics in ing power and improve their lives. et line and in labor action. Furthermore, the of a “Caucasian” identity was a social con- the face of such absurdities, academics Now public workers nationwide stand working class is inherently international, a struct, in contrast to black oppression under have invented “intersectionality,” adding to lose the right to collective bargaining, unique and revolutionary social develop- slavery and Jim Crow segregation. up the identities. Instead, it is necessary whether through a Supreme Court deci- ment in human history. The working class On the other hand, some black liberals, to overcome the poisonous divisions that sion or a national “right-to-work” law. Yet today is about 60% non-Latino white, but such as MSNBC commentator Joy Reed, make it easier for the ruling class to pre- it is possible to defeat anti-union legislation, according to projections in a study by the have reached the second stage of electoral vail by setting one group against another in as was demonstrated in the powerful and Economic Policy Institute, it will be “ma- grief – anger – and directed it at the “white their unrelenting class war. successful 1970 postal strike led by black jority minority” in a decade and a half. working class.” Her article in the Daily Identity certainly matters in life and workers which defied federal state power. What is behind the sudden concern Beast (December 9) is titled, “Hey, White political struggle. In a society as racist The walkout was illegal from the outset, as for the “white working class”? Two words: Working Class, Donald Trump Is Already as the U.S., those who are designated as postal workers were banned by law from Hillary lost. The Democrats’ vaunted elec- Screwing You Over.” With barely concealed outsiders are singled out to face endless collective bargaining and from striking. Be- toral “blue wall” crumbled “bigly” in what Schadenfreude, she ticks off many of the oppressions in the routines of daily life, set by low wages and benefits and subjected were once Democratic strongholds of Mich- ways the Trump regime will hurt working- as well as existential terror. An African to unhealthy and unsafe working condi- igan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio class Trump voters while protecting her American, Native American, Latino or im- tions, workers in New York City struck in – the so-called “rust belt.” The response own more privileged economic position. migrant may be unable to hail a taxi, or be defiance of their union leaders. It was the of the labor bureaucracy, which since the Trump will gut your Medicare, she says, stopped, frisked and arrested on trumped- largest wildcat strike in U.S. history. 1930s has chained workers to the Demo- privatize your Social Security, pollute your up charges, and sometimes shot by killer After two days, Republican president cratic Party, was summed up in the head- air and water, lower your wages and bust cops. The question is how to fight back. Richard Nixon, just as reactionary as Don- line of The Chief (18 November), the New your unions, outsource your jobs. Ha! Then A black subway worker in New York City ald Trump, ordered strikers back to work. York City weekly for public employees: you’ll be punished for not voting for Hillary. has real power when she acts as part of the Instead, angry postal workers in hundreds “Union Officials, Dreading Trump Presi- This arrogant petty-bourgeois rant is union and in concert with other workers to of locations around the country joined the dency, Say Clinton Disregarded Discontent positively delusional. Trump will be “screw- fight against racist cop killings. strike. After six days, Nixon declared a na- Among White Working-Class.” The sordid ing over” the entire working class, not only For Revolutionary Class tional emergency and threatened to have and reactionary conclusion of bureaucrats white Trump voters in Pennsylvania, and troops distribute the mail. Over 18,000 and Democrats is to woo white workers by will also be coming after black journalists. Struggle Against Trump Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine and Nation- adapting to Trump’s racism. Opposition to identity politics can … And the Democrats al Guard active-duty and reserve personnel In the post-mortem blame game, as they come from two radically different direc- For all the talk of an upset in an elec- were dispatched to NYC post offices. But seek to refurbish their party’s appeal, they tions. When “color-blind” liberals and tion like no other, the aftermath has fol- Nixon hesitated to arrest strike leaders be- are opposing struggles against racism, ho- Democrats like Bernie Sanders attack it lowed a familiar script. A fake populist cause the strike was so popular. After eight mophobia and xenophobia. The columnist they are resisting raising any special de- promises to shake things up and bust up days the strikers went back, without a single Nicholas Kristof summed up the liberal fac- mands against black oppression. This is the Washington establishment. Once in of- firing, and winning the right to collective tion fight: “One faction argues that the left also the case with some pseudo-socialist fice, the new regime implements the pro- bargaining. They didn’t win the legal right became too focused on ‘identity politics,’ groups like the Socialist Equality Party gram of the Chamber of Commerce, the to strike, but that hadn’t stopped them from fighting for the rights of Muslims, gays, (a/k/a the World Socialist Web Site) which Fraternal Order of Police, Wall Street, im- waging a successful “illegal” strike. blacks and Latinos but neglecting themes of vituperates against “Black Lives Matter” perialist militarists, and anti-immigration Defeat is pretty much assured if the economic justice that would appeal to ev- marches. In contrast, when revolution- racists. Americans always vote for change, capitalist oppressors wage class war while eryone, working-class whites in particular” ary Marxists (Trotskyists) oppose identity and always get the same class domination workers are divided by identity-driven poli- (New York Times, 8 December). The same politics we are opposing the bourgeois lib- and oppression. Neither capitalist party tics. Victory is possible when those divisions theme is echoed by Bernie Sanders. eral notion that a person’s politics are di- has anything to offer the working class but are overcome on the basis of a revolutionary Their common assumption is that most rectly derived from their individual iden- continued exploitation and misery. Trump, program and leadership that champions and Trump-voting white workers are solidly tities rather than class, dividing different who promised to “drain the swamp” of organizes all the oppressed. The power of racist. By projecting the working class as oppressed groups into competing sectoral special interests, has dredged up the most the working class must be the driving force just another identity, the Democratic politi- “identities.” And as Leninists, our answer hideous creatures from the white lagoon of the fight against racism and sexism and cians imagine that they can compete for rac- is to call for class struggle against racism, for his military-billionaire complex – the all social oppression in capitalist society. To ist votes. The lesson they have drawn from sexism and all forms of social oppression. most right-wing cabinet in U.S. history. mobilize the power of the multiracial work- defeat is that the Democratic Party has be- Identity politics have become the de- The idea that the Democratic Party ing class requires a multiracial revolution- come too associated with its African Ameri- fault position in the U.S. in the absense of has abandoned the “white working class” ary workers party to lead the struggle for can, Latino and gay/lesbian constituents. sharp class struggle. Choose your group: has long been the preoccupation of liberals socialist revolution so we can achieve lib- While criticizing “identity politics,” they are you a worker or African American? A (like filmmaker Michael Moore) who yearn eration for all the oppressed. n January-February 2017 3 Donald Trump, the “Alt-Right”

Is Donald Trump a fascist? Quite drive toward increasing bonapartism, that is a few liberals have said so, on web sites military/police rule. Moreover, the ominous such as The New Republic, Slate, and Sa- expansion of police powers has been pro- 1 and Fascism lon. So do some establishment “neo-con- moted by the Democratic administrations of servatives” like Robert Kagan,2 who quit Pinochet regime was Bill Clinton and Barack Obama no less than the Republican Party in order to become a a classic Latin Ameri- Daniel Lombroso / The Atlantic by the Republican Bushes. It is the product Hillary Clinton advisor. You can hear the can military dictator- of decaying capitalism which increasingly same thing from reformist leftists, such as ship, resting on army discards its “democratic” trappings. the misnamed Revolutionary Communist bayonets, not fascist Donald Trump is no Mussolini, but Party (RCP) of Bob Avakian, which has mobs rampaging in in many respects he is similar to another launched a web site, www.refusefascism. the streets. Defining right-wing billionaire and media mag- org. Another Stalinist outfit, the Progres- fascism just as repres- nate, Silvio Berlusconi, who governed sive Labor Party (PLP), treats Trump as sive actions actually Italy off and on between 2001 and 2006. a fascist, just as they did with Democrat prettifies bourgeois Like Trump, Berlusconi is not a fascist Barack Obama (even as PLPers participat- democracy, that is, the but a dangerous demagogue who was not ed in Obama’s election campaign!). “normal” class dicta- wedded to a particular policy. Sinister In labeling Donald Trump a fascist, torship of the capital- forces flourished under his regime, from these varied political tendencies recall the ists, which is and al- Northern League racists to fascistic soc- horrors of the dictatorships of Benito Mus- ways has been based cer gangs, fascist skinheads and groups solini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany, on racism, imperialist nostalgic for Mussolini’s rule. Likewise, including the mass murder of six million conquest and police Trump’s campaign and his surprise vic- Jews in the Holocaust (as well as gypsies, violence in defense of tory in the November elections greatly Slavs, homosexuals and communists). private property. emboldened all sorts of racists, “white na- Since Trump was elected, does that mean Using character- tionalists” and outright fascists. In order we have concentration camps around the izations loosely and to combat and defeat them, it is necessary corner? Actually, the U.S. already has lots imprecisely can lead to have a clear understanding of the vari- of concentration camps – hundreds of de- to political disorienta- ous forces in the Trump “camp.” tention centers holding over 400,000 immi- tion. Analysis is often There is a coterie of unvarnished mili- grants. During the Cold War witchhunts of driven by policy. Thus “Hail Trump! Hail Victory!” Participants at “alt-right” tarists soon to be at the helm of the Pen- the 1950s a whole network of prison camps Stalinists frequently conference chant Nazi slogans, give Hitler salute. tagon and intelligence agencies. There are was set up to jail tens of thousands of com- label all sorts of regimes and forces “fas- social roots of the phenomenon they are the Wall Street bankers from Goldman munists and other leftists on lists of people cist” in good part in order to justify building analyzing. As opposed to such trivia, in his Sachs who are now in charge of Trump’s to be picked up in a “national emergency.” an “anti-fascist popular front,” as Stalin’s prophetic warnings to the German work- economic policies. You have token Re- It was all under capitalist “democracy.” henchman Georgi Dimitrov called for in ing class facing the rise of Hitler’s Nazis, publican Party establishment figures, like The election of Trump is a threat to Afri- 1935, seeking to tie the workers to a politi- Leon Trotsky, the co-leader of the Russian Republican National Committee chairman can Americans, Muslims, immigrants, orga- cal alliance with supposedly “anti-fascist” socialist revolution, described fascism and and White House chief of staff designate nized labor and democratic rights generally. capitalist forces. This marked the definitive its relation to the “normal” functioning of Reince Priebus, whose job is to keep the It is important to note that, while those who passing over of Stalinism to reformist sup- the bourgeois state apparatus: Congressional majority in line. And there’s voted for him were well aware of his repul- port for capitalist rule, openly rejecting the “At the moment that the ‘normal’ police Trump’s chief ideologist, Steve Bannon, sive statements, this does not mean that all program of international socialist revolution and military resources of the bourgeois who ran the presidential campaign during Trump supporters are primarily motivated of the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and Trotsky. dictatorship, together with their parlia- the final months. Bannon, a millionaire by racism, as Hillary Clinton suggested with The result was a disaster for the working mentary screens, no longer suffice to former Wall Street investment banker and her remark about his voters as a “basketful class in the Spanish Civil War and since. hold society in a state of equilibrium Hollywood movie mogul, is an utter reac- – the turn of the fascist regime arrives. of deplorables.” In Midwestern “rust belt” You can see the popular-frontist pol- tionary and rabid right-winger. Through the fascist agency, capitalism states quite a few workers voted for him as icy in protests on Inauguration Day, Janu- As soon as Bannon took charge of ary 20, as various reformist leftists call for sets in motion the masses of the crazed a protest against the anti-worker “free trade” petty bourgeoisie and the bands of de- Trump’s campaign, there was an uproar “unity against Trump” (or “Trumpism,” or policies of the Democrats (and Republicans) classed and demoralized lumpenprole- over his anti-Semitism, quoting his ex-wife “Trump’s agenda”). This is an implicit – that have led to the wholesale destruction of tariat – all the countless human beings and other informed sources. Bannon sup- and sometimes explicit – call for an alliance industrial jobs. Certainly much of the hard- whom finance capital itself has brought porters responded by asking how could he core racist sector of the electorate voted for with bourgeois “progressives,” like support- to desperation and frenzy. be promoting hatred of Jews since he is a Trump, and racist forces were emboldened ers of Democratic Party “socialist” Bernie “From fascism the bourgeoisie demands big supporter of Israel. Actually, there are by his victory. But fascism is far more: it is Sanders. Revolutionary Marxists and class- a thorough job; once it has resorted to plenty of supporters of Israel who are viru- the mobilization in the streets of desperate conscious workers call instead for class methods of civil war, it insists on hav- lent anti-Semites: the Republican Party is shock troops for the bourgeoisie to smash opposition to Republicans and Democrats, ing peace for a period of years. And the full of right-wing evangelical zealots who the workers movement, obliterate oppressed and all capitalist parties, and for a workers fascist agency, by utilizing the petty would love all Jews to go to Israel where, groups labeled the “enemy within,” and de- party to fight for a workers government. The bourgeoisie as a battering ram, by over- they claim, the Anti-Christ would annihi- stroy every vestige of bourgeois democracy. answer to Trump, and to genuine fascism, whelming all obstacles in its path, does a late most of them, prior to the Rapture. The It’s important to be clear: being a vi- is not allying with “anti-fascist” bourgeois thorough job. After fascism is victorious, Zionist rulers of Israel long ago learned to cious anti-Mexican, anti-Arab, anti-black politicians – who defend the same class finance capital directly and immediately live with pro-Israel anti-Semites in the U.S. race-hater, a sexist and national chauvinist, interests as the fascists, and consequently gathers into its hands, as in a vise of steel, Congress, whose votes are needed to get bil- a union-basher and advocate of unfettered block any real fight against capitalist attacks all the organs and institutions of sov- lions in Pentagon military aid that they de- police power, does not in itself make Trump – but to fight for socialist revolution. ereignty, the executive, administrative, pend on to suppress the Palestinians. a fascist. Some throw around the term as As Trotsky wrote in the Transitional Pro- and educational powers of the state: the Trotsky warned decades ago that Zi- entire state apparatus together with the an all-purpose epithet meaning “very bad.” gram, the founding document of the Fourth onism was a reactionary dead end, and army, the municipalities, the universities, Others use it to mean “very repressive.” International: “‘People’s Fronts’ on the one emigrating to Palestine could become a the schools, the press, the trade unions, But there are plenty of repressive regimes hand – fascism on the other: these are the bloody trap for Jews seeking to escape fas- last political resources of imperialism in the and the co-operatives. When a state turns that are not fascist. Fascists helped bring fascist … the workers’ organizations are cism, which sought the extermination of struggle against the proletarian revolution.” 4 the junta to power in Chile in the bloody annihilated ... the proletariat is reduced the Jewish people. So what is fascism? Some reputed Santiago coup d’état in 1973 with the to an amorphous state ... a system of ad- That Bannon is an anti-Semite, there “fascism experts” say Trump may be fas- backing of the U.S. government, but the ministration is created which penetrates can be no doubt. He produced a final (No- cist because of an “authoritarian person- vember 6) national television campaign ad, 1 “Yes, Donald Trump is a fascist,” New Repub- deeply into the masses and which serves ality,” or a “jutting jaw” like Mussolini! to frustrate the independent crystalliza- in which Trump rails against the “global lic, January 2016; “Donald Trump Is a Fascist,” They even have a 14-point checklist of Slate, 25 November 2015; “Trump’s not Hitler, tion of the proletariat.” special interests” and “political establish- “fascist traits” from the Italian writer Um- – “What Next? Vital Questions for the ment” who have “bled our country dry” as he’s Mussolini: How GOP anti-intellectualism 3 created a modern fascist movement in Ameri- berto Eco. All this shows is the inability German Proletariat” (1932) images stream past of billionaire George ca,” Salon, 11 March 2016. of bourgeois academics to understand the This scenario is not a description what Soros, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen 2 “This is how fascism comes to America,” 3 From his essay on “Ur-fascism,” New York Re- is happening in the United States today. 4 Leon Trotsky, “On the Jewish Problem” Washington Post, 18 May 2016. view of Books, 22 June 1995. What is happening is plenty dangerous, a (1937-40). 4 The Internationalist They are semi-tolerated, rotating in and out of prison, kept in reserve for when the un- Portland Union Calls to Mobilize Against stable equilibrium inevitably breaks down. On January 20 and 21, there will be some the Ku Klux Klan and Other Racist Forces ritual protests against Trump’s inauguration, either directly or indirectly linked to the Following the victory of the racist, 2015, Local 10 joined together with several this Union and the labor movement Democratic Party. Thus they cannot fight anti-immigrant, woman-hating Republi- other unions and dozens trade-unionists in a as a whole. Trump even though he lacks any kind of can Donald Trump over the warmonger- contingent initiated by the CSWP of “Labor Whereas, the white supremacist forces “mandate,” having lost the popular vote by ing representative of Wall Street Democrat Against Racist Police Murder.” are related to the origins of anti- almost 3 million votes. Meanwhile, racist Hillary Clinton in the November 8 U.S. Since this resolution was passed, similar labor “right to work” law in order forces from KKK nightriders to immigra- presidential elections, the hooded fascists motions were approved by IATSE (Stage- to destroy unions because they be- tion police are feeling emboldened. of the Ku Klux Klan announced that they hands) Local 28, Carpenters Local 1503, and lieved unions would lead to “race It will take hard class struggle to de- would hold victory rallies. As rumors the Seattle branch of Industrial workers of mixing” among workers, and feat Trump’s attacks on the workers. Revo- Whereas unions are considered a threat spread that the KKK intended to stage the World (IWW). lutionists should seek to organize mass to the KKK and other racist organi- such a provocation in the Portland, Or- labor-centered mobilizations to crush the zations because they are a working egon/Vancouver, Washington area, Local Mobilize Labor to fascist provocateurs as they attempt to class defense organization for all 10 of the Painters and Drywall Installers Stop the KKK make forays into urban centers of the mul- workers in the community. tiracial working class. In the Pacific North- Union (IUPAT) unanimously approved a Whereas, there has been a sharp increase Therefore be it resolved that the Interna- west, Class Struggle Workers – Portland motion calling for a working-class mobili- in racist and anti-immigrant attacks tional Union of Painters and Allied sparked a “Labor Against Racist Police zation to stop the KKK lynchers and other across the country in recent days, and Trades Local Union 10 stands ready Murder” contingent of several unions and racist forces in their tracks. Whereas, the Ku Klux Klan has announced to join with the community in mobi- scores of unionists in the 2015 May Day The resolution (reprinted below) was it would stage menacing provocations lizing against the clear and present march. Now, as rumors have circulated put forward by members of Class Struggle in many areas, and danger that the KKK and other rac- about a planned Klan march, CSWP mem- Workers – Portland, which works frater- Whereas, the KKK and other racist orga- ist organizations provocations pose bers are organizing to “Mobilize Labor nally with the Internationalist Group. Note nizations represent a deadly threat to to us all. to Stop the KKK.” Already three unions that the same union last August called on African Americans, Latinos and im- Resolution approved by the membership in the Portland-Vancouver area (Painters, workers to oppose the Democrats, Repub- migrants, as well as to Muslim, LG- of Local 10 at the monthly membership Stage Hands and Carpenters) as well as the licans or any party of the bosses, and to BTQ, and Jewish people, among many meeting on November 16th, 2016 at Industrial Workers of the World in Seattle build a class-struggle workers party. In others, and directly to the members of Portland, OR. have passed resolutions to use their power together with others “against the clear and and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, nabe Goebbels of American fascism. It is the Nazi gangs that threatened to march on present danger that the KKK and other rac- all of whom happen to be Jewish. (Bannon, the site of the corporate office of Spen- Whitefish or the KKK hooded lynchers – ist organizations’ provocations pose to us who happens to be Catholic, made his mil- cer’s National Policy Institute (NPI), terror squads drawn from the decomposition all” (see box this page). lions as a mergers and acquisitions banker an “academic” front for racist pseudo- products of decaying American capitalism. In the context of such a mobilization, at Goldman Sachs.) Meanwhile, as editor science. Spencer disclaimed responsibil- While Bannon and Trump are willing a squad of demonstration marshals could of the Breitbart News website up until last ity for the threatened Nazi march in his to court the fascist vote, their power rests become the nucleus for labor-based de- August, Bannon published numerous ar- hometown, but when he was interviewed on the established institutions of American fense guards that can effectively disperse ticles denouncing critics of Israel, which by David Duke on the latter’s December capitalist “democracy,” namely the deadli- the lynchers and Nazi scum. This is a very were gobbled up by virulent anti-Semites, 26 radio show, he had a different line. On est military and police forces on the planet. different perspective from that of those who as you can see from comments from the the air with his political mentor, Spencer In fact, this only makes them even more seek an “anti-fascist” adventure while avoid- site’s devotees. called on Whitefish residents to renounce dangerous to the workers and oppressed ing the hard political struggle in the unions Bannon is a hard-right national chau- “Love Lives Here” (a locally based anti- people the world over than the fascist scum against sellout bureaucrats, phony “friend of vinist who rails against “illegal immigra- racist organization targeted by the Nazis), who fantasize about holding state power. labor” Democrats and the opportunist left- tion.” As such he has affinities with, and singled out local rabbis by name and de- As the Internationalist Group emphasized ists who tag along after them. Waging that has given a platform to, “white national- manded that residents denounce them, in throughout the spectacle of the 2016 presi- struggle means organizing the power of the ists” and other brands of white suprema- exchange for cancellation of the march he dential election, Trump’s “border wall” and working class to take on the labyrinth of anti- cists, including out-and-out fascists like claimed to have no part in. “deportation force,” the nuclear weapons labor laws which both the partner parties of former KKK “imperial wizard” David Spencer came to national media atten- at his command and his belligerent threats American capitalism support to the hilt. It Duke, the “Klan in a suit” who repeatedly tion when he gave a keynote address to an against China were prepared for him by his means defeating the poisonous racism that ran for political office in Louisiana. Trump NPI conference last November, ten days Democratic predecessors (including the paralyzes working-class solidarity. hesitated for some days before renouncing after the election. Reveling in the growth “socialist” Bernie Sanders). As for Ameri- While the AFL-CIO leaders strained the endorsement of his campaign by Duke, of his movement and its prospects under a can racism, that was born with American mightily alongside their masters on Wall and also by the Ku Klux Klan, pretending Trump administration, Spencer concluded capitalism as the ideology of a ruling class Street to elect Clinton, many union mem- to “know nothing” about Duke or even with appeals to “Hail Trump! Hail our that established its rule through genocide bers didn’t buy it. Seeing no alternative rep- white supremacy. But Trump’s father Fred people! Hail victory!” mimicking Nazi and slavery. resenting the workers, some stayed home, was arrested in a Klan riot in Queens, New salutes of “Heil Hitler!” and “Sieg heil!” In the United States today, the “nor- others voted for Trump. Now