Indian Religious Art Mink interview (Winter, 1978 Editor's Response Freedom issue) I received several phone calls We were in error in character­ It is extremely important that the from now-retired longshoremen izing the vast opposition as an "un­ Indian public be aware of the Indian concerning the eight lives lost in principled combination." It was no Volume 5, Number 1 Spring 1979 Religious Freedom Act. the 1934 strike. more unprinCipled than the Febru­ We are interested in hearing from The three men killed in San ary 1917 revolution that deposed the On the cover: Graphic by Marcel Hatch, inspired by tribes, non-affiliated Indian groups Francisco were: Howard S. Perry, Russian Czar and merited the sup­ 1925 Soviet poster commemorating Bloody Sunday member of Sailors Union of the In 1905. and individuals experiencing port of revolutionists everywhere. problems in asserting their con­ Pacific and a volunteer in the But it is vital for radicals to China stitutional right to religious freedom. strike kitchen; Mike Bordoise, a scrutinize Khomeini and denounce The Indian Religious Freedom cook and strike kitchen volunteer; his anticommunism and support Act requires various federal depart­ and Charles Olsen, a Longshore­ for capitalism. It would have The antics of the Chinese ments and agencies to evaluate their man shot in the arms, chest, and been dangerous and deceitful to give leadership are sowing face. Two men were killed in confusion and doubt laws and practices and determine him unqualified support before he about socialism, as what changes are needed to allow Seattle: Shelly Daffron, a Long­ seized power, regardless of his pop­ Chinese foreign policy, Indians to practice their religion shoreman; and Ollie Helland, ularity. rooted in Stalinism in­ without federal government inter­ Sailors Union of the Pacific mem­ Unity should never mean the stead of internationalism, ference. President Carter has to ber. Two were killed in San Pedro: cessation of internal criticism and shakes the world. Mary report the results of this evaluation a Mr. Knudson and Richard Parker. debate, nor blindness toward a Ann Curtis is the reporter. to Congress by August, 1979. And Bruce Lindeberg, a member of clearly impending split. In order to intervene into the eval­ Sailors Union of the Pacific, was The "Death Qr the Veil" slogan Teamsters uation process, the Native American killed in Shanghai. was reported in Workers Vanguard, 6 Rights Fund and the American In­ Hundreds of other men were the organ of the Spartacist League, dian Law Center are undertaking an gassed and otherwise injured for which attributed it to Khomeini's Indian Religious Freedom Project. striking for dignity on the job, Iranian supporters. Events have We need examples of problems equality of earnings, and union­ shown that the veil has taken on Contention over the experienced by Indian peoples controlled hiring and dispatching. different meanings during different Master Freight Agree­ They are traditionally honored on ment has forced a con­ with federal laws, regulations, stages of the revolution; under the frontation between and procedures that prevented July 5, the Longshore Holy Day. Shah, it symbolized opposition to Teamsters and the gov­ their unhampered practice orNative Melba Windoffer him, but now it is a clear symbol ernment. Harry Turner American religions. Contact Native Seattle, Washington offemale oppression. assesses the situation. American Rights Fund, 1506 Khomeini's stance on the veil has Broadway, Boulder, CO 80302, Iran Critique now been exposed on the front pages Violence against Wome 5 Phone (303) 447-8760. I enjoy your paper and was dis­ of the world press. Burgess C. Primeaux appointed that so little space was The article on Iran in this issue Wife-beating and female­ Native American Rights Fund devoted to something as earthshak­ should clarify our position. Thank battering are intrinsic to Boulder, Colorado ing as the Iranian revolution. you for your comradely criticism. the American way of life. The people of Iran are involved in Tamara Turner reports on an incredible movement against SCAT some of the victims who Getting to Know You the right wing of Iran and the world. As a woman active in the Seattle defended themselves, We call ourselves the Anti­ Their unity against imperialism has Committee Against Thirteen, I and the legal jeopardy Imperialist League. We are a small strongly protest your article on they are in. left the U.S. with no workable op­ i but militant group that believes tions to save a sinking ship. Initiative 13 characterizing SCAT as in the right of oppressed nations to But the FS characterized anti­ a white, male organization. Alaskan Natives 4 self-determination. We follow the Shah forces as an "unprincipled What a gross insult to the many teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin combination of Left, Mosol.eru and Women who were active in arid lCflC and Trotsky. business forces" and Khomeini as leaders of SCAT! According to you, We are discussing the question: Is a "right-wing religious leader." all our efforts count for nothing; we The aboriginal people of the so-<:alled socialist camp really simply don't exist. Throughout Alaska face extinction at On the contrary, the right wing in socialist or state capitalist? Iran (the comprador bourgeoisie, history, women's contributions have the hands of the resource been systematically belittled or pillagers and land The two main activities we are in­ serving Western business) hates snatchers. But they are volved in at the present are build­ Khomeini and supports only the ignored. Your denial. ..continues fighting back. Analysis by ing support for the Newport News Shah, the Army, and now Bakhtiar. this chauvinist tradition. Phil McMurray. shipyard strike, and building an All other classes, including the petty Both SCAT and Women Against Affirmative Action Coalition. bourgeoisie, are anti-Shah. Thirteen plan to continue activities We hope to find out more in the fight for lesbian and gay ------aI50------I agree with Marxist Iranian about you. rights. By praising W AT... while INTERNATIONAL GAYS students who say, "We critically Larry Txabi denigrating SCAT, I feel you are try­ Cambodia ...... 15 Gay Resistance, Part 3 8 support Khomeini as long as he Newport News, Virginia ing to drive a wedge between the Iran ...... 10 follows the demands of the people." two organizations and prevent fur­ GENERAL To do otherwise is to. play into the Editor's Response ther collaboration of the kind that Freeway Hall Ev.iction 9 hands of the right wing in their effort LABOR We think it crucial that the defi­ was so fruitful in the campaign. Pulp-PaperWorkers .. 4 Open Letter ...... 8 to divide the opposition. at a time nition of "nation" be applied Should such efforts on your part Weber Case ...... 6 MS.Tami ...... 14 when unity against the right is with great care. We don't, for in­ succeed, the gay movement can only The Uncivil Service .... 7 crucial. Unity of the anti-Shah POETRY stance, view Blacks as a nation but lose. NY Doctors' Strike 7 masses and the striking oilworkers Ann Barada ...... 12 as an oppressed race. We promote You owe SCAT, particularly the brought Death to the Shah. the program of Revolutionary women in SCAT, and the entire WOMEN EDITORIAL I support the Iranian leftists Rebuttal ...... 14 Integrationfor Blacks in the u.s. Seattle gay community, a public Clara Fraser ...... 13 (See FS Vol. 3, Nos. 3 & 4,for a who joined with the masses in wel­ A Victory for Labor Party ...... 12 apology for printing such a slander­ Socialist Feminism 16 thorough analysis of this issue.) coming Khomeini. They were not ous statement. We agree with Trotsky's view that "collaborating with class enemies," Caryl Sholin MOVIE REVIEWS the so-called "socialist" countries but were expressing unity with their MINORITIES Witchhunt Nostalgia 13 Seattle, Washington Japanese Americans .. 3 Previews ...... 13 are saddled with a bureaucratic class. caste rather than a ruling class, The time to criticize Khomeini will Editor's Response so they are workers states (in various come when and if he falters in his We wrote, "SCA T, composed degrees of degeneration, deforma­ "leadership" and the masses pass predominantly of white gay men. .. tion, and crisis). Their national him by. But until then we should rec­ moved quickly into emphasis on Efree~ ownership of the means of produc­ ognize that this movement is pre­ moderation. . .pushed a generally tion, monopoly offoreign trade, and dominantly progressive - no single-issue line of 'war on homo­ Published quarterly by the Freedom Socialist Party. Editorial and planned economy are a tremendous matter how much the terms phobia,' but pressure from WAT production offices: Freeway Hall, 3815 Fifth Avenue N.E., Second advance OVer capitalism, and we "moslem," "holy war" and "aging forced it into occasional opposition Floor West, Seattle, WA 98105. (206) 632-7449. staunchly defend these lands against religious leader" are thrown around. to Initiative 15 and into addressing Staff all imperialist onslaughts. N one of the Iranians I know the issue of the 'right wing." White males did predominate at SCA T EDITORIAL/PRODUCTION BOARD PHOTOGRAPHY ever heard of "Death or the Veil" as Sam Deaderlck Doug Barnes You Bet! a right-wing slogan against op­ meetings, and this was significant in Clara Fraser We recently received a copy of the pressed women. I do not think it the light of its cautious program. Marcel Hatch TECHNICIANS The anti-I3 forces were led to victory Ivan King Barbara Brown Freedom Socialist and found it to reflects the true nature of the situa­ Janet Sutherland Megan Cornish be very informative. tion and wonder if that slogan by feminists who rallied the minority Tamara Turner Beth Kellner Chama Klein Would it be possible to receive originated as a plant in some "news" communities, labor, and the liberals MANAGER Eugenle Nlbouyet into opposition. Val Carlson Klmle Snyder your publication on an exchange article by the CIA. Elaine Weaver basis with our monthly pUblica­ I hope more space can be devoted BUSINESS MANAGERS Sarah White Readers are encouraged to submit Mary Ann Curtis tion Steelabor? in the next issue to Iran. I always Melba Wlndoffer Russell W. Gibbons, Editor letters, news stories, commentary, SUPPORT SERVICES look forward to reading a publica­ cartoons, graphics, photographs, PRODUCTION COORDINATORS Chuck Meyer Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania tion which encourages such open Helen Gilbert Sandy Nelson and pertinent information on world Ann Manly Rune response from its readers. and national affairs for publication. Longshore Martyrs John Dickerson All material will be carefully con­ Subscriptions exchanged. After the publication of the Houston, Texas sidered by the Editorial Board. Articles and graphics may be reprinted wIth credit.

2 FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 at -.. z;z: 'A III at

by Helen Gilbert

hirty-six years after the shameful concentration-camp imprisonment of 123,000 Japanese, a vast memorial-protest movement to T avenge the infamy is assaulting the '----~~~~ J conscience of America and threaten- ing congressional purse-strings. On Noyember 25,2000 Japanese Americans publicly reenacted their forced trek to prison in 1942. Using borrowed U.S. Army buses and cars, they traveled from Seattle to the stables of the State Fairgrounds in nearby Puyallup. Euphemistically called "Camp Harmony," this was one of the many infamous stopover-relocation centers of World War II. Similar grim demonstrations took place in Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles during February, 1979. Gordon Hirabayashi, who served time in federal prison for his courageous stand against internment, spoke for thousands of Asian Americans when he said in Seattle, "We must shed the survival mech­ anisms of self-effacement and quietness-and fight!" Redress for Relocation Nightmare Japanese Americans today are demanding national legislation to provide monetary restitution Japanese -Americans as well as a legal commitment that racism and greed will never again cause the wholesale lockup of a race and robbery of its possessions. 'remember Pearl Harbor and The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) is preparing enabling legislation to furnish com­ pensation for the loss of property, homes, busi­ protest U.S. prison camps nesses, and jobs. In addition, they are estimating the social and psychological damages of the loss of to "protect internal security." resistance became the favored forms of protest, up to four years of freedom, and a tentative sum of along with universal, covert forms of daily rebel­ $25,000 has been pinpointed as reparations for each America the Beautiful lion: caustic anti-administration jokes, silent boycott internee-a total of $3 billion. Three months after Pearl Harbor, the evacua­ of administration projects, and persistent violation In order to prevent future abuses, the legislation tions began. All Japanese from Alaska to the of the camp ban against the practice of traditional seeks to overturn the legal basis for internment Mexican border were herded into 10 massive con­ medicine and clubs and schools which taught (upheld by several Supreme Court decisions) and centration camps in some of the harshest deserts on Japanese culture. curb the misuse of presidential power, so that earth. "Scorching hell. .. a place beyond description Japanese resistance was especially heroic when crimes against innocent civilians can never again and beyond tears," said on.! inmate. contrasted with the desertion of those who should be committed in the name of "military necessity." Tar paper barracks were divided into cubby­ have been allies. Few radical parties, no labor holes, each housing one family. Huge bathrooms organizations, and no other minority groups took A Convenient Enemy featured long rows of toilets with no partitions for up the cudgels. "Liberal" politicians championed . U.S. entry into WWIl demanded a scapegoat privacy. Standards were below those of prisoners the camps . to disguise U.S. warmongering in Asia, and to per­ of war. Despite great hostility against them, the Socialist petuate the Big Lie of the "sneak attack" on Pearl Barbed wire fences and guard towers girded the Party and several pacifist groups staged protests Harbor. It was a perfect opportunity for West camps, and searchlights scanned the premises against the relocation; the Socialist Workers Party Coast growers, and the Bank of America, to get rid nightly. Trigger-happy guards manned the gates to also spoke against the internments. But the COUl­ of the Japanese and seize their property. prevent people from leaving. munist Party, completely pro-Roosevelt and Despite 100 years of "Yellow Peril" hysteria and And as the war progressed, and the insanity of frenzied with superpatriotism after the Nazi discrimination against them, Japanese farmers were relocation became evident, "protection against invasion of the USSR, endorsed the outrage and' incredibly successful at turning wasteland into misguided patriots" became the official excuse for violently broke up one of the protest meetings highly productive farms-and earning the envy and continued imprisonment! in Seattle. hatred of powerful agricultural interests. Since Japanese immigrants were barred from Resistance and Betrayal N ever Again! becoming citizens or owning land, property was Part of the official racist cover-up of this terrible "Whatever groups come into disfavor with the held in the names of their American-born children. chapter in American history is the myth of Japanese government will be threatened with this happening Hence, to get control of these lands, the entire acquiescence. to them," says Ron Mamiya, one of the drafters Japanese race had to be impounded. Citizen and It is true that the initial evacuation was charac­ of the JACL legislation. ''Maybe gays, maybe noncitizen, child and parent, affluent and poor­ terized by the desperate effort of a stunned people Iranians, maybe Taiwanese-who knows who it without a trial, all were accused and convicted of to cooperate so as to prove loyalty. But indignation might happen to next'! Unless we rewrite this page being treacherous enemy aliens. A tidal wave of and outrage prevailed from the outset, and resist­ in history, it will happen again." jingoistic slander and lies was unleashed which ance was soon manifest. The camps still exist, intact, waiting there for all convinced the nation that Pearl Harbor was a result Strikes erupted against insufferable conditions of us unless the working class and its allies support of internal sabotage. and abuses of human rights. Unions were orga­ the proposed legislation and build a strong united And the Japanese were rounded up like animals nized. Legal suits, petitions, "riots,'" and draft front against all forms of police-state regimentation.

FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 3 r------...... oiii7Tiiii·iiiiiiiiiiiiii---====;;;;;;;======I

r

f I ALASKA!

where the natural people and the natural resources face extinction by Phil McMurray which destroys people and natural But these restrictions totally ignore and non-Native, preach that parallel resources with equal ferocity. Alaska Natives' survival needs. and coexisting cultures are possible, ast summer, four As resources dwindle, Native hunt­ Whaling has been an integral part and that the regional corporations can Native Alaskan men, ing and fishing rights are arrogantly of Eskimo diet and culture for thous­ meet the needs of Native people for ages 67 to 98, were denied or ignored. The conservative ands of years. Yet in 1977, the Inter­ housing, education, employment, arrested by Alaskan backlash against Native Americans in national Whaling Commission banned and legal rights, and still make a L Fish & -Game wardens the "lower 48" states is mirrored in the taking of bowhead whale. The profit. But more and more Native for attempted salmon Alaska by cries that Native people are Eskimos were not notified or involved people realize that these corporations fishing on the Copper River. a "special interest" group demanding in the decision, which was made on have not stopped the destruction of The fishermen were seeking food "special privileges." the basis of incorrect evidence on the their lands, resources and livelihood. for their households. They did not But the hypocritical cries flaunt the number of existing bowhead whales. It has not been profitable to know that a weekday fishing ban had historical truth. Eskimo people strongly protested develop labor-intensive local busi­ been imposed by the State because of the ban and the denial of their right nesses which meet economic needs the limited salmon run, nor could The Whaling Issue to participate in such decisions, and in and support the culture of Native they compete with the sports fisher­ Large-scale exploitation of whales, 1978 the IWC permitted a quota of people,-and the corporations have men swarming all over the rivers on otters, and other wildlife by Ameri­ whales for Eskimo hunters. But it was been investing in hotels, stocks and weekends. can, Japanese, Russian and European far too limited for survival needs. And bonds, and large-scale extractive Many similar arrests in recent years interests during the 19th century when a quota of only 18 whales was industries. have once again raised to the fore­ rendered some species virtually ex­ established for 1979, the Eskimo dele­ Clashes between the corporations front of Native struggles the question tinct. The vast oil pipeline and other gation walked out of the conference and Native communities have already of basic subsistence. environmental assaults have helped to and rejected IWC jurisdiction over erupted; the battle over control of the Alaska's 250 Native villages are decimate salmon. caribou, and other their people. resources of beautiful Admiralty among the last places on earth remaining food resources. As a result, Island is a vivid example. marked by a subsistence-level fishing the State of Alaska and various Clash of Cultures Hiding behind phony catch- and hunting economy, and they face capitalist-dominated international The 1971 Alaska Native Claims phrases like "more jobs and ecological annihilation as their aboriginal coop­ commissions have limited the seasons, Settlement Act gave Native Alaskans protection," capitalist interests are erative lifestyle becomes engulfed by or set quotas, or banned altogether title to 40 million acres of land, plus gearing up to plunder more non­ an insatiable, profit-mad capitalism the taking of certain wildlife. compensation for lost land. But the renewable Alaskan resources and fundamental result of ANCSA was exterminate the economy, the culture, ~------~------~iliefurmation~13re~on~profi~ and the very lives of the indigenous making corporations to manage and people .• distribute benefits to the people, Paper Workers Hold Out and conservative leaders of the Native communities have themselves set out Phil McMurray, a member of on a course which will cause the final CRSP, is an energetic supporter of extinction of Native cultures. the Alaskan Native struggle. He lives Against Heavy Odds Business entrepreneurs, both Native in Juneau.

by Robert Crisman icals from Local 315 in Hoquiam, Washington provided a beacon light he bitter West Coast of resistance. Pulp and Paper The Grays Harbor Paper Company Workers' strike has replaced the striking office workers with entered its eighth scabs who filed for union decertification. T month with no end in The striking clericals filed a countersuit sight-the longest and for two months exerted unrelenting stoppage ever held in the Pacific pressure on the scabs by rallying the Coast paper mills. union into mass picketing, which was A rash of February settlements stopped only by a court injunction and seemed to signal the strike's end, but the police violence. thousands of workers still out are deter­ 1,000 paperworkers marched with the mined to save their conditions and their clericals in October, and a November union from gouges by industry ~a:nts antiscab demonstration attracted culin­ like Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific. ary workers, longshoremen, and The Association of Western Pulp and Teamsters, in an exemplary display of Paper Workers has demanded a 10% labor solidarity. annual wage increase over 2 years, and Local 315 contingents traveled pension adjustments to offset inflation. throughout Washington State soliciting Management has offered 10,9, and 8% labor support against the union-busting wage increases over 3 years, and inade­ war of the paper companies. Their bitter quate pension adjustments. 8-month battle was settled March 31 The strikebreaking manufacturers through federal mediation. have hired scab labor and provoked violence on the picket lines. Struck Renewed Militance plants are reimbursed for losses by the Workers at Weyerhaeuser mills in In the words of author and FSP Organizer Martin, the bosses' association, which demagogi­ Oregon and Washington rejected con­ report seeks to "assess the highlights, identify the errors, and cally cites Pres. Carter's "anti-inflation­ tract offers in March, and locals at other level judgment on an entire decade of revolutionary work." ary wage-hike guidelines" as the basis companies followed suit. Roving Fascinating reading for radical organizers and historians, and for its shabby proposals. pickets shut down all Weyerhaeuser Separate bargaining with each Oregon operations, as well as plants in an exciting sequel to A Victory for Socialist Feminism. A WPPW local has seriously hampered Everett, Longview, and Snoqualmie .... __ ._ ..._. __ ._._. Falls, Washington. _._ strike coordination and persistence, _._. especially after the more compliant 11,000 International Woodworkers • Please send me copies of Socialist Feminism: The First • AFL-CIO United Paperworkers of America members, joined by wood­ • Decade, 1966-76. Enclosed is $ . Price $7.95 each. • International Union accepted contract workers in other unions, have refused to offers early in the strike. And while cross A WPPW picket lines. • Name • (please print) I strike funds have dwindled toward zero, Broad labor and community assis­ • M~~ C~ • industry profits have increased. tance to the tenacious strikers, plus a determined course of united mass : State Zip Phone(s) • Bright Spot action, could spell victory for the hard­ • Send checks or money orders (no cash. please) to Freedom Socialist Party, • The militance of striking women cler- pressed paperworkers .• Freeway Hall, 3815 Fifth Avenue !\i.E., Seattle, WA 9XI05. • ======-:_=--=--:::::::'::_-=-=-======----_._.. •••_ ••__ ._.--_._. __ .­ ~_ FREEDQM §OCIALlSL~fi'NG 197~ __. __ ii:a =

The American Way of Life by Tamara Turner the judge felt she was "a threat to her husband." hen women employ On February 22, the judge deadly force to 'protect deferred sentencing and ordered a 90- . themselves agamst day period of psychiatric observation on males who assault, the grounds that she was a dangerous W batter, and terrorize and disturbed woman because she never them, the courts tend expressed remorse for her act. to hand them a reduced prison term in A major fundraising campaign to exchange for a plea of guilty. meet $6000 in legal fees has been But women today are rejecting the launched by the Cassandra Peten De­ blatantly sexist legal definitions of self­ fense Committee, 1600 Woolsey Street, defense and demanding victory in the Berkeley, CA 94703. Message phone: courts as an affirmation and a vindica­ (415) 841-6500. tion of their right to survive. The celebrated cases of Joan Little Claudia Thacker, and Inez Garcia dramatized the terrible Embattled Mother plight of women who are unmercifully On Labor Day, 1977 Claudia Thacker harassed by the state because they chose ended a 20-year reign of terror in her to defend their lives rather than submit to Port Orchard, Washington home by murderous and rapacious men. Scores shooting her husband dead as he of similar, less heralded cases still crowd stormed through the house in a drunken the court dockets, and the outlook for rage. He had smashed the furnishings, most of them is bleak. beaten two of their three daughters, and Violence against women is an institu­ threatened to kill them all with his gun. tion that perpetuates the contemporary Claudia was convicted of second de­ social jungle. The human male's use of gree murder, which carries a mandatory superior muscular strength to brutalize 5-to-20-year sentence. Claudia was freed and control an entire sex is endemic on her own recognizance pending out­ under capitalism, and the revolt of the come of her appeal to the Washington victims foreshadows a titanic overturn State Court of Appeals in June, 1979. of all social relations that is next on the The jury heard very little about Ken­ world agenda. neth Thacker's violent habits. Not until a year later, through precedent set in the Cassandra Peten, Battered Wife Yvonne Wanrow case, was past history of abuse permitted as evidence in a self­ The brutalization of women is huckstered as a staple The Oakland, California jury that defense trial. In February, 1979 the commodity on the nation's newsstands. found Cassandra Peten guilty of assault appeals court agreed to consider a served notice last January that it is still supplemental brief written by Claudia. open season on women in the nation's Friends of Claudia Thacker, c/o The there was "an altercation between two For the first time, the brutal story of her criminal "justice" system. Gazebo Florist Shop, 730 Bay Street, men." Requiring a 5'4" woman on life with Thacker will be exposed in all Cassandra Peten is a young Black Port Orchard, W A 98366. crutches to "repel a 6'2" intoxicated man its relentless cruelty and trauma. without employing weapons in her mother, a shipyard worker, and a bat­ Claudia Thacker learned about Yvonne Wanrow: Update tered wife. In 2Y2 years of marriage, she defense ...violates the respondent's marriage American-style from her Air Yvonne Wanrow's long, hard struggle was slapped and beaten, and her.teeth right to equal protection of the law." Force sergeant husband after he to protect her family from social were broken. She left her husband three To help, contact: Yvonne Wanrow brought her from her native France to oppression took a decisive turn in times, and after he threatened to kill her, Defense Committee, c/o P.J., l824-l2th the small town of Port Orchard. Over 1972 when she was forced to shoot a she left her job at Todd Shipyards, Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122. the years, his drinking and abuse wors­ drunken, angry man-known in the placed her child in her mother's care, Phone (206) 324-6292. ened, but she did not know how to seek neighborhood as a child molester-who and fled to another state. protection and was too frightened and entered the house where she sought Sharon Crigler, Unwilling Victim In May, 1978 she returned to San ashamed to ask. Ironically, her plight safety from him. As he started to attack On April 17, Sharon Crigler will Francisco to cash her $1500 income tax was common knowledge. her family, she shot him through the appeal her conviction and lO-year return, and agreed to split the money "My kids went to school with theirs heart. sentence for manslaughter. with her estranged husband. Outside the and I guess he was thumping them all Today, seven years later, this valiant Crigler, a Black, was tried before an bank, he took all but $95. When she pro­ the time," said the police chief. "Nobody Native American woman is still fighting all-white jury. The judge who sen­ tested, he raised his fist and she shot wants to see her serve time. But what can the sexist, racist American legal system tenced her criticized her for being on him, like thousands of women who have you do? You just can't go around that found her guilty of assault and mur­ welfare and for her attitude. defended themselves with a weapon in knocking off husbands." der, and sentenced her to a 25-year Refusing to bargain for a lesser order to equalize the battle with an un­ Interviewed by the Freedom Social­ prison term. charge with a guilty plea, Crigler armed but violent male. A minor wound ist, Claudia expressed thanks to all the Her 1973 conviction was overturned maintained her innocence. Keith was inflicted on him. feminists supporting her. in a landmark Washington State Rolland, a man she had sheltered and Because he had no weapon, it was her "Now I worry about my appeal," she Supreme Court decision in January, supported for several months, re­ word against his that his intentions were said, "and I hope the judges will see the 1977, but the Spokane prosecutor ob­ peatedly beat her, and she kicked him threatening; her past history of batter­ truth of how badly women are treated. tained a retrial, scheduled for out. When he returned, she believed ing and terror meant nothing. And I worry for Yvonne Wanrow. But April 30. him to be armed, and fired the warn­ Found guilty of assault, she now faces how can the judges not listen? This is A major legal step toward equality ing shot that killed him. a 4-year maximum imprisonment. And 1979; they must see how life has not been under the law for women came with the Contact Sharon Crigler Defense though free on bail before the trial, she fair to women." court's ruling that the traditional deter­ Committee, 3811 N. 22nd St., Tacoma, was jailed prior to sentencing because Donations and letters can be sent to: mination of "reasonable force" assumed WA 98406. Phone (206) 759-8501. •

FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 5 liArit ,

women and 50% white men were to be admitted to the training program. Kaiser the Great The previous two lower court decisions ruled that the 50% goal for women and minorities was "an unlawful preference" because Kaiser ad­ mitted to no prior discrimination. Neither court heard documented testimony about Kaiser's history of lower pay, limited hiring and segre­ gated facilities for nonwhites; Blacks were forced to eat amid factory fumes while whites enjoyed an airconditioned lunchroom. Kaiser management testified only about its equal opportunity policy (on paper), its un­ successful attempts to recruit Blacks, and its adoption of a "quota system" to satisfy federal re­ Brian Weber charges "reverse discrimination" in U.S. Supreme Court case quirements and avoid "vexatious litigation." Had management admitted the disparities that justi­ fied the selective training program, successful and costly suits by minorities would have Weber: Blue Collar Bakke followed. Reverse Justice: Another Twist Labor's ability to bargain for the special his­ by Val Carlson Seven Blacks and six whites were accepted, toric needs of minority and women workers is and two of the Blacks had less seniority than gravely imperiled by the Weber case. A recent rian Weber's reverse discrimi­ Weber. Charging a violation of the Civil Rights United Steelworkers resolution from the.New nation suit now before the Act, Weber sued Kaiser and the United Steel­ Orleans local called Weber "an antiunion attack U.S. Supreme Court is the latest workers of America on behalf of all eligible white in the worst tradition of the Taft-Hartley Act, giant warhead aimed at the heart workers at the plant. 'right to work' open shop laws, and strikebreaking B of affirmative action. If the Court injunctions. " I '--____----' decision does not dismantle this No Career Ladders Civil rights leaders.rightfully proclaim that the formidable weapon, the complete destruction Until 1974, Kaiser required previous experi­ issue involved is simply fair and just reparations of compensatory opportunity for the socially dis­ ence for skilled workers and hired from the out­ for minorities, not the vengeful discrimination advantaged will ensue. side instead of promoting from inside. Hence, against whites claimed by Bakke and Weber. From Bakke to Weber, devastation of affirma­ Weber could not even have been a candidate for Voluntary affirmative action programs are al­ tive action is moving from the educational arena a skilled job before the inauguration of the very ready staggering under the paralyzing wound in­ to the economic, and from the public sector to program he is challenging. flicted by Bakke, which constricted white-collar the private. The Kaiser-Steelworker plan was to build up opportunities. Should Weber block access to In 1974, Weber was a $21,000 a year lab assist­ minority and female representation until the craft skilled blue-collar work, it will be back to the ant at Kaiser's Gramercy, Louisiana plant, and workforce contained 5% women and a percent­ broom for minorities, back to the offices for wo­ he was turned down for a new skilled craft, on­ age of minorities equal to the population in the men, and back to the open shop for the entire the-job training program called for in the union area around each plant. Gramercy's minority labor movement. contract. The purpose of the program was to popUlation was 39%, but only 2% of Kaiser's craft A clarion call must be heard across the land, a improve mobility for all workers and to offset workers were minority. call so loud that even the Supreme Court can hear past racial inequities. To accomplish this, 50% minorities and it: STOP WEBER! •

by Harry Turner Teamster Contract: 3 years ago by the Labour Party government and the 5% wage-rise he national Master ceiling imposed by current Labour Freight Agreement of Party Minister James Callaghan. the International Critical Test for Labor The British truck drivers are now Brotherhood of winning at least 20.75% wage raises, T Teamsters-an agree- Teamster Misleadership TDU and PROD slates have ousted setting the pattern for all British ment covering 300,000 The Teamsters have begun contract the bureaucrats in local elections in labor. local cartage and 100,000 long-haul negotiations, but their union is headed Oklahoma City, Flint, St. Louis, And if a Trotskyist vanguard party truck drivers, the backbone of the 2.4 by a thoroughly corrupt and venal Boston, Jacksonville, Harrisburg and existed in Britain today, the labor million member union-expired in leadership. Frank E. Fitzsimmons and Roanoke, losing only in New York movement would move beyond the March. And April found thousands of company have a cozy relationship and Pittsburgh. reformist Labour Party into revolu­ teamsters on strike or locked out. with organized crime, are implicated The rank and file is demanding not tionary politics. Without such a The new contract is expected in the murder of previous union presi­ less than a 39% wage boost and an political development, the growth of to set the pattern for 3.7 million dent Jimmy Hoffa, and are involved uncapped cost-of-living clause. But the right will become an increasing workers under other major contracts in the looting of millions of dollars of their primary stress is on working danger. which expire this year, among them pension fund money from locals in conditions and workers' control ("a the heavy artillery of the labor move­ the central states, southeast and right to our own lives") against the Radicals in Basic Industry ment-those workers in such basic southwest areas. The union officials "productivity" offensive of the truck­ Trotskyists must become rooted in industries as rubber, electrical and had been trustees of these funds until ing bosses and mandatory overtime. major industrial unions such as the auto .. forced to resign by the federal govern­ At present, drivers are only guaran­ teamsters and steelworkers. The open­ The IBT settlement will be a ment. teed a 24-hour rest period between shop South is now being challenged major test of labor's ability to with­ Fitzsimmons may yet bow to 8-day /70-hour tours, and must by the steelworkers' strike at the stand the double-barreled, antilabor Carter's 7% wage ceiling, if only to "babysit" by the telephone, reporting shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. "austerity" offensive recently an­ win immunity from prosecution. He is for work within 2 hours after being Trotskyists must become involved nounced by the chief executive of the no longer talking about matching the called. They are also demanding job in rank-and-file organizations such as ruling class, Jimmy Carter. 39% won by the miners. He may also security, pension improvements, the TDU where they exist and in Carter's 7% "voluntary" wage-rise accede to the "productivity" demands grievance and safety provision reform, organizing them where they do not. ceiling is designed to curb the double­ of the trucking industry-variable pay and the right to vote on all contract In industries with a predominantly digit inflation rate again threatening scales and starting times, increased supplements and riders. white male workforce, Trotskyists workers. Even though real wages speedup, longer probation and a must spearhead the fight for jobs for declined 3.3% last year, Carter would lower apprentice wage. But he faces Lessons of the women, as part of the process of erode them further. His "austerity" a growing and increasingly influential British Truck Strike fighting for jobs for all workers. At budget is designed to help induce a rank-and-file movement which will In 1934, the strikes of the Teamsters the last TDU convention, 15% to 20% "mild" recession this year by paring limit his ability to sell out. in Minneapolis under Trotskyist of the delegates were women. last year's inflation-generating federal leadership helped spark the formation Trotskyists can playa crucial role deficit of $37 billion to $29 billion, Rank-and-File Demands of the CIO. in the unions in developing wQrker in the hope of staving off a galloping Teamsters for a Democratic Union In England, the recent strike of consciousness that the next historic depression next year-a presidential (TDU) has 3100 members and a 100,000 British truckers for a 23% step for labor must be political-a election year. The austerity in the monthly newspaper, Convoy, which increase-which started as a wildcat­ break with the twin parties of capital­ budget, however, is only for workers reaches another 50,000 Teamsters. sparked a tremendous wave of 24- ism and the construction of an and especially oppressed minorities, Together with PROD, Inc.'s 5400 hour strikes by locomotive engineers independent party of the workers, a for whom social services and pro­ members, they have formed a "Major­ and hundreds of thousands of low­ Labor Party .• grams are to be slashed. The arma­ ity Contract Coalition" which is co­ paid municipal workers, demanding ments industry, the banks and the big ordinating struggles on a chapter level increases over 40%. The strikes corporations will suffer no pain, and for union democracy and a better crippled British industry, commerce Harry Turner, a prominent member the Pentagon's "defense" appropria­ Master Freight Agreement. and transportation and smashed both of CRSP and a veteran socialist, lives tion is to be increased by $11 billion. Despite a barrage of "red-baiting," the "social contract" fastened on labor in New York City.

