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AUSTRALIA $1.50 · CANADA $1.50 · FRANCE 1.00 EURO · NEW ZEALAND $1.50 · UK £.50 · U.S. $1.00 INSIDE Nan Bailey: ‘True to her revolutionary convictions every day of her life’ — PAGES 6-8 A SOCIALIST NEWSWEEKLY PUBLISHED IN THE INTERESTS OF WORKING PEOPLE Vol. 83/no. 2 January 14, 2019 SWP members Judge affirms Join Socialist Workers gear up to take Chicago cops Party 2019 campaign! Militant, books used torture in door to door frame-up case BY ROY LANDErsEN BY JOHN HAWKINS Members of the Socialist Workers CHICAGO — More than 28 years Party are starting the new year with after his conviction for a double mur- a bang, organizing teams to take the der he didn’t commit, and over eight party, its program and its support for years after the Illinois Torture Inqui- working-class struggle to working ry and Relief Commission ruled that Chicago cops had tortured him into SWP SPEAKS IN INTERESTS making a false confession, Gerald Reed, now 54, came one step closer to OF WORKING PEOPLE freedom Dec. 19. Circuit Court Judge Thomas Gain- people on their doorsteps. They are er ruled that Reed’s confession was traveling to cities small and large, likely the result of the beating he suf- towns and farming areas in different fered at the hands of Chicago Police parts of the country. They are dis- Department detectives Victor Breska cussing how to resist the only future and Michael Kill. They were both Militant/George Chalmers offered by the political parties of the part of former police Commander Jon Alyson Kennedy, SWP candidate for Dallas mayor, speaks with Dakotah Luster Dec. 30. capitalist rulers — the worsening con- Burge’s notorious “midnight crew.” “Democrats and Republicans are parties of the bosses,” she said. “We need our own party.” sequences of debt and wage slavery. The torture inquiry commission The launching of SWP election was set up by the state government in US troops out of Middle SWP candidates are campaigns across the country will 2009 under pressure from the grow- East, Afghanistan now! ‘tribunes of the people’ help advance this work, the central ing outrage at continuing revelations axis of the party’s activity. SWP about decades of Burge’s torture and The following statement was issued BY BRIAN WILLIAMS members — and members of sister frame-up operations. Burge, who died Jan. 2 by Alyson Kennedy, Socialist The Socialist Workers Party has Communist Leagues in Australia, in September, was fired in 1993 and Workers Party candidate for Dallas announced plans to run candidates for Canada, New Zealand and the United convicted in federal court in 2010 for mayor. more than a dozen municipal and state Continued on page 3 Continued on page 5 offices across the country in 2019, in- cluding in Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, SWP STATEMENT Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington. Los Angeles teachers, supporters The Socialist Workers Party de- They will be the only working-class mands the immediate and uncon- voices in the elections and speak out rally before Jan. 10 strike deadline ditional withdrawal of U.S. troops, as tribunes of the people. bombers and warships from the Mid- “My campaign will not just be dle East and Afghanistan! about workers who live in Dallas but The Donald Trump administra- about working people worldwide,” tion’s proposed drawdown of U.S. Alyson Kennedy, the SWP candidate troops from Syria and reduction of for mayor there, said by phone Jan. U.S. forces in Afghanistan are only 1. “Whatever the capitalist rulers do a small fraction of the vast weaponry to us here, they do the same thing to and troop deployments the U.S. rul- working people internationally. That’s ers keep in the Middle East and else- why I speak out against U.S. wars where worldwide. They’re ready to abroad from Afghanistan to Syria and unleash this whenever it seems neces- Iraq. Bring the troops home now!” sary to protect their interests against Kennedy, a worker at Walmart, was capitalist rivals and above all against the party’s presidential candidate in Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Trump plan to draw down troops in Syria, Afghanistan stirs debate Militant/Deborah Liatos Teachers marched Dec. 15 demanding more funds for schools, smaller classes, higher pay. BY TErrY EVANS President Donald Trump an- BY LAURA GARZA sea of thousands of teachers and their nounced plans Dec. 19 to withdraw Also Inside LOS ANGELES — The Los An- supporters joined a March for Public U.S. troops from Syria and cut by geles Unified School District is on a Education here Dec. 15. nearly half Washington’s forces in ‘Yellow vests’ actions continue collision course with 34,000 teachers, One teacher wore a sign saying, Afghanistan. The decision galvanized to press needs of French toilers 2 as their union has set Jan. 10 as the “Why strike? 