the union tops York in May 1927. Many attendees responded with stiff- mal” means of bourgeois rule are not im- seek to outdo Trump in pushing nationalist But while neither Trump nor Bannon arm Nazi salutes. The political objective mediately threatened, as happened in Italy protectionism – that is, protecting the cor- are fascists, actual fascists are crawling of Spencer’s movement is the creation in the 1920s and Germany in the ’30s. This porations’ profits and dividing the workers out of their holes and looking forward to of what he calls a “white ethno-state” is not due to any internal vitality. On the against each other. Against this bankrupt the Trump years. Some are open Nazis, to replace the United States. This would contrary, the “two-party system” by which program which has produced nothing but like the website the Daily Stormer of one require the smashing of all democratic a small number of capitalist firms have se- defeats for decades, Portland Painters Union Andrew Anglin, which called for an armed institutions, particularly the integrated lected their government for over a century Local 10 last August called for no vote to march against Jews in Whitefish, Montana organizations of the multiracial working failed spectacularly in 2016 when Hillary the Democrats or Republicans, or any party on January 15. The town’s handful of Jew- class, which could only be accomplished Clinton’s coronation was bungled and an of the bosses, and for labor to build a class- ish residents reported anonymous death through genocidal mass murder. unreliable demagogue outmaneuvered the struggle workers party. That together with threats. Their photos, including of chil- This is exactly what Richard Spencer Republican establishment. The hysteri- real labor action against the attacks on Afri- dren, were posted on the Internet superim- and his ilk are aiming for. Spencer is the cal whining from the “intelligence com- can Americans, Latinos, immigrants and all posed with the Star of David patch that Hit- guru of the so-called “alt-right,” a term he munity” and the kept media over “Rus- working people, is what it will take to defeat ler required Jews to wear. Local police said coined several years ago to give political sian hacking,” i.e., over the leaking of the Trump … and the Democrats. they would allow the march in the name of cover to the Islamophobic, homophobic, xe- Democrats’ dirty secrets of conniving with Of course, none of this will fall from “free speech.” Yet the fascist provocation nophobic, anti-Semitic, white-supremacist Wall Street, testifies to the bourgeoisie’s the heavens or come about spontaneously. was not an exchange of views but a stag- ideology of his so-called “white national- self-conscious senility. Someone has to lead the fight. It’s up to the ing ground for murder of Jews, blacks, im- ism” movement. As editor of Breitbart, The only force that could clear away most conscious militants to orient the class migrants, homosexuals, leftists and union Trump ideologist Steve Bannon bragged this dead wood, the working class, is kept in struggle against the entire capitalist sys- activists. Stormer Anglin later postponed it that he had made the web site into “the such a state of disorganization and political tem, all of its parties and politicians, and for lack of a special event permit. platform of the alt-right.” But where Ban- subjugation by its pro-capitalist leaders that every form of oppression that it generates. Why Whitefish? This mountain resort non traffics in fascistic rhetoric, Spencer’s the ruling class does not feel immediately That’s the task the Internationalist Group town near Glacier National Park is the movement are actual fascist propagandists threatened by it. Mainly for this reason, the and the League for the Fourth International residence of Richard Spencer, the wan- linked to paramilitary action units, such as fascist gangs remain marginal in the U.S. have taken on. Make it yours. n January-February 2017 5 Turn Protests into Workers Revolt Leading to the Struggle for Power For Workers Mobilization to Smash the Gasolinazo! Starting on New Year’s Day, the Mexi- can population has been hit by a 20% increase in fuel prices, what has become known as the gasolinazo (gasoline coup). Desinformémonos Our comrades of the Grupo Internacio- nalista issued the following leaflet that is being distributed in Tijuana, Guadalajara, Mexico City and Oaxaca. JANUARY 6 – “The country is in flames,” was the headline of an article in El Uni- versal (5 January). Various websites of the national newspapers have included “min- ute by minute” coverage of the protests. “Interactive” maps show how the mobili- zations spread day by day. Major highways have been severed by barricades for long periods. From Tijuana in the north to Che- tumal in the south, truck drivers, peasants and workers give free passage at the toll- booths, while at some gas stations protest- ers pump the gas free of charge. Demonstrators in Ixmiquilpan detained riot police, demanding protestors arrested during a police assault on a Meanwhile, there are reports from var- highway to Nuevo Laredo be released. ious localities of clashes between residents and police: Guadalajara, 2 January; the im- are violating the sanctity of private property. and 20 percent in prices for gas and diesel The government claims it is a simple techni- poverished municipalities of Naucalpan, The popular unrest, caused by a system that fuel, which went into effect on the first of cal matter of “freeing up” the price of gaso- Ecatepec and Acolman in the the state of only produces hunger and oppression, is ut- the year. The government also announced line to conform to international oil prices. In México1 on January 3; the districts of Gus- terly justified. We in the Grupo Internacio- that beginning on February 18 the price televised messages transmitted throughout tavo A. Madero and Iztapalapa in Mexico nalista call to direct this anger at the root of of these fuels would change daily. These the country during the past two days, a ner- City, along with Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, the problem, the capitalist system. What’s increases come on top of a cumulative 38 vous Peña Nieto has insisted that this mea- Monterrey and Nuevo León, January 5; in needed is a socialist revolution to seize from percent increase in fuel prices since the be- sure is necessary to guarantee the “stability” Rosarito, Baja California protesters who the bosses the enormous riches that they ex- ginning of the president’s six-year term. of the economy (which if it were true, would had blocked gas pipelines supplying this propriate form the workers. The means of Ever since the massive privatization of have led to a fall in fuel prices, as many have city and Tijuana were driven out by federal production and distribution should be in the the Mexican National Railways under the pointed out). In reality, the gasolinazo is a police in the early hours of January 6; and hands of the working class. As Karl Marx auspices of presidents Carlos Salinas and direct result of the two-decade-long privati- the list goes on. said: expropriate the expropriators! Ernesto Zedillo, the bulk of the country’s zation of the energy sector. One of the great TV news flashes images of looting as Workers at Pemex (the state oil compa- goods are transported by road. This means “reforms” pledged by the Pact for Mexico representative of the protests against the ny), under siege by the bosses, not only have that any increase in fuel prices puts direct was the energy reform, accelerating the pace surge in gas prices; they suggest that “shad- an interest but also the power to enter the fray pressure on the prices of other basic com- of privatization in Pemex at the demand of owy interests” are behind the “acts of vandal- and transform the situation. Since Pemex modities. What’s more, the price of electric- the imperialist financial institutions. ism.” But in spite of the spin, what we see is workers literally control the gasoline pumps, ity and cooking gas is going up all across One of the most obvious effects of the the mounting rage of the people, seemingly they should decide how it is to be distributed the country, and in many regions the price of privatizing assault is the beginning of mass slipping out of the control of the government to the population and at what price. But this drinking water is rising. Therefore, the gas layoffs at Pemex. Just today, hundreds of of imperialist puppet-president Enrique Peña would require a real class struggle, which price increase represents a direct attack on Pemex workers in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca Nieto. This Institutional Revolutionary Party would break once and for all the shackles of the living standards of the working people. and Poza Rica, Veracruz, to cite two repre- (PRI) politician rules in concert with the corporatism that have kept the oil workers In some areas the situation is even sentative examples, are getting pink slips. “opposition” parties of the Pact for Mexico under the control of the bourgeois state for worse. For the population of Baja California The National Union of Oil Workers of the to impose precisely the counter-reforms that decades. Only complete independence from it’s not just the gasolinazo: on December 19 Mexican Republic (SNTPRM), a corporat- today show their results in the starvation at- the bosses’ state, and from the capitalist par- the National Action Party (PAN) majority ist institution that imposes the dictates of tack against the workers and their families. ties and politicians, can open the way to vic- in the state legislature, along with its allies the bosses and their government on the oil Even “expert” pundits closest to the regime tory against the starvation offensive. of the Party of the Democratic Revolution workers to the letter, has accepted the mass admit the “unpopularity” of Peña Nieto’s lat- Since every class struggle is a political (PRD) and the Citizens’ Movement (MC), layoffs so long as they are done “legally” est move, and while they exalt the doctrine struggle, the key is to build a revolution- approved the privatization of water, which … and so long as the top “union” officers of the “free market” they are apprehensive ary, internationalist working-class leader- will lead to a price increase of almost 300 get their share of the privatization payout through their own companies. that the protests might get out of control. ship which the situation requires. We need percent for this indispensable resource. Add The fact that oil workers are under at- Reports in the bourgeois press note with to forge a revolutionary workers party! to this the increase in public transportation certain alarm that the “looters” of gas stations fares. The bus companies are calling for an tack is a key element in planning a class- come from neighborhoods and housing com- The Energy Counter-Reform increase to 18.50 pesos on their routes, since struggle strategy to roll back the gasolinazo, plexes where riot police have been driven out Leads to Impoverishment a 100-pound tank of cooking gas now costs along with the anti-worker “reforms” that by the residents under a hail of rocks. In Ix- The panorama of protests that rang in more than 676 pesos. Like elsewhere along have smashed the living standards of the miquilpan (Hidalgo state) the population de- the new year is the answer to the brutal in- the northern border, this comes on top of the workers. So far, the mobilizations against the gasolinazo have fundamentally been lead by tained various state riot police, demanding an crease in gasoline prices (the gasolinazo). brutal devaluation of the peso against the dol- sectors of the petty bourgeoisie of the coun- exchange for protesters arrested in the course 2017 did not begin well for the workers and lar, leading to a 30% overall increase in hous- tryside and the cities: organizations such as of a police assault on the highway to Nuevo their families. On December 27 the federal ing and food prices. Clearly, the situation has El Barzón2 and various truckers organiza- Laredo. In Monclova (Coahuila state), the in- government of Enrique Peña Nieto of the become untenable. tions (owners of tractor-trailer rigs, buses and famous special police unit “Fuerza Coahuila” PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) an- If the consequences of the gasolinazo even taxis) have been at the head of protests also attacked protesters, but the crowd freed nounced an initial increase of between 15 are clear, little has been said of its causes. those who were arrested. in the highways and at the gas stations. Defenders of bourgeois order are scan- 2 A lobby of medium and large farmers, whose dalized by the looting, wailing that the poor Forge a Workers Party to Fight for politics are exemplified by its slogan debo no niego, pago lo justo (I don’t renounce my debt, 1 The central region around the capital (Mexico International Socialist Revolution! but I only pay what’s fair). City). continued on page 9 6 The Internationalist CLASS STRUGGLE EDUCATION WORKERS

in Title I federal funds which the Republi- cans have their eye on to finance vouchers. Betsy DeVos: Trump’s But it’s not just the Republicans. “Democrats for Education Reform,” is a powerful lobby bankrolled by Wall Street financiers. Hillary Clinton has been closely Voucher Vulture tied to the corporate education “reform- ers” since she was on the board of the Who is Betsy DeVos? Trump’s pick Vos represents a anti-union Walmart corporation in Arkan- for Education Secretary is an extremely mortal threat to sas. And Barack Obama’s administration has used billions in federal money to push wealthy former head of the Republican Images Drew Angerer/Getty teachers unions party in Michigan who is a zealot of vouch- and to public ed- charters, standardized testing and punitive ers and privately run, publicly financed ucation overall. teacher “evaluations.” charter schools. Her goal is to abolish pub- The leadership All in all, Betsy DeVos is a fitting suc- lic education outright. of the American cessor to the Democratic charterizers, from She is married to Dick DeVos, heir to Federation of Obama’s basketball pal Arnie Duncan to the family fortune derived from the totali- Teachers and the John King. And don’t forget Obama’s for- mer chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who tarian Amway Corporation. Amway (for National Educa- got to be mayor of Chicago by bashing the American Way) is a giant Ponzi scheme tion Association the teachers union and has kept it up ever which uses its sales force as a private po- know this. But since. The difference is that while the Clin- litical-religious army and funds far-right like a deer staring ton/Obama Democrats want to undermine groups, making the Koch brothers look at the headlights public education from within with corpo- like bleeding-heart liberals. of an onrushing ratizing “reforms,” the Trump Republicans Betsy is from another wealthy Michi- car, they are para- want to tear it down altogether. gan family, the Princes, whose money lyzed. Efforts to outright privatize the public The politics came from their auto parts corporation. schools have repeatedly failed, from the of the AFT and Her brother, Erik Prince, is the founder Edison Schools (which went bankrupt) to of Blackwater, the mercenary killer-elite NEA tops, like DeVos’s campaign from Michigan to Penn- “contractors” notorious for gunning down almost all union sylvania and Indiana using their millions to Iraqi civilians with reckless abandon. leaders in the promote vouchers by hook or crook. But Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos have declared war on Along with extreme right-wing ideology, U.S., are summed we have to defeat all the schemes to milk public education. Betsy and Erik both seek to finance privati- up in the phrase public schools for private profit, which zation schemes with public money. House, the Betsy DeVos agenda will soon de- class collabora- threaten our children’s education and DeVos bases her philosophy on Mil- termine national educational policy. tion. They chain the unions to the parties working people everywhere. ton Friedman, the apostle of “free market” Betsy DeVos was central to the near- of capital, particularly the Democrats. But Corporatizing and privatizing “educa- capitalism, who declared: “Vouchers are destruction of public education in Detroit. like the tango, it takes two to class-collab- tion reform” is backed by both parties of not an end in themselves; they are a means The schools were taken over by the state and orate, and the Trump Republicans aren’t capital. To defeat the bipartisan capitalist to make a transition from a government to starved of money so that their physical con- interested in that dance. assault on public education we need to take a market system.” Friedman was an advi- dition was marked by broken windows, rats What it will take to defeat DeVos, the schools out of the hands of Republican sor to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet everywhere. They treated the schools like Trump and the rest of the privatizers and and Democratic politicians. Class Struggle and first implemented his education poli- landlords trying to drive out tenants. Then union-busters is hard class struggle. Last Education Workers fights for teacher-stu- cies under that bloody regime. they were massively taken over by for-profit month United Federation of Teachers pres- dent-parent-worker control of the schools. Hearings start next week on Trump’s Ed charters, and have sunk into chaos. ident Mulgrew predicted that in 2017 “it’s To accomplish this we need to oust the labor Sec nominee. Confirmation is guaranteed. DeVos also played a key role in pushing going to be war.” He got that right. In re- bureaucrats, who have sold out hard-won With Republicans in control of the Senate, through a union-busting “right-to-work” law. cent editorials Mulgrew warned that NYC union gains, and break with the Democrats the House of Representatives and the White Donald Trump’s voucher vulture De- schools stand to lose half a billion dollars to build a class-struggle workers party. n NYC Schools Must Be A Sanctuary For Immigrant and All Students

The day after last November’s elec- has been an unprecedented upsurge in of New York (Article XI), all children would not hand over information on tions, a wave of fear swept through the racist attacks of all sorts, including at must be provided free public schools immigration status from the municipal schools over the threat to undocumented universities and in schools, as well as and the Supreme Court has ruled that ID cards to federal authorities, but immigrants. “Will I be deported?” students taunting of immigrant students in New education cannot be denied to students Whereas, a judicial injunction has been is- asked teachers. School administrations and York City schools, and on the basis of immigration status, and sued to prevent NYC from destroying teachers unions issued statements of sup- Whereas, Muslims, African Americans, Whereas, 40% of the population of the City information on immigration status from port. But much more is needed. We need to Latinos and immigrants from Mexico, of New York are immigrants, and municipal data bases, therefore be it prepare now to defend our students and ac- Central America and the Near East Whereas, under local laws and executive Resolved, that working people, immigrants tively resist the threat of deportations with have been singled for attacks, which orders (Nos. 34 and 41) New York City and all oppressed sectors can only rely action. The following resolution was raised also threaten Jewish, gay and lesbian employees, including police, have long on our own strength; and be it further at the December UFT Delegates Assembly. individuals and communities, and been instructed not to provide informa- Resolved, that our union issue a statement While the Unity Caucus voted it down, we Whereas, immigrant communities have tion on individuals’ status to ICE and that we will stand by our immigrant urge teachers everywhere to take the ini- been swept by fear of deportation and other immigration authorities except in students, faculty and staff, as well as tiative to form school-based committees to all manner of victimization, and limited circumstances, and their families, who are at risk of repri- defend immigrant and all students. Whereas, putative president-elect Trump Whereas, Chancellor’s Regulation A-101 sal due to their status; and be it further ------has threatened to cut off funds to states that students are not required Resolved, that the UFT call on the NYC Whereas, in his election campaign, Donald “sanctuary cities” that refuse to coop- to present documentation of immi- Department of Education to pub- Trump vowed to deport all 11 million erate with Immigration and Customs gration status, and that reference to licly restate that it does not collect undocumented immigrants, after the Enforcement (ICE) police, while ma- such status shall not appear on any information on students’ immigra- Obama administration already deport- jorities in both houses of Congress school records, and tion status, and that it will refuse to ed more than 5.5 million immigrants have threatened to cut off funding to Whereas, Mayor de Blasio has stated that hand over to federal authorities and in its first seven years, and “sanctuary campuses,” and the City of New York will not partici- will immediately delete any such Whereas, in the wake of the election there Whereas, under the Constitution of the State pate in deportation proceedings and continued on page 9 January-February 2017 7 You Can’t Fight Trump with Democrats – For a Class-Struggle Workers Party! NYC Transit Workers: Fight for Track Safety and Free Mass Transit! As we go to press, on January 16, NYC famously told the city to “drop dead” and transit union president John Samuelsen an- said he would veto any bailout. But it was nounced a tentative contract with “solid rais- Democratic Party NYC officials who carried es ... well ahead of inflation.” The TWU web- out Wall Street’s diktat. The banks raided the site boasted of a “concession-free” contract. News Rose Abuin/Daily city – and they’re still collecting today. Local Many members will be rightly skeptical. 100 should call to open MTA books to union D-Day is January 15. That’s when the inspection, and to stop paying the debt.. contract for New York City subway and bus workers in Transport Workers Union Local Shred the Taylor Law – Break 100 expires. The Metropolitan Transit Au- with the Democrats – Build a thority bosses are sure to raise a carload of Workers Party! giveback demands. At a mass rally last No- In order to win, the union has to go up vember 15, Local 100 president John Samu- against New York’s no-strike Taylor Law. elsen vowed, “If we don’t come to work, this But the union leadership plays by the bosses’ city can’t move.” In 2012-2014 transit work- rules. In 2005, Local 100 president Roger ers went for two years without a contract. In- Toussaint didn’t want the strike. When the stead of hinting, Local 100, the powerhouse membership voted to walk out, he called off of NYC labor, should draw the line: No con- the strike on the third day. The union was hit tract – no work! And to make it stick, the with a $2.5 million fine and removal of the TWU must begin gearing up for battle now. dues checkoff, while members were fined A mass membership meeting is called two days’ pay for each day of the strike. De- for January 7. For starters, a strike com- spite his services to the ruling class, Tous- mittee should be elected. Picket schedules NYC transit workers rally outside MTA headquarters, November 15. TWU must saint was jailed anyway. Toussaint came should be drawn up, demonstrations be- to office together with the New Directions gun. Have thousands of transit workers tie break with the Democrats and build a revolutionary workers party to win. caucus. These “reformers” crossed the class up traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and then there was an oncoming train about to round (COLA) should be non-negotiable, along line by suing the union in the bosses’ courts. jam Wall Street. Raise demands to win the the corner, and the operator had no idea they with a big raise on top of that. Once they got into office, the government support of riders and all NYC labor. Not were there. Bloc signals prevent a train from Transit bosses say they need the mon- owned them – no wonder they collapsed. only should the union oppose a fare hike, entering a bloc occupied by another train, ey to pay off debt due to the capital pro- Now Samuelsen is calling the shots af- it should revive the TWU’s historic call for but do nothing to protect flaggers. CBTC gram, so they can build a Second Avenue ter being elected in 2009 on the Take Back free mass transit. And with workers being signals only increase the risk by letting subway which stops short of Harlem, and Our Union slate. At the November 15 rally, killed on the tracks and injured at an alarm- trains operate closer together. the 7 train extension to the Javits Conven- he bragged about making the “smart decision ing rate, Local 100 should make track safe- There is no reason workers have to die tion Center and the new Hudson Yards to bargain past the end of the contract,” citing ty a top demand. on the tracks. Technology that can greatly high-end office and residential district. In “an economic crisis that was very real.” The If the union raised such demands, increase track worker safety already exists. short, the MTA board runs the system in result was a contract with all kinds of give- NYC working people would overwhelm- The Canadian rail equipment manufac- the interest of capital. backs – increased healthcare contributions, ingly and enthusiastically back transit turer Bombardier, which delivered the lat- The capitalists only need mass transit an additional two years for new hires to reach workers in their contract fight. Remember est (R-179) train to the MTA in September to take its wage slaves to and from work. top pay, and pay “raises” below the rate of in- that in 2005, when the big business press for testing, has developed a system called That is a key reason why service on Sat- flation. Since last year, Samuelsen sits on the was calling transit strikers “rats” and de- Tracksafe that would virtually eliminate urday and Sunday is so lousy. Local 100 manding union leaders be jailed, a solid all such incidents. Workers walking along should demand a doubling of train ser- MTA Board thanks to Governor Cuomo, no majority of city residents continued to sup- the tracks have an RFID chip embedded in vice on the weekends. Meanwhile, fares doubt as a reward for playing ball by working port the strike. But to make that support their badge which notifies the system of take a huge bite out of everyone’s pay. In without a contract. If a strike is in the offing, count, the entire NYC labor movement their presence. Sensors detect where trains 2015, police arrested almost 30,000 people you can bet he won’t defy Cuomo. must come out. Transit workers must not are, so that when they are a certain distance for fare beating, the vast majority of them Union workers are under the gun stand alone! away workers are alerted by a siren and African American and Latino. But if there across the country. But in order to bust the flashing strobe lights. Tracksafe has been were no fare to beat, there wouldn’t be any union-busters, labor must throw off the Safety First