6 FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 on public hospitals, the doctors struck in sympathy. The Uncivil When the public hospital strike was announced, hospital administrators unleashed a scare campaign. They is­ sued memos on the Taylor Law (illegal­ Service izing public employee strikes) and threatened, implausibly, to revoke mal­ by Ivan King police and fire departments. Ironically, practice insurance and prevent striking the merit system won liberal support as doctors from getting licensed or certi­ misplaced backlash a vaunted boon to affirmative action, fied. The day before the strike, the City against front-line yet the two exempt departments have went to court claiming union viola­ public employees has the worst all-time record of wanton tion of the Taylor Law and seeking found expression in exclusion of women and minorities. financial penalties from the doctors. A tax revolts, in con- And hard-won job protections will no They lost the latter but won an injunc­ '--____--' tracting out public longer be available to affirmative tion against the one-day strike, and services to profit-making private cor­ action hires in less powerful depart­ publicly vowed to jail strike leaders. porations, and recently, in reckless dis­ "ments. Undaunted, the house staffs walked mantling of civil service systems at With loss of seniority rights for out the next morning, leaving skeletal every level of government. government workers, and little chance emergency crews inside, and the Trigger words like Watergate, of winning high "merit" ratings from spirit on the picket lines was high, Lockheed, and Iran constantly remind racist and sexist supervisors, many despite the snow and cold. the public of high-level political corrup­ minorities and women will be caught tion, waste, and bungling, but the in a career cul-de-sac. Strike Stirs Community Support ruling class cynically diverts this indig­ Boss-pleasing will rapidly become At Harlem Hospital, many nurses, nation into an attack on innocent, more important than civic-minded aides, clerical workers, technicians, rank-and-file civil servants. Oppor­ service. Sexual politics, old-boy and attending physicians joined the tunistic politicians, egged on by the networks, rampant race discrimina­ picket line during breaks or after capitalist press, blame everything from tion and destructive interpersonal Disgusted their shifts, and community people racism to inflation on government competition have gained a green light. added their numbers to the line. At workers, and their careers flourish as a noon rally, doctors exposed bad they manipulate citizen distrust. Back to Tammany Hall Doctors conditions in the hospitals and con­ Most unions across the country are demned the racist attack on the poor Whims and Vengeance resisting the"attack on civil service, Strike by the government and by city In October, Congress eagerly helped since the peeling away of public em­ financiers. Support statements were ployee protections sets a dangerous and Carter to fulfill a vengeful campaign contagious precedent for accelerated read from many sources, including threat against public employees. Under Nevv York AFSCME DC 37 and the NAACP. union-busting in the private sector. the new federal law, seniority safe­ No strike leaders were jailed. But Organized labor has warned that cur­ guards are now sacrificed to a cap­ Harlem Hospital filed charges against rent "liberal" administrations offer no City ricious system of "performance evalua­ the CIR Representative, a leader guarantee against a precipitous return tions," while still denying govern­ of the local strike committee, for to patronage. Public "endangering" lives, "obstructing" ment employees basic bargaining rights. The expense to the public of the re­ an administrator, and "behaving in an The plan encourages increased ex­ vived spoils system will be great. Unions Hospitals unprofessional and unbecoming ploitation of workers by 9,200 "super­ struggled for decades to get seniority manner." The CIR Representative, a executives." These administrators can recognized as a reasonably objective by Susan Williams Black woman doctor, immediately earn bonuses up to $10,000 yearly for performance criterion. ~ut now per­ instituted a union grievance and a civil successful adaptation of private functory and unvalidated subjective ngry interns and resi­ suit for libel and defamation of char­ enterprise-style brain-picking, btown­ supervisory evaluations will determine dents struck nine New acter. nosing, and throat-cutting. It is clear an employee's job security, and the YOTk City hospitals Interns and residents were incred­ that the requirement for holding most relatively high standard of public ser­ for 24 hours in a mas­ ulous and indignant at this harassment, jobs will become abject subordination vice will suffer irremediably. sive January protest and committed to defeating the ad­ to the ambitions and political whims As favoritism and prejudice encroach A of superiors. L-____--l against city cutbacks ministration's attempt to pick leaders upon objectivity and fairness, the true in public health services. This was off individually. They voted to consider Seattle provides a glaring local ex­ merit of a representative workforce, re­ the first public hospital strike in the themselves suspended, too, should the ample of this new type of travesty. One flecting the composition of the popUla­ city's history. Rep be suspended. Although the year ago, voters were persuaded to tion served, will be eradicated. The Committee of Interns and threatened suspension has been with­ desert municipal civil service for a The day-to-day imprint of a well­ Residents (CIR), a union representing dra wn, the victimized Rep was fined "merit system." But this so-called im­ organized, self-respecting, and affirma­ 4,000 housestaff doctors, has been pres­ 3 days' pay. She is appealing that provement simply furnishes the frame­ tively hired staff is the best and only sing to include patient rights and better penalty. work for speedy return to a full-scale guarantee of integrity, awareness and patient care in the new contract, but Doctor militants are organizing spoils system. competence in the public service. All the city's Health and Hospital Corp­ a radical caucus to facilitate response Seattle voters were only vaguely friends of labor should be alerted to oration refuses to negotiate these sup­ to reprisals and to maintain the mo­ aware that two significant groups of city resist the sinister return to Tammany posedly "nonlabor" issues. The doctors mentum created by the strike, which workers were not covered in this "re­ Hall-style cronyism in government demand an end to hospital closures, brought public hospitals favor- form" shell game, namely the huge hiring, promotion and tenure .• cutbacks, and layoffs, as well as able press coverage for the first provision for adequate supplies, staf­ time in years. Doctor activists are fing, and support services. working to consolidate support among Last December, union doctors city unionists and community groups refused to sign certification sheets affected by the increasing paral- used to collect Medicare and Blue ysis of public health services. • Cross payments. The financial toll to the city caused by this bold job action reached hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the HHC still did not budge. READ ALL A80UT IT! City Scissors Services NEWS AND COMMENTARY Protesting doctors managed to learn a great deal about the city's ON A WORLD OF three-year plan for social and health service cutbacks, including a city com­ mission recommendation to close two UNREST AND REVOLUTION hospitals and give two others to •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• private owners. • Subscribe Now to the Freedom Socialist! At Harlem Hospital, after doctors Enclosed is $2 for a I-year sub, 4 issues. (Institutions $5) blocked an attempt to eliminate the o • Enclosed is $50 for a 5-year Sustaining Subscription and a free copy of A Victory for departments of pathology and radio­ • o therapy, the HHC moved to reduce Socialist Feminism (Organizer's Report to the 1969 Freedom Socialist Party Conference). the surgical program by more than 40%. •o I am enclosing $ as a donation. In January, the city started to lay • Name ______~r=~~------off 20,000 employees, further dim­ • (please print) inishing the provision of health • Address ______,City "~ ______services to poor and working people. • State Zip Phone(s) ______As a result, the CIR organized the January 17 strike. • Send checks or money orders to Business Manager, Freedom Socialist. Freeway Hall, 3815 Fifth Avenue N.E., • Second Floor West, Seattle, W A 98105. At a private hospital whose Chief Add $2 per year for surface postage outside the United States (allow 6-8 weeks for delivery of overseas mail). Add $5 per yearforoverseas airmail(allow of Medicine spearheaded the attack • one week for delivery) . •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ; q , s.

by Sam Oeaderick times, regardless of language or country of origin. and Tamara Turner The reader of Foster's book feels devastated over the enormity of the suppression of lesbian art, European Lesbians and the cruelty of the loss to world culture. ,------, he story of the struggle for lesbian rights in Europe during the late Renee Vivien 1800s and early 1900s is shrouded Two modern pioneers of the submerged litera­ _ in virtual silence. The laws referred ture of lesbianism were expatriate Americans who only to male homosexuals, so the lived in Paris and wrote in French: Natalie Clifford '--____T ---' effort to remove antigay laws from Barney and Pauline Tarn (Renee Vivien). the criminal codes focused primarily on men. Appalled by the intense prejudice against Nevertheless, lesbians were prominent and homosexuality, they fought hard to eradicate it. dedicated activists in the male-dominated move­ They lived openly and proudly as lesbians and were ment for homosexual emancipation. outspoken in their demand for respect rather than In their pioneering work, The Early Homosex­ tolerance. They were strong feminists. They were ual Rights Movement (1864-1935), John Lauritsen also rich. and David Thorstad report that Magnus Hirsch­ Vivien was extensively well-read in the classics feld, leader of the German Scientific Humanitarian and in modern, romantic literature. She exhurped Committee, stated in 1902 that lesbians "have all the data and myths of the past to find every become an almost indispensable and prominent single female rebel and theme of female indepen­ component of all our events. Although the homo­ dence, and celebrated their heroism in her writings. sexual woman is not subject to any legal restric­ Her poetry has -been described as the most tions in Germany, she nevertheless suffers in the perfect in form of any French verse between 1900 most varied ways because of the ignorance about and 1925, an extraordinary accolade in view of the her nature." difficulty of mastering French literary forms and Lesbians faced enormous difficulties and the fact that French was a second language to her. suffered great scorn and outrage for daring to live Vivien created a massive body of poetry and independent lives outside the traditional family other writings before her tragic death from alcohol­ unit. It is most likely that politically oriented ism complications at 32. Although her work lesbians channeled their efforts into the women's explicitly centers on the love of women, most movement, which electrified Europe in the highly­ anthologies of her writing exclude this theme. The charged, pre-World War I period. only biography of her was written while most of the Lauritsen and Thorstad also describe a 1904 persons involved were alive, so much was omitted. meeting of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee When she died, her friends seized her unpublished in Berlin, where lesbian feminist Anna Riihling manuscripts and letters and sealed them in the spoke on "What Interest Does the Women's Move­ Gay Resistance: Bibliotheque Nationale until A.D. 2000. ment Have in a Solution to the Homosexual Vivien's magnificent achievement in poetry and Problem?" Said Riihling: her just place in literature are denied solely because The Hidden History of the lesbian content of her work. Fortunately, her When we consider all the gains that 1904 novel, A Woman Appeared To Me, was homosexual women have for decades translated into English by Jeannette H. Foster and achieved for the women's movement, it can part III published by Naiad Press in 1976. only be regarded as astounding that the big and influential organizations of this move­ Colette ment have up to now not raised one finger The international suffragist movement, mean­ Through the great fiction of the famous French· to secure their most insignificant number of while, expanded women's educational and occupa­ writer Colette, a total philosophy of sexual devel­ Uranian members their just rights as far as tional opportunities, especially during World War 1. opment and sexual relations was illuminated. one the state and society are concerned, that These developments, combined with a relaxation which presented lesbianism in a healthy light. they have done nothing-and I mean of Victorian sexual standards, permitted a more The five novels about Claudine trace this not a thing-to protect so many of their open life for lesbians, and their lifestyle and ideas character from childhood through marriage and best known and most devoted pioneers were quickly reflected in the literature of the time. widowhood, with profound and unique com­ from ridicule and scorn as they enlightened Much lesbian defiance of convention in early mentary on sexual mores and practices. the broader public about the true nature of twentieth-century Europe emerged in literary form. Colette's work has been available to the world Uranianism. In stirring novels and poetry, "the love that since 1900. Although she was forced to issue her dares not speak its name" spoke with a voice whose books under the name of her husband, she soon Her speech could have been delivered to NOW in strength and power would irrevocably revolutionize separated from him and lived openly as a lesbian the early 1970s. Western literature. for some years before remarrying later in life. Her Much of this literature, however, was privately profound understanding and acceptance of the rich The Literary Challenge printed in small press runs, ignored by established variety of human experience render her a literary The scientific studies of Krafft-Ebing, Moll, and critics, and known only to a few lesbians. immortal. • Hirschfeld in Germany, as well as Symonds, Jeannette H. Foster's Sex Variant Women in Havelock Ellis, and Edward Carpenter in England, Literature, published in 1956, analyzes this body of definitely attributed homosexuality to hereditary writing with a lucidity and intelligence that is in­ This is the third installment of a unique analysis factors. By the turn of the century, these works valuable to the uncovering of gay history. of gay history that traces the gay rights movements served to create a more open and permissive Her work is of monumental significance because from antiquity to the present day. The next section climate for authors to include variant characters or it salvages the work of lesbian writers through the assesses Virginia Woolf, Radclyffe Hall, and Mary themes in their work. span of history from ancient Greece to modern Renault, among others.