50+ students per class. some in his administration, and pro- deadline for a new contract or they No full-time nurse. No full-time li- war liberal Democrats and Republi- ‘Militant’ fight against prison will go on strike. The district has brarian. Overloaded counselors.” cans alike, into calling for the troops censors draws attention 3 640,000 students, the second largest “The school board is offering 6 per- to remain. in the country. cent, but with strings attached like Trump had campaigned on and Wearing red — the color of teacher extra work. We need school nurses. promised during the presidential elec- The Kurds’ decadeslong fight strikes and protests last year in West Right now the district only pays for tion that he would pull U.S. troops to gain a homeland 4 Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona, Colo- a nurse one day a week,” Daisy Fer- out of these “never ending wars.” He rado, Oklahoma and elsewhere — a Continued on page 5 Continued on page 4 ‘Yellow vest’ actions continue to press needs of French toilers BY HUGO WILS there had written “We aren’t vandals” LONDON — Thousands of “gilets on the back of their yellow vests. jaunes” — yellow vests — continue to protest in France, especially in cit- Gov’t forced to make concessions ies and rural areas outside Paris and The catalyst for the yellow vest re- other large cities, despite government volt was a hike in vehicle fuel taxes concessions and a police crackdown aimed at forcing workers to drive on roadblocks and roadside encamp- less in the name of “climate change.” ments in some areas. The protests forced the government “Police shut down the roundabout of President Emmanuel Macron to protests in Dieppe and Forges-Les- abandon these taxes and other mea- Eaux Dec. 16,” Arnold, who had sures he planned to impose. The taxes helped Militant reporters from the were, as many workers said, the straw U.K. visit roadblock protests there in that broke the camel’s back after de- mid-December, said in a telephone cades of declining living standards interview. for workers, family farmers and other In the south of France, Militant small proprietors in France. Workers Vincent Feuray/ABACA/Sipa USA via AP Yellow vest protesters march in Rennes, France, Dec. 29. “We fight for you,” sign on left correspondent Jacques Salfati vis- and tradesmen outside of Paris de- says. Protesters continue pressing for further concessions from the French government. ited coastal Hyeres, where he reports pend on their cars to get to work, to the protests, though smaller, are still the store, to live. on small businesses. cial Times, Wolfgang Munchau la- well attended. Macron, a former investment bank- “The most important thing is living mented Macron’s decline. He called “I’m in the countryside near Ales, er, has been a central target of the standards, wages and retirement ben- the French president crucial for his an industrial town of 40,000 inhabit- yellow vests. His disdain for working efits,” 64-year-old Marie-Andree told “vision for the future of the EU and ants inland,” Nat London reported. “I people is legion, echoing Hillary Clin- Nat London. “Everyone should have a the eurozone.” But he’s been dam- counted about 35 at the Route de Ba- ton calling workers who didn’t vote for livable income when we retire.” aged by having to make concessions gnol traffic circle protest. The other her “deplorables.” Macron says their “The anger has not gone away,” to the protesters. “It is not hard to four I visited were slightly smaller.” French fellow workers are infected Arnold told me on the phone. “While see why he had to do this,” Munchau The French big business media fo- with populist “leprosy.” Workers call the roadblocks have been cleared in wrote. But a failure to regain his stat- cus on declining participation in the him the “president of the rich.” Nor- Dieppe and Forges, a farmer sym- ure “would probably end any hopes Saturday actions in Paris and some mally hugging the limelight, Macron pathetic to the yellow vests provided of further European integration for a other larger cities — many marked has conspicuously pulled back over roadside land for an ongoing visible long time.” by cop tear gas and violence, and the last couple of weeks. protest. In nearby Rouen, the region’s Workers in Bury St Edmunds, a provocations by antifa types. But the Dominique, a retired ironworker capital city, yellow vests have re- town of 40,000 in East Anglia, 85 bulk of the protests remain in places and one of the protesters in Ales, turned over and over after being regu- miles northeast of London, had quite a like Ales, where yellow vests opted to railed against “politicians and bank- larly expelled by the cops.