tested on Atlanta’s transit system, MAR- “evasion” arrests to make. We say rip out ties that bind it to the Democratic Party. In At the November rally, Samuelsen TA. But management consistently under- the turnstiles and make public transit free! Philadelphia, TWU transit workers struck talked a lot about safety. There was a mo- cuts safety in the name of “efficiency.” A main reason fares keep going up is at the beginning of November, but settled ment of silence for workers who died on In response to Louis Grey’s death, because the MTA is paying off a massive on the eve of the November 8 election to the job. Two weeks earlier, track worker Samuelsen said “the NYC Transit Author- debt to Wall Street bankers. As of 2015, avoid embarrassing Hillary Clinton (see Louis Gray was pinned and killed by a G ity can’t protect us so they damn well bet- the debt amounted to a whopping $34 bil- “Victory to the SEPTA Strike! Mobilize All train while setting up lights to warn train ter pay us.” Yes, the MTA damn well better lion. That’s bigger than the national debt of Philly Labor to Win!” (The Internation- operators of track work ahead. His partner, pay … and it damn well should be forced of 30 countries. The debt is decades old. In alist, 5 November 2016). In July 2013, Bay Jeffrey Fleming, was also struck and suf- to ensure worker safety! The union should the mid-1970s, NYC was placed under the Area Rapid Transit workers walked out in fered serious injuries. In October, signal demand worker safety committees with the control of a Municipal Assistance Corpo- a strike that was 100% effective. But after maintainer Monique Braithwaite fell onto power to shut down the system for unsafe ration, headed by investment banker Felix four days, the Amalgamated Transit Union the third rail while on the job. Nerve dam- working conditions and that the MTA in- Rohatyn, and an Emergency Financial Con- tops called it off at the request of Demo- age was so bad that her right arm had to stall track safety technology to ensure no trol Board. The EFCB stopped infrastruc- cratic governor Jerry Brown (see “Lessons be amputated: a catastrophe for anyone, let track worker would die on the job again! ture maintenance on bridges, tunnels and of the On-Again, Off-Again BART Strike,” alone a single mother raising four children. of course the public transit system. In 1981 The Internationalist, 10 November 2013). Samuelsen said that every day an av- Rip Out the Turnstiles and the MTA was allowed to issue bonds to raise Everywhere the biggest obstacle to a erage of five transport workers are injured Refuse to Pay Wall Street money for repairing its infrastructure, and successful strike is the labor bureaucracy badly enough that they have to miss work. Currently the TWU leadership is has been borrowing ever since. that is bound hand-and-foot to the Demo- So where are the union’s safety demands? demanding raises above 2%. This is only The capitalists who started this mess are crats. This is true both of the old-line bu- None of the announced contract demands slightly over inflation. The MTA typically the ones profiting from it. When New York reaucrats and reformers: Samuelsen hangs relate to worker safety on the tracks. Louis juggles its books to produce a deficit so it was first subjected to the dictatorship of the with Cuomo, Toussaint hobnobbed with Grey died because he and Jeffrey Fleming can cry poverty at contract time, but this EFCB, it was because the banks junked the then New York senator Clinton. In last did not have enough time to get into sepa- time it admits to having a surplus. The de- city’s credit rating and drove it to near bank- year’s presidential election, the TWU en- rate cubbyholes. They had no warning that mand for a full cost-of-living adjustment ruptcy. Republican president Gerald Ford dorsed Clinton. Now they are facing mega- 8 The Internationalist capitalist Donald Trump and rabidly anti- to set up committees in every school has in every state. The proceeds should go Break with the bourgeois popular front union Republicans who control Congress. including faculty, staff and parents, directly to a strike fund, indispensable for around AMLO! In order to wage a successful fight against to establish phone trees, social me- the struggle to break the shackles of corpo- In the current protests against the these labor haters, it is necessary to break dia networks and other measures ratism in the industry and for the simulta- government of oppressors and exploiters, with the Democrats and oust the bureau- for rapid response and outreach; and neous organization of genuine instruments revolutionary workers call for intervention crats who chain labor to this party of capital. be it further resolved of proletarian struggle bringing together with a program of transitional demands, to The way forward was shown last Au- Resolved, that if immigration authorities not only the employees of Pemex but also transform the popular mobilizations into a detain any NYC school students or gust by the International Union of Paint- of the various private companies active in working-class revolt pointing toward the ers (IUPAT) Local 10 in Portland, Oregon their families for deportation pro- the industry. Along with the urgent need to seizure of power. To fight layoffs and un- which voted to “not support the Democrats, ceedings, such school-based com- open the accounting books of Pemex and employment, as well as to put a brake on Republicans, or any bosses’ parties or poli- mittees should immediately call an the other companies in the sector, this points the devastating effects of inflation, work- ticians,” and instead to “call on the labor ongoing assembly, including teach- towards workers control of fuel production ers throughout the country should impose movement to break from the Democratic ers, students, staff and parents, to shut and distribution across the country. a sliding scale of wages (so that every in- Party, and build a class-struggle workers down the affected school, and other To finally begin a counteroffensive of party” (see “To Hell with the Bosses’ Par- schools in solidarity, and that the UFT the exploited and oppressed against decades crease in the cost of living is compensated ties – For a Class-Struggle Workers Party!” shall mobilize mass action citywide of bosses’ attacks, we need a working-class, by proportionate wage increases) and a The Internationalist No. 45, September-Oc- in support of such protest action.n revolutionary program. First of all, it is nec- sliding scale of working hours, to distribute tober 2016). If TWU Local 100 were to take essary to understand the bourgeois charac- the available work among all the workers up and pass IUPAT Local 10’s motion, it Gasolinazo... ter of the corporatist “unions,” which are without any pay cuts. The unions should would set off a firestorm in the labor move- continued from page 6 nothing but labor fronts integrated into the also begin to organize neighborhood com- ment locally and nationwide. It would show In the cities, various bourgeois parties, capitalist state that act as real labor cops mittees to control prices. the bosses that the workers are getting ready especially MORENA (Movement of Na- to quash any attempt at resistance by the The working class is the only social for a knock-down, drag-out fight. tional Regeneration) led by Andrés Man- workers. To fight corporatism effectively it class with the power and interest in sweep- As we wrote on the eve of the 2005 uel López Obrador (known by his initials, does not suffice to fight for “democratiza- ing away the rot, the violence and poverty NYC transit strike, a walkout would be met AMLO), the PRD and the “Labor Party” tion” of these outfits: it is necessary to build of decaying capitalism. To carry out the with the full might of the capitalist state. (PT),3 have sought to organize “symbolic” the kernel of genuine revolutionary lead- necessary tasks what’s required above all “To defeat this threat, it is necessary to occupations of gas stations and government ership for the working class. All reformist is a revolutionary workers party, forged on go beyond simple business unionism offices. MORENA promises that AMLO perspectives are condemned to defeat: it the Trotskyist program of permanent revo- and place New York transit workers at will lower fuel prices as soon as he becomes is necessary to overcome all forms of nar- the head of all working people, poor, lution, which says that today’s democratic president in 2018 (!). For its part, the PRD, a row corporatism and break with bourgeois oppressed minorities and immigrants demands cannot be satisfied short of the sei- nationalism, pointing the way to unite the facing relentless attacks by the ruling co-signer of the Pact for Mexico, is directly zure of power by the working class, leading class…. If the Taylor Law is used responsible for the privatizing counter-re- struggle of the Mexican workers with those to international socialist revolution. on the other side of the borders, to the south against the TWU, all public employees form in Pemex. Now it wants to pass itself In short, what is needed is a revolution- off as an “ally” of the workers that it has at- as well as to the north. Oil workers must unions should walk out.” ary leadership of the working class. Such a tacked so many times, whether on its own or look to the dissident teachers of the CNTE What’s needed is “a program to mo- leadership can only take the form of a Lenin- in alliance with the PRI and PAN. All these as their natural allies, as well as to the health bilize labor’s power. That means, no more ist party of the proletarian vanguard, armed forces and political personalities put for- sector workers, who in addition to being un- capitalist politicians on labor platforms, and with theoretical-programmatic perspective of no more representatives of police or detec- ward nothing more than various bourgeois der a brutal attack by “structural reforms” at permanent revolution. These dark days can tives’ ‘unions’ either. We say: cops out of the currents that agree on the fundamentals: the the moment, have already shown solidarity, illuminate with their fires the path of struggle unions – they are the armed fist of the boss- defense and strengthening of capitalism, an like the 72-hour hospital strike in Oaxaca that the workers must undertake. We in the es. And that means getting the revenue and all-embracing system of exploitation and last year in support of the teachers strike. Fi- ‘property protection’ cops out of the TWU.” oppression that can only bring more poverty nally, it is fundamental to fight for the full- Grupo Internacionalista dedicate our efforts The next time police gun down an innocent (we are now into the ninth year of a global est political independence parties and poli- precisely to the construction of the indispens- person, we added, “unions should mobilize capitalist crisis from which there is still no ticians of the bosses: the PRI, PAN, PRD, able revolutionary workers party carrying their power and the TWU should shut down way out). MORENA and their two-bit satellites. the Marxist program into the struggles of the mass transit against police terror” (“Shut The ongoing crisis of capitalism is no In Oaxaca the dissident teachers of workers. Join us in this effort! ■ Down NYC with an All-Out Transit Strike!” anomaly, it is an integral part of a system Section 22 can be instru- The Internationalist, 10 December 2005). that impoverishes the masses while ac- mental in carrying out a League for the Fourth International Today, the war on working people cumulating fabulous riches for the few. In joint struggle of the vari- LFI, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY continues, as does the plague of racist po- these moments of struggle we must drive ous working-class sectors 10008, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] lice terror. Now more than ever, it is nec- out all those bourgeois politicians who want against the government essary to fight politically, putting labor to derail the protests to their benefit by pre- assault. Key is the po- Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil squarely in the forefront of the struggles of senting themselves as supposed opponents litical perspective, which Brazil: write to Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251-740, of the PRI government. It is truly absurd, must be one of complete the oppressed. This is what a class-struggle Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil workers party would do, and NYC transit disgusting and cynical that PAN and PRD independence from the Rio de Janeiro: write to Caixa Postal 3982, CEP workers have the power to wage that fight. politicians – who voted for the energy re- bourgeoisie. Instead of 20001-974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil What’s needed is to forge a leadership with form (and the other reforms) – have the reviving a class-collab- E-mail: [email protected] the determination and revolutionary pro- gall to “unite” with the protests, such as orationist organ like the gram to fight to win.n in the city of Ensenada, Baja California. APPO (the Popular As- LVI/Deutschland Meanwhile, MORENA would like to play sembly of the Peoples of Germany: write to Postfach 80 97 21, 21007 Hamburg, fireman for the bourgeoisie, saying that the Oaxaca, which led the NYC Schools... Germany continued from page 7 solution is to vote for this bourgeois party struggle in 2006), which information that may exist in school (partners of those who ordered the murder included prominent bour- Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia records; and be it further and kidnapping of the students of Ayotzi- geois politicians like Fla- napa), to sign petitions and perpetuate the Italy: write to Anna Chiaraluce, Casella Postale N. 6, Resolved, that ICE police and immigra- vio Sosa (at the time, of 06070 Ellera Umbra (PG), Italy capitalist system of exploitation and death, tion authorities will not be allowed the “New Left” current of E-mail: [email protected] on school premises under any cir- as various pseudo-socialist groups (some of the PRD), what’s needed cumstances, and be it further whom even call themselves “communist”) is class-struggle action Grupo Internacionalista/México do in tailing after the bourgeoisie. Resolved, that the United Federation of of the workers against México: write to Apartado Postal 12-201, Admón. For this reason a complete shift in the Teachers will seek to mobilize mass the bourgeoisie. Today, Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, México D.F, México class axis of these protests is needed. To labor-immigrant action to defend Sosa’s group, Comuna E-mail: [email protected] achieve this, the workers of the energy sec- those threatened and to stop depor- Oaxaca, an integral part Tel. Mexico City: 55-3154-7361; Guadalajara: 33-1752- tor, and particularly the oil workers, must tations and call on other unions and all of MORENA, puts for- 6643; Oaxaca: 951-185-6815; Tijuana: 664-112-5423 opponents of racism and defenders of play a key role. To defend their own jobs ward a program to subor- democratic, minority and immigrants and turn back the effects of privatization dinate the workers strug- Internationalist Group/U.S. in the sector, the oil workers could sell fuel rights to do likewise; and be it further gle against the gasolinazo , Box 3321, Church Street directly to the population at five pesos per Internationalist Group Resolved, that a representative union-wide to the election campaign Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. liter. This is utterly realizable at the big committee be set up to monitor all of AMLO, a bourgeois- E-mail: [email protected] storage and distribution centers that Pemex threats and indications of action by nationalist caudillo who New York Tel. (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 immigration authorities against mem- 3 A thoroughly bourgeois party that was formed calls for a “loving re- Los Angeles Tel. (323) 984-8590 public” together with bers of our community; and be it further as an adjunct to the PRI, and has since become Portland Tel. (971) 282-7903 Resolved, that the union take the initiative a satellite of the PRD. the Mexican capitalists. January-February 2017 9 Hands Off Standing Rock Sioux! 4 DECEMBER 2016 – In a significant Obama administration into blocking the (but perhaps temporary) victory for the pipeline crossing. But ETP has power- Native American and other protesters ful support not only from North Dakota’s at the Standing Rock Indian Reserva- Republican government, which is entirely tion, and their supporters elsewhere, the in the pocket of the oil companies, but U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today an- also from putative president-elect Donald nounced it would not grant an easement Trump, who is an investor in the DAPL (permission to build) for the Dakota Ac- and has called for it to be built at that site. cess Pipeline (DAPL) to cross the Mis- A new administration in Washington next souri River at the Reservation. Instead, January could easily reverse the Army it said the builders should “explore alter- Corps of Engineers ruling. native routes” – which Energy Transfer Moreover, there could still be a con- Partners (ETP), the main owner of the frontation at the construction site on De- DAPL, has refused to do. cember 5 or in coming days as police have The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has threatened to arrest anyone who crosses opposed the Missouri River crossing at a bridge. Local police have been openly [Minneapolis] Richard Tsong-Taatarii/StarTribune that site as endangering water supplies racist, calling the Indian protesters “evil” and violating Indian land rights. The for violating sacrosanct private “property pipeline was originally planned to cross rights” of the pipeline company – on land the Missouri north of the state capital of which was granted to the Sioux in an 1851 Cops attack demonstrators protesting Dakota Access Pipeline next to Bismarck, but when politicians object- treaty and subsequently stolen from them. Standing Rock Indian Reservation on November 20, blasting them with ed, the route was moved south to cross State and local police and sheriffs water cannon in sub-freezing weather. at Standing Rock in a blatant case of en- deputies from as far away as Minneapolis, pipeline as such, meaning that much of At a November 3 protest in Los An- vironmental racism. In response, thou- Wisconsin, Indiana and Cincinnati, Ohio North Dakota oil would continue to be geles, IG signs called for: “Hands Off sands of Native Americans (including have participated in the brutal cop attacks shipped by rail which is far more danger- Standing Rock Sioux,” “Cops, Feds, representatives of more than 300 tribes) on the Standing Rock protesters. In opposi- ous, the Internationalist Group has taken Pipeline Companies – Get Out of Indian and others have traveled to the reserva- tion to the vicious repression, hundreds of the position of supporting the Standing Lands!” and “Pipeline? Run It Thru the tion to support the “water protectors.” veterans from across the country are pres- Rock Sioux – and solidarizing with their Golf Courses of N.D. Power Elites!” We The federal action may stop the ently gathering to “take a stand with Stand- courageous resistance to the forces of rac- also demand that all charges be dropped pipeline for now, but the battle is far ing Rock.” ist repression – in opposing the construc- against the more than 500 protesters who from over. Many protesters and trib- While liberals, environmental activ- tion of the pipeline at the reservation as an have been arrested during the course of al leaders focused on pressuring the ists and many leftists have opposed the attack on Native American rights. the struggle. n

owner of the pipeline, and in Phillips 66, Indian and other demonstrators at a con- a federal court ordered a brief halt on Standing Rock... which holds a quarter of the DAPL stock. struction site near the Sacred Stone Camp construction. But on October 9 a federal continued from page 1 Moreover, Kelcy Warren, the CEO of near Cannon Ball. Vicious dogs were set appeals court denied the request for an objected that they did not trust the govern- ETP, was a major donor to Trump and gave on the protestors and pepper spray used injunction. Two weeks later a militarized ment and would not leave until the pipeline $3 million to the Republican campaign. against demonstrators, including children. force of state and local police beefed up was definitively stopped. North Dakota governor Jack Dalrymple, TV footage on Democracy Now viewed with riot cops from Wisconsin, Indiana, Liberals were jubilant. “This Is What who threatened mass arrests of pipeline by more than 13 million people recalled South Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming and Victory Over The Dakota Access Pipeline protesters, was a Trump campaign energy scenes of the 1963 police attacks on civil Nebraska launched an assault on the 1851 At Standing Rock Looks Like” gushed the advisor. Trump’s nominee for energy sec- rights marchers in Birmingham, Alabama. Treaty Camp, trying to drive out protest- Huffington Post (4 December). A “historic retary is former Texas governor Rick Perry, The response of the state of North Dakota ers. Using pepper spray, tear gas, rubber victory,” proclaimed The Atlantic (5 De- a wholly owned asset of Warren. Perry sits was to issue a warrant for the arrest of De- bullets, LRAD sound cannons producing cember). The action by Obama-appointed on the board of directors of ETP and on mocracy Now producer Amy Goodman in ear-splitting noise, helicopters overhead top brass at the Pentagon – which com- the board of Sunoco Logistics Partners, a blatant attempt to intimidate media cov- and armored Humvees and Bearcat per- mands the Army Corps of Engineers, with the two main owners of the DAPL, both erage. At least seven journalists have been sonnel carriers, provided courtesy of the jurisdiction over the Lake Oahe federal controlled by Warren, who also bank- arrested during the protests, deliberately Pentagon, the “forces of order” arrested flood control project – put a crimp in the rolled Perry’s failed presidential bid.1 Rex targeted by the county sheriff. more than 140 people. drive to complete the DAPL at break- Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, will be In response to widespread outrage The multi-state police force was neck speed by January 1. But the effect secretary of state; Scott Pruitt, a creature over the repression, the Obama adminis- assembled under the Emergency Man- will likely be temporary (see “Hands Off of Oklahoma’s Devon Energy and Conti- tration revoked authorization for pipeline agement Assistance Compact (EMAC), Standing Rock Sioux!” in box above). nental Resources, the biggest producer in construction on federal land on Septem- which was signed into law by Democratic Trump’s support for the pipeline was North Dakota’s Bakken oil patch, will run ber 9, and asked ETP to temporarily stop president Bill Clinton in 1996. Supposed- quickly reaffirmed by his transition team. the Environmental Protection Agency;2 building where demonstrations are ongo- ly intended to enable states to cooperate The incoming chief executive officer of and former Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, ing. The company refused. A week later, in the face of national disasters, it also au- American capitalism has vowed to “un- a hard-line pro-cop racist, will be attorney leash” unfettered production of oil and gas general. An administration of Big Oil and Rob Wilson Photography and has holdings of stock in ETP, the main unbridled police power ensures that the battle over Standing Rock will reignite af- ter January 20. It was the vicious repression of pro- testers that made Standing Rock national news in the first place. A boiling point came in late August when Republican