Stop the Gangs of rightwing terrorists, bent occurred the day after Trudell led and group protection, and become on annihilating those who resist op­ a demonstration in front of FBI immobilized. Terrorism pression, pose a deadly threat to headquarters in Washington, D.C. The police will not defend Us from militants and radicals. We must expose and denounce attack. We must defend ourselves. We Two recent brutal murders of these savage murders! must solidarize on this issue, and or­ Against Us! movement activists bring home the ganize radicals, feminists, workers, We must excoriate the complicity of urgent necessity for mutual defense gays and people of color into joint police, courts, and the FBI with the against OUr common enemies. defense guards and protective squads. reactionary fanatics of the right. They In November, Tony Adams, a The lives of our comrades and are all agents of the capitalist state Black member of the Socialist colleagues are far too high a price to apparatus and are unrelenting foes of Workers Party and a gay activist, pay for go-it-alone sectarianism or all progressive forces. was murdered in his Salt Lake City suicidal dependence on the very same apartment only days after a phony The SWP, unfortunately, merely bodies of armed men that persecute us. morals charge against him was dis­ follows the routine of demanding To the families and comrades of missed in court. police investigation and does nothing Trudell and Adams we should offer Three months later, the family of to stop the next attack, and the next, both our deepest sympathy and our American Indian Movement (AIM) and the next. This irresponsibility assurance that we shall avenge these chairman John Trudell died in a perpetuates ignorance about the right­ outrages by effectively preventing propane fire set at their home on wing terror and breeds a false sense of their repetition. the Duck Lake Reservation in security within movement ranks. Nevada. Activist Tina Trudell, her If they are not alerted to the growing Guerry Hoddersen three children, and her mother were danger, movement workers are pre­ Seattle Local Organizer John Trudell the victims of this strange fire which vented from organizing self-defense Freedom Socialist Party

8 FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 by Gloria Martin When millionaire restaurateur Ivar Haglund tried to summarily evict the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women from Freeway Hall, their longtime headquarters, he 'had no inkling ~g~~~;~~~U neXRected of the forthcoming eruption of community inter­ hundreds of est and wrath. lectures, forums, debates, symposiums and classes C Haglund dropped his eviction-bomb in on every pertinent international and domestic devel- November, and when negotiations for a stay of opmen~ and vast numbers of parties, dances, cultural U execution proved fruitless, the tenants called a "a se events, movies, theatrical productions, press conference-and everybody came. banquets and rummage sales. C Representatives of dozens of varied organ­ izations-who had used the Hall during its 15 bur~i~iit~~s~~~:i~~~~~~dc:~!~~C!I~~ b re the good Vibes. e Ie years of operation-read protest statements, and the story was carried on every TV channel, The first classes ever presented in Seattle on for an embattled childcare center thrown off the and in the daily, weekly, monthly and special­ women's role in history took place at Freeway University of Washington Campus. interest press. Haglund was forced to grant an Hall in 1965, initiating the exciting process that In 1971, amidst a fundraiser for the Seattle extension to provide time for locating a new hall. culminated in the birth of Radical Women. Seven conspiracy trial defendants, the Hall was The halcyon days of Freeway Hall as a center The Hall housed the founding convention of raided by cops. A mass arrest ensued. Organizer and rallying point of radical politics in the Pacific the Freedom Socialist Party in 1966, when a Clara Fraser, one of those arrested, subsequent­ Northwest are numbered. It is slated to share the small band of radicals became the first socialist ly defended herself in court and won acquittal. fate of many historic buildings demolished to party in history to assign the emancipation of The proud saga of Freeway Hall entitles it to make way for parking lots. women to the top of the revolutionary agenda. be declared an historic monument, but it will be Big capital will eradicate Freeway Hall, but And the first warriors for legalized abortion were pulverized by the implacable bulldozer. Andwe the great ideas and thunderous mass actions mobilized there in 1969. will do more than bid it a fond farewell. We are conceived there will never be forgotten. And the In 1970, scores of pre-schoolers managed to committed to see it rise anew to carry forward Freeway Hall philosophy of free speech and ruin the floors and scuff the walls when the Hall the original hope and promise implicit in a principled revolutionary politicS will continue to opened its arms and doors as a last resort refuge revolutionary headquarters. benurturedinwhatever~ore&on~warehousel ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. or older home becomes the new Freeway Hall. ?Rf$ Years ago, the Seattle IWW deSignated one The big, bad wolf ~ Skid Road intersection as "free speech corner," is a huffin' and a puffin', and this honorable tradition and model was joyously revitalized by Freeway Hall, which Tryin' to blow our house down proVided a platform for all rebels with a cause- Again! a soapbox on request. Everyone has been heard (Wh d h h k h there-race freedom fighters, Marxists, anar- 0 oes e t in e is, anyway, chists, paCifists, reformists, feminists, labor organ- Ivar Haglund?) izers, political candidates, hippies, yippies, and new left counter-culturists. We need a new home! The Hall was a base for the antiwar move­ Our goal is $20,000, ment, women's liberation, SNCC and the civil to keep the wolf from the door_ rights struggle, labor defense work, community Send contributions NOW to: Freeway Hall, organizing on behalf of Chicano and Native 3815 Fifth Avenue N.E., Second Floor West, Seattle, WA 98105. d

FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 T 1-- -- ::aIiIFW5f W¥

intensified strikes and a new slogan closures, and transportation shut­ tion, duly sanctioned by Islamic law. for street demonstrations: cries of downs were greeted with joy by the Women were unable to marry, "Death to Bakhtiar!" mingled with populace as dramatic manifestations leave the country, or find a job "Death to the Shah!" of the power of the revolution. without permission from male guard­ Neighborhood committees took ians. They were not allowed to testify Enter the Ayatollah care of people's needs during the. in court, and automatically lost Without nationally recognized and strikes, and whole towns were custody of their children in a divorce organized leadership from the left, a administered by representatives of the case. Sons, by law, inherited twice as vacuum existed into which stepped people who simply dismissed much as daughters. the Moslem religious leaders whose Bakhtiar's functionaries. Women bore the brunt of Iran's mosques and communication network The level of organization has been skyrocketing joblessness, predom­ were available vehicles for organizing. tremendously high, linking virtually inated in the low-paying hazardous The popular symbol of opposition' every sector of society. And the huge industries; and earned two-thirds of to the Shah, exiled Moslem leader network of soviets, committees, and men's wages. Ayatollah Khomeini, proved to be revolutionary tribunals of all kinds Despite-and because of-such by Monica Hill equally intransigent to Bakhtiar. shows no signs of dissolving and exploitation and repression, Iranian Khomeini, still in exile, refused to turning over power to the government women fought back heroically in the ith stunning force meet with Bakhtiar unless Bakhtiar appointed by Khomeini. Nothing can early 20th century, after the 1917 and searing intensity, resigned. Khomeini's uncompromising be done by the government without Russian Revolution, and after the the Iranian revolution opposition to the puppet prime the agreement of the councils; Second World War. continues to ascend minister greatly increased his stature Bazargan can act effectively only with Today they have surged to the fror W to ever higher peaks and influence, in the revolution. And the approval of the particular council ranks of the revolution, insisting on of proletarian Bakhtiar was forced to allow affected. their demands and their right to be il consciousness, socialist aspiration, Khomeini to return to Iran, where he Dual power, shared between the on decisions. and revolutionary feminism. was greeted by a crowd estimated at organizations of the working class Women activists were dealt with After 38 years of subjection under four million people. and the government of the bour­ brutally by the sexist police of the the hated, U.S.-installed Shah Khomeini immediately announced geoisie, is a reality in Iran today. Shah and by right wing Moslems. In Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the masses the names of key figures to comprise one instance, a group of university of oil-rich Iran are swiftly accumu­ a rival regime, and a short-lived dual Permanent Revolution professors were fired on and beaten lating in their grasp the greatest power situation developed. After days The historic task in Iran is to by police, who singled out six womel power there is-the power to inter­ of demonstrations, culminating in complete the revolution against the professors for punishment, shouting vene in their own destiny. fierce street fighting, the armed forces Shah by inaugurating a workers state "harlot" and "prostitute" at them. And it is no wonder that the vital transferred their loyalty to the and trallsforming capitalist productive The controversial veil (chador), a principle, the paramount social issue Ayatollah, and the Bakhtiar regime relations into a socialist system. full-length garment worn by many that is impelling the awesome revolu­ was finished. Khomeini is scrambling to halt this women in the early demonstrations, tionary tide to the left, is the inexorable process of swift revolution­ did not necessarily mean female explosive question of women's rights. Leadership, Soviets, Dual Power ary development from lower to higher submission. Iranian women reported The slogan of the liberation of The U.S. media has portrayed Iran planes. In concert with the generals, that the veil was worn as a symbol 0 women has become the focus and the as a country running amok under domestic capitalists, and U.S. imper­ mourning and of resistance to the rallying point for the radical opposi­ mob rule. Khomeini is variously ialism, he is desperately trying to Shah. Many women wore veils for tt tion. Once again, female revolution­ portrayed as a despot or as a focus of reestablish "order" in Iran. first time during the revolution, aries are the catalysts spurring history order amidst chaos. But beneath the But the revolution has a life of its vowing not to remove them until the onward to new citadels. apparently disordered surface of own, and it will not easily stop short Shah was gone. The veils also come revolution always lies organization of its own intrinsic destination-the in handy for concealing weapons and Death to the Shah! and logic. complete and fundamental economic, leaflets! For 15 months the people have The truth is that the Iranian social and political transformation of In Iran, as in all revolutionary waged a determined war for liberation working class and the radicals organ­ Iranian society. movements of this epoch, the in the streets, schools and factories. ized extensively to overthrow the Khomeini demanded that the question of women's emancipation In the final months preceding the Shah and then Bakhtiar. armed populace turn in their plays a pivotal role in the unfolding overthrow of the Shah, demonstrators Before Bakhtiar's exit, government weapons. No more than a trickle of of the permanent revolution. Terribl{ numbering in the millions-one­ workers refused entry to his ministers. guns was surrendered. oppression under the Shah impelled quarter of them women-emerged in Los Angeles Times reporter Joe Alex He demanded an end to strikes and women to join the opposition all the major cities, testing their Morris, Jr. wrote, "In the Foreign a swift return to production. The movement en masse, and Khomeini's strength and gaining experience. And Ministry, an action committee formu­ workers, particularly in the oil fields, double-talk on women's rights insure nothing could stop their dynamic, not lated a new foreign policy for Iran rejected capitalist business-as-usual his fall from grace in their eyes. guns, tanks, troops, or police. calling for a nonaggression pact with and kept oil production in their own Khomeini says the new Islamic Brief retreats turned into renewed the Soviet Union and a diplomatic hands. They are not about to give up Republic will not discriminate agains and stronger offensives against the break with Israel and South Africa. their control to anybody. women, but he quotes Islamic law to monarchical regime, and the collective 'It's the first time in history that Khomeini calls for establishing an oppose abortion and says that divon courage and insistence on victory of a doormen and tea servers are making "Islamic Republic" based on the will only be allowed under "certain truly revolutionary populace proved foreign policy,' commented a Western religious teachings of Islam. Already, circumstances." He also instructed irresistible. Army and air force mutinies erupted with regularity, peasants seized land, and long­ oppressed nationalities mobilized for independence. The momentum of insurrection was dizzying. Oil workers were in the forefront of a general strike that paralyzed the economy and cemented an alliance of all the popular masses. Confronted with relentlessly insurrectionary masses ready to die for their cause, the monarchist loyalties of the armed forces eroded and then crumbled. Like their Russian predecessors in 1917, Iranian women were the first ambassador." homosexuals have been executed, women to go back to the veil, and demonstrators to meet the soldiers Workers councils, i.e. soviets, "adulterous" women stoned, and reinstituted a wide range of regula· head on and persuade them not to sprung up in such key industries as thieves mutilated. He is running into tions that are oppressive and demeal shoot and to solidarize with the oil and railroads, evincing their ferocious opposition. In class terms, ing to women. people. The ranks of the military independence by protesting the he is forming a bourgeois republic, Iranian women, however, did not went over to the people. negotiations for domestic oil trans­ and the workers and radical students help depose the Shah just to be thru Virtually the entire population port conducted by Khomeini­ and intellectuals know that capital­ ba<:k into the Middle Ages. moved as one body toward their goal. appointed Prime Minister Bazargan. ism-replete with labor exploitation, On International Women's Day, Monarchist officers were executed, Workers stopped a trainload of oil close ties to 'worId imperialism, March 8, 100,000 women rallied at and the Shah fled when it became destined for the army. SUbjugation of women, and political Tehran University, a center of radial evident that the army could not stop In factories outside the capital city, powerlessness of those who chased ism. Twenty thousand women dresse the mass movement. Tehran, workers won two hours off away the Shah-cannot fulfill the in Western clothes marched through work daily for political seminars. aspirations of the Iranian masses for the city demanding the right to wear Death to Bakhtiar! During the Shah's last bloody days, independence, justice, economic secur­ whatever they choose, the reinstitu­ The Shah fled under heavy guard power station workers blacked out ity and democracy. tion of laws protecting women, whic to Morocco for a "vacation." He left the city just before the military­ Khomeini had scrapped, and an equ with all the pomp and ceremony his controlled evening news came on. Women to the Fore voice in government. pride required but not before he and Telephone workers instituted a daily Nothing in Iran expresses this Khomeini had abolished equal his family had transferred millions of cut in service. A committee at the sharp dividing line between the classes property and divorce rights for dollars out of the country. Central Bank stopped the supply of more clearly than the movement for women, richly deserving the "male In a last desperate gesture, the money to local banks and published women's emancipation. chauvinist" epithet hurled at him by Shah attempted to form a "civilian" an expose of the millions stolen by Despite the Shah's much touted Kate Millett, the American feminist government headed by former opposi­ the Shah and his entourage. advocacy of women's rights, Iranian author of Sexual Politics who was tionist Shapour Bakhtiar. But this Inconveniences like power black­ women toiled under the rankest expelled from Iran. doomed move was greeted by outs, gasoline shortages, market social, legal and economic discrimina- Millett had joined the mass mard