John L. Mone/AP governor Dalrymple declared a state of emergency. On September 3, security guards hired by ETP brutally attacked 1 See “In Money Race, Rick Perry’s Campaign Shows the Power of Few,” Bloomberg, 31 July 2015. The article quotes Donald Trump saying, “When you have people giving you millions of dollars, when they call up, even if it’s not the best interest of the United States, you do what they tell you to do. Who knows it better than me? I Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy give to everybody, they do whatever I say.” Transfer Partners and Sunoco 2 See “Energy and Regulators on One Team,” New Multi-state police force used LRAD sound cannon mounted atop armored Logistics, the main owners of DAPL. York Times, 7 December 2014. personnel carriers to blast demonstrators with ear-splitting noise. 10 The Internationalist thorizes a cobbled-together paramilitary Flint that water is in dire need,” said one. police force in the face of “community “In North Dakota, they’re trying to force disorders, insurgency, or enemy attack.” Getty Images pipes on people. We’re trying to get pipes EMAC has been used only twice against in Flint for safe water” (Associated Press, protests: first in Baltimore, Maryland fol- 4 December). Serious ecological and envi- lowing the police murder of Freddie Gray, ronmental issues under capitalism have an and now in Standing Rock. While this was often dominant content of class and racial largely ignored by “mainstream” bour- oppression. So to fight off the attacks by a geois print and broadcast media, it pro- rapacious ruling class, you need a revolu- voked protests in Minneapolis, Cincinnati tionary program of class struggle. and Madison, Wisconsin demanding re- While the protests at Standing Rock call of police. But North Dakota authori- have emphasized the tribe’s opposition ties and police forces around the Midwest to routing the Dakota Access Pipeline see Standing Rock as Baltimore West or through Sioux lands, elsewhere (and Ferguson North, a “civil disturbance” to particularly on the East Coast) demon- be suppressed at all costs. strations against DAPL have focused The scene was surreal: hundreds of on ecological issues and opposition to police strung out in a line in the prairie, the pipeline as such and oil production writing numbers on the arms of arrested overall. Some signs say, “Keep It In the protesters and holding them in pens re- Ground.” We are not for or against the sembling dog kennels; sophisticated police Unlicensed security guards hired by ETP used dogs to attack protesters, pipeline, but we support the right of the communications vehicles trucked in from including women and children. Dakota Sioux to keep it out. If they ob- hundreds of miles away, and sound can- the Indian population (whose lands they neers because of “public input” (i.e., jected to a project to grow petunias (or nons blasting away in the middle of vast submerged in damming the river and cre- politicians’ objections), more “desktop more likely, sunflowers), we would also open spaces. The sheriff of Cass County ating Lake Oahe in 1958), and the politi- evaluation” and proximity to populated support the right of a dispossessed Na- (Fargo), with no jurisdiction in the area, cal echelon of the Pentagon will soon be “high consequence areas.”3 Danger to an tive American people to defend their accused demonstrators of using “very dan- replaced by a Trump administration that is Indian reservation and its water intake lands. The call for an immediate end to gerous means” … like horses. beholden to the oil companies and an eager in case of a leak was not deemed “high the production of oil, on the other hand, Then at the beginning of Thanksgiv- proponent of police power. consequence.” In fact, objections from is a petty-bourgeois anti-working class ing week, cops launched an even more The brutal repression dealt out to Standing Rock about a river crossing a demand that would shut down industry. vicious attack on the water protectors protesters at Standing Rock, North Da- half mile north of the reservation were at Standing Rock. Police water cannon kota in 2016 – using paramilitary forces not even mentioned in the 983 pages of Those who raise it should hand over their drenched protesters in sub-freezing (23º just as were used against black demon- the November 2015 Army Corps Draft iPhones, iPads, MacBook Air laptops, air Fahrenheit) weather, injuring 300. They strators in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 Environmental Assessment (written en- conditioners, and their electric-powered justified this potentially lethal tactic by and Baltimore, Maryland in 2015 – is di- tirely by Dakota Access). So to shorten Toyota Priuses (or gas-guzzling SUVs). claiming the praying Indians were en- rectly related to the fact that the protests the route and avoid the need for new In focusing on pipelines, eco-radicals gaged in an “on-going riot.” Protesters have been led by, and the bulk of the pro- easements, the pipeline was routed in the and Democratic Party liberals are in effect were severely injured, including a wom- testers are, Indians. The placement of the same corridor as the existing Northern promoting a potentially far more danger- en who lost the use of her arm after it pipeline and the ferocity of its paramili- Border natural gas pipeline. ous method of transporting petroleum was nearly blown off, and another who is tary guards against peaceful protesters The parallel is inescapable to the now products: the oil trains that today carry the now blind in one eye after being hit in the is, as Standing Rock chairman Archam- infamous Flint water crisis, where the majority of the Bakken oilfields produc- face by a tear gas canister. bault put it, “not at all surprising given largely black and working-class Michigan tion. Pipelines are safer, but where they go Standing Rock Sioux tribal chairman the last 500 years of the mistreatment of industrial city had its water supply poi- and what safety measures are required is David Archambault II appealed for federal our people.” While African Americans, soned by state officials’ decisions to switch a class question. An Internationalist Group intervention against the “militarized law brought here in chains, have had to en- the supply source as a budget-cutting sign at a November 3 Standing Rock pro- enforcement.” So the Army Corps of Engi- dure four centuries of oppression, from measure (see “Flint Water Crisis: Capital- test in Los Angeles read: “Pipeline? Run It neers regional commander in Omaha (who chattel slavery to Jim Crow segregation ism Is Poisoning Us,” Revolution No. 13, Thru Golf Courses of N.D. Power Elites!” in July approved DAPL plans to tunnel un- and now mass incarceration and wanton March 2016). As the December 5 show- As a modest proposal, since the governor der Lake Oahe, and was being sued by the police murder, Native Americans sub- down in Standing Rock loomed, a carload is so hot for DAPL, we suggest running tribe) decreed the Oceti Sakowin (Seven jected to genocide are still under siege of veterans made the 17-hour drive from the pipes smack through the middle of the Council Fires) camp must shut down by over five centuries later. Flint to show their solidarity. “We know in Apple Creek Country Club (“the only pri- December 5 in order to “protect the gener- You couldn’t miss the contrast be- 3 vate club in the Bismarck-Mandan area”) al public from the violent confrontations” tween the October 28 acquittal of the See “Pipeline route Plan First Called for Cross- ing North of Bismarck,” Bismarck Tribune, 18 where the Friends of Jack Dalrymple hold with police, with protest confined to a Bundy brothers, the white ranchers who the governor’s cup golf tournament. Mean- “free speech” pen. Corps commander John August; and “Why a Previously Proposed Route led an armed takeover of the Malheur for the Dakota Access Pipeline Was Rejected,” while, we say: “Cops, Feds, Pipeline Com- Henderson said he acted from “concern for federal wildlife refuge in Oregon (a for- ABC News, 3 November. panies – Get Out of Indian Lands!” ■ public safety and the fact that much of this mer reservation stolen from the Paiute land is leased to private persons for graz- people after they rose up in 1878) and the ing and/or haying purposes.” Governor relentless persecution of unarmed Indi- Dalrymple ordered the area cleared be- ans in North Dakota protesting a pipeline Internationalist Photo cause it is “not zoned for dwellings suit- being built on reservation land stolen able for living in winter conditions.” The from the Dakota Sioux as part of an 1868 Morton County sheriff (who ordered the land grab (“Fake Cowboys and Real In- water cannon attack) said protesters must dians,” New York Times, 2 December). not subject themselves to “life-threatening Anti-Indian racism is endemic among conditions.” North Dakota’s rulers. Last year the Re- The stage was set for a showdown. publican-controlled legislature passed a Several thousand Native American and voter registration law that would disen- other veterans mobilized to converge on franchise thousands of Native Americans Standing Rock to protect the water pro- who don’t have a street address – a de- tectors. The potential clash between two liberate attack on the reservation popu- trained military forces was defused by the lation, whose ID cards lack street ad- decision by the Department of the Army dresses since most receive mail at post – not by the Corps of Engineers, as was office boxes. A federal judge threw out widely and erroneously reported in the the racist law. press. The Corps was ordered to engage in The whole battle over the Dakota Ac- “a robust consideration of alternative loca- cess Pipeline at Standing Rock is a bla- tions for the pipeline crossing the Missouri tant case of environmental racism. The River,” including the alternative crossing original route plotted in May 2014 would north of Bismarck, and “detailed discus- have crossed the Missouri ten miles north Internationalist Group at November 3 demonstration in Los Angeles protesting sion of potential risk of an oil spill” at the of the state capital, Bismarck. However, attempt to run pipeline through Standing Rock Indian Reservation, potentially lake. But the Corps is viscerally hostile to this was rejected by the Corps of Engi- endangering water supply and violating Native American rights. January-February 2017 11 he push to ram transformed North Da- Tthrough the Dakota kota from an agricultural Access Pipeline (DAPL) Pipelines, Oil Trains, state – mainly produc- reflects the frantic pace ing hard winter wheat for of the oil boom over the pasta, beans, sugar beets last decade. In the space of six and canola, flax and sunflower oil years, production in the Bakken – to a major player in the U.S. oil fields more than quintupled to and Capitalism energy economy. Correspond- more than 1.2 million barrels per ingly, its politics have been trans- day, making sparsely populated formed from a pale reflection of North Dakota the second-largest the prairie populism of yore into

oil producing state after Texas. Matthew Brown/AP a kind of Texas North. Shale ty- But shortage of pipeline capacity coons buy politicians who run has led to bottlenecks. So after state regulatory agencies as sub- fast-track approval by the com- sidiaries of the industries they are pliant state Public Utilities Com- supposed to watch over. A cel- mission in January, the DAPL got ebration of state oil production a rubber-stamp OK from the U.S. topping a million barrels a day Fish and Wildlife Service in May. was catered by Halliburton and On July 25 the Army Corps of En- featured the theme song of Dal- gineers issued a “Mitigated Find- las – the TV series of intrigue, ing of No Significant Impact,” skullduggery and unbridled overriding 23 objections by the greed. Presiding over the pit of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (and corruption has been Republican another 16 by the Environmen- governor Jack Dalrymple, also a tal Protection Administration) to member of the North Dakota In- decree that “no Environmental dustrial Commission. In his 2012 Impact Statement was required.” election campaign, Dalrymple Construction began in January took in $550,000 from big oil (and in North Dakota on May executives, lawyers and political 4 23). Proceeding at breakneck Oil train near Wolf Point, Montana in November 2013. Rail transportation of Bakken crude action committees. speed, DAPL sponsors vowed to oil is far more dangerous than pipelines. So why are environmentalists protesting DAPL In addition to such naked finish the $3.8 billion project by but not BNSF? Clue: pipeline owners are right-wing Republicans while BNSF is owned by “pay to play” practices, the com- the end of the year. Warren Buffet, the darling of environmentalists and liberal Democrats. panies and state government are Following the oil boom in cahoots to suppress informa- came the oil bust. Prices for the U.S. while, Kelcy Warren, boss of Energy cerns about funny money maneuvers. Af- tion about environmental damage caused benchmark oil West Texas Intermediate Transfer Partners, which is building the ter all, this is the industry that gave rise by the oil boom frenzy, and to minimize Crude fell from $107 per barrel in June pipeline, and of Sunoco Logistics, which to the 2001 Enron accounting scandal and any cost to the industry. A New York Times 2014, when the Dakota Access Pipeline will operate it, is hell-bent on pushing bankruptcy, which Warren fed off. There investigation documented that more than was launched, to under $27 by February through DAPL. have been frictions in the $37 billion bid 18 million gallons of oil and chemicals 2016, since then rebounding to a little Warren, a high roller in the mergers by Energy Transfer Equity (ETE), a “sis- were spilled in North Dakota in almost over $50. The price collapse, mainly due and acquisitions (M&A) game, has been ter company” of ETP, to buy out the Wil- 8,700 incidents from 2006 to 2014, mostly to Saudi Arabia’s decision to ratchet up snapping up hard-hit pipeline companies2 liams Companies, owner of the Transco during the last two years as the drive to production to grab market share, is par- left and right. So residents of an impov- pipeline. And a planned sale of a minority raise production reached a fever pitch. Yet ticularly problematic for higher-cost shale erished Indian reservation are struggling stake in DAPL to Canadian pipeline giant state officials “do not release even sum- oil producers such as the Bakken field to protect their water supply against a Enbridge and oil independent Marathon mary statistics about environmental inci- in North Dakota. But with advances in pipeline cowboy who has been playing could fall through. dents and enforcement measures.”5 Much hydraulic fracturing (fracking) technol- fast and loose in the casino-like energy But clearly a major reason for ETP’s of the damage is avoidable. Some produc- ogy the marginal cost for new production industry. One reason for the ETP chief’s urgency is that it has contractual agree- ers have a far better record than others, and is still below price levels, so that North urgency may be worry about some of his ments for up to ten years for 90% of its ca- Warren’s Sunoco operation is the absolute Dakota’s production has only fallen to M&A deals going up in smoke amid con- pacity with major producers, whose terms worst in the industry, with over 200 spills around 1 million barrels per day.1 Mean- were negotiated at the height of the boom since 2010.6 Such environmental damage 2 See “Pipeline Billionaire Kelcy Warren Is 1 Will Oil Price Collapse Hit Bakken Output? Having Fun in the Oil Bust,” Bloomberg, 19 when oil prices were double today’s levels. is not the inevitable result of using fossil Don’t Count on It,” Institutional Investor, Feb- May 2015, and “Oil’s Wild Ride,” Dallas Mag- Those contracts expired on 1 January 2017, fuels but a result of the relentless capitalist ruary 2016. azine, June 2016. and the producers could demand a renego- drive to maximize profits. tiation of prices or pull Most environmental activism in recent out.3 In this boom-bust years has focused on pipelines and frack- industry, if oil prices ing. But in North Dakota, with its small and production fall, population (750,000) and low population a pipeline that was density (11 people per square mile), there rushed to completion has been less concern about the dangers of could end up sitting fracking than in states like Pennsylvania idle, a “stranded asset.” (population 12.8 million, density 286 per Or alternatively, with square mile) and New York (20 million, friends in high places 420 per square mile). Since North Dakota in a Trump administra- now has the lowest unemployment rate in tion, Kelcy Warren & the U.S., with family incomes rising by Co. could luck out and 20% over the last decade to well over the rake in billions. Either national average while in the U.S. over- way, the indigenous all income levels fell from 2005 to 2015, peoples and farmers outright opposition to oil and natural gas that Dakota Access production is limited. Yet the real safety is- Pipeline’s owners rode sues in this industry run by swashbuckling roughshod over will rough riders, for whom dangers to human not benefit – and could life are just a dollar figure on their bottom Map by Andrew Umentum/National Geographic Map by

reap disaster. 4 The oil boom has “Where Oil and Politics Mix,” New York Times, 24 November 2014. 3 See Institute for Energy 5 “The Downside of the Boom,” New York Economics and Financial Times, 23 November 2014. Analysis, “The High-Risk 6 “Sunoco, behind protested Dakota pipeline, tops U.S. crude spill charts,” Reuters, 23 Sep- There are more than 2.6 million miles of oil, natural gas and petroleum products pipelines Financing Behind the Dakota Access Pipeline” tember 2016. in the United States. (November 2016). continued on page 16 12 The Internationalist Christopher Juhn for Minnesota Public Radio News

Over the past nine months, hundreds is over centuries of oppression. and widespread public support for their “unceded Indian territory ... [that] no white and then thousands of Native Americans Elsewhere in the U.S., the issue has cause may spark a broader struggle for In- person or persons shall be permitted to set- from around North America converged on often been posed as an environmental fight dian rights. But to win this must be a class tle upon or occupy.” Soon enough, in 1874 the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to over building pipelines. But as an article battle against all the capitalist rulers.1 Custer announced the discovery of gold in stand with the Sioux “water protectors” in on the New York Times (7 November) blog The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe rightly the Black Hills of South Dakota, and then resisting the attempt to push the Dakota Ac- Dot Earth headlined: “The Core Issue in insists that the U.S. must deal with it not as launched a war to drive out the Sioux. De- cess Pipeline (DAPL) through their lands. the Dakota Pipeline Fight is Sioux Rights, subjects but through negotiation between spite Sitting Bull’s stunning victory over More than 300 of the 567 federally recog- Not Oil.” The author, Arnold Revkin of governments. Since Native American Custer, the war resulted in an 1877 treaty nized tribes were present, signaled by the the ProPublica website, wrote about calls peoples were classified as nations in the seizing the Black Hills. In 1889 the U.S. rows of tribal flags at the Oceti Sakowin to “keep it in the ground” that this “might modern system of nation-states, their rela- broke up the Great Sioux Reservation into (Great Sioux Nation, or Seven Council work symbolically and energize progres- tions with the United States have been set five small tracts, and the next year tribal Fires) camp. It has been the largest mobili- sives, but oil is a global commodity and down in treaties. These agreements have police on the U.S. payroll killed Sitting zation to defend Indian rights since Sitting will find a path from wells to markets as repeatedly been ripped up, but the treaties Bull at Standing Rock. Bull at the head of several thousand La- long as demand persists.” Rather than themselves only codified the land theft as The reservations, while a last toehold kota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes a fight over fossil fuels, the battle of the American capitalism marched across the of Indian territory, are a historical injus- smashed the U.S. Seventh Cavalry under Standing Rock Sioux is about confronting continent, whether in the form of settlers, tice, meant to confine the survivors of the General George Custer at the 1876 Battle the systematic dispossession of the Indian gold miners, railroads or pipelines, backed American bourgeoisie’s destruction and of the Little Bighorn (known as the Greasy peoples dating back to the first European or spearheaded by the U.S. Army. The his- displacement of the native population. The Grass River by the Lakota). The battle at settlement of the American continent. The tory of broken treaties goes back to the birth of industrial capitalism in this country Standing Rock is not just over a pipeline, it unparalleled Native American solidarity foundation of the republic, and continues to required the exploitation of vast tracts of this day. The owners of Dakota Access, the land that indigenous people formerly in- state of North Dakota and the Army Corps habited and used for hunting grounds and of Engineers all hold that the pipeline does agriculture. The little parcels today inhab- not cross the territory of the Standing Rock ited by various tribes are the end product of Indian Reservation, and therefore the tribe a string of crimes – and the violation of the has no right to veto the project. But in fact land rights of Native Americans continues. it’s on stolen Indian lands. In 1958, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers A century and a half ago this was all seized nearly 200,000 acres of land from formally recognized by Washington as the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Indian country. As the Tribe asserts in its reservations, removing the people in order suit against the Corps, “the 1851 Treaty of to build the Oahe Dam as part of a Mis- Fort Laramie included extensive lands that souri River flood control program. Now would be crossed by the proposed pipe- the Corps and the DAPL claim the right to line.” While a second (1868) Treaty of Fort put a pipeline across Sioux lands. Laramie established a Great Sioux Reser- vation covering all of western South Da- A History of Massacres and kota, the lands to the north were declared Broken Treaties 1 The League for the Fourth International, of Behind this latest aggression there which the Internationalist Group is the U.S. is a whole history of massacres and bro- section, has written about the “Indian question” ken treaties. To the extent most Ameri- in Latin America as well. See “Marxism and cans know anything of the Sioux (aside the Indian Question in Ecuador” in The Inter- from romanticized versions of “Custer’s nationalist No. 17, October-November 2003, Soldiers throw bodies of Lakota Sioux Indians killed in the 29 December Last Stand”), they may have heard of the where we raise the call for a workers, peasants 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in mass grave. Twenty and Indian’s government in the Andean coun- Wounded Knee massacre of 1890, when Congressional medals of honor were obscenely awarded to participants tries; and “The ‘Other War’ Against the Indig- U.S. Seventh Cavalry soldiers slaugh- in this mass murder. Top Photo: Tribal flags at entrance to Oceti Sakowin enous Peoples of Oaxaca,” The Internationalist tered as many as 300 Lakota Sioux. They camp north of Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in September. No. 25, January-February 2007. were fleeing, fearing reprisal by the state January-February 2017 13 700 Native Americans were slaughtered by Then came Andrew Jackson’s infa- guarantee hunting and fishing rights, etc. these colonial thugs – and then-governor of mous “Trail of Tears.” Under the Indian – and how U.S. capitalism’s need for re- Massachusetts John Winthrop proclaimed Removal Act of 1830 and precipitated by sources led to these promises being bro- “a day of public thanksgiving to God for the discovery of gold in Georgia, the Cher- ken. Then when the reservation system was his great mercies in subduing the Pequots.” okee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw introduced, the federal Bureau of Indian American schoolchildren learn of and Choctaw peoples were forced to sell Affairs (BIA) instituted brutal controls to Daniel Boone as an explorer, but not about their lands east of the Mississippi River “civilize” the Indians. The second (1868) his role in leading settlers into what is and move to present-day Oklahoma. The Fort Laramie Treaty called for Lakota chil- Library of Congress now Kentucky, where they were resisted Seminoles fought two wars of resistance, dren to be given an “English education.” by Indian nations. This was the start of joined by black slaves who destroyed At the end of the 19th century, mission Lord Dunmore’s War (1774), named after coastal plantations, lasting from 1832 to schools on the reservations were replaced the colonial governor of Virginia, which 1842. Those Seminoles who were not forc- by Indian boarding schools, where children pushed the Shawnee Indians beyond the ibly relocated to the west of the Missis- were taken from their families, physically Ohio River. Such acts of aggression drove sippi retreated into the Everglades, refus- abused, prohibited from using their native many Indian tribes into the arms of the ing to sign a peace treaty with the U.S. The languages and religion, and forced to learn British during America’s 1776 war for Cherokee also refused to leave and were English and practice Christianity. independence. In 1779, on the orders of marched at gunpoint in groups of 1,000 on The 1887 Dawes Act aimed at break- President George Washington, the Sulli- a thousand-mile trek fraught with disease, ing up communally owned tribal land by van Expedition was sent into Pennsylva- starvation and exposure to brutal weather. parceling it out in individual “allotments.” nia and western New York to decimate the By 1837 some 46,000 Native Americans It destroyed Indian communities and Iroquois Confederacy. Their orders were to had been expelled from their homelands opened the way for massive land-grabs by Chief Sitting Bull smashed treaty- burn all villages, crops and livestock. The in the South, and 6,000-10,000 died on the white settlers and corporations. The Com- buster Custer at the Battle of Little result was starvation for thousands through way. missioner of Indian Affairs Thomas J. Mor- Big Horn in 1877, was murdered by loss of agricultural land. This marked the While Harrison and Jackson were gan in his 1889 report on the BIA spelled U.S. in 1890 at Standing Rock. definitive subjugation of the Iroquois, open reactionaries, few know about Abra- out the intent: “The Indians must conform after some Indian police on the U.S. pay- whose pre-class society (“primitive com- ham Lincoln’s brutal repression of the to the white man’s ways, peaceably if they roll were killed as they tried to arrest, and munism”) was studied by Lewis Henry Sioux Uprising of 1862 in southern Min- will, forcibly if they must. They must ad- ended up assassinating, Chief Sitting Bull. Morgan. His book Ancient Society (1877) nesota during the Civil War. Provoked by just themselves to their environment and (The U.S. feared he would join the Ghost was a main source for Friedrich Engels’ U.S. confiscation of their lands, failure to conform their mode of living substantially Dance spiritual revivalist movement.) As Origin of the Family, Private Property and pay annuities, and famine due to hunting to our civilization. This civilization may the Lakota neared the Pine Ridge Indian the State (1884). by encroaching white settlers, the Da- not be the best possible, but it is the best Reservation, they were surrounded by sol- The restless westward expansion of kota Sioux in the Minnesota River valley the Indians can get. They cannot escape it diers who attempted to take their arms. the newly formed United States soon sent rose up in rebellion. This led to a series and must either conform to it or be crushed Warriors were shot point-blank and their settlers and the U.S. Army across the Ohio of battles between the Sioux and the U.S. by it.” In the next year’s report he added: families mowed down in tipis by Hotchkiss River. Although the area was ceded to the Army. It ended with the mass hanging of “It has become the settled policy of the rapid-fire guns. Those who escaped were U.S. by Britain in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, 38 Native Americans in Mankato, Minne- government to break up reservations, de- pursued across the prairie and finished off. it was populated by tens of thousands of Na- sota on 26 December 1862, the day after stroy tribal relations, settle Indians upon Even the butcher General Nelson Miles tive Americans. The Western Confederacy Christmas. It was the largest single execu- their own homesteads, incorporate them called it “abominable” and a “horrible led by Shawnee and Miami Indians scored tion in American history. Even so, Minne- into the national life, and deal with them massacre of women and children.” some resounding victories, notably in the sota governor Alexander Ramsey wanted not as nations or tribes or bands, but as in- Some may also know of the Wound- Battle of the Wabash (1791) where the U.S. to execute 300 Sioux. That same day, the dividual citizens.”3 ed Knee siege of 1973, for example from invaders lost almost 1,000 troops. But even- “president who freed the slaves” officially To top it off, in 1953 Congress passed seeing Robert Redford’s documentary tually the Indian forces were overpowered made a national holiday of Thanksgiving, the Termination Act, seeking to end what film, Incident at Oglala (1992). Two hun- and lost the Northwest Indian War (1785- which celebrated the 1637 massacre of the few responsibilities the federal government dred Oglala Lakota and supporters of the 1795). This didn’t stop Native American Pequots. An expedition led by ex-governor still had to the Indians living on reservations, American Indian Movement (AIM) had resistance, however. The next chapter was Henry Hastings Sibley pushed the retreat- and insert them into urban populations. In An occupied the town of Wounded Knee, Tecumseh’s War (1811) in the Indiana Ter- ing Dakota Sioux into the Dakotas, where Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United South Dakota – the same place as the 1890 ritory. The Shawnee leader objected to the the next year 300 to 400 were killed in the States (2014), Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz noted massacre. They were protesting the U.S. Treaty of Fort Wayne, when “moderate” Inyan Ska (Whitestone) Massacre. that during the Termination period, Eisen- government’s failure to fulfill treaty obli- chiefs gave up huge tracts. Despite Tecum- In his famous Custer Died For Your hower’s Commissioner of Indian Affairs was gations, and demanding impeachment of seh’s eloquence, calling on Indians to awak- Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), Na- one Dillon S. Myer – the same official who the Pine Ridge Reservation president. In en from “the sleep of slavery,” his tactical tive American activist and Standing Rock oversaw the detention of Japanese Ameri- response, the FBI put the town under siege success (along with the British) in gaining Sioux member Vine Deloria Jr. traces the cans in U.S. concentration camps during for 71 days, killed two demonstrators and the surrender of Detroit, and future presi- succession of broken treaties back to the World War II. Then came the Pick-Sloan disappeared civil rights activist Ray Rob- dent William Henry Harrison’s dubious Treaty of Delaware of 1778. Deloria out- Missouri River Basin flood-control program inson. Later, AIM activist Leonard Peltier claim to have won the Battle of Tippicanoe, lines the official promises made by the which consisted of permanently flooding was framed for the 1975 shooting of two Tecumseh failed to unite the tribes and was U.S. to American Indians – to never en- Indian tribal lands. Native Americans were FBI agents at Pine Ridge. The feds manu- killed as a British ally in the War of 1812. croach on land, allow for self-governance, moved from the food-rich bottom lands, their factured evidence against Peltier, hid bullet aboriginal homelands, to the barren plains tests proving his innocence, presented false above the river valley, where clay soils made