10 FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 of women who chanted, "At the dawn Khomeini's rule, the newly-formed significance. for the ravages of U.S. imperialism in of freedom, we have no freedom, " Iranian SWP (affiliated with the Even bourgeois analysts say that Iran. "Death to the Dictatorship, " and "We Trotskyist Fourth International) "the revolution is not over" and warn A Democratic president, with the will not be slaves. " Troops loyal to called for a constituent assembly to of a leftwing bid for power. full support of his party, denounced Khomeinidispersed the demonstra­ decide the future social order, and for As Khomeini attempts to build a the Iranian revolution from the tion by firing rifles into the air. a workers and peasants government. bourgeois state, he condemns the beginning. Carter supported and feted The demonstrations continued for Later, according to the March 9 issue radicals. "Anyone opposed to Islam is the Shah. When the Shah was chased several days as the women clashed of the Militant (the organ of the our enemy," he says, and those out, Carter supported his clone, with pro-Khomeini men who hurled American SWP), the Iranian Trot­ opposed to an Islamic Republic are Bakhtiar. And now Cartet" calls for rocks, fired rifles, and brandished skyists advocated "the development, "counterrevolutionaries." But he dares order under the Khomeini regime, as knives. At least four women were extension, and coordination of the not use substantial force against the Khomeini repays him by negotiating stabbed. The world watched in awe as democratic committees of the toiling growing left opposition. for continued purchase of Iranian oil the endless phalanxes of intrepid masses in the factories and offices, in On February 23, a rally in Tehran and for U.S. technical advisors. women defied the Ayatollah's feudal the armed forces and the neighbor­ of 150,000, led by the Fedayeen, All this treachery against the will decrees. hoods." demanded a workers state, distribu­ and needs of the Iranian people is "The experience of all liberation But these demands do not go far tion of all arable land, nationalization promoted by the Democratic Party, movements," said Lenin in 1918, "has enough. The constituent assembly is a of banks and foreign investments, and the party of American imperialism, shown that the success of a revolution key demand for a democratic cancellation of contracts with foreign and political support to it is a depends on how much the woman institution that will provide an arena oil companies. Since then, many betrayal of the Iranian revolution and takes part in it." Iranian women are for the political fight ahead. However, smaller rallies and demonstrations its sisters, brothers and comrades in making sure that this revolution a constituent assembly is a multi-class have opposed Khomeini's Islamic the American working class. succeeds; their struggle is a key institution with the exclusive function Republic from the left. component of the general yearning of writing a constitution. In early March, reports appeared in for a workers democracy, and if the On the other hand, a national and the American press of gun battles male Left gives full and unstinting truly representative assembly, which between Khomeini's forces and the support to the women, the victory of includes only representatives of the left wing. And then the feminist fury socialism in Iran is assured. popular councils-factory councils, erupted against Khomeini. If radical male workers fail to soldiers' and airmen's councils, special These struggles between the radical solidarize with the women, the revolu­ councils of women workers, neighbor­ workers and the bourgeoisie are the tion will flounder and degenerate hood councils, all the councils born in heart of the revolution; they fuel the sooner or later. For the women the revolution-must be created. Only total movement and all other develop­ workers of Iran are currently the such a national body, a national ments must be weighed and measured vanguard of the upsurge, and to halt congress of soviets, could present a against them. their momentum is to betray the unified proletarian voice in a revolutionary essence and dynamic. constituent assembly. The Yankee Presence "The development, extension, and u.S. interference in Iran was a coordination" of these committees is major cause of the revolution. one thing, but the organization of a The Iranian masses will never Iranians in the U.S. definitive system of local representa­ forget that the Shah would have Washington is callously using the tives to. regional councils, and fallen after World War II without Iranian revolution as a ploy to regional representatives to a national CIA help, and that Wall Street and contrive another oil crisis and foment revolutionary council, is quite the White House have propped him anticommunist xenophobia. But another. up ever since. Iranian students in the U.S. have This task is on the top of the In return, U.S. capital was free to countered with effective demonstra­ agenda in Iran today, and is systematically rob Iran of its wealth tions of the links of their revolution absolutely essential to the consolida­ through special oil deals, to use the with the world proletariat. Their tion of revolutionary gains and the country as a base for spying on the protests have exposed U.S. hypocrisy sharpening of the struggle for USSR, to sell Iran billions of dollars on "human rights." socialism. of U.S.-manufactured weapons, and Many of these students, and many Two other Marxist organizations to advise and train the hated secret Iranian political exiles from all over have played key roles in Iran, the police, SAVAK. the world, are currently returning to The Left Wing Fedayeen and the Mojahedeen. As a result, revolutionary rage their homeland to help fight for the The socialist movement in Iran is The Fedayeen split from the Tudeh against the U.S. government presence persisting revolution. engaged in deep-going theoretical in 1970 over the Tudeh's attempted in Iran reached volcanic proportions, debate. Handicapped by decades of collaboration with the Shah, and it and Khomeini rushed to take advan­ The Continuing Revolution repression and by widespread distrust has operated as an underground tage of this fury. But now he's Iran is a cauldron of revolutionary of communism because of Stalinist guerrilla force. The Mojahedeen, making oil deals with the U.S. and fires, stoked py round-the-clock betrayals, radicals are striving to which describes itself as "Islamic­ trying to send oil workers back to debates, demonstrations, and ham­ develop a program, a party, and a Marxist," is an outgrowth of the their jobs to produce oil for export. mering out of political programs. leadership that will carry the revolu­ Islamic opposition movement. Khomeini is seeking a way to Crisis rocks the government at tion through to a workers democracy. The Feyadeen and Mojahedeen, contain the vast contradictions of the every turn. Bazargan, claiming an often working in alliance, represent situation so that Iranian capitalism inability to govern due to the counter­ the leading left forces in Iran. They can be reconstituted. Can he build a authority of the revolutionary coun­ have a mass following and stand viable capitalist state without U.S. cils, has attempted to resign. But opposed to an Islamic Republic. trade? Will the workers allow export Khomeini will not let him. If the These two organizations have to the U.S.? Will the workers allow government were to fall, Khomeini's played an exemplary role as highly the renewed presence of American personal reign would be sorely conscious revolutionary cadres advisors in Iran? The Khomeini endangered by face-to-face confronta­ throughout the insurrectionary compromisers and the revolutionary tion with the democratic workers period. At the moment when the fall workers are heading for an historic councils. of Bakhtiar depended on the arming showdown over these and many other Bazargan also demanded that the of the workers, the Fedayeen and unresolved questions. executions of generals and SAVAK Mojahedeen provided the arms and torturers be stopped, and Khomeini the military leadership to challenge has obliged him, mandating that all the regime. verdicts of revolutionary courts must , The Fedayeen issued instructions be reviewed. The debate centers around the by radio to the people, instructing The blazing march to freedom of classic polarity between Bolshevism them in how to handle the firearms, the Iranian people has left the world and Menshevism. set up communications networks, breathless. The Stalinist Tudeh Party is build barricades, conduct street fight­ When the Iranian rebellion started, traditionally Menshevik, claiming that ing, and arrest "enemies of the many sage observers predicted that in the revolution must go through pro­ people." a decade or so the Shah would be longed and orderly consecutive stages They continue to exhibit an deposed. As usual, they underesti­ and must therefore merge with bour­ excellent sense of revolutionary mated the fervor, audacity, persis­ geois forces at this time. strategy as they build their forces and tence, resilience, and raw purpose of It is one thing to ally temporarily extend their influence more and more the Iranian people, who would not with the bourgeoisie to get rid of a deeply among the masses. settle for a mere casting out of a monarch. It is quite something else to The Fedayeen, however, despite its detested monarchy, and who will not submerge the revolution in the camp advanced program for a workers and Social Democratic Complicity rest content with the formal democ­ of the capitalist class. peasants government, does not call Yankee plunJer of Iran and racy and continued exploitation The Tudeh has no argument with for a national body of soviets. brutalization of its people were only imposed by a limited, bourgeois Khomeini's Islamic Republic, even (Such a body may be in the process possible given the tacit approval of revolution. though he has not lifted the Shah's of formation, but no news of such a the cynical opportunists who com­ Their gigantic le~p·toward the apex ban on them! development has yet emerged.) prise the social democracy in the U.S. of revolution~ry power furnishes a Several radical organizations, for­ The labor bureaucracy, National living lesson to workers of the world tunately, adopt the Bolshevik position Toward a Workers State Organization for Women, the moder­ on the anatomy and dynamic of the that the revolution must not stop at N ow that the first stage of the ates who control most minority and permanent, unstoppable revolution. the stage of a bourgeois republic but revolution has been attained and the gay civil rights groups, and all liberals For Permanent Revolution in Iran! must drive forward to socialism and a Shah and Bakhtiar have fallen, the who preach adaptation to the For Workers Democracy! workers state. internal political differences within Democratic Party for "practical" For Revolutionary Feminism! Throughout the early weeks of the revolution have attained key reasons bear a definite responsibility For a Socialist Iran! -----=-= ~ ------v-- •• as, . 24

EDITORIAL The Coming Labor Party

American workers are caught in a political trap. huge sector of the specially oppressed in society, Year after year, they are swindled by their worst and members also of the organized working class, enemies, the Republicans and Democrats. Workers they connect and bring together the underprivileged are deceived into voting back into power all the and the relatively privileged whose unity will spark devoted representatives of the capitalist class. a new era of revolutionary drive. And what does this capitalist power produce? Something else that is new on the scene is the Rising unemployment, ballooning inflation, soaring sharp erosion of the privileges of the worker­ taxes, cutbacks in health, welfare and schools, aristocrats. mounting oppression, and imminent depression­ No longer are they assured of security and lulled everything the worker hates. by a comfortable income and job conditions. The enormous wealth produced by workers is Retirement benefits, wages, seniority and job grasped by the hands of a tiny group of capitalists protections are under fierce bombardment, and the who see to it that at least half the federal budget is rumble of resistance is rising everywhere, as re­ allocated to war, and to crushing sister and fellow flected by the 1978 coal miners' strike. workers in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. And at home, the ruling class foments an Political Counteroffensive antihuman campaign of vast proportions-a racist, Deep fissures, cracks and dislocations are antiunion, antiwoman, antigay offensive. beginning to wrack the labor aristocracy, and its creature, the bureaucracy, in the wake of worsening Labor Lieutenants of Capital economic conditions. Union officials are singing What prevents the working class from organiz­ new tunes. Donald Fraser of the auto workers ing its own Party, a Labor Party with a workers' own watchdogs. union now speaks of the "one-sided class war" program and pro-labor candidates who will fight The labor bureaucracy rests mainly upon the against labor. But he has no counterwar against for the real needs of the people? upper layers of privileged workers in the unions capital to propose. What stops the organization of such a mass who are bribed in a thousand ways to ape the The new dynamic force and catalyst of the party of the majority is the huge labor bureaucracy. politics of management. Lenin and Trotsky bril­ working class-its most suppressed layers-will These high-priced union officials are tightly liantly explained the function and mechanism of the force a break with capitalist politics and will identified with the interests of capitalism, its labor bureaucracy many years egO. But what is new stimulate the building of a labor party. This most parties, its FBI and CIA, its foreign and domestic today is the makeup of the U.S. proletariat. urgent task of our time will be accomplished by the plots, and its imperialism. Union bureaucrats ram . intervention of women and ethnic and gay workers. the philosophy and policies of the bosses down the The Real Proletariat The task of all concerned people is to tell the throats of the rank and file with unrelenting The majority of the contemporary working class truth about the indistinguishable parties of Big cynicism. And a peculiar irony of the system is in the United States are either racial, national and Business, and stimulate interest in an anticapitalist revealed: these forked-tongued betrayers of ethnic minorities, or gays, or the undocumented, or Labor Party that can turn this country around and exploited workers are actually fed and cared for those who alone constitute more than 50% of the lead the way to socialism, feminism and freedom and given super-privileges by the very workers who population and the class-women of all colors. for all the harassed and deprived. are their victims and their prey. Women workers are transforming the entire The capitalists don't even have to pay for their character of the working class. As members of the -Murry Weiss

We come back to work each day. Dirt-lined, slowly we gather in the afternoon before the last bell, meet each other in the underground locker room, watch out for each other, begin to notice the changes as we tum to callous and leather and move like our well-oiled tools, hear howthe cutting edges of our tongues sharpen, watch our arms turn to bare copper. ·"'''W~,·.·wbrk ~i~ the ground, We climb. We push s~dered around the city. and pull ourselves up the poles. W~ run oUr faces in the mud, We begin to learn, break our necks under the blistering sun, woman to woman, now, ... watching, straining and womahto man, to catch the new words that bounce that taut ropes have always burned through off the traffic, that are groUnd our dreams, through the saws and the drills and and our muscles will hokl the hydraulics . . . . Good news! We sweat for our lives! -Ann Barada We are thirsty for whoever will shoot "You skin wire with your knife like this,you dumIily. This is number two and that's four, When you're "weeny armed" Measure with your arms and you can fmd and a woman, more reels over there." the linemen who risk their lives everYday We watch the linemen climb, on the poles slipping through the maze of wire. flfty feet up, or more, They lean back on their hooks and their belts who say they've done their share of the dirty work as they cut and splice and and fought their way to the top, sweat out the hot connections, they'll yell down swinging in the wind over the whole city, "IT you can't hold the goddamn line balancing cross-arms and bugs and lamps you'd better look for another job!" on their arms and legs like acrobats And if you ask for help with a feeder arm or mothers. going up, when you're new and sore and don't have In a night sweat we dream meathooks yet for hands, of swaying buckets far above our heads, they'll jeer the blinding sun behind them, "You gonna share your pay? the mustachioed linemen And how the hell did you pass the exam with the power in their hands anyway, grunt?" that can kill or save us all, And all will ask how you like that who tell us day after day little piece of meat that's walking by we're slow and stupid on the street, conts and bitches and who do you sleep with, anyway? who don't belong. .... ~~

12 FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 'I don't know what got into me ... I went to America . .. I.te hamburgers and Coca-Cola . .. I wore a 10-gal/on hat and then I invaded Vietnam . .. ' nuggets from the in-basket MOVIEREVIEW Prediction of the Week. Feisty Bella Abzug, who is wedded to the Democratic party but got bounced from the National Advisory Committee for Women by our M.C.P. president, told a Seattle reporter, "It's true we were not at the Last Supper, but you can be damn sure we're going to be at the next one." me earthy fra nostalgia For the benefit of all you infidels, the repast referred to, best I can make out, found Jesus dining with his Gently the seeds float down, flowering into (incomprehensibly) falls in love with rich, disciples on the eve of his crucifixion. And a bon apetit to sweet, lovely blossoms. And the inhabitants of privileged, and talented Robert Redford. you, too. But Abzug is complaining because women were trendy San Francisco are replaced, one by one, Amid much gauzy glamour, it is soon excluded from that festive occasion. by steely humanoids grown from the pods apparent that their attachment is seriously Some people will demand equal rights to just about which developed from the alien seeds. jeopardized by Streisand's radical views, and anything. A remake of a 1956, low-budget horror film, then by her militancy against McCarthy's raid " the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body on Hollywood. ... Snatchers has more pretension to political Redford, ambitious to become a successful relevance than the origi_nal, but less success at scriptwriter instead of the fine novelist she Book of the Month. Black Macho & the Myth of the it. believes he could be, sells out to the producers Super- Woman, by Michelle Wallace, delivers a knock-out The earlier movie, far less ambitious in fin­ who are paniCked by McCarthy, and writes punch to the Moynihan-Eldridge Cleaver garbage that Black ancing and length, was a fast-moving and truly what they want him to. She has a baby and matriarchs-rather than capitalism-caused second-class eerie film. Produced at the end of the then leaves him. citizenship and second-class egos for Black men. "And when the black man went as far as the adoration McCarthy era, it captured the paranoia and the In a great scene, Streisand sees him by of his own genitals could carry him," writes this brave, 26- constant undercurrent of fear. chance years after their romance is over. She year-old rebel, "his revolution stopped. A big Afro, a rifle, The allegorical reality was striking. But the says hello, talks to him a few mome:1ts, touches and a penis in good working order were not enough to lick remake, which is slick, sophisticated and artful, him lightly Oil the forehead. Her strong feelings the white man's world after all." loses this gut-level connection to reality and for him are obvious, but her political It is good to hear the scathing voice of Black feminism. dwindles into one more puerile horror movie. convictions are unchanged. Redford walks Wallace not only excoriates the Imamu Barakas and Only a few scenes are even startling. away, and Streisand calmly begins passing out her Ban the Bomb leaflets, without a tear. Stokely Carmichaels-and their muling mentor, Norman Both Invasions are ambiguous. The depicted Viva the constancy of her relationship to Mailer-for misogyny against Black women, she also fear could easily be taken for the fear of politics! And her objective perspective on sex recounts, compassionately but boldly, how Angela Davis communism, not McCarthyism. Since the and love. and poet Nikki Giovanni, each in her own way, surrendered weakness of the metaphor offers few clues in But The Way We Were avoids a direct, to the epidemic of masculine mystique that fatally poisoned either case, the vagueness effectively prevents shattering confrontation between Redford's the Black movement of the sixties. either film from stimulating any attitude opportunism and Streisand's firm principles. A " ... the single most important reason the Black i stronger than antiauthoritarianism. confrontation scene was written and filmed, but Movement did not work," she writes, "was that black men Far better in their treatment of in ironic homage to their 1950s predecessors, did not realize they could not wage struggle without the full McCarthyism are The Front, a 1976 movie the 1970s censors cut it. involvement of women ... By negating the importance of starring Woody Allen, and The Way We Were, All three films reveal that the spirit of (women's) role, the efficiency of the Black Movement was a 1973 film starring Barbra Streisand and McCarthyism is not entirely dead in obliterated." Robert Redford. Hollywood. The period is used as a dramatic The appalling confusion of racial emancipation with The Front has Woody Allen fronting for a device, without indicting Congress and the manhood was addressed fourteen years ago in a paper I scriptwriter who has been blacklisted. It is bosses for the misery and terror they produced, wrote on "The Emancipation of Women." touching and funny in its examination of the or crediting the courage and strength of the What happened, I said then, was "a pater:familias wiles needed to get around the witchhunters. thousands of radicals who opposed them. despotism, as endorsed by the Muslims, or a more subtle But the film is marred by a surfeit of Woody There's no lack of fine, dramatic material on and sophisticated assumption of male supremacy, derived Allen's over-intellectual humor. McCarthyism. Lillian Hellman's Scoundrel from campus sociology, orthodox Freudianism, and general Only Zero Mostel's wonderful performance Time, for example, would make a thrilling, practice ... The black liberation movement, to endure and sharply brings home the terror and tragedy of suspenseful, and triumphant film. But develop, is going to have to rise to heights unachieved by the Hollywood persecutions. Mostel plays an Hollywood is not ready; the producers and any existing labor or political organization: it is going to actor blacklisted from the movies and forced to financial backers are not about to make have to come to grips with the woman question." work clubs for a living. Hounded, harassed, anticapitalist movies. You bet. And Wallace is one of the tribunes speaking and cut off from his real work, he finally kills The scripts depicting the real scourge of for a new generation of women of color who have cast out himself, stunning Woody Allen, and us, with McCarthyism still languish, unscreened, until the devils of confusion and self-abnegation, defied the the horror of the witchhunt. the day when the whole truth will be demanded black-bitch slander, and shouldered public responsibility for In many respects, The Way We Were is the by cinema-goers. racial and human progress. Right on, sister. best of the McCarthy era films. Streisand plays an intensely committed communist who - Sam Deaderick • • • Shotgun Wedding of the Year. I loved the syndicated WITH BABIES AND BANNERS granted the floor, speaks volumes about sexist cartoon of a rifle-toting Carter nudging that reluctant Directed by Lorraine Gray. Produced by Lorraine ingratitude in the labor movement. couple, Begin and Sadat, into the chapel. Gray, Lynn Goldfarb, and Ann Bohlem. The film is available from New Day Films, Carter is a shoo-in for the peace prize bestowed from P.O. Box 315, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417. the coffers of Alfred Nobel, the munitions mogul. With Babies and Banners recounts the dar­ How appropriate. ing and crucial role of the Women's Emergency TORRE BELA Brigade in the 1937 sit-down strike at General Produced by Thomas Harlan. Filmed in 1975. ••• Motors in Flint, Michigan. The film alternates 1937 footage of the Torre Bela is the true story of the seizure of Tour of the Decade. The tempestuous events in Iran Brigade in action with a recent event-its re­ a huge estate during the 1974 Portuguese Rev­ are the subject of a Houston-West Coast tour by "ace-analyst flective reunion 40 years later. The star of both olution. Reclaiming land long left fallow by its Murry Weiss, national chair of the Committee for a events is Genora Johnson Dollinger, whose wealthy owner, the peasants harvest olives, set Revolutionary Socialist Party. leadership and spirit validly dominate the film­ up housekeeping in the manor house, argue, Comrade Weiss is an acknowledged genius-in-residence which fails to mention her then-membership and agitate, and learn to form an agricultural collec­ of CRSP. As Marx once wrote to Engels, "Between whiles, training in the then-revolutionary Socialist tive. As the richly democratic process unfolds, as one cannot always be writing, I am doing some Workers Party. the collective becomes a testament to the will of Differential Calculus dxl dy," and that's about how Murry The last scene, depicting the unvanquished workers to control their own destiny and the pro­ utilizes his time (while the rest of us go to the movies). militancy of the Brigade veterans as they vocif­ ducts of their own labor. The Weiss tour will reward all its audiences with a erously conduct a floor fight at the last U A W Order from Tricontinental Films, P.O. Box memorable May Day experience. Bon voyage, Murry, your Convention-to demand that Dollinger be 4430, Berkeley, CA 94704. public awaits!

FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 13 d j

rebuttal

n the fall issue Clara Fraser railed Chinese regime. Maoism is an outgrowth of Stalin­ against some unnamed "patience ism, sharing with it the theoretical cornerstone of mongers" and "manana mouthers." Deng "socialism-in-one-country ." These "Marxist realists," she wrote, • • • The demands of international workingclass I "cooly inform" women and minor- from back page solidarity, according to this counterrevolutionary '--____----' ities "that they must wait until being seen. He did not even hold a press conference notion, must be subordinated to building "social­ the revolution, throughout the revolution and in Seattle, to the chagrin of reporters; his mission ism" at home through wangling diplomatic deals long after the revolution before their oppression was geared to business and political deals, not to with imperialism. Military security, therefore, is significantly relieved" and that "the attainment winning support for the Chinese people. ' depends on selling out the world working class of elementary civil rights is out-of-sight even under ins~ead of winning it. socialism." The Vietnam Connection Intrinsic to "socialism-in-one-country" is a Unfortunately, she neglected to identify the cul­ China invaded northern Vietnam as a political narrow, rigid, and outmoded nationalism that prits or cite a single quotation. We have never heard demonstration of the strength of the new U.S.­ provides the impetus for such counterproductive a socialist utter such absurdities. Of course elementary China alliance. The USSR was put on notice that a measures as China's invasion of Vietnam and her civil rights are attainable, but is Comrade Fraser sat­ firm U.S.-China block against the USSR was the fawning on U. S. officialdom. isfied with "elementary civil rights," i.e., legal equal­ tangible product of Deng's visit. Since the Sino-Soviet split, relations between ity? In Cuba women certainly enjoy elementary civil Tension between China and Vietnam has the USSR and China have been governed not by rights, but political, economic and social equality is a escalated since Vietnam's defeat of the U.S. in 1975. comradely internationalism but by a conservative long way off. Overt discrimination can be abolished China consistently disapproved of Vietnam seeking ethnocentrism. Bitter competition for trade virtually overnight, but habits of thought cannot. Fur­ Soviet aid to rebuild its shattered country. Yet agreements and areas of influence finally erupted in thermore, the disadvantaged need more than civil China reduced aid to Vietnam in retaliation for the a new war on Vietnamese soil, further proving that, rights to win an equal position in society. They need Cambodia border fighting early in 1978. And in to the Chinese regime, an alliance with Wall Street training, experience and confidence. This requires May of 1978, when Vietnam expropriated the large against the Kremlin was infinitely preferable to that the state give top priority and assign all necessary capitalist class in the South, many of whom were socialist solidarity with the Vietnamese Revolution. resources to this end. Chinese, the tension spiraled higher. "Racism," The Sino-Vietnamese mini-war was rooted in The revolution will certainly elevate the conscious­ screamed China. the poisonous earth of counterrevolutionary ness of all workers, but it is those who were the doubly China seized on this move to cut off all remain­ Stalinism. exploited and oppressed who will struggle most mili­ ing aid to Vietnam, and Vietnam quickly signed a tantly for a genuine equality in the shortest possible friendship agreement with the USSR and joined Capitalist Restoration? . time. This question is addressed by the resolution COMECON (the Soviet-organized economic bloc). Shortly before the Deng visit, a Seattle Times of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International Then came the Kampuchean conflict, with headline proclaimed "Capitalism Restored in on "Socialist Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Vietnamese troops fighting the Beijing-backed Pol China." The article reported that "the capitalists Proletariat" as follows: "Political freedom under Pot regime (see p. 15). The stage was set. will be able to recover huge sums in bank deposits workers democracy therefore implies freedom of or­ Once on American soil, Deng obtained the and confiscated property," and that former land­ ganization and action for independent women's administration's green light for his invasion. lords have been given back their jobs and past liberation, national liberation and youth move­ Although the White House claimed it did not wages, and have had their civil rights restored. ments." approve the invasion, Treasury Secretary Blumen­ In factories, previous management by revolu­ It was apparently this statement that provoked thal made his scheduled trip to Beijing at the height tionary committee has been replaced by a single Comrade Fraser's polemic. She rejects the idea that in of the fighting-a clear signal of support in the manager, and the Beijing Review reports that a workers democracy women and other oppressed language of international diplomacy. workers are now being motivated by individual strata should be guaranteed the right to organize But the Vietnamese put up a strong fight, and material incentives such as bonuses. Chinese domestic opposition to the invasion grew. independently ofthe state to make sure'that their needs Since the Cultural Revolution, it is known that The Chinese regime was forced to begin troop receive top priority and to campaign against sex- factions of the Chinese Communist Party have withdrawals in March. ist hangovers. Instead, she offers her personal guaran­ struggled over economic directions. tee that this will not be necessary, since the revo­ Both sides claimed victory, and bragged of Mao and "The Gang of Four" stressed ideologi­ lution will produce full equality automatically. Yet, inflicting heavy casualties. But the real winner was cal incentives and limited foreign investment nowhere has the revolution led to complete the U.S., which has been trying to isolate Vietnam (although Mao consistently sought political ties to equality for women-either in society or in the home. by refusing to pay war reparations, by denying A victorious workers' revolt does not immediately diplomatic relations, and by imposing an economic the U.S. and invited Nixon to China in 1972). produce communist relations-it "only" transfers blockade. The Dengl Zhou Enlail Liu Shaoqi grouping, state power from one class to another. The transfor­ The U.S. fears Vietnam's ties to Kampuchea, whose view is now ascendant, stressed increased mation of social relations, and with them, personal which pose a threat to the U.S. linkpin, Thailand, investment by foreign capital and material incen­ and family relations, culture, morals, ideology and and fears Soviet access to the modern, U.S.-built tives for workers, who desperately need improved psychology occurs over a period of years. In a sense, naval base abandoned at Cam Ranh Bay. living standards. the elimination of the inequality of the sexes is one China is now an agreeable accomplice to U.S. Deng has reemployed former capitalists as aspect of the elimination of the division of labor gen:. viciousness. China's attack was greeted with ill­ managers, instituted financial incentives and trade erally in society, and this, like the state and the fam­ concealed glee in the international bourgeois press. with the U.S. But none of these measures, by ily, will not be "abolished," it will wither away. A New York Times editorial crowed that the themselves, signal an imminent return to capitalism. Finally, Comrade Fraser suggests that this ap­ concept of capitalism as the cause of war had been Public ownership of industry has not yet been proach will not inspire oppressed people. We think it laid to rest. But it wasn't. touched, nor the state monopoly of foreign trade. is condescending to assume that in order to motivate The prolonged hostility between the Soviet Nevertheless, China's course is extremely women they must be fed fairy tales about miracles of Union and China, like that between the Soviets and dangerous as production and planning·move ever instant, total liberation. Yugoslavia, and the Soviets and the early regimes farther away from workers control and the bureau­ What will the revolution accomplish in the first in Hungary and Cuba, is a product of the cratic practices of the regime proliferate. And if months? counterrevolutionary Stalinist idea of socialism in China permits U.S. firms to own property in China, I) Eliminate all remaining areas of discrimina­ my country but not in yours. And this idea is a social tumult is inevitable. tion. Guarantee full civil rights by the vigorous flagrant capitulation and accommodation to The triumph of Chinese socialism depends, in prosecution of violators. imperialism. the final analysis, on the success of the world 2) Eliminate all programming of children The cause of war between workers states is revolution; yet shortsighted, pragmatic China is according to sex roles, etc. precisely the terrible pressure of world capitalism acting as a terrible block to that process. And 3) Use the full propaganda and educational upon them. should China let a hundred capitalists bloom on resources of the state to overcome prejudice against Chinese territory, the death knell of the Chinese women, minorities and gays. The Legacy of Stalinism Revolution itself would be sounded. 4) Initiate a massive affirmative action pro­ Maoism remains the basic ideology of the to next page gram to overcome the handicaps inherited from the old order. 5) Guarantee the unconditional right of women and minorities to organize and struggle un­ ms.'tami til the last remnant of inequality is eradicated. This right does not exist in any so-called "socialist" :ountry. We think that these goals (along with the overall 'enefits of socialism) are sufficient to inspire all op­ The Art of Analogy The lady has arrived at a total of 117%, and we lressed people to join the fight for the new society. "The act of deserting the home in order to shape wonder what the extra 17% are up to-those who society is like thoughtlessly removing crucial fingers neither work nor huddle. -Edith and Milt Zaslow from an imperiled dike to teach people how to swim." ______... -Elder Neal A. Maxwell at an April, 1978 Mormon Household Hint conference. Having trouble starting a fire in your fireplace? Try Second Annual 500-Mile That's thoughtless? Sounds good to this social using a Pinto gas tank to get it going, then toss in a American Indian Marathon Run swimmer. And if the home is an imperiled dike, how Firestone tire to make sure it doesn't stop. From Davis, California to Los Angeles long can it remain a man's castle? June 20, 1979 Mathematics for the Millions Captionitis Purpose: to commemorate The Longest Walk Kate Rand Lloyd, editor-in-chief of Working protest against anti-Indian legislation Women, says her magazine is aimed at the estimated "It won't stop, doctor! Anyone May Participate 37% of working women to whom ajob means a career, All I hear is Arafat, Contact: Oakland Inter-Tribal Friendship House not just a paycheck. Arafat, Arafat, Arafat, phone (415) 452-1235 "The huddled masses, the 80%, don't spend $1.25 Arafat ... !" t. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~=f=o=r=a=m==a~g~a=zi=n=e~'''==sh=e==sa=i=d=i=n=S=e=a=t=tl=e=0=n==M=a=r=c=h=8=.====~~~~~~~~~~======~ , FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 CA it&t. '" ...

by Sam Oeaderick

itter war rages in Kam­ puchea (Cambodia) as KAMPUCHEA two armies-the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese ~71Wasion" or Civil War? B Kampuchean National United Front for National Salvation (KNUFNS)­ contend for control of the country. political freedom and social progress KNUFNS In December, 1978 the KNUFNS represented by the KNUFNS. The National United Front for army, comprised of 100,000 Viet­ National Salvation, which now holds namese troops and 20,000 Kampu­ Military Agriculture most of the key population areas, chean rebels, launched a drive into The Khmer Rouge gained control calls for a progressive counterprogram Kampuchea and rapidly took over all of Kampuchea in 1975, after the fall to that of the Khmer Rouge. key areas of the country. The Khmer of the U.S.-puppet regime of Lon It wants to reestablish urban indus­ Rouge government, headed by Pol Nol. Within hours of its victory the trialization and grow beyond regi­ end to "Vietnamese aggression." But Pot, appeared to be entirely routed by Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuated the mented, agricultural social organiza­ the prince vented his ire against the the rebel forces. cities and forced the entire population tion. The KNUFNS promises to Khmer Rouge as well. He charged But Khmer Rouge loyalists have into agricultural cooperatives and reinstitute a money economy and that human rights violations in Kam­ summoned a strong military resist­ roving work brigades. establish an eight-hour working day . puchea were legion under the Khmer ance and amid today's heavy fighting, The new rulers claimed the evacua­ with wages paid for hours worked, Rouge, but asked for U.S. and U.N. it is far from clear who will triumph. tion was necessary because food sup­ health care, education for children, troops to drive the Vietnamese away. plies in the cities were too low, and and the gradual relocation of people He wants to retire to the French Proxy War? independent sources confirmed this into their original urban areas. Riviera, since "aristocratic nationalists The Western press views the con­ fact. Also, a huge and well-organized China and the U.S. claim that the are not much in demand in Cambodia flict as a proxy war between the workforce was needed to repair the KNUFNS is simply an invasion force anymore." USSR, which backs the KNUFNS, damage to agriculture caused by the from Vietnam-though the U.S. is He is currently being sheltered once and China, which backs the Khmer devastating U.S. bombings. hardly in a moral position to con­ again by China. Rouge. To a certain extent this is But it soon became clear that the demn any "invasion" in Indochina. true. The war is being waged with population was being permanently And while the KNUFNS is largely Whither Kampuchea? Chinese and Soviet weapons, and regimented into agricultural units, and made up of Vietnamese troops, a sub­ Amidst charges and countercharges both countries deem the outcome as the cities were never rebuilt. stantial number of its ranks are of "invasion," "aggression," and critical to their influence in S.E. In 1977, Prime Minister Pol Pot Kampuchean, and it seems to have "atrocities," the best course for Kam­ Asia-an area attractive for both its admitted that the evacuation was considerable internal support. puchea is difficult to chart. militarily strategic location and its planned months before the takeover The outcome of the conflict is The Stalinist-oriented regime of abundance of natural resources. because the "class enemy" could orga­ critical for Vietnam. A Kampuchea Vietnam is no great model of revolu­ But the proxy character of the war nize in the cities. He said the new aligned with Beijing (Peking) leaves tionary democracy. But the social becomes secondary when examined social organization was indicated be­ Vietnam virtually surrounded by the order created by the Khmer Rouge through the eyes of the Kampuchean cause "(Khmer Rouge) strength was forces of its bitter enemy-the has nothing in common with socialist people. They are not fighting for not great enough to defend the revo­ People's Republic of China. democracy and cannot reconstruct the China or the USSR, but for them­ lutionary regime" against the "enemy's economy. selves. To them, the conflict is a secret agent network." By dispersing The Unhappy Prince Life would most probably be struggle between two distinct forms the population into the countryside, One of the more bizarre episodes of markedly improved under a KNUFNS of social organization: the militarized opponents of the Khmer Rouge "were the conflict is the reemergence of regime. The KNUFNS has not pro­ agricultural primitivism of the Khmer scattered in various cooperatives Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who was mised full political freedom, but it Rouge versus the hope for greater which are in our grip." held under luxurious house arrest has promised to rebuild agriculture, After the evacuation of the popu­ since the Khmer Rouge took power. industry, and the cities, and this lace to the country, the flow of infor­ Sihanouk was king during the last would be an enormous step forward As We Go to Press . .. mation from Kampuchea halted, and years of French rule of Cambodia. on the road to a Kampuchean it became almost impossible to un­ Independence came in 1955, and he workers state. A major theoretical dispute has earth facts about life in that deliber­ remained chief of state until a CIA­ The Soviet Union has not inter­ emerged between leaders of the ately isolated country. But enough backed coup overthrew him in 1970. vened directly in the conflict, even Fourth International and the Social­ became known to reveal a bleak por­ His crime was neutrality in the Viet­ after China invaded Vietnam as ist Workers party of the U.S. The trait indeed. nam/U.S. war. Living in exile in "punishment"! International severely criticizes the The economy was completely dis­ Beijing, he became titular head of the Anything can happen in this power SWP for abandoning Trotskyist mantled, and currency eliminated; all Khmer Rouge. When the Khmer struggle between super-nationalist, exchange is handled through simple Rouge triumphed, he returned to anti-internationalist and bureaucratic principle by labeling Kampuchea barter. There exists no educational Cambodia, but was immediately workers states, and the Kampucheans under Pol Pot as a capitalist state. system, health care system, or postal arrested. will undoubtedly be the last to be The International calls it a seriously service, and only one government When the KNUFNS danger sur­ consulted by anybody. But like the deformed workers state. An assess­ newspaper and radio station. faced, the Khmer Rouge attempted Vietnamese before them, they are ment of this dispute will appear in The population apparently has no to gain international sympathy by likely to surprise everybody by taking the next Freedom Socialist. political rights, and little, if any, free­ dusting off Sihanouk and sending him their revolutionary destiny into their dom to travel or choice of residence. to the United Nations to plead for an own hands .•