testimony obtained by torture, and lied to Library of Congress agriculture almost impossible. Although the jury. Forty years later, he is still in jail.2 required by the 1944 law to replace the in- We demand Leonard Peltier be freed, now! frastructure (roads, water systems, schools, The history of the genocidal push to community facilities), the Army Corps of devastate the American Indian population Engineers failed to do so.4 goes back to the “rosy dawn of capitalist 3 Gale Courey Toensing, “The Dawes Act Start- production,” as Marx ironically put it. That ed the U.S. Land-Grab of Native Territory,” In- drive includes erasing the history of dis- dian Country Media Network, 8 February 2012. possession of the Native Americans, and of 4 Peter Capossela, “Impacts of the Army Corps Indian resistance. Every year, the feast of of Engineers’ Pick-Sloan Program on the Indian Thanksgiving is celebrated in November. Tribes of the Missouri River Basin,” Journal of Schoolchildren are taught that this was a Environmental Law and Litigation, Vol. 30:1, day of brotherhood and gratitude when the pp. 143-217. Capossela notes that “The Corps located the dams so as to minimize the impact pilgrims were saved from starvation by the of the reservoirs on the cities along the river Indians at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Such in North and South Dakota. The Corps target- a feast did occur in 1621, but the official ed Tribal lands, which were inundated as the proclamation of Thanksgiving celebrated sites of the reservoirs.” According to Michael a 1637 massacre by English and Dutch L. Lawson, Dammed Indians: The Pick-Sloan mercenaries against the Pequot Indians. In Plan and the Missouri River Sioux, 1944-1980 what is present-day Mystic, Connecticut (1982), “The Oahe Dam [affecting Standing Rock and the Cheyenne River reservation be- 2 See the International Leonard Peltier Defense Drawing of mass execution of 38 Sioux at Mankato, Minnesota in December low it] destroyed more Indian land than any Committee for more information. 1862. President Lincoln personally selected those to be hung. other public works project in America.” 14 The Internationalist And now the Dakota Access Pipeline gust). When the Department of the Army which have become a major source of revenue the Civil War, when freed slaves without continues the assault on the lands of Native finally refused an easement to drill under ($26.5 billion in 2009, although much of that land became sharecroppers, tenant farmers Americans, this time threatening the Sioux the Missouri River, pending investigation goes to pay off bank loans), and in some noto- and smallholders, there was some possibil- at Standing Rock. The company has the en- of environmental impact and alternative rious cases a history of sweetheart deals with ity of a national development in the “black thusiastic support of the North Dakota state sites, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is- mining companies. As a result of private land- belt” across the South. But ever since the government and as usual the backing of the sued a statement to stress that “we are not ownership, on the Fort Berthold Reservation Great Migration of rural black people to Corps of Engineers.5 Although the DAPL opposed to energy independence … or in the heart of the Bakken oil patch a huge gap Northern industry in World War I, any talk has temporarily been put on hold by the national security concerns,” and to “com- has opened up between those who have oil of a black nation in the U.S. is a myth, Obama administration, this will soon be re- mend with the utmost gratitude the cour- leases or oil-related businesses and those who serving to divert black workers from their placed by a new regime of Big Oil and hard age it took on the part of President Obama don’t. The tribal leadership there has been rent vanguard role in a socialist revolution. cops. Court suits can perhaps delay the day … to take steps to correct the course of by corruption, crime and murder.6 Meanwhile American Indians, on the other hand, of reckoning, but since time immemorial history and to do the right thing.” Then unemployment on the Standing Rock Reser- were treated as separate peoples, formal- the law is stacked against the Indians and Archambault told protesters to dismantle vation is around 60% (compared to 2.6% in ized in the term “nations” with whom trea- in favor of the corporations. the camp and go home. North Dakota as a whole) and the official pov- ties were “negotiated” at gunpoint. The na- But some of the “water protectors” re- erty rate around 40%. The rates of metham- Native American Rights and tive peoples were pushed into increasingly fused to leave. LaDonna Bravebull Allard, phetamine addiction, alcoholism and suicide marginal regions by military aggression Socialist Revolution on whose land the Sacred Stones Camp was among Native Americans are almost twice as and the relentless expansion of immigrant In any fight it is crucial to know who built, declared: “The chairman does not tell us high as for other ethnic groups. While many settler population as the frontier moved are your friends, and who is the enemy. For what to do. The chairman is not in charge of factors are cited to explain this, one stands out: westward. After the decimation of the Na- starters, it is necessary to dispel dangerous the camp…. We came to fight a black snake,” the lack of jobs. tive American population through mas- illusions in the courts and federal govern- she said, referring to the pipeline. “Until it’s It will take a revolution to do away sacres, hunger and disease, the remaining ment as potential allies. Marxist theory dead, we stand” (Guardian, 6 December). with these afflictions, which will continue, small and geographically separated popu- holds, and five centuries of Indian history This dispute reflected deep divisions on the pipeline or no. But what kind of revolution? lations are not a nation in the Marxist sense prove, that the state defends the interests reservation and among the Native American In the 1960s, the rise of the American In- of having a common territory, economy, of the ruling class against the exploited population generally. The Standing Rock el- dian Movement and struggles for Native culture and language. The dream of a pan- and oppressed, no matter who heads the ders declared that the Red Warrior Society, American rights reflected the broader radi- Indian nation is just that – a dream, and a government of the day. The battle over the including militant Indian youths who began calization of the civil rights, black power, product of Native American intellectuals DAPL shows that whether under Obama the protests, should leave. The Red Warriors New Left, antiwar and radical women’s and activists living in urban areas. AIM did or now Trump, Native Americans are up replied that they were leaving because tribal movements. The 19-month occupation of not come out of the reservations but was against the full force of the repressive and leaders with their “peace policing” and “con- Alcatraz in 1969-71 by AIM and “red pow- founded in 1968 in a fight against police administrative apparatus which exists to stant slinging of arrows … are not ready to er” activists, the 1970 Thanksgiving AIM harassment in the Minneapolis ghetto, in- enforce the interests of the capitalist class. embrace a world view that upholds decoloni- protest at Plymouth Rock, the 1972 Trail spired by the Black Panther Party. To prevail against such a powerful enemy, zation and revolution.” of Broken Treaties caravan sponsored by AIM called for “self-determination it is necessary to mobilize an even greater Certainly not. In fact, tribal leaders AIM and others, and the 1973 occupation for free peoples,” in the words of Dennis force: that of the multiracial, multiethnic have close ties to the Obama administra- and siege of Wounded Knee drew attention Banks. Historically, as Bolshevik leader working class which makes this society tion and the Democratic Party. David Ar- to the brutal realities of oppression but were V.I. Lenin insisted, self-determination run, together with doubly oppressed Af- chambault II’s sister, Juliette Archambault not just “Indian” causes. But those struggles means independence. But since the mate- rican American, Latino, Asian and Native Gillette, worked at the White House for ran up against a brick wall, and with defeat rial basis for an Indian nation is lacking, American people and immigrants, and all six years as Obama’s special assistant for came a political degeneration into identity the term was redefined to mean “Re-estab- defenders of democratic rights. Native American affairs. She arranged the politics and linking up with dissident pet- lishment of reservation sovereignty and From the outset, the leaders of the annual White House Tribal Nations Con- ty-bourgeois and bourgeois parties, from self determination” – replacing the dicta- Standing Rock Tribe have looked to the ference and also the June 2014 visit of the left-populist Peace and Freedom Party torship of the Bureau of Indian Affairs with courts and the Obama administration. At the Obamas to Standing Rock. Another (Dennis Banks) to the ultra-capitalist Liber- a kind of autonomy. But with very partial the camp on the banks of the Cannonball prominent Standing Rock Sioux, Chase tarian Party (Russell Means). exceptions, the reservations are economi- River, wrote tribal chairman David Ar- Iron Eyes, who called for water protectors The radical American Indian Move- cally unviable, designed to imprison the chambault II, “Our elders of the Seven to stay, ran for Congress in the November ment was relatively few in number. The Native American peoples and ensure tribal Council Fires, as the Oceti Sakowin, or elections, while Marlo Hunte-Beaubrun Native American mobilization for Stand- dependence on Washington. So in practice, Great Sioux Nation, is known, sit in de- ran for the Public Service Commission ing Rock is far larger, in the biggest fight the radical Indian program focused on wel- liberation and prayer, awaiting a federal (which approves pipelines), both on the for Indian rights in 150 years. But contrary fare demands on the structures of capital- court decision” (New York Times, 25 Au- Democratic-NonPartisan League Party to scaremongering by county and state of- ist domination. Thus Vine Deloria’s 1969 5 ticket. In fact, the only North Dakota coun- ficials about a dangerous “out-of-state Whether it was building ever-higher levees on “Indian Manifesto” called for “the Depart- the Mississippi River leading to the disastrous ties won by the Democrats were Sioux militant faction” that was “escalating their ment of the Interior to redefine its service Great Flood of 1927; channeling the Missis- (Standing Rock Reservation) and Rolette, violent tactics,” the politics of the pipeline function” and stated that “The corporation sippi below New Orleans straight into the sea, site of the Turtle Mountain Reservation of protests are far from radical. This is one serves as the technical weapon by which eliminating wetlands that protected against Ojibwe (Chippewa). But the Democratic reason why they have broad liberal support, Indian revivalism can be accomplished.” storm surges; building the Industrial Canal that Party represents the interests of capital and and also why they cannot defeat concerted channeled Katrina flood waters right into New Under capitalist rule, the claims of In- U.S. imperialism. It is the class enemy of repression. Yet with their scope, they promi- Orleans’ black Lower Ninth Ward, or damming dian “nation-building” will have not only a Native American workers and youth. nently pose the issue of liberation of the op- the Missouri River so that it mainly flooded In- utopian but often a reactionary content. In Capitalism has fostered class divisions pressed Indian population, and the need for dian lands, the United States Army Corps of En- Arizona, the Navajo Nation has a long, bit- among the 5.2 million American Indians. a program of revolutionary class struggle, gineers systematically targeted the poor African ter conflict over land use with the Hopi Res- American and Native American areas. Some tribal authorities profit from casinos, joined with African Americans, Latinos, ervation, which it completely surrounds. In immigrants and others behind the power of Oklahoma, when the Nixon administration the multiracial, multiethnic working class. in 1971 cynically called for Indian “self- It is the task of the revolutionary Marxists determination,” the Cherokee Nation reor- (Trotskyists) to put forward such a program, which alone can point the way to victory ganized its government and elected W.W. over the combined forces of capital. Keeler as chief. Keeler was a top-level In the 1960s and early ’70s, radical capitalist, president of Phillips Petroleum. Native American groups such as AIM, as Based on oil wealth, the Cherokee Nation well as some pseudo-Marxist organiza- Businesses holding company owns com- tions, put forward a kind of pan-Indian panies in gaming, construction, aerospace, nationalism, a counterpart to the black technology, manufacturing, real estate and nationalism they also advocated. Both health care, with an annual economic im- Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times Gabriella Demczuk/The New York were and are dead-ends, based on a false pact on the state of over $1 billion. And this analysis of the nature of black and Indian corporate “nation” has acted in typical capi- oppression. African Americans are subju- talist fashion. In 2007 it canceled the tribal gated as an oppressed race-color caste at membership of 1,500 descendents of black the bottom of bourgeois society. From the freedmen and intermarried whites who had time of slavery, black labor was integral to for generations been considered Cherokee. the overall U.S. economy. For a time after Meanwhile, already in the 1970s and Indian leaders have strong links to Democratic Party and Obama more so today, a majority of the Native administration. Above: Standing Rock Tribe chairman David Archambault II 6 “In North Dakota, a Tale of Oil, Corruption and American population lives in urban areas with Barack Obama during Cannon Ball Flag Day celebration, 13 June 2014. Death,” New York Times, 30 December 2014. (55% in 1970, 70% by 2010) where they January-February 2017 15 citizenship until 1924, nor the nent, of which genocide of the indigenous right to practice their tradi- population was a key component, makes Pipelines... tional religions until 1978, and “independence” a pipe dream, and a di- continued from page 12 who even today are disciplined version from the task of overthrowing the lines, are of little concern to the “keep it in for speaking native languages rapacious capitalist rulers today. Instead the ground” environmentalists. A militant in school.8 A key demand is of a mythical “return” to a pre-Conquest labor movement, in contrast, would use its Democracy Now! for union-scale jobs for Na- society, we seek to go forward to a com- power to shut down unsafe operations, for tive Americans, to break out munist future based on the development of workers’ lives are on the line. of the vicious cycle of welfare modern industry and technology, including In terms of industrial safety, North programs, poverty, isolation energy production. In doing so, the Inter- Dakota is “The most dangerous U.S. state and despair, the root cause of for workers,” headlined CBS Moneywatch Leonard Peltier, imprisoned for the last 40 nationalist Group champions the interests epidemic levels of alcoholism, (8 May 2014). A report by the AFL-CIO, years after being framed by the FBI in its war of all of the oppressed, as we strive to build drug addiction and suicide. Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect on Native Americans: “The only thing I’m a party that will act, in Lenin’s words, as a With a strong labor move- (2014), summarized: guilty of is struggling for my people.” Free “tribune of the people.” ment, one could generalize “North Dakota stands out as an In 2009, the U.S. Congress and Presi- Leonard Peltier! union training programs for exceptionally dangerous and deadly dent Obama issued an “Apology to Native Native American youth, such as the pro- place to work. The state’s job fatality are largely concentrated in poor neighbor- Peoples of the United States,” saying the gram hosted by the IBEW electricians rate of 17.7 per 100,000 [workers] hoods. But, as a New York Times (14 April U.S. “apologizes … to all Native Peoples 2013) article noted: “while many black mi- union at the United Tribes Technical Col- is more than five times the national for the many instances of violence, mal- grants [in the WWI Great Migration] found lege in Bismarck, ND. Free university edu- average and is one of the highest state treatment, and neglect inflicted on Na- jobs in meatpacking plants, stockyards cation could be provided by vastly expand- job fatality rates ever reported for any tive Peoples by the citizens of the United and automobile factories, American Indi- ing initiatives such as Sitting Bull College state. North Dakota’s fatality rate more States.” This hypocritical apology com- than doubled from a rate of 7.0 per ans have not had similar success finding at Standing Rock, with open admissions mitted the U.S. government to exactly 100,000 in 2007, and the number of work.” There are significant exceptions: under student-teacher-worker control. A workers killed on the job increased from Mohawk and Iroquois iron workers (“sky hard-knuckle campaign to unionize oil nothing, and didn’t mention stolen Indian 25 to 65. Latino workers accounted for walkers”) play a key role in the construc- workers could insist on hiring large num- lands. In the case of the Dakotas, the theft bers of Indian workers in focusing on the of the resource-rich Black Hills has been 12 of the deaths in 2012, compared with tion of Manhattan skyscrapers, and Native three Latino worker deaths in 2011. The need for union safety committees to stop the focus of a legal fight for decades. The American workers were on the front lines fatality rate in the mining and oil and gas unsafe production in the deadly dangerous region is of cultural importance for the of the bitter Phelps-Dodge copper strike of extraction sector in North Dakota was an Bakken oil fields. But the labor bureau- Sioux and Cheyenne (both of whom claim 1983. But poverty levels of American In- alarming 104.0 per 100,000, more than dians in the cities range up to 45% in Min- cracy is incapable of waging such a sharp it as the center of the world), and the Fort six times the national fatality rate of 15.9 neapolis, where the jobless rate in the only class struggle. Its class collaboration is so Laramie Treaty of 1868 had exempted it per 100,000 in this industry; and the public housing project in the U.S. giving ingrained that Laborers Union Local 563, from white settlement “forever.” In 1980 construction sector fatality rate in North preference to Native Americans is over backed by the national AFL-CIO, shame- the Supreme Court concluded in the case Dakota was 97.4 per 100,000, almost 10 65% – as high as on the most impoverished fully sided with Energy Transfer Partners of United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians times the national fatality rate of 9.9 per reservation. There are also high levels of against the Standing Rock Sioux in the that, “A more ripe and rank case of dishon- 100,000 for construction.” gang violence and racist attacks. Native fight over the DAPL pipeline. orable dealings will never, in all probabil- The number of workplace injuries and American project administrators respond Defense of oil workers, pipeline work- ity, be found in our history.” illnesses is not even known, since North just as their white counterparts, threatening ers and Native American workers requires The Court ordered the payment of the Dakota is one of only a handful of states to expel residents who can’t find a job. that we dump the sellout labor bureaucrats full value of the land at the time, plus in- that don’t even keep records of this data. Even so, as AIM co-founder Clyde and break with the Democrats. What’s terest, a sum calculated at over $1 billion Yet in the protests over the DAPL, the Bellecourt, remarked, many young Indians needed is to build a class-struggle lead- as of 2011 (which vastly underestimates dangers to oil industry workers are never ership of labor and forge a revolutionary “come here [to urban areas] and they get the value of the gold mined there). How- mentioned. In fact, pipeline construction workers party that fights for jobs for all and job training and don’t want to go back to ever, the Sioux have refused to accept the crews are sometimes cast as the enemy, defends all the oppressed in the struggle to the reservation.” Just as you can’t keep ru- money as they continue to demand the re- whereas energy/transportation workers overthrow the dictatorship of capital. ral youth down on the farm no matter how turn of the Black Hills themselves. While should be the allies of those genuinely At the same time, life in the Dakotas In- many 4-H or FFA programs you have, they overcoming the subjugation of the Native fighting for environmental (and industrial) dian Country has its own specific character. can’t keep Indian youth on the reservation: American peoples, including the Dakota safety. harsh as the economic realities of the ur- While Native Americans in the U.S. over- and Lakota Sioux, can only come about The Standing Rock struggle has been ban ghetto are, the lure of the big city and whelmingly live in urban areas, in North through workers revolution across North taken up by ecology activists including bright lights prevails. Meanwhile, talk of Dakota 60% live on five reservations. While America, that would importantly include Bill McKibben, who penned an op-ed “empowerment” by increasing “diversity” nationally, many if not most jobs in “Indi- some symbolic restitution of stolen lands piece, “Why Dakota Is the New Keystone” among the rulers is phony. Minneapolis has an” casinos are held by non-Indians, in the (New York Times, 29 October. McKibben’s Dakotas 80% of those jobs are filled by Na- (along with returning some parts of the a Native American city council member, a outfit, 350.org (whose $11 million annual tive Americans. Also, a significant minor- Southwest seized from Mexico) in recog- Native American state representative, and budget is 70% financed by capitalist foun- ity on the reservations still speak Dakota- nition of the crimes of American capital- a part-Indian police chief, Janee Harteau, dations including the Rockefeller Brothers Lakota languages. That indigenous ways of ism. This would surely include returning who presided over the cop murder of Jamar Fund, heirs to the Standard Oil fortune), life have largely been destroyed as a result the Black Hills to the Indian peoples, in- Clark in November 2015. So a program calls to “keep carbon in the ground.” The of capitalist expansion is a tragic fact. But cluding Mount Rushmore. The Sioux and to free the American Indian peoples from well-financed eco-guru proposes to “Save revolutionary Marxists respect and defend Cheyenne can then do with it as they see poverty, racism and police repression is in- the Planet From Trump” by “fighting every the rights of Native Americans to preserve fit, including effacing it entirely (or at separable from the struggle for the social pipeline and every coal port” (Ecowatch, 4 the cultures that survive. A workers revolu- least the sculpture of “Big Stick” impe- liberation of African Americans, Latinos, December). Opposing all pipelines is a rec- tion in the U.S., building on the experience rialist Theodore Roosevelt), or charging immigrants and all the oppressed. ipe to shut down industry, electrical energy of the early Soviet Union, could provide That underscores the importance of nostalgic tourists exorbitant Disneyland- and heating, all of which largely depend on for different forms of autonomy within the Native American participation in fighting level admissions to view this obscene oil, natural gas and coal. This is the pro- framework of the full participation of Na- for labor/black mobilization against rac- monument to U.S. imperial glory. gram of arrogant petty-bourgeois “smaller tive American populations in building a col- ist cop terror, for example over the cop In the meantime, Native Americans are is better, back-to-nature, love the earth – lectivized socialist economy. murder of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis and once more under attack, and anyone who hate the people” eco-maniacs, backed by a Current proponents of “Indian nation- Philando Castile in suburban St. Paul. In calls themselves Marxist must defend them. section of the U.S. ruling class (like Demo- fact, Native Americans have been victim- alism” put forward the idea that the oppres- If the Standing Rock Sioux say they don’t sion of native peoples can be overcome crat Al Gore). They seek to reorder capital- ized by police terror at a higher rate than want construction on their ancestral land, all ist priorities rather than to overthrow the any other ethnic group.7 No less important through “decolonization,” or some form defenders of democratic and Indian rights system of production for profit that threat- is mobilizing in defense of immigrants, of separation from U.S. society. But Indian must join them in demanding that the Dako- ens environmental disaster. particularly in the face of Trump’s threat reservations are not colonies, and in fact ta Access Pipeline be stopped from crossing There are 2.6 million miles of pipelines to deport 11 million (after Obama deported (as Standing Rock shows) are heavily in- the Missouri River there. We also call for in the U.S. An article on the web site Inside 5.5 million). The demand for full citizen- tertwined with the U.S. economic and po- the immediate dropping of charges against Energy (18 November) poses the question, ship rights for all immigrants should echo litical system. The fundamental fact is that the more than 500 “water protectors” ar- “Protesters Say Pipelines Are Dangerous. among American Indians who did not win U.S. capitalism’s domination of the conti- rested at Standing Rock, and for freedom Are They?” It answers: “According to data 7 See “The Police Killings Nobody Is Talking 8 In 2012, Miranda Washinawatok was banned About,” In These Times, 19 October 2016; and from a reservation school basketball team be- for Leonard Peltier, the innocent target of from federal regulators, there is actually a “More Natives Killed By Police Than Any Oth- cause she was overheard teaching a classmate an FBI frame-up in Washington’s unending low probability of a pipeline accident. But er Group,” Indian Country Media Network, 18 how to say “hello” and “I love you” in her na- war on the Native American peoples. Hands when there is an accident, the impact can August 2016. tive language, Menominee. off the Standing Rock Sioux! ■ be huge.” From 2010 to 2015, significant 16 The Internationalist pipeline accidents caused 74 deaths, an av- of oil is moved from wellhead to rail hub 7 erage of 12 per year. By way of compari- Francois Laplante-Delagrave/AFP or pipeline terminal by truck, an even more son, in the same period, there were over dangerous transportation method.12 199,500 traffic fatalities in the U.S., an av- By opposing construction of a pipe- erage of 33,250 a year.8 So should cars and line, rather than demanding it be relocated trucks be banned? Inside Energy concludes away from Standing Rock and be outfitted that “analysis of PHMSA data showed that, with vastly more safety measures, ecology over the years, the risk of an accident has groups are effectively supporting the far remained steady: roughly 1.2 incidents that more dangerous alternative of rail trans- included injury, death, substantial property portation. And the potential for a truly damage or spillage, per 10,000 miles.… gargantuan tragedy is enormous. Oil trains But it is exactly that tiny fraction, that rare run through the downtown areas of small accident, that the Standing Rock Sioux are towns and big cities all the way from west- worried about.” ern North Dakota to the East Coast. The The fact that serious pipeline acci- BNSF main line runs through the center dents are relatively rare does not mean that of Minot and Fargo, North Dakota, then nothing can be done. Quite the contrary. Moorhead and St. Cloud, Minnesota and The scandalous fact is that the tiny federal on to the Twin Cities. In November 2015, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety the trains were routed through downtown Administration has a grand total of 184 “in- Minneapolis, only blocks from where Ja- spection staff” on its payroll, roughly one Oil train exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec in July 2013 (above), killing 47 mar Clark was shot to death by police, go- for every 14,000 miles of pipe. There are and devastating downtown area. ing past apartment houses (see picture) and no PHMSA inspectors stationed in North would require a resident monitoring team, eastbound train on the BNSF railroad haul- literally right next to Target Field where Dakota (the nearest is in Omaha, 400 miles shut-off valves and spill basins to catch ing 106 tank cars hit a westbound train close to 40,000 people regularly attend from Standing Rock). The PHMSA doesn’t any fluids that escaped. All of this costs outside Casselton, North Dakota: 20 tank games of the Minnesota Twins, the Vikings even pretend to inspect local pipelines, but money, of course, which the multi-billion- cars with Bakken crude derailed and ex- and the UofM Gophers. as of 2014 there were zero North Dakota dollar companies naturally object to. ploded, sending a giant fireball into the air With a dozen to two dozen mile-long state inspectors for 18,000 miles of such But neither a Republican Bush or and burning for hours. A week later, on 7 oil trains passing through every week, it “gathering lines” transporting water and Trump administration dominated by Big January 2014, five tank cars carrying crude didn’t take much effort to imagine what oil to and from wellheads. So federal and Oil, nor a supposedly eco-friendly Demo- oil from Manitoba and Alberta heading for could happen if some tank cars exploded state agencies responsible for overseeing cratic Clinton or Obama administration the St. John refinery derailed and exploded next to the stadium, particularly with the hazmat dangers rely on self-inspection by has ever or would ever propose such mea- in New Brunswick, burning for days. On city in an uproar over racist police murder. the industry. Any real concern for environ- sures because they cut into the sacrosanct January 20, a 101-car CSX train derailed So the governor and city leaders had the mental safety would demand the deploy- profit stream, the lifeblood of capitalism, in Philadelphia with a tank car leaning off trains moved back to blue-collar working- ment of thousands of inspectors, frequent which both parties represent and defend. a bridge over the Schuykill River near hos- class Northeast Minneapolis. The same inspections, heavy fines and shutting down Nor has the “green capitalist” ecology pitals. The list goes on and on, to last June scenario looms over numerous locations dangerous operations. movement (or even their “eco-socialist” 3 when a Union Pacific oil train derailed in around the country. Every week, 27 trains Inspection of pipelines is generally left tails) demanded such measures. In- the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon setting with crude oil from the Bakken field pass carried out by means of “pigs,” devices stead they play around with their “keep off a major fire. through Buffalo, New York on their way to designed to fit snugly into the pipe which it in the ground” sophistry. In fact, both A Congressional Research Service Albany, a major hub. There the oil is trans- can prevent leaks by detecting faulty or the partner parties of U.S. imperialism are report on U.S. Rail Transportation of ferred to barges for transport to East Coast weak welds, corrosion, etc. Regular “pig- strongly behind the push to develop Bak- Crude Oil (4 December 2014) noted that refineries, from Philadelphia to New York ging” is presently only required for “high ken shale oil and natural gas, in order to “The volume of crude oil carried by rail City and New Brunswick. Some 26 public consequence” areas (which Standing Rock achieve “energy independence” (i.e., no increased by 20-fold between 2008 and schools (and 7 charter schools) in the Buf- was deemed by the Corps of Engineers not longer depend on oil imports from Vene- 2013.” With the sudden and massive in- falo area are located within one-half mile to be). Not only should such mechanical zuela), and to export U.S. gas to wean Eu- crease in rail transport of oil, more crude of the tracks, i.e., inside the Department of monitoring be greatly increased, on-site rope off Russian gas. This was behind the oil was spilled from rail incidents in 2013 Transportation mandated evacuation zone inspections are necessary to spot shoddy April 2014 visit of former CIA director than in the previous 37 years since the in case of a derailment. welding, poor quality pipe, inadequate David Petraeus to Williston in the heart of federal government began collecting such There are obvious steps that can be coating and the like. This is all the more North Dakota’s, “oil patch.9 data.10 Statistics from the American Asso- taken to sharply reduce the dangers of oil necessary because more than half the na- Meanwhile, as ecology activists try ciation of Railroads show that oil transpor- trains. Since a 2014 PHMSA report de- tion’s pipeline network is now over half to stop one pipeline after another, the oil tation by train results in almost three times termined that the standard oil tanker cars a century old, dating to a pipeline build- is being produced, and it is transported to as many spills as by pipeline.11 A report (DOT-111) rupture too easily in derail- ing boom from the late 1940s to the early markets – by a far more dangerous means: by the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank ments, they should be immediately replaced 1960s. Some lines are a century old. More- oil trains. If there is a danger of pipeline notes that “Pipelines are by far the cheap- with cars using heavier steel, ceramic ther- over, new pipelines should be required to spills, the potential outcome of train de- est and safest way to move oil and the only mal jackets and other safety measures. Rail have (and older lines should be retrofitted railments and tank car explosions is much practicable method of transporting gas.” companies have already introduced an to install) automatic shut-off valves with greater. We have already seen what can Yet by 2012, most crude oil from the Bak- upgraded model, but even those cars ex- sensors all along the line to detect a drop happen: in July 2013, a train with 72 load- ken basin was transported by rail due to ploded in the June 2016 Columbia River in pressure. ed tank cars of crude oil from North Da- lack of pipeline capacity. Moreover, 70% Gorge derailment. Yet the Department of According to the Corps of Engineers’ kota en route from Montreal, Quebec to a Transportation has yet to settle on a design, 10 July 25 environmental non-assessment refinery at St. John, New Brunswick, was “More Oil Spilled From Trains in 2013 Than and only plans to phase in new cars gradu- (written by Dakota Access) Standing Rock parked just outside the town of Lac-Mé- in Previous 4 Decades, Federal Data Show,” ally, while the unsafe DOT-111s continue McClatchy Newspapers, 20 January 2014. to roll. In addition, oil shippers can be re- Sioux concerns about a spill are misplaced gantic, Quebec. The brakes failed, and the 11 “Quebec disaster spurs rail-versus-pipelines because “Dakota Access would utilize a train rolled down into the center of town debate on oil,” Bloomberg, 8 July 2013. quired to use stabilization technology for supervisory control and data acquisition where 63 cars derailed, leading to multiple the gassy Bakken crude, and there could be

(SCADA) system to provide constant re- explosions and fires. Forty-seven people Elizabeth Flores/StarTribune a ban on running oil trains through cities, mote oversight of the pipeline facilities” were killed, 2,000 were evacuated and the requiring railroads to build new tracks to which would ensure “100% reliable remote town center was devastated. Investigators skirt heavily populated areas. But none of monitoring/operation of these sites through concluded that the “light, sweet” Bakken this has been done, nor are environmental the SCADA system to the Operations Con- crude oil was more volatile than previously groups pushing this. trol Center (OCC) in Sugarland, Texas.” thought. Why not? In part, it’s because the en- Yet Sugarland, Texas is 1,190 miles from Then that November another train of vironmental NGOs (non-governmental Standing Rock, North Dakota “as the crow 90 cars going from North Dakota to a re- organizations), which are basically mar- flies”! In addition to relocating the pipe- finery in Mobile derailed in Alabama, with keting and fundraising operations, always line well away from the reservation, any 26 tank cars sending almost 800,000 gal- go for the great visuals. For them, pipeline serious response to concerns about spills lons of crude into a wetland while a dozen protests are a dream. That’s how the Avaaz 7 U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety cars burned. Again on December 30, an lobbying and public relations outfit spun off Administration, Pipeline Significant Incident 20 9 “Petraeus Fracking Field Trip Reveals ND by hedge fund mogul George Soros orga- Year Trend (28 December 2016). Government, Oil, Private Equity Nexus,” Des- nized the September 201 “People’s Climate 8 National Highway Traffic Safety Administra- mog Blog, 22 May 2014; and “Petraeus Visits Oil trains pass through downtown tion, Fatality Analysis Reporting System Ency- N.D.’s ‘energy revolution’,” Oil Patch Dis- Minneapolis, Minnesota, next to 12 “Busting Bottlenecks in the Bakken,” Fedga- clopedia (2016). patch, 29 April 2014. apartment buildings zette, April 2013 January-February 2017 17 Spartacist League: Land Surveyor Socialists In the struggle over the Dakota Ac- are Indian lands – i.e., not a “high conse- cess Pipeline, the reformist left as usual quence area.” But it has had consequences. has tailed along after the environmental Faced with environmental racism to bolster groups who are opposed to any pipeline, oil company profits, here we have an osten- and in the more extreme cases opposed to sibly revolutionary organization providing using oil or fossil fuels at all. On the other lawyer’s arguments. hand, the centrist Spartacist League (SL), This comes on the heels of the new- in a knee-jerk reaction to the environmen- found arguments of the SL’s misnamed In- talists, ends up echoing the line of some of ternational Communist League against the the most retrograde, chauvinist sectors of right to asylum for refugees, and against the the bourgeoisie. While calling to “Defend right to free movement for immigrants inside Native American Protesters” against state the European Union. Why, that would mean repression, the SL denies that the protest- “open borders,” the ICL gasps, sounding ers had any legitimate reason to protest in for all the world like Donald Trump railing the first place. They entirely disappear the against Hillary Clinton (as he did in their blatant environmental racism, and argue third debate). The SL/ICL doesn’t “get in- that the native people have no legal right to volved in which country immigrants and asy- control what happens on the pipeline route. lum seekers are sent to,” it says (see “Strange The SL writes that, “As Marxists, we Encounters with the ICL,” The International- neither oppose nor support the DAPL.” ist No. 44, Summer 2016). So with tens of Certainly pipelines in themselves are not thousands of Syrian refugees being held in inherently bad or good, but this is a subter- inhuman conditions in internment camps, the fuge in order to refuse to oppose the DAPL ICL raises these specious arguments to refuse route at Standing Rock. As Marxists, we to demand they be let in. On Standing Rock, defend the oppressed native peoples against it argues that because “we do not counsel the this racist capitalist attack. Contrary to the Map by cartographer Carl Sack showing the lands crossed by the Dakota capitalist ruling class on the most effective straw-man argument of the SL, the Stand- Access Pipeline which were guaranteed to the Sioux in the 1851 Fort Laramie way to run its economy,” therefore it does not ing Rock Sioux Tribe is specifically oppos- Treaty and then declared unceded Indian territory in the 1868 treaty. oppose a potentially dangerous pipeline be- ing the pipeline river crossing next to their ited by other people,” this is a preposterous of the northern boundary of the Standing ing built right next to an Indian reservation. reservation (as one can readily verify from objection. The area between the Cannonball Rock Sioux Reservation.” So the fact that Recognizing that “many Indian pro- its court suit against the U.S. Army Corps River and Cedar Creek is sparsely populat- the DAPL is slated to cross the Missouri testers have argued that the pipeline in- of Engineers and various tribal statements). ed, inhabited only by a few hundred people at a latitude of N 46 26’ 14” instead of N fringes on what they consider to be sacred, The SL’s skewed portrayal of the fight is a (2 per square mile). And even if the entire 46 25’ 42”, according to the U.S. Army ancestral land” from which they were ex- smokescreen to hide anti-Marxist indiffer- area in North Dakota belonging to the Sioux Corps of Engineers, Energy Transfer Part- pelled, Workers Vanguard (23 September) ence to the fate of the Standing Rock Sioux. under the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty were ners and the Spartacist League, means the responds: “Of course one understands the Energy Transport Partners, the main returned, which they have not demanded Standing Rock Sioux Tribe does not have resentment toward that displacement.” But owner of the DAPL, insists that “The Da- but would have every right to, who says the right to veto it! of course. In the same vein, an ICL leader kota Access Pipeline Is Not on Standing the present residents would have to move? As a point of reference, if the SL has said of refugees clamoring at Europe’s Rock Sioux Land” (see ETP map). The Then there are the treaties. Even under Ar- difficulty visualizing it, that is less than the doors, “We sympathize with their plight.” SL agrees. While piously lamenting the ticle 16 of the 1868 Fort Laramie robber- distance between Washington Square and What is one to make of such Bill Clinton- “grave injustice” of the theft of Indian land treaty unjustly imposed on the Sioux, and Union Square in Lower Manhattan. like “I feel your pain” nostrums when the with the construction of the Oahe Dam in never ratified by them as required, the land The potential for a serious environmen- SL/ICL can’t bring itself to oppose a pipe- the 1950s, it insists that “the DAPL goes north of the Cannonball River traversed by tal incident at this point is dismissed with a line at Standing Rock, even as the Sioux north of land seized in 1958 and does not the pipeline is “unceded Indian territory” on wave of the hand by these lawyers and un- residents and Native Americans around the cross it.” The SL denies that there is “an which they continued to have use rights and licensed surveyors. Consider that a natural country are protesting it? Of what value are explicit link between tribal land rights and on which white settlement was banned. gas pipeline (the Northern Border line) and its assurances that a future workers govern- the pipeline,” writing: The whole hair-splitting, logic-chop- an overhead high-tension power line cross ment would “ensure the social emancipa- “In the case of the Northern Gateway ping argumentation by the SL as to why Lake Oahe at precisely the same point. En- tion of American Indians, promoting their pipeline in western Canada, our the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe does not ergy Transfer Partners uses this to argue voluntary integration on the basis of full comrades of the Trotskyist League have the right to block a pipeline a stone’s what’s to worry, it’s already an infrastruc- equality while providing the fullest possi- of Canada rightly oppose the project ble regional autonomy for those who desire because it brazenly flouts the land throw from their present residence, on land ture corridor. But what if an explosion of the rights of Native peoples who are the that is historically Indian country, stolen gas pipeline were to rupture the oil pipeline, it,” when it parrots the propaganda of the predominant population in the remote from them by the rapacious capitalist gov- at most a few dozen feet away (and at points bourgeoisie in the present battle, the big- regions that the pipeline would traverse. ernment, is a specious lawyer’s argument. much less)? Impossible? When the pipeline gest fight for Indian rights in ages? This is not the case with the DAPL.” The Spartacist line reflects the mentality was slated to cross the Missouri ten miles After the SL/ICL’s admitted “social- –“Standoff at Standing Rock”, Workers of land surveyors for the bourgeoisie. north of the state capital, Bismarck, con- imperialist” support to the U.S. occupa- Vanguard, 23 September 2016 The Corps of Engineers July 25 “Miti- cerns about possible water contamination tion of Haiti after 2010 earthquake, these As for the SL’s assertion that the land gated Fining of No Significant Impact” got the route changed. The only reason this ex-Trotskyists now take a social-chauvinist crossed by the pipeline “has not been Sioux states that the entry point for crossing Lake is not considered sufficient reason to stop line, from the Greek islands to Standing territory for almost 150 years and is inhab- Oahe is “approximately 0.55 mile north the pipeline at Standing Rock is that these Rock. For shame! ■

March” and simultaneously pushed for U.S. to “tax the rich,” and his famous remark that to the Tides Foundation of San Francisco, from Bismarck to Washington defend the intervention in Syria.13 (They tried the same “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my of which $1.3 million was funneled to two interests of their big business masters, for tack lately with soulful pictures and fake class, the rich class, that’s making war, and environmental groups (Honor the Earth and whom workers’ deaths and ecological disas- blogs by 7-year-olds in Aleppo.) But there’s we’re winning.” Oil “independents” like the Indigenous Environmental Network) ters are just a cost of doing business. Class- another factor involved: bourgeois party ETP’s Warren and Hamm are small fry, which have been active opposing pipe- conscious workers should fight for union politics. ETP/Sunoco chief Kelcy Warren, worth perhaps $7 billion and $14 billion re- line construction. Meanwhile, the Buffetts safety committees and labor action to put Continental CEO Harold Hamm and the rest spectively; Buffett is the big time, with a net bought the BNSF railroad in 2006, just as a stop to unsafe operations, which requires of the pipeliners are staunch Republicans, worth of $73.7 billion, according to Forbes. the Bakken boom was taking off, and since ousting the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. while the owner of the BNSF railway which He also is a leading “philanthrocapitalist” then have been making money hand over But to counter global climate change it’s monopolizes oil transport by rail from North and has invested in wind farms and solar fist moving oil by rail from North Dakota. necessary to sweep away the capitalist sys- Dakota is Obama backer Warren Buffett, the energy. His son and designated successor Whether fuel is transported by rail or tem, embraced by the reactionary oil moguls Democratic Party’s favorite capitalist. Howard Buffett (who also sits on the board pipeline, or energy produced by wind farms and “progressive” environmentalist NGOs Buffett is a liberal, known for his calls of Coca-Cola) received the 2011 World and solar power, environmentalist efforts to alike. Only through international socialist 13 See “The Great ‘People’s Climate March’ Ecology Award for launching the Global promote a “clean” capitalism are doomed to revolution will it be possible to establish a Scam,” The Internationalist No. 38, October- Water Initiative. Even more specifically, fail, while ensuring that the chaos of produc- rationally planned world economy to deal November 2014. Warren Buffet gave over $6 million in 2013 tion for profit will continue. Governments with the mounting environmental danger. ■ 18 The Internationalist Mass Mobilization and Workers Action Are Key Free Mumia Abu-Jamal And All Black Panther and MOVE Prisoners! On January 3, federal district judge the case because of his prior role as D.A. Robert Mariani ordered the Pennsylva- Castille refused and the state’s top court in Internationalist photo nia Department of Corrections (DOC) to 1989 turned down Jamal’s appeal. In 1999, promptly provide Mumia Abu-Jamal the with Castille again participating, the state medical treatment he urgently needs to fight supreme court again affirmed the denial of a deadly hepatitis-C infection. The ruling, post-conviction relief. In 2003, 2004, 2008 following a year-and-a-half long legal bat- and 2012 the court repeatedly refused ap- tle, enjoins prison authorities from enforc- peals by Jamal’s lawyers, and, as Mumia’s ing a “protocol” denying Mumia the highly new petition states, “each of those deci- effective DAA medication. The DOC re- sions were [sic] affirmed by the Pennsyl- fused him treatment even when he was in a vania Supreme Court with Justice Castille coma and near death in March 2015. partici­­pati­ng in the consideration and de- Judge Mariani’s decision granting a ciding of each one.” preliminary injunction is quite strong in de- As for “actual bias,” of this there can termining that the DOC is “allowing Plain- be no doubt. Ronald Castille was elected to tiff’s condition to worsen while his liver the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1993 function and his health continues to dete- (becoming chief judge in 2008) in a cam- riorate,” which in the case of a degenerative paign where he bragged that as district at- disease violates the Eighth Amendment to torney he “sent 45 people to death rows.” the U.S. Constitution against cruel and un- Also as Philly D.A., Castille oversaw the usual punishment. production of a sinister 1986 “training This decision offers hope for medical tape” for prosecutors demonstrating how relief for thousands of prisoners across the to exclude African Americans from juries U.S. There are 7,000 inmates with hep C in (his name appears on the title piece). The Pennsylvania alone. The ruling is welcome number one argument in Mumia’s direct but it is reversible and Mumia’s attorneys Internationalist Group marched with hundreds in Philadelphia in May 2007. appeal, which Castille as district attorney warn that they expect the DOC to appeal. Significantly, the prosecutor/judge guilty workers action that doesn’t flinch at taking opposed, was that a black woman was re- When he learned of the judge’s deci- of “actual bias” in the Williams decision, on the capitalist state. That is what it will moved without cause and replaced with a sion, Mumia wrote: Pennsylvania chief justice Ronald Castille, take to bring Mumia home to his loving white man with ties to law enforcement. “I thought of thousands of men and also played a crucial role in Jamal’s frame- family, friends and legions of supporters. In 2011, the federal appeals court up- women in Pennsylvania prisons, suffer- up and conviction. Legally, the two cases held (for the second time) a 2001 ruling Ronald Castille: Prosecutor ing from the unforgiving ravages of hep- are analogous. Politically, there is a huge that Mumia’s death sentence was uncon­ atitis C - and now, who had new hope. difference: Mumia is the potent symbol of and Judge, Over and Over stitutional. A few months later the state “I thought of the prisoners who also resistance to racism, imperialism and the Ronald Castille was the Philadelphia announced that it would no longer seek suffered from Hep C, and were denied mass incarceration of millions. district attorney who signed off on the the death penalty. But at Mahony prison treatment by the DOC – and died, chok- Even after a federal court ruled for death penalty for Terrance Williams, con- in Frackville, PA the state is now trying ing on toxins that their liver could no victed of a 1984 mur­der. In 2012, Williams’ to carry out the original death sentence by longer expel. a second time in 2011 that his death sen- tence was unconstitutional and Mumia execution was stayed but the state appealed denying Mumia urgently needed medical “They did not live long enough to see attention to treat a life-threatening hepati- this day.” was resentenced to what he described to Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court