putting themselves in the same camp as the KMT. The Deng faction has allowed a certain amount If anybody on Taiwan has the right to self­ of open discussion of political issues-wall posters Deng determination, it is the 230,000 non-Chinese representing opposing views, contact between the • • • aboriginal people who lived there long before the people and the Western press, and Chinese press from page 14 present Taiwanese migrated from China and the reports of debate. And while the debate is some­ The Taiwan Question KMT fled there. But their rights are ignored by the what orchestrated by the regime, political discus­ For many years, U.S. recognition of China was Taiwanese nationalists. sion cannot be turned off and on like a spigot. stalled dead center over the status of Taiwan. Whether or not Taiwan is a nation with the The Chinese masses represent the largest The U.S. recognized Chiang Kai-shek and his right to self-determination is a debatable question. national working class in the world. And they have Kuomintang regime as the only legitimate govern­ And without the demand for an end to U.S. been educated in some fundamental Marxist princi­ ment of China. The People's Repuhlic of China colonialism and for a workers Taiwan, an exclu­ ples, despite Maoist distortion and vulgarization of insisted that Taiwan is an integral part of China. sively bourgeois independence struggle can only those principles. Large-scale repression of this vast When U.S. capital realized the tremendous lead to a replacement of one capitalist class with populace is currently out of the question, and the potential for trade and political maneuvering another. flourishing debate will inexorably lead to wide- represented by an alliance with China, Washington spread opposition to the regime. . 'switched course and recognized the Chinese Back to Basics Left opposition from the masses has the ex­ Communist Party as the sole legitimate governing The Deng-Carter love-in is too hot not to cool plosive potential of forcing the Chinese leadership body of all China, including Taiwan. down. The protagonists objectively represent two into a revolutionary direction that would truly In return, Deng promised a "peaceful resolu­ fundamentally irreconcilable social systems and two represent the historic aspiration of 900 million tion" to the question. He announced that the intrinsically warring classes. Chinese. China has again shaken the World, and it capitalist economy could remain in Taiwan, and the Deng's antics in America and his reprehensible is once again in torment as it stands at the cross­ U.S. would be permitted to continue to sell arms invasion of Vietnam violate the historic interests of roads: toward cynical opportunism or to providing there! This betrayal of the workers on Taiwan the exploited and oppressed of the world. And the inspiring revolutionary leadership to the exploited guarantees their availability for stepped-up U.S. great Chinese people, to preserve their own giant people of the planet. • exploitation. social conquests, will have to rise up in protest and Pro-capitalist Taiwanese living in the U.S. or settte accounts with Deng and his cohorts. Taiwan call for a Taiwan independent of both the Reports of Chinese dissidence have already Mary Ann Curtis, a specialist in Chinese CCP and the Kuomintang. They insist that Taiwan surfaced. Demonstrations against the invasion of language, history, and culture, has lived is not part of China, but since they do not oppose Vietnam occurred in major Chinese cities, and a rift in Taiwan. She is Business Manager U.S. intervention in Taiwan, these nationalists risk in the leadership has developed over the invasion. of the Freedom Socialist.

FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 15 r w -

FOR

Organizers Report to the 1969 FSP Conference A Victory for Socialist Feminism describes the birth-pangs of a political party. When, in 1967, the Seattle Branch of the Socialist Workers Party separated from the parent body and became the Freedom Socialist Party, one of the unresolvable differences that had precipitated the split was the Woman Question. And in the new party's first two years of life, its feminist principles were tested even further in the crucible of experience, and all but the most determined champions of women's equality ended up out of the party. Those comrades who stuck to their feminist battle stations emerged tempered enough to go on to build a unique kind of revolutionary party.

The issue that triggered the split in the young FSP was a divorce between two leading members, Clara and Richard Fraser. Washing­ ton State divorce law at that time put the wife at a terrible disadvan­ tage, and when Richard Fraser forced the issue and contested Clara's divorce and custody suit. the party had to face the then-disputed question of whether a political principle or a private matter was at stake. Fortunately for its survival. the party made the correct decision-an historic decision. Clara Fraser, considerably ahead of her time, refused to be in­ timidated by male chauvinist "radicals" who scornfully accused her of confusing the personal and the political. Nor would she be shamed into secrecy and submission by any individualistic fear of public "disgrace" over the exposure of her domestic battles for equal rights. She saw clearly that the physical abuse, the husband's alcoholism, her economic burdens, and the reaction­ ary political and moral slander against her character, wielded as blackmail in the child custody dispute, were not just the center of her case but the heart of women's oppression everywhere. And these out­ rages were no more to be tolerated in a radical party than anywhere else; on the contrary, in a Marxist organiza1ion energetically espousing the great principles of women's emancipation, Richard Fraser's conduct was particularly reprehensible. The ensuing intra-party conflict categorically separated the socialist feminists from the hypocrites, and The Victory tran­ spired when the conflict deepened into rift and the rift into outright split. Because the women and their few male defenders won out. this chapter of feminist history warrants close attention today, when the women's movement is scrutiniz­ ing the Left in search of a basis for a principled alliance. And the book speaks just as tellingly to male-dominated radical groups who are still wondering just what it is that women revolutionaries want!

16 FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 Introduction developed political differences and went over to critical and perplexed. Unsure of what was wrong, the Spartacists; others simply dropped out of they knew that something was, that a section of In the two years since our last party politics, as did a few of the former SWPers. the leadership could no longer be relied on for firm, By January, 1967 this initial differentiation principled political direction and organizational conference, our organization has been through within the party's ranks was substantially complete. guidance. They demanded a change. a rich and intense political experience, in the The remaining cadre comprised the bulk of the So a cleavage existed between a majority of the course of which we have clarified our basic former SWP members, plus a few of the newer leadership and the ranks, but its precise nature political and organizational concepts and recruits. was not yet clear to anyone. Since there was every consolidated the core of a political cadre. This Despite organizational attrition, the FSP was appearance of political unanimity, differences were crystallization of our political identity has in a stronger position at the time of the 1967 seen as purely tactical, and the solution proposed developed out of a conscious affirmation of conference than at its founding the year before. was accordingly of an organizational character. Bolshevik principles in the face of a complex The objective situation was very promising. The There was a general consensUs among all sectors external situation and very serious internal anti-war movement demonstrated considerable vigor of the party that room must be made for new problems. and both the Black struggle and the student move­ leadership that would represent a broader spectrum This document is a review of the political ment were showing signs of increasing militancy and of experience, age, and reflexes. It was hoped that radicalization. Our party commanded considerable such a new leadership would be able to organize and ideological developments of the radical respect in the radical movement, had connections and direct the party's activities more effectively movement in Seattle over the past two years, with most of the developing groupings on the local than the old. and an evaluation of our role and activities in scene, attracted a broad periphery, and was estab­ the same period. This report will be the basis lished On the political scene. The cadre had been The Conference Elects New Leadership for collective discussion and analysis during tested in the struggle for political survival. The general agreement on the need for reorga­ the party conference, out of which will come The very fact of survival was a tribute to our nization was codified in two unanimous decisions our decisions on approach and priorities for ideas, the main bulwark against pressures from made at the conference: the coming year. without and within. (I) A new executive committee was elected, its members drawn from several generations and Rank -and File Revolt backgrounds. Most of the new members were also "The strength and meaning of Bolshevism The January, 1967 Conference was marked by . party officers with definite administrative respon- a contradiction between the formal political unity sibilities in the party apparatus. From the outgoing consists in the fact that it appeals to the visible on the surface, and the dissension fer­ executive, only one member-Comrade Clara­ oppressed masses and not to the upper strata menting beneath. was retained. of the working class ....They feel in their Apparently, everyone agreed on the basic (2) A Literary and Correspondence Committee innermost hearts that it is a teaching for the definition of party program and character. (LCC) was established to prepare basic documents oppressed and exploited, for hundreds of We considered ourselves a bolshevik vanguard for publication, maintain national correspondence, millions to whom it is the onry possible salva­ party, based on the tradition of revolutionary and produce position papers on pertinent issues tion. That is why Leninism meets with a Marxism developed by the world communist move­ for discussion. This committee contained all the passionate response among working women, ment under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky members of the outgoing executive. who are the most oppressed section of society." and continued in the U.S. by the early SWP, led by Comrade Frank, the outgoing organizer, pre­ -Leon Trotsky. Prospects and Tasks in the Far East James P. Cannon. sented these major proposals to the conference, We agreed on the central importance, for the including the slate of officers for the new executive. American scene, of the extensions of this tradition And despite the emergence of tactical differences in "F ortune favors the godly. If you live right as set forth by the Kirk-Kaye tendency in the SWP, the conference discussions, general harmony seemed and conduct yourself properly, you get a lucky which was characterized by two main program­ to prevail. matic positions: Still, these reorganization measures had arisen break now and then. And when an accident (I) Revolutionary Integration as the direction out of a defacto partial revolt in the party ranks comes your way-a good one-you should of motion of the Black liberation struggle. Blacks against most of the old leadership. grab it and make the most of it." in the U.S. cannot end their special oppression The removal of all but one of the former -James P. Cannon, The History of American by turning in a nationalist-separatist direction, executive members and the simultaneous creation Trotskyism and in the course of fighting for their rights will of the Literary and Correspondence Committee most likely take their rightful place as the vanguard were motivated in part by the urge to free some detachment of a working-class socialist revolution. of the party's most qualified writers and theoreti­ (2) The first-rank importance of women's rights, cians to carry out necessary literary work. But in both theory and practice, within the party, the there was also a very real desire to free the party I. History and Backdrop mass movements, and on the general political scene. from their organizational leadership, which was Further, in accordance with its high political felt to be increasingly arbitrary and capricious. y the time of the January, 1967 standards, the FSP was to maintain democratic It was hoped that in their new role, the former FSP Conference, the party had centralism as its organizational principle, i.e., full leaders could accomplish something constructive, already passed its first major freedom of discussion in arriving at decisions, and while a new organizer would help the party get test: it had survived six months of complete unity in action, based on the rule of the down to business. B independent political existence, no majority, in implementing policy. Events were to show that this hope was sadly L _____---' small accomplishment. There appeared to be agreement on current doomed. The nucleus of the Freedom Socialist Party tasks and perspectives. The party's main role in was the former Seattle Branch of the Socialist the coming period was to be propagandistic, hence Workers Party (SWP), which had existed as a the most immediate task was to complete the barely-tolerated minority tendency in the SWP for publication of the basic documents setting forth II. The Breakup of "Unity" nearly a decade. The branch held fundamental the party's distinctive contributions to the Marxist differences with the SWP majority over Black tradition. n apparently minor dispute at the Liberation, the Woman Question, Socialist Re­ It was also generally recognized that the party's conference concerned the division groupment, anti-war policy, and internal democracy. internal functioning must be drastically improved. of labor between the executive and When the SWP adopted its Peoples-Frontist The executive committee had been paralyzed for the Literary and Correspondence "single-issue" strategy in the anti-war movement, months by intense disputes over strategy and A Committee. and brought spurious charges against Comrade tactics which the party ranks knew about vaguely, Comrade Frank, in his reorga­ Kirk (the tendency's sole remaining representative mostly through rumor. nization proposals, had characterized the LCC as on the National Committee) for circulating a docu­ Meanwhile, considerable frustration and puzzle­ "a kind of Politburo" or "National Committee," ment inside the party that was sharply critical ment prevailed over the maneuvers of some party implying a role of primary leadership and direction, of anti-war policy, the branch decided that the leaders in the mass movement. while the executive was a lower-level administrative conservatism and bureaucratism of the SWP were Their actions took the form of a series of and service apparatus. intolerable, and proceeded to separate from the desperate plunges in different, sometimes antago­ His formulation was decisively repudiated by parent organization. nistic directions, with different elements of the the conference. It was made clear that while the The official break took place in May, 1966. A party leadership involved at different times. LCC was to produce literary and theoretical work few weeks later, all the former SWP members, Thus, in the Independent Socialist U nion-the of a high order and act as an advisory council together with others who shared their political party's abortive attempt to initiate a youth organi­ on programmatic issues, the executive was to be outlook, met in convention and founded the zation-Comrade Kirk maneuvered with opponent the political directorate of the party. Freedom Socialist Party. elements, directly betraying his own party fraction. With this clarification of structural roles, the The new party immediately faced a serious Comrade Frank Krasnowsky was the author of our new executive committee tried to settle down to external threat. This first took the form of a nearly disastrous "deep-entry" tactic in the first business, but it was soon evident that the confer­ series of organizational attacks and maneuvers by Peace and Freedom Party. And Kirk, this time ence had not, in fact, solved the basic problems the SWP; the Spartacist League followed with opposed by Frank, led the FSP into a "fraternal" of authority. No sooner was the new leadership an organizational raid within a few months. association with the Spartacist League that set the installed than it faced a direct challenge to its Combined with the external pressures was a party up for an organizational raid by the S.L. hegemony by the Literary and Correspondence challenge to the party's existence and integrity All these sorties demonstrated the existence of Committee. from within. an opportunist current in a section of the leadership Some of the new members, who weren't part that was always willing to make unprincipled The Priorities Crisis of the old SWP cadre, had no solid grounding in political concessions and combinations in adapta­ The executive's first assignment to the LCC the traditions of revolutionary Marxism and no tion to the mass movement or opponent organiza­ was to immediately prepare basic party documents conception of the political difficulties the new tions. for publication. This was not accepted. Instead, organization faced. Most of these people proved At the same time, party organization and the LCC chairman, Comrade Frank, backed by unable to withstand the pressures bearing down I administration were degenerating. Comrade Kirk, insisted on initiating a new dis- I I The bulk of the 13Ilk·and-file was annoyed, to next page I I on t~~ s:~I~,_~ocal rc\olu!i\Jnaryg~·~~~~~:somc ...... 1 FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 19, v 17 • {\s\ ~~oi\O ~c~