where as “slow death row” – life imprisonment Castille was by then the chief justice. Wil- tis C infection. It’s been almost five years since Mumia tested positive for the hep C December 9 marks the 35th anniversa- with no possibility of parole – prison of- liams’ attorneys moved that Castille recuse ficials are trying to kill him by medical him­self from the case. Request denied. In- antibody. In March 2015, Mumia was hos- ry of the arrest and attempted police assas- pitalized in critical condition and on the sination of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the foremost neglect. In August 2015, Mumia’s law- stead, the court led by Castille reinstated yers filed suit for negligence, malpractice Williams’ death sen­tence. This double role, brink of diabetic coma. His attorneys filed class-war prisoner in the United States. For for an antiviral treatment which has a 95% and deprivation of his Eighth Amendment as prosecutor and then judge, is what the three and a half decades, Mumia has been cure rate, but prison officials ruled that he rights to medical care, including hepatitis U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitution- held behind bars – almost 30 years in soli- wasn’t sick enough to be eligible. Now, C medication. This August a federal judge al, violating the due process clause of the tary confinement on Pennsylvania’s Death while the courts dither over which officials ruled that the state prison “protocol” for Fourteenth Amendment. Row – convicted on bogus charges of the should be sued, the infection continues to inmates with hepatitis C in fact violates Same pattern in Jamal’s case: During 1981 shooting death of Philadelphia police ravage Mumia’s body. officer Daniel Faulkner. The former Black the constitutional prohibition of cruel and Mumia’s 1982 trial Ronald Castille was a Panther and renowned radical black jour- unusual punishment. But Mumia’s appeal senior Assistant District Attorney, and in Ruling Class Vendetta nalist has been the target of an unrelenting was denied on the grounds that it should Mumia’s 1988 direct appeal Castille was Against Mumia vendetta by the capitalist state. A potential have been directed to state prison officials the District Attorney who filed the pros- In the Williams case, the Supreme legal opening for Jamal could come from rather than local authorities. On October 6, ecution briefs opposing Mumia’s request Court remanded (sent back to state courts) a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that Mumia’s attorneys filed a new lawsuit de- to overturn the conviction and death sen- it for “further proceedings,” and perhaps set a powerful precedent of throwing out manding hep C treatment. tence. After running for Philly mayor in the Williams will get another day in court. a conviction based on prosecutorial and The ruling class and their enforcers, Republican primary in 1991 (where he was Mumia’s legal defense team is seeking this judicial misconduct. But for every legal the cops, are determined to silence Jamal, defeated by former police chief and mayor as well. Marxists support using every legal precedent, bitter experience has shown that the eloquent “voice of the voiceless,” who Frank Rizzo), Castille was elected to the avenue for defense in the bourgeois injus- there is a “Mumia exception.” has courageously exposed and denounced Pennsylvania Supreme Court. When Mu- tice system. At the same time, we know full On August 7, Jamal’s lawyers filed a their endless crimes. The Fraternal Order mia appealed under the Post Con­viction well that the courts are prepared to shred new appeal based on a June Supreme Court of Police, in lockstep with the bourgeois Relief Act (PCRA) in 1995, the case was the Constitution and the state will spit on decision in the case of Williams v Pennsyl- politicians and judicial mafia who vie for referred to the same notorious hanging its own laws to bury Mumia Abu-Jamal. vania. That ruling held that, “Under the the FOP’s support, are determined to see judge, Albert Sabo, who oversaw Mumia’s As we have repeatedly stated, “The fun- Due Process Clause there is an impermis- their nemesis die behind bars. Like the original trial and who, ac­cord­ing to the damental fact is, there is no justice for the sible risk of actual bias when a judge ear- decades-long persecution of the Black sworn report of a court stenographer, was oppressed in the racist, capitalist courts” lier had significant, personal in­volvement Panther Party, which continues to this day, over­heard saying that he intended to help (“Death Sentence Dropped Against Mumia as a prosecutor in a critical decision re- and the racist police murder machine that the prosecution “fry the n…r.” Abu-Jamal,” The Internationalist special garding the defendant’s case.” Therefore grinds on despite tens of thousands march- In Mumia’s appeal to the Pennsyl- supplement, January 2012). the Supremes threw out the decision of ing in Black Lives Matter protests, the vania Supreme Court of Sabo’s denial of Mumia has been in the crosshairs of the state supreme court upholding the persecution of Jamal can only be defeated his petition for PCRA relief, he moved for the state from the day in the 1960s when, death sentence against Terrance Williams. by mass mobilization and class-struggle Castille to recuse (remove) himself from as a teenager, he was “beaten into the January-February 2017 19 Black Panther Party” by the Philadel- terPunch (25 October), “President phia cops. An award-­winning journal- Lou Jones Obama: Before the Empire Falls, ist on the radio and in print, he cham- Free Leonard Peltier and Mumia pioned the poor, the homeless and the Abu-Jamal,” ended with the plea, MOVE commune against the Philly “Yes You Can, President Obama, Yes cops’ murderous­ attacks. By the late You Can!” Actually, he can’t: only the 1960s, the FBI had declared war on Pennsylvania governor can pardon the Black Panther Party. At least 38 or commute sentences of those con- Panthers were killed in assaults across victed of state charges (as the writer the country and hundreds were hound- acknowledges). But beyond that, as ed to prison. Chicago Panther leaders we have detailed, Obama has repeat- Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were edly stated that anyone found guilty slain in their beds in a police/FBI raid of killing a cop “deserve[s] the death in 1969. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover penalty or life in prison.”3 might as well have been talking about Today, those who look to the Mumia, as well as Hampton and Clark, bourgeois state have come full circle when he wrote in March 1968, “The and again are looking for salvation in Negro youth and moderate[s] must be a new trial, foreseeing that an appeal made to understand­ that if they suc- based on the Williams decision could cumb to revolutionary teaching, they provide a path through the courts to will be dead revolutionaries.”­ overturn Mumia’s conviction, that While racist reactionaries repeat- “if successful” Mumia could then edly denounce Mumia Abu-Jamal as a redo his numerous appeals includ- “cop killer,” the fact of his innocence ing not only the sentencing but the has been proven over and over. On 9 frame-up conviction itself. But even December 1981, the night Philadel- in the unlikely event that a new trial phia police officer Daniel Faulkner were ordered, despite all the perjured was killed, Mumia was shot and then testimony, phony ballistics “evi- beaten nearly to death by the cops. But dence,” recanting “witnesses” and his Kafkaesque nightmare was just be- Former Black Panther and award-winning journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal was sentenced the rest, historical experience and ginning. At trial, the state’s case con- to die by the racist courts and spent almost 30 years in solitary confinement on the Marxist analysis of the capital- sisted of a concocted confession, falsi- Pennsylvania’s death row. The state is still trying to kill Mumia through medical ist state concur: there is little reason fied ballistics and perjured wit­nesses neglect in order to silence the powerful “voice of the voiceless.” to believe that Mumia could prevail who were intimidated, promised deals or in thrall by terror, from KKK nightriders pression, and its name is capitalism. in a judicial system organized from top to had reason to lie. The playbook of dirty to unbridled police murder and the “stop- In this system, Democrats and Repub- bottom to ensure that those targeted by the tricks was on display from the start: black and-frisk” policing of black and Latino licans are sometimes at loggerheads, but police are found guilty – the facts and the potential jurors were repeatedly rejected neighborhoods that Donald Trump wants work together as partner parties of Ameri- law be damned! by peremptory challenges, and Mumia was to intensify. Mumia was a threat to that can capitalism when its vital interests are In short, even as lawyers pursue ev- denied the right to represent himself and system because he talked back and ex- at stake. Prosecutor/judge Ronald Castille ery legal avenue, we cannot look to the even to be in the courtroom during his trial. posed its workings. considered running for Philadelphia mayor capitalist courts or politicians and parties All of these were cited in Jamal’s appeals, The death penalty itself is a legacy as a Democrat in 1991, but then ran in the for justice against the cops, who are the to no avail. This is the typical modus ope- of slavery. The unending campaign to kill Republican primary, where he was de- badge-toting hired guns of the capitalist randi of Philly cops and courts. Mumia recalls the racist pathology that feated by ex-Democratic mayor and Philly rulers. But that does not mean that there is Mumia Abu-Jamal was a threat to swept the country a century ago when top cop Rizzo, who himself switched to no hope, that Jamal will inevitably die be- the racist prerogatives of the tight-knit widespread lynching was a punishment the Republicans after being defeated by hind bars. When Mumia was on the verge local ruling class, Democrats and Re- for black people who “didn’t know their Wilson Goode. Black Democrat Goode of being killed in the summer of 1995, with publicans together, who ran Philadelphia place.” Today this is continued as police ordered the 1985 police bombing of the a warrant for his execution signed by the like a Southern city, keeping the black wantonly murder civilians with impunity MOVE commune, torching a whole neigh- governor, mass, international protests were population down through cop terror. In (current count as of December 6, 1,072 borhood in West Philadelphia. Castille’s crucial in saving his life. Now, as judges in the early 1970s, the federal Civil Rights people killed by police so far in 2016), predecessor as D.A., Ed Rendell (who the same court that has repeatedly turned Commission denounced the Philly police particularly black, Latino, immigrant and ran the frame-up prosecution of Mumia in down Mumia’s appeals try to figure out as a “paramilitary institution” that acted poor white people. Time after time, the 1982), was a Democrat, as was Castille’s a rationale for why the Williams decision like “a law unto itself.” It produced a 271- killer cops’ justification is that their vic- successor, Lynne Abraham, known as the doesn’t apply to Mumia, such mobiliza- page list of thousands of people beaten or tim “refused to obey” police orders. The Queen of Death for putting over 100 Afri- tions are again vitally important. Ten years shot by the police. By the early ’80s, the killers in blue get away with it, even in can Americans on death row. ago, when Mumia’s life was in the hands FBI was investigating. In 1999, a profes- the exceedingly rare cases where a cop is Rendell went on to become Philly of a federal appeals court in Philadelphia­ sional hit man, Arnold Beverly, admitted actually charged with something, because mayor in 1991 and then governor of we wrote: that he had killed Faulkner, contracted by grand juries are under the thumb of pros- Pennsylvania in 2003. As a wheeler- “The relentless repression against Mu- the mob and corrupt police who feared ecutors, and the law itself provides ample dealer in the national Democratic Party, mia is proof positive that there is no Faulkner was a danger to their system of immunity. Police protection societies like he has made sure to squelch any moves justice for the poor, blacks and all the graft and payoffs to allow illegal gam- the FOP back this up by accusing protest- in favor of Mumia. The whole Penn- oppressed in the capitalist courts. This bling, prostitution and drugs. Beverly’s ers such as the Black Lives Matter move- sylvania Democratic Party is a den of is particularly true for those seen by the videotaped confession was never allowed ment of being “cop killers,” just as they corruption, epitomized by now ex-state rulers as a revolutionary threat to their into evidence.1 do with Mumia. attorney general Kathleen Kane – con- system of exploit­ation of modern-day But the vendetta against Mumia has How can we combat this murder ma- victed in August of perjury, conspiracy wage slaves. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International never been purely, or even mainly, a lo- chine which has kept Mumia behind bars and obstruction of justice – who played have called to mobilize­ working-class cal affair. It was part of the government’s for 35 years and continues to rob innocent a key role in the on-going frame-up of action to demand freedom for Mumia people of their lives? Liberals and reform- Corey Walker.2 Democrat Bill Clinton continuing war against the Black Panther Abu-Jamal. In April 1999, our comrades Party and black militants generally. This ist would-be socialists keep putting forward passed the Anti-Terrorism and Effec- of the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do was summed up in, but by no means lim- doomed strategies hoping that somehow the tive Death Penalty Act of 1996 that has Brasil initiated a statewide work stop- ited to, the murderous COINTELPRO system would work for the oppressed, that blocked Mumia and other death row in- page by the teachers union in Rio de Ja- (Counterintelligence Program) master- with enough pressure the “scales of justice” mates from presenting new evidence of neiro, carried out in conjunction with the minded by Hoover. By 1971 Mumia was would be righted. For years they kept call- their innocence. And as we wrote, from International Longshore and Warehouse on the FBI’s Security Index (people con- ing for a “fair trial” rather than demanding city hall to the state house and the White Union which shut down U.S. West Coast sidered a threat to “national security”) Mumia’s freedom, as if any trial in these House, “Democrats Are the Bosses of the ports, demanding that Mumia be freed. and in Category 2 of the ADEX (those rigged courts could be fair. Then came the Racist Killer Cops” (The Internationalist This was only a taste of the kind of class people to be picked up and put in concen- appeals to Attorney General Eric Holder to No. 42, January-February 2016). mobilization that will be necessary to tration camps in a “national emergency”). open a civil rights investigation of Jamal’s Even so, we still hear calls on win freedom for Jamal and put an end Since the end of chattel slavery, the racist case, and later calls on Barack Obama to Democratic president Barack Obama to the heinous system of state murder.” ruling class has held African Americans pardon Mumia as he leaves office. But hav- to pardon Mumia. An article on the 3 See “Mumia’s Life Is On the Line: Mobilize 1 See “It Will Take Workers’ Power to Free ing a black president and head of the “Jus- liberal/“progressive” web site Coun- Labor/Black Power to Free Him Now!” in The Muma Abu-Jamal!” The Internationalist No. 26, tice” Department made no difference. We 2 See “The Frame-Up of Corey Walker,” The Internationalist No. 30, November-December July 2007. Available at www.internationalist.org. are combating a whole system of racist re- Internationalist, February 2016. 2009. 20 The Internationalist ridiculous illusions about ‘justice’ from the courts of the enemy. It relies mainly on legal proceedings. It seeks to blur the Free the Panthers and MOVE Prisoners! issue of the class struggle, it shrinks from In demanding that Mu- Sundiata Acoli, jailed the ‘vulgar and noisy’ demonstrations of mia Abu-Jamal be sentenced since 1973 (46 years); the militant workers and throws the mud to die, the Philadelphia pros- Mutulu Shakur, jailed of slander on them.” ecutor pounded on his mem- since 1981 (35 years) in –International Labor Defender, Janu- bership in the Black Panther connection with the daring ary 1927, reprinted in Notebook of an Agi- Party. From the highest lev- 1979 escape of his sister As- tator (1958) els, the U.S. government had sata Shakur (Joanne Chesi- Mumia Abu-Jamal was supposed to declared war on the Panthers. mard), who received asylum die that night of 9 December 1981 when Not only were at least 38 BPP in Cuba; under the adminis- he was felled by a bullet from Daniel members killed by the police, tration of Democrat Barack Faulkner’s gun and beaten senseless by hundreds were jailed, 348 in Obama, Assata was put on the police. When he survived, the cops 1969 alone, according to Po- the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted and courts have never rested in their cru- lice Magazine (6 September list and the U.S. government sade to kill him, whether in the gas cham- 2012). had demanded she be handed ber or now by denying him medication. Several former Black over in negotiations over re- Keeping Mumia imprisoned for 35 years Panther Party members even- establishing diplomatic rela- and withholding life-saving drugs are a tually gained their freedom af- Delbert Africa being beaten by cops in 1978 Philly police tions with Cuba; demonstration of the wanton cruelty of ter decades in jail, including: raid on MOVE commune. and numerous others. the capitalist state power. It is Mumia’s Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), former member of the San Quentin 6 (prisoners In addition, members of the MOVE defiance of that power that inspires us and BPP Minister of Defense in Los Ange- framed in a melee following the 1971 as- 9, seized in the 1978 Philadelphia po- infuriates the state. Mumia is the living les, who was jailed for 27 years after sassination of Panther George Jackson); lice attack on their Powelton commune, symbol of the defiant Black man. Despite surviving an LAPD/FBI assault four Pinell was murdered in jail in 2015 with have been in prison ever since (38 every effort to squeeze the life and politi- days after the December 1969 Chicago the connivance of officials at California years), including Delbert Orr Africa, cal spirit out of him, he remains unbroken. raid that killed Fred Hampton and Mark State Prison at Sacramento. a former member of the Black Panther Even from death row and “slow death Clark (see “Geronimo Is Out! Now Free Mondo we Langa (David Rice), one Party in Chicago; Debbie Sims Africa; row” Mumia has continued to write and Mumia!” The Internationalist supple- of the Omaha 2, who died earlier this year Charles (Chuck) Sims Africa; Janet rail against the racism and imperialism of ment, 16 June 1997); Geronimo died in after spending 45 years in prison as a result Holloway Africa; Janine Phillips Af- his oppressors. 2011 (see The Internationalist No. 33, of a frame-up personally orchestrated by rica; Edward (Eddie) Goodman Af- The history of U.S. racism is the his- Summer 2011). FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover to “neutralize” rica and Michael Davis Africa. The tory of social control through criminaliza- Eddie Conway, former Baltimore the Omaha Panther leadership. video of Delbert Africa being viciously tion of black defiance. It begins with the Panther, who was released after 44 years But numerous Panthers are still behind kicked in the head by Philly cops has “slave breaker,” as Frederick Douglass in in prison in Maryland when an appelate bars, including: become a symbol of police brutality in his autobiography called his tormentor, court ruled that the jury in his case had Edward Poindexter, now in his 46th the misnamed “city of brotherly love.” who through brutal beatings and gross de- been given improper instructions de- year in Nebraska’s maximum security pen- All nine MOVE prisoners have been ception sought to break young slaves “in signed to produce the maximum sentence. itentiary, who like his co-defendant Mondo eligible for parole since 2008, but their body, soul, and spirit.” Then came the con- Albert Woodfox, released from was targeted by COINTELPRO; requests have repeatedly been turned vict leasing system under Jim Crow segre- Louisiana’s notorious Angola Prison af- Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap down on the recommendation of the gation and now mass incarceration. A spe- ter 43 years in solitary confinement, one Brown), jailed since 2000; Philadelphia district attorney. cial place in their hell holes is reserved for of the Angola 3. Woodfox was a marked Russell Maroon Shoatz, 44 years in The Internationalist Group and the those who don’t break. That is what binds man for starting a Panther chapter inside prison. 23 in solitary, jailed in the notori- League for the Fourth International call Mumia and the struggle for his freedom to the prison’s walls in 1971 with fellow in- ous 1972 mass raid on Panther headquar- on class-conscious working people and the resistance to cop terror on the streets mates Robert King (who was released ters in Philly; defenders of democratic rights to join in all over this country. The common justi- after 29 years in solitary) and Herman Veronza Bowers, 43 years in prison; class-struggle defense demanding freedom fication by the cops who murdered Eric Wallace, who was freed in 2013 after 40 Kamau Sadiki (Freddie Hilton), for Mumia Abu-Jamal, for all remaining Garner in New York, Michael Brown in years in prison, 37 of them in solitary, sentenced to life in 2003; imprisoned Black Panthers, the MOVE Missouri, Sandra Bland in Texas and Keith and died three days later. Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, jailed 9, American Indian Movement leader Scott in North Carolina is that their victims Other Panthers died in prison, in- in California since 1969 (47 years); Leonard Peltier and all class-war pris- didn’t obey their orders, or didn’t do so fast cluding: Robert “Seth” Hayes, jailed since oners. And we repeat: Hands off Assata enough. Hugo Pinell, the last imprisoned 1973; Shakur! n Today Eric Garner is dead, Raymond Orta was jailed in retaliation for filming –“It Will Take Workers’ Power to Free apologists could set off mass protests. Cop on a system of racist repression, including the police murder of Garner, while killer Muma Abu-Jamal!” The Internationalist protection rackets like the FOP and PBA black as well as white cops, “soft cops” as cop Daniel Pantaleo who chokeholded Eric No. 26, July 2007 (Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association) do well as hard. to death has a cushy desk job where he Mumia has millions of supporters their bit by denouncing every protester and From the outset, there have been coun- pulled down $120,000 last year, including around the world. The point, however, critic, from Black Lives Matter to Mumia terposed strategies over how to defend $35,000 in overtime and “unspecified pay.” is to mobilize an effective force that can Abu-Jamal, as “cop killers.” It’s not as if Mumia Abu-Jamal, as has been true of the The list of those wantonly killed by the po- win his freedom. Protests defending Mu- cops are in danger: police are one of the Scottsboro Boys, Sacco and Vanzetti and lice grows longer and longer. And Mumia mia have fallen off since he was taken safest occupational categories in the U.S.4 other major defense cases. As opposed to Abu-Jamal is sick and still in prison, denied off death row, yet talk of “reigniting the Rather, by posing the issue as “cop kill- those who seek salvation through the bour- the life-saving medication he needs. Mu- movement” without a strategy to take ers” rather than “killer cops” they put the geois state, whether the courts or politi- mia is not the only one. Many of his former on the capitalist state is so much hot air. screws to liberals, who support the capital- cians, revolutionary Marxists look to the Black Panther comrades were condemned Mass protest combined with an effec- ist state. workers and oppressed. As James P. Can- to life imprisonment. While some managed tive legal defense is vital, but it is not So long as protesters see the issue as non, the founder of American Trotyskyism, to get out after decades behind bars, their enough. In recent years, tens and hun- a few “bad apples,” they fall prey to the wrote in 1927 on “Who Can Save Sacco lives shredded, and others died in prison, a dreds of thousands of young (and not-so- illusion that some “reform” scheme (ci- and Vanzetti”: number are still being held as hostages (see young) people have taken to the streets vilian review boards, “community polic- “One policy is the policy of the class partial list below) by a vicious ruling class to denounce racist police murder … and ing,” etc.) can somehow change the police, struggle. It puts the center of gravity in determined to teach a bloody lesson to all the killer cops keep on killing with aban- which as an institution is racist to the core.5 the protest movement of the workers of those who dare to rebel. don. To jam the gears of state repression Moreover, protests will be derailed, as in America and the world. It puts all faith This is the society we live in, and we must mobilize workers’ power not December 2014 and July 2016, when a in the power of the masses and no faith will continue to live in until a revolu- whatever in the justice of the courts. just to block some streets and highways, deranged person or a lone avenger out of tion of the workers and their allies, of While favoring all possible legal pro- important as that can be, but to impede desperation and despair sets out to even African Americans, Native Americans, ceedings, it calls for agitation, publicity, the functioning of the capitalist system. the score. Effective protest depends on un- demonstrations – organized protest on a Latinos, immigrants and all those who derstanding that American capitalism rests And that requires above all a program for national and international scale. It calls “have nothing to lose but their chains,” revolutionary class struggle. brings down the edifice of oppression 4 See “Whose Life Is On the Line? Cop Stats” in for unity and solidarity of all workers on Events may be pushing in that direc- The Internationalist, February 2016. this burning issue, regardless of conflict- and repression, opening the doors of the tion. With their all-out defense of killer 5 See “Bad Apples, Broken Windows, and Other ing views on other questions…. modern Bastille prisons and the road to cops, president-elect Donald Trump and Myths About the Police,” The Internationalist, “The other policy is the policy of freedom and justice denied them by the his team of hard-line racists and KKK February 2016. ‘respectability,’ of the ‘soft pedal’ and of capitalist exploiters. n January-February 2017 21 Revolution For Mass Labor/Immigrant Mobilization to Stop Deportations, Defend Muslims and the Rights of Us All! Defend Immigrant Students Immigration Police and All Cops Off Campus!

By CUNY Internationalist Clubs November 2011 ICE memo cautioning about undertaking and the Internationalist Group actions at such “sensitive locations.” Even a Trump ad- (U.S. Section of the League for the Fourth International) ICE Hands Off! ministration may hesitate to do that. The election of arch-racist Donald Trump to the presi- A statement by the CUNY faculty and staff union, dency of U.S. imperialism has set off a wave of fear of Professional Staff Congress, pledges that “our classrooms, laboratories, libraries, studios and offices will remain spac- mass deportations among immigrant workers and students Internationalist photo in cities across the country. Spouting vile anti-immigrant es where the targeting of students based on their identities, and anti-Muslim rhetoric throughout his campaign, Trump beliefs, appearance, or immigration status will never, ever promised to end the Obama administration’s supposed be tolerated.” It’s good that the union is stating that, but “non-enforcement policies” on immigration in the first what about outside of campus? And if students are target- days of his term. His nominee for U.S. Attorney General, ed, what then? More appeals to campus administrators? To Jeff Sessions, has been a virulent opponent of the DREAM the city government? New York City mayor Bill de Blasio Act and along with the Republican majority in Congress made a major speech at Cooper Union vowing that NYC would be a national model of resistance, vowing to “pro- has vowed to cancel Barack Obama’s DACA (Deferred tect immigrant families threatened with deportation” and Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. There are an esti- repeating that “we stand by you.” But as a comment on his mated 6,000 undocumented students at the City University Twitter site noted, “Mayor de Blasio rolled over for the of New York who are directly threatened. N.Y.P.D. after they did a back-turning protest. You think Immigrant and Muslim students and their families he won’t roll over for Trump?” must be defended by all CUNY students, faculty and staff, Calls on city, state and federal governments as well as well as by all defenders of democratic rights. To do as campus administrations to “protect” immigrants create so, we must be clear about who we are fighting against. dangerous illusions about where the threat comes from. While Republican candidate Trump vowed to deport all We can only rely on our own power. To that end, the PSC undocumented immigrants (underestimated at 11 million should issue a statement that it will defend immigrant people), the Democratic Obama administration during its students, faculty and staff and their families, as well as first seven years deported over 5.5 million undocumented CUNY Internationalist Clubs at October 20 NYC all those subject to racist attack, and join in preparing for immigrants (including “removals” and “returns”), in addi- demonstration protesting U.S. deportation and mass labor-immigrant action to defend those at risk and tion to another 2.7 million “voluntary departures.” More- exclusion of Haitians. to stop deportations. Other unions and all opponents of over, the legal basis for the deportations of undocumented class – as the defenders of immigrants. We vividly recall racism and defenders of immigrants’ rights should do like- immigrants is the 1996 “Illegal Immigration Reform and how CUNY cops, together with NYPD riot police, viciously wise, and students should massively participate in such an Immigrant Responsibility Act” enacted by the administra- initiative to organize active working-class resistance inde- tion of Bill Clinton. In short, both the partner parties of attacked student protesters in November 2011 at a Board of Trustees meeting at Baruch College. The police (as well as pendent of the bosses’ state, parties and politicians. This American capitalism are enemies of immigrants. should be given organizational form with committees on In the aftermath of the election, there has been a rent-a-cop security guards) are all part of the repressive ap- paratus of the capitalist rulers, the backbone of their state, every campus, setting up phone trees, using social media dramatic spike in racist attacks, including on university and forming networks for rapid response and outreach. campuses. This poses an urgent need to organize defense of which ICE, the Border Patrol and other “Homeland Secu- rity” officials are an integral part. These enforcers of bour- Trump has also threatened to cut off funds to “sanctu- of immigrant students, as well as of African Americans, ary cities” which have refused, in different degrees, to coop- Latinos, Muslims, Native Americans, gays, lesbians and geois “law and order” must be opposed by those who stand with undocumented students and workers. erate with ICE police, most commonly by refusing to hold other targets of violent assaults. Beyond this, the Trump those arrested on minor charges for deportation. In his Coo- Moreover, calling on the federal government – under victory has given rise to the “sanctuary campus” move- per Union speech, de Blasio vowed that in the face of calls Donald Trump, no less – to protect undocumented immi- ment – a push to make college campuses “sanctuaries” for for a registry of Muslims, NYC would “take legal action” grants, or on New York governor Andrew Cuomo (who re- undocumented students. While supporting this demand to block it; that the city would not “tear families apart” (and peatedly sacrificed the DREAM Act in budget negotiations) critically, we warn against liberal illusions. The Cosecha single immigrants?), that it would “step in” if the feds try to aid immigrant students is not only a diversion, seeking to movement which is promoting this seeks to “claim spaces to deport “law-abiding New Yorkers.” How? By providing get the oppressed to rely on their oppressors, it is positively of resistance and protection for our country’s most vulner- legal counsel. In the case of bias attacks, he counsels “call delusional. The CUNY Internationalist Clubs say: All cops able people.” It calls for “sustained mass non-cooperation” 911” – i.e., to bring in the racist NYPD! Yet what’s needed through such measures as consumer boycotts “of one busi- off campuses! ICE, hands off our fellow students! And con- is to defy the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state, ness at a time” leading to a “general strike” (defined as trary to the Democrats’ fraud of an immigration “reform” bringing the power of the multiracial, multiethnic working “not going to work or school for seven days”). that would provide a “path to citizenship,” we call for full class into the fight at the head of all the oppressed. At CUNY, the sanctuary campus movement has taken citizenship rights for all immigrants, underscoring that in It is possible to stop deportations in this city where the form of demands on the chancellor and presidents of this imperialist epoch such a basic democratic demand can 40% of the entire population was born in another country. the 24 campuses to ban Immigration and Customs En- only be achieved by a workers government. To do so requires using our power to bring the capitalist forcement (ICE) police from CUNY campuses, refuse to Defenders of immigrant rights, and the rights of all system to a grinding halt. Unions should be prepared to share information with migra enforcers without individu- the oppressed, must fight tooth and nail against all attacks flood the streets en masse, physically blocking the migra als’ consent and forbid CUNY cops from cooperating with whether from the state or racist individuals or gangs, and thugs. If students’ families are picked up for deportation, immigration officials. It culminates in a call on the admin- the sentiment to create “sanctuaries” for the persecuted, as their school should shut down – followed by others in soli- istration to “Publicly call on state and federal governments many churches did in the 1980s, is positive. But campuses darity. If a CUNY student is seized by ICE, there should to protect students, faculty, staff, and families from depor- will not be islands of security in a sea of reaction any more be a citywide walkout by students, faculty and staff. And tation and to provide them a path to citizenship.” than they can be “ivory towers” isolated from the rest of rather than impotent consumer boycotts, New York City As revolutionary Marxists, we support banning ICE capitalist society. The official assault on immigrants will has a powerful working class consisting of transportation, from campuses, forbidding campus authorities from coop- likely take place outside the halls of academe. The Obama education, construction, health and food service workers erating with them, and keeping information about undocu- administration was well aware that it could stir up a hor- who together with students can paralyze the center of fi- mented students secret. But we do not look to the campus net’s nest of opposition by carrying out migra arrests in nance capital with strike action. MTA workers showed the administration – which runs CUNY on behalf of the ruling schools, universities, churches and hospitals and issued a way in 2005 before they were sold out. 22 The Internationalist As we chanted in mass marches of tens a tiempo parcial con bajos salarios como 45, septiembre-octubre de 2016). El Grupo libertad de expresión y de reunión, sino of thousands of city workers and CUNY stu- en Walmart. Esta revuelta de los pequeños Internacionalista fue el único en luchar en que defendemos también el derecho a la dents a decade ago, “Workers and students, pueblos y del Cinturón del Óxido [las otro- los sindicatos para romper con demócratas, autodefensa de los negros en contra de shut the city down!” Defense of immigrant ra ciudades industriales que hoy yacen en republicanos y con todos los partidos capi- ataques racistas, en oposición a los abo- students must be part of a broader struggle ruinas] en Estados Unidos está dirigida en talistas, y a favor de la construcción de un gados liberales del control de armas. En la for social emancipation. The CUNY In- contra de las políticas “libremercadistas” partido obrero de lucha clasista. atmósfera actual, los afroamericanos ac- ternationalist Clubs were founded in 2001 impuestas tanto por los demócratas como Este programa, apoyado por el sindi- tuarían de manera sensata si se prepararan when we launched the campaign that halted por los republicanos. No todos son racistas: cato de trabajadores pintores en Portland, para ejercer los derechos que les concede CUNY’s post-9/11 “anti-immigrant war de hecho, millones de ellos, el 12 por cien- Oregon, es lo que podría ofrecer una ver- la Segunda Enmienda a la Constitución es- purge” against undocumented students. We to del total de los que votaron por Trump, dadera respuesta a la demagogia de Trump. tadounidense (que garantiza el derecho de fight for open admissions, free tuition, abol- también votaron por Barack Obama. Son Debe lucharse a favor de esta perspectiva portar armas). ishing the Board of Trustees and student- víctimas del capitalismo. en el movimiento obrero en todo el país. Todos estos pasos prácticos para la worker-teacher control of the universities. Para la élite “neoliberal” de altos vue- Pero ahora vamos a enfrentar ataques resistencia en contra de la reacción racista These are all straightforward democratic los, ésta es la “gente olvidada”, residen- de las victoriosas fuerzas de Trump, que en marcha sólo pueden ser una respuesta demands, but in decaying American capi- tes del paisaje fly-over (por la que pasa el representan una ominosa amenaza a sec- parcial que apunta a la verdadera solución: talism it will take a revolution to get them. avión) cuando se va de Wall Street a Ho- tores oprimidos en particular. Par luchar la revolución obrera. Ya sea que un Do- We – the workers and oppressed – have llywood, cuyos hombres del dinero finan- contra los ataques por venir, es necesario the power. Facing the prospect of attacks cian a los demócratas Clinton y Obama. presentar un programa para movilizar el nald Trump o una Hillary Clinton (o Ba- from Trump’s administration, we must use Los arrogantes mercadotécnicos políticos poder del movimiento obrero. Si el nuevo rack Obama) ocupen la Casa Blanca, el that power, independent of and against the de Bill Clinton S.A. ven a los que votaron régimen pretende reiniciar las redadas en sistema capitalista seguirá inevitablemente Democrats, Republicans and all capitalist por Trump como los “perdedores” en la los centros urbanos, debe haber moviliza- generando racismo, pobreza y guerra. He- parties, laying the basis for a workers party globalización del capitalismo “moderno”, ciones obreras para impedir las deporta- mos denunciado la política de Clinton en to lead the struggle for international social- mientras que los “ganadores” son los capi- ciones, incluso bloqueándolos, inundando Siria y Ucrania por amenazar con una con- ist revolution. n talistas de riesgo de Silicon Valley. Al per- el área con defensores de los derechos de frontación militar y una eventual guerra der sus trabajos, al serles arrebatadas sus los inmigrantes. a toda escala con Rusia. Trump pretende Shock electoral... casas por los bancos, se volvieron presa Dado que violentas fuerzas racistas ser amigo de Putin, pero al mismo tiempo sigue de la página 24 fácil para los demagogos que venden el oro y hasta abiertamente fascistas se han en- amenaza con una guerra comercial –o algo tas y comentaristas están hablando acerca falso del racismo antiinmigrante. El hecho valentonado con la victoria de Trump, peor– en contra de China. Como trotskis- de un “desastre” electoral, de un “apoca- es que los demócratas arrojaron a millones los musulmanes e inmigrantes de Medio tas, enfáticamente defendemos al estado lipsis” y de la “resistencia”. Pero aquí hay de trabajadores a los brazos de Trump. Oriente en particular pueden ser blanco obrero deformado chino en contra del una fundamental diferencia de clase: para Los políticos demócratas no lo admi- para ataques. Militantes con conciencia de ataque imperialista. los trabajadores y los oprimidos es nece- ten, ni pueden admitirlo, tachando a los clase deben iniciar ahora el esfuerzo de for- La inesperada elección de Donald sario oponerse a todos los partidos capita- obreros blancos como racistas, pues es mar guardias obreras de defensa basadas Trump ha impactado a muchos que se opo- listas, echar tanto a los demócratas, como resultado de la política económica de los en las organizaciones de masas de la clase nen hasta la médula al racismo, el sexismo a El Donald. Así, para resistir, debemos en demócratas. Comentaristas liberales como obrera y los oprimidos, para contrarrestar y al chovinismo antiinmigrante. Ha ases- primer lugar entender qué pasó y por qué. Thomas Friedman, quien impulsó esta po- esta amenaza. Los asesinatos policíacos de Pregúntese: ¿habría este shock trau- tado un duro golpe al clintonista Partido lítica, ahora están sumidos en la desespera- afroamericanos y latinos deben ser enfren- Demócrata. No sólo ha arrojado al establi- mático, habría estas protestas de masas si ción: “Estoy angustiado, asustado, por mi tados con masivas movilizaciones obreras shment político a una profunda confusión, la candidata demócrata hubiera resultado país y por nuestra unidad. Y por primera en contra del terror policíaco, tal como sino que ha llevado a muchos a cuestionar electa? Por supuesto que no, puesto que vez, me siento abandonado en EE.UU.” la que dirigió el sindicato de trabajadores la estructura política en su conjunto (inclui- para muchos de los que están participando (New York Times, 9 de noviembre). Izquier- portuarios en Oakland, California, el Pri- do el Colegio Electoral, que sirvió como un en las manifestaciones, incluso si no vota- distas seudo radicales que parlotean teorías mero de Mayo de 2015 (y el contingente bastión de la esclavocracia hasta la Guerra ron por ella, Hillary Clinton representaba de acerca del “privilegio de la piel blanca”, que marchó en Portland ese mismo día alguna manera un “mal menor” que el con- buscan igualmente responsabilizar a los de Sindicalistas en Contra de los Racistas Civil, debido a que Trump pudo perder el sumadamente malo Donald Trump. Pero no trabajadores blancos de la opresión negra, Asesinatos de la Policía). voto popular y aun así ser presidente). Pero es así. Como señaló el Grupo Internaciona- cuando es el racista sistema capitalista el Los trabajadores de la educación de- la alternativa que se presenta ante esta con- lista en su sitio de Internet, se trataba de “la que saca beneficios de la división entre los ben prepararse para detener todo intento de moción política no es una falsa “revolución ‘elección’ entre el candidato más propenso trabajadores negros y trabajadores blancos. detener a estudiantes indocumentados y a política” como la que predican Bernie San- a desencadenar un pogromo racista (Donald Mientras los liberales “neoliberales” sus familias. Si una escuela cerrara y con- ders y sus acólitos, sino una verdadera re- Trump del Partido Republicano) y la candi- se encuentran sumidos en la desesperan- siguiera el respaldo de otras, en respuesta volución socialista internacional. data más propensa a comenzar una Tercera za, varios reformistas y “progresistas” li- a la detención de una familia inmigrante, ¡Esta es la respuesta en contra de Trump Guerra Mundial (la rusófoba Hillary Clin- berales sostienen que el problema es que eso galvanizaría a todo el país. Como mar- … y de Clinton, los demócratas y todos los ton del Partido Demócrata)”. Hillary Clinton no era la candidata demó- xistas no sólo defendemos el derecho a la partidos y políticos patronales! n ¿Por qué entonces resultó Trump elec- crata idónea. Dicen que debió haber sido el to? Los comentaristas liberales lo presentan “socialista” del Partido Demócrata Bernie simplemente como una victoria del racismo Sanders, quien se presentaba como “amigo rampante, particularmente el de los traba- de los trabajadores” y que en las prime- The Internationalist jadores blancos. Nadie puede obviar los ras encuestas de opinión tenía mucho más llamados abiertamente racistas de Trump. apoyo en contra de Trump que la amiga de A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the Para el 50 por ciento de los votantes, esto, Wall Street Clinton. Sin embargo, Sanders al menos no les impidió votar por él. El Ku (quien apoyó obsequiosamente a Clinton) Reforging of the Fourth International Klux Klan y varias organizaciones nazis lo no tenía un programa económico muy dis- Publication of the Internationalist Group, respaldaron con entusiasmo. Pero el voto tinto al de ella porque el “neoliberalismo” section of the League for the Fourth International racista duro es bastante menor –quizás un no es una política, sino que es la actual cuarto del electorado– y ha atacado violen- fase del capitalismo en decadencia, en la Annual subscription US$10 for five issues. tamente a Obama desde 2008. Trump tam- que la caída de los salarios es dictada por bién ganó los votos de sectores acomodados la misma tasa decreciente de ganancia que Name______de la clase media (el votante promedio a fa- desencadenó el crash de 2008. Address______vor de Trump tenía un ingreso familiar de Varios grupos reformistas de izquierda unos 72 mil dólares anuales), como ocurre apoyaron a la candidata del Partido Verde ______Apt. #_____Tel.(___)______normalmente con los republicanos. Jill Stein, cuyo programa eco-capitalista no City______State/Province______Pero los que finalmente dieron la ven- ofrecía nada a los trabajadores, y que anun- taja a Trump fueron los otros, los residen- ciaba calamidades para los trabajadores Postal Code/Zip______Country______tes de poblaciones rurales abandonadas por del acero y mineros del carbón en nombre los jóvenes debido a que no tienen futuro de la supuesta lucha en contra del cambio Make checks/money orders payable to Mundial Publications and mail to: en ellas, y los trabajadores que han visto climático. Otros presentaron a sus propios Mundial Publications sus industrias diezmadas y sus ciudades candidatos con largas listas de ilusorias Box 3321, Church Street Station New York, NY 10008 U.S.A. devastadas. La ira en contra del gobierno reivindicaciones que piden al estado capi- norteamericano proviene de las víctimas talista (véase nuestro artículo “Left Green Write the Internationalist Group at the above address, or contact: del crash de 2008 y de la depresión econó- Dream of People-Friendly Capitalism” [El Tel (212) 460-0983 Fax (212) 614-8711 mica que continúa, que los arrojó al desem- sueño ecologista de un capitalismo amiga- E-mail: [email protected] pleo permanente o los redujo a empleados ble con la gente] en The Internationalist No. January-February 2017 23 El Internacionalista enero-febrero de 2017 Shock electoral postraumático Para derrotar a Trump … y a los demócratas ¡Luchar por la revolución obrera! Reproducimos a continuación el texto del volante el Grupo Internacionalista

publicado, en inglés y español, el 10 El Internacionalista de noviembre, dos días después de las elecciones norteamericanas. El efecto de las elecciones del martes fue el de un relámpago en el cielo noctur- no. Después de toda la cháchara feliz en los medios, incluso hasta entrada la tarde, de que la demócrata Hillary Clinton iba a ser la segura ganadora –la primera mujer presidente después del primer presidente negro– quedó súbitamente en claro que el republicano Donald Trump resulta- ría elegido. El racista, sexista, antiinmi- grante, acosador de mujeres Trump, sería el próximo gerente general de Estados Unidos y comandante en jefe del impe- rialismo norteamericano. Para la mañana siguiente, decenas de millones se pregun- taban con profunda consternación e incre- dulidad, cómo había podido pasar eso. Al mismo tiempo, las familias musulmanas, latinas, afroamericanas e inmigrantes ex- perimentaban puro miedo. Entonces, ¿qué hacer? Los grandes medios de comunicación corporativos Contingente internacionalista en la marcha del Primero de Mayo de 2015 en Nueva York. encomian al unísono la “pacífica transfe- rencia del poder”. El presidente Barack Obama dice de Trump que “todos estamos Hay que resistir – Pero ¿cómo? ahora apoyando su triunfo” En su discur- so de rendición, Clinton dijo “Le debemos ¡Acción obrera para detener las deportaciones! una mente abierta y una oportunidad para gobernar”. Esto quiere decir que el abu- sivo multimillonario puede pisotear toda ¡Forjar un partido obrero revolucionario! oposición. Nosotros respondemos ¡Para nada! Los que son blancos de los victorio- demócratas entregan las riendas del poder dores y oprimidos. en comenzar: miles de personas en todo sos racistas y enemigos de los sindicatos “gentilmente” porque al igual que los re- Para muchos, los resultados de la elec- el país han marchado. La consigna más deben luchar contra ellos en toda la línea, publicanos representan a la misma clase ción fueron como una película de terror, común es la de “Trump no es mi presi- pues de no responder lo pagarán caro. Los capitalista en contra nuestra, los trabaja- quizás una escena sacada de La noche de dente”, junto con la de “Echar a Trump” y los muertos vivientes. El men- “Racista, sexista, anti gay, lárgate Donald saje: debes tener miedo, mucho Trump”. Pero Trump es el que ganó las miedo. En la escuela, el miérco- elecciones burguesas –siempre amañadas les, los estudiantes latinos le pre- para asegurar la selección de un defensor guntaban con miedo a sus maes- del capital– y no se va a ir sólo porque tros: ¿qué me va a pasar, van a unos miles o decenas de miles lo coreen. deportar a mis papás? Defenso- Las consignas mostraban un anhelo favo- res de los derechos de los inmi- rable a Clinton (a veces explícito, como grantes reportaron un torrente de en numerosas pancartas en Nueva York

El Internacionalista amenazas de muerte recibidas que dicen (en referencia a la principal por vía telefónica. Grupos de ra- consigna electoral de los demócratas),“- cistas empezaron a gritar aquí y Todavía juntos, más fuertes”. Asimismo, allá a personas provenientes de expresan ilusiones patrióticas, liberales Medio Oriente que “ha llegado y democráticas, tal como que se trata de el momento de que se larguen “nuestro país”, cuando en realidad perte- de este país”. Mujeres musul- nece a los capitalistas. manas temen usar el hiyab, el La cuestión es ineludible: es urgen- velo islámico para la cabeza. Un temente necesario resistir, pero ¿cómo? prominente portavoz afroameri- Ahora que los republicanos derechistas cano, el ex asesor de Obama Van controlan los tres poderes del gobierno Jones, proclamó que se trataba (ejecutivo, legislativo y judicial) –desde la de un #Whitelash, o contragolpe Casa Blanca, pasando por las dos cámaras Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas participó en la marcha del Día Internacional blanco, en referencia al racista del Congreso y la Suprema Corte, así como del Inmigrante, el 8 de diciembre, en Nueva York. El TIC abogó por plenos derechos contragolpe en contra del movi- la mayor parte de los congresos estatales– de ciudadanía para todos los inmigrantes. En la marcha gritó, “Ni Trump, ni Hillary, miento por los derechos civiles. hasta los más apacibles políticos demócra- ¡construir un partido obrero!” Las protestas no tardaron sigue en la página 23