p.\- perspective endorsed by the conference. Finding shared organizational responsibility was labeled as ~ lAeet\1'~ ~o~~~ itself in the untenable position of lacking the a "bureaucratic Stalinist" trend, supposedly inflicted "confidence" of the party, and no longer allowed on her by Comrades Bob and Gus, who had spent to represent the program it was mandated to serve, long years in the Communist Party. ~~~, the executive resigned. Four out of the five execu­ In sum, the opposition had begun to politically tive members offered their resignations and de­ characterize the executive leadership group as ~c manded that the real majority, led by the LCC, take Stalinist, bureaucratic, sectarian, and hostile to ~ saluting over the leadership and carry out its own per­ regroupment. International Year of the Child spective. By way of reply, the executive summed up This did not happen. Despite the confusion over the opposition's political tendencies in two "Our Young: the nature of the differences in orientation and words-liquidationist and menshevik, i.e., adulter­ organizational principles, the party membership ating and defaming the very concept of the revolu­ The Foundation 0/ Our Future" was not prepared to deliver itself back to the tionary vanguard party. leadership of Comrades Frank and Kirk, who were At the conclusion of the internal discussion themselves unwilling to take responsibility for in June, 1967 it was clear that there were funda­ • Workshops on administration of a party that had adopted contra­ mental organizational differences dividing the Native American dictory perspectives out of sheer confusion. party. What was not yet clear was the political The outcome of the dispute was a membership basis of these differences, and in the absence of Survival decision to reject the resignations of the executive any visible, definite difference in programmatic • Special Activities and re-establish the policies of the party conference. line, neither of the two groupings was ready to A qualified victory for the new executive com­ organize itself along definite factional lines and for Children mittee had been won. press a determined struggle for hegemony within the party. In Search of Differences Nothing was resolved. Rising dissension, often June 7-10 Throughout the debate over priorities, Frank, over what seemed to be petty matters, continued Kirk, and their supporters had constantly intimated to disrupt the life of the party. In this charged that the new executive represented a grouping with atmosphere, the party could neither orient itself Daybreak Star Center views contrary to the basic line of the party, views toward effective intervention in the mass move­ Seattle, Washington which were being intentionally "concealed." The ment, nor carry out its basic and uncompleted puzzled executive denied this, but nevertheless internal tasks. The publication schedule had become agreed to an extensive internal discussion designed inoperative; six months after the conference, only Sponsors: Northwest Native American to analyze the party's basic positions in order one document-Introducing the FSP-had found Indian Women's Council to determine what differences, if any, might exist. its way to press, and this was the document that Women of All Red Nations This discussion in search of "differences" Comrade Clara had been assigned to edit and International Indian Treaty occupied a good deal of the party's time through­ prepare for pUblication. Council out the spring of 1967, but failed to disclose any major differences whatever in principle on the Election Campaign Frenzy Host: "main political questions" of China, the Black In the summer of 1967, big-city Black ghettoes United Indians of All Tribes Foundation Struggle, Regroupment, Youth work, Women, etc. across the country erupted in a series of spon­ Nevertheless, sharp and acrimonious disputes taneous, massive explosions. This marked a qualita­ For information: Andrea Luna, NWNAIWC, erupted on tactics, style of work, past events and tive leap forward of millions of people in an arena 3604 W. Government Way Extension, Seattle, how they were handled, and the relative emphasis of the class struggle which our tendency has WA 98199. Phone: (206) 285-4425 to be placed on each question-again, priorities. always regarded as the key to the American revo­ It was not the 'big political questions,' but the lution and thereby to the international revolution. character of the party that emerged as central to The entire party recognized the exceptional cussion on China, with a view toward intervening the dispute. Clearly, two different concepts co­ opportunity for intervention in the Black struggle nn the left with a call for the defense of the Chinese existed of the party's nature, and the correct with our own politics. After a long discussion, I Cultural Revolution, currently at its height. methods of operation deriving from it. the party decided that despite previous priorities Comrade Clara, an LCC membe~ and the liaison One concept, put forward most clearly by and serious internal problems, it would intervene with the executive committee, pointed out that this Comrade Clara, regarded the FSP as a vanguard in the situation by running a Black candidate­ would completely disrupt the priorities laid down party with enumerated and specific goals, priorities, Comrade Skip Ware-in the upcoming City for the LCC, and that despite the great importance and standards of conduct. The first goal was to Council elections. of the Chinese events, it remained the basic task establish the party as an integral entity in the The party had high hopes for the election of the party to publish its already-developed radical arena, with its politics succinctly defined and campaign. Here, if anywhere, appeared to be an positions on key questions of the American Revolu­ differentiated, and its organizational structure, opportunity to unify the party around its basic tion. A finished position on China would simply based on consistent internal discipline, candidly political line. Also, here was a great chance to make have to wait. described. solid contact with rebellious, revolutionary-minded This dispute over priorities paralyzed the LCC The contrary view, espoused emphatically by Blacks in the Central Area. Healthy contact with for several weeks, and no literary work was done. Comrades Frank and Lee, called for a broader, a mass upsurge, it was hoped, would revitalize Finally, the executive brought a policy motion looser, more "flexible" organization without fixed the party cadres and heal the growing rupture in to the party membership, instructing the LCC to priorities, ready to take up anything and everything the ranks. give exclusive priority to publishing our basic at once in response to developments in the mass The political content of the campaign was documents. Comrade Frank contested this, moving movement or opportunities for entries, collabora­ carefully worked out beforehand. Its main thrust an amendment to delete the word "exclusive" and tions, and hopefully, quick "unifications." Some was to be an articulation of the political logic substitute "first priority," with the qualification proponents of this view, particularly Lee, claimed implicit in the rebellion of the ghetto, to be imple­ that the LCC continue to carry out its "normal" that the FSP should see itself as a temporary, mented through the raising of transitional demands functioning. purely transitory formation that anticipated explicitly linking the struggle of the ghetto masses This was confusing; what it gave away with imminent dissolution into a broader formation. with the class struggle for socialism. one hand, it took back with the other. Never­ To this group, "mass work" was everything The election campaign was to be a crash pro­ theless, it was apparent that by "normal" func­ and party integrity was a triviality. gram, claiming virtually exclusive priority over all tioning, Comrade Frank meant the right of himself The gut-level nature and depth of the emerging other work and mobilizing the energies of the or anybody else on the LCC to introduce new differences between the two groupings crystallizing entire party. It was to be a solid, professionally­ questions on its agenda, regardless of assigned in the party became revealed with the onset of organized effort, requiring full-time personnel priorities. Frank's amendment passed by one vote. vitriolic attacks by the Frank-Kirk contingent and a competent director to take responsibility for The LCC had successfully challenged the against other leading members. Comrade Bob, day-to-day activities and administrative decisions. executive's authority to set the priorities for literary the organizer, was particularly singled out for sharp This responsibility, and the authority that went work, and had established its own autonomy, with criticism for regarding the FSP as "The'party," with it, was to rest with three different campaign the sanction of the general membership. The rather than just "a party," while Clara's "inflexi­ directors for three consecutive two-week periods, executive saw this vote as a repudiation of the bility" on matters of consistent standards and since no one comrade could work full time for

ALASKA Juneau; 125 Troy Ave., Juneau, AK Speak to Thousands 99801. (907) 586·1617. of Radical Readers CALIFORNIA OREGON ALASKA NEW YORK Los Angeles: P.O. Box 29471, Los Portland: P.O. Box 1643, Portland, Juneau: 125 Troy Ave., Juneau, AK New York City: P.O. Box 1100, Angeles, CA 90027. (213) 463-3706. OR 97207. (503) 284-9884. through Freedom Socialist 99801. (907) 586·1617. Cathedral Stn., New York, NY San Francisco/Berkeley: 361 10025. (212) 850-4867. Hearst, San Francisco, CA 94112. WASHINGTON (415) 863-7160. Olympia: 3138 Overhulse, #9 CALIFORNIA OREGON Ashtree, Olympia, WA 98502. (206) CLASSIFIED Los Angeles: c/o Hill, 637'h N. Portland: 506 N.E. Alberta, Portland, NEW YORK 866-4939. Windsor Blvd., Los Angeles, CA OR 97211. (503) 249-8067. New York City: c/o Williams, 54 Seattle: 90004. (213) 463-3706. Morningside Dr., Apt. #34, New National Office, Freeway Hall, 3815 ADS San Francisco: P.O. Box 31634, WASHINGTON York, NY 10025. (212) 850·4867. 5th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105. San Francisco, CA 94131. (415) Olympia: 3138 Overhulse, #9 (206) 632·7449. 334-7714. Ashtree, Olympia, WA 98502. (206) North Branch, 1931 E. Calhoun, 20¢ per word - $2.00 minimum 866·4939. Seattle, WA 98112. (206) 633·5636. IOWA Seattle: Freeway Hall, 3815 5th A~e. South Branch, 5137 S. Holly, Burlington: 823 Oak, Burlington, IA N.E., Seattle, WA 98105. (206) Seattle, WA 98118. (206) 725-2609. Mail to: Advertising, Freedom Socialist, Free­ 52601. (319) 752-3101. 632-1815. Tacoma: 415 N. 5th, Tacoma, WA way Hall, Second Floor West, 3815 Fifth CANADA 98403. Avenue N.E., Seattle, WA 98105. (206) 632- MASSACHUSETTS Victoria. British Columbia: 7449. Type or clearly print ad orders. Pre­ Amherst: Northvillage Apartments, Contact -Amy Jaarsma, #422 • #1 21, Amherst, MA 01002. (413) 1020 Pembroke St., Victoria, B.C., payment required. 549·4589. Canada V8T-U5. (604) 385-1687.

18 FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 free for the duration of the campaign. Each director One was the growing opportunism of the balanced, on the negative side, by the growing was to oversee the operation during his or her candidate himself. Instead of addressing himself hysteria of the opposition and the general demorali­ two-week term. The director's administrative forthrightly and directly to the Black revolt and the zation following in its wake. decisions were to be, within the framework of the ghetto, Comrade Skip oriented toward gaining The campaign ended as·a public success, but campaign committee, authoritative, and could be the sympathy and intellectual admiration of the an intra-organizational disaster. The two wings of challenged or over-ridden only by the party white liberals (whose aim was to end the ghetto the party were polarized to the point of virtual executive. revolt by offering token concessions). His political stasis; for the first time, there was an atmosphere Definite procedure, definite responsibilities, over-adaptation to this milieu was strikingly evident of split in the party. a definite line of authority-good, businesslike, in his last TV broadcast, where he soulfully bolshevik procedures-were to be the rule of "begged" (his words) the white community to do The second installment of A Victory for Socialist campaign organization. something for the Black minority by electing him. Feminism will appear in the Summer, 1979 issue ofthe This perspective was agreed to by all. Comrade Instead of using the campaign to mobilize Freedom Socialist. Clara was assigned the decisive post of initial white support for Blacks and Black support for campaign manager and was to spend her two-week socialism, he strained desperately to get elected. vacation working full-time in the headquarters Coupled with this irregularity was the opposi­ to get the campaign rolling. She was to be suc­ tion's deliberate disruption and characteristic ceeded by Comrades Lee and Frank respectively, disorganization of the campaign. Despite formal but she was to retain final authority over all agreement with the procedural rules adopted, they news releases. could not live by these rules in practice. Through­ In the beginning, our high hopes for the out the campaign, unanimous organizational campaign appeared to be justified. The campaign decisions were unilaterally and frivolously chal­ program and the excellent quality of the campaign lenged, sabotaged and overturned by members of literature met a highly favorable response from the opposition. Their desperate assertion of autono­ Black and white radicals alike. There was no great my and their capriciousness dislocated the campaign difficulty in securing endorsement of our candidate workers and exacerbated the inner-party feud. from several organiza.tions and prominent indi­ In the atmosphere of organizational anarchy viduals, including Black militants. We managed and personal bitterness that surrounded the cam­ to break through the wall of silence initially im­ paign, the party was unable to unify itself suffi­ posed by the bourgeois press, and received the ciently to correct the opportunist course taken by Poster: Iran, the Revolution Unveiled! best and most frequent publicity mileage of our the candidate, or to direct its attention outward long history in Seattle. and take advantage of the tremendous opportuni­ Ruby, turquoise and bronze ink on pearl But, in the end, the campaign ran aground ties presented by the situation. The great propa­ stock. $5.00. Mail to: Freedom Socialist, check on two political snags. ganda gains made during the campaign were 3815 Fifth Avenue N.E., Seattle, WA 98105.

The Committee for a Revolutionary Socialist Party, a Trotskyist tendency undertaking revolutionary regroupment, proudly announces a

I

Houston: Wednesday, April 18, 7:30 p.m., University of Houston, University Center, Embassy Room. Los Angeles: Friday, April 20, 7:30 p.m., Western Federal Savings Bank, 1700 Vermont. San Francisco: Wednesday, April 25, 361 Hearst. Seattle: Saturday, Aprl128, Freeway Hall, 3815 Fifth Avenue N.E. Mid-East dinner 6 p.m., meeting 7 :30 p.m. Portland: Tuesday, May 1, 7 :30 p.m., 506 N.E. Alberta. Eugene: Wednesday, May 2, Noon, University of Oregon.

CRSP Publications Pre-Conference Discussion Bulletins 1. Where Matters Stand, by Edith and Milt Zaslow 6. The National Question, by Megan Cornish 75tt Critical Notes on Cannon's Conception of the Revolution­ 7. September 25, 1978 ary Party, (author unknown) Close Encounters with the SWP Prove It Neccessary to Ernest Mandel on the Relation of Women and Minorities Rebuild American Trotskyism, by Fred Hyde to the Class Struggle in the U.S. Transcript of a tape Socialist Feminism: Where the Battle of the Sexes Resolves made in Seattle, and submitted by Los Angeles CRSP Itself, by Susan Williams and Clara Fraser The National Question. Reprinted from an SWP 75tt Discussion Bulletin, 1973 90tt 8. October I, 1978 Where Matters Stand with Me, by Gloria Martin 2. The Matriarchy in Gentile Society, by Patrick Haggerty ~o· \ 0\ The Political Space Wars over Single/Multi Vanguards and What Role for CRSP in the American Revolution? by ~\e\\1\ ~e1\\ ~ . 01\ \\ll S\~\e. ~e~ 0 Issues, by Jamie Bevson Robert Crisman 70tt ~\.. ell""~~\1\~ \\\e~~\ C~\\\1 \\\e Letter Exchange between Seymour Kramer and the 3. Socialist Feminism and the Travail of the Typical White 1J. Co{\: ~ ~e"e :-."~\~ o. 1\ '\)':1 . e'lO Freedom Socialist 70tt o~'" 1\~.' :-.~\\o ~~ Male, by Ivan King f~~~y, ~1\ ~ \l-e"o ~1\ 0"\1.105 What Is CRSP? What Is FSP? by Clyde Frick 45tt C~;:J lle~e ~1\G \~~. ~o. 1.. ~ "o{\ll~ ~ e\.... ' e~ ~ e ~\e\\1\ ~1\~\\1\ ~l~~~':1 '\~1\1\ . ~ \\ll \ .. e~ '10 Call CRSP chapters for jurther (information. \' .. ~':I~~ ll.... \o ~~e1\ 0\ ~:l ti·\ ..\ '\)':1 C. ~\.. ; e':l GoC \~~~~e \\\e \, ..~ z5 ---___Order Form ______T> \\\e ~ '10\\\\, "e. S . ClaSP _.11-. \~o~ C\l-Sf o\\ec\\ '{ 0~Y- \01\ C ...... oX ~G~c~\ Enclosed is $ to cover the cost of the following items ALASKA OREGON (please fill in the quantity of each item ordered in the space Juneau: 125 Troy Ave., Juneau, AK Eugene: P.O. Box 3863, University 4. The Black Struggle for Liberation, by Myra Tanner Weiss following item number): 99801. (907) 586·1617. Stn., Eugene, OR 97403. Letter from the Trotskyist Organizing Committee 1 __ 2 __ 3 __ 4 __ 5 __ 6 __ Portland: 1007 S.E. 15th, #8, Why I Am Not a Member of CRSP, by Bill Callison Portland, OR 97214. (503) 232· CALIFORNIA 7206. Reply to Bill Callison, by Manny Sunshine and Sukey 7 __ 8 __ A __ B __ C __ Durham 65tt Los Angeles: P. O. Box 27783, los TEXAS Angeles, CA 90027. (213) 463· The Impact of the Latin American Revolutions on the 3706. Houston: P.O. Box 21359, Houston, 5. ~~---~--~~------TX 77026. (713) 523·4708. U.S., by Jesus Mena (please print) San Francisco: 167 lorry lane, Address ______City ______Pacifica, CA 94044. (415) 359· WASHINGTON The Relationship of the Women's Struggle to the Class 4276. Olympia: 3138 Overhulse, #9 Ash· Struggle, by Milt Zaslow State ______Zip ______Phone(s) ______tree, Olympia, WA 98502. (206) Draft Resolution on Permanent Revolution and Women's 866·4939. Liberation, by Murry Weiss NEW YORK Seattle: 3701 S. Dawson St., Seattle, Price includes postage. Orders should be paid in advance. FS 5-1 New York City: P.O. Box475, Village WA 98118. (206) 632·7468. Nazi Echoes: The New Right Wing and Its Choice of Stn., New York, NY 10014. (212) Tacoma: 415 N. 5th, Tacoma, WA Targets, by Sukey Durham 75tt Send to: L.A. CRSP, P.O. Box 27783, Los Angeles, CA 90027. 789-4156. 98403.

FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979 19 ,,'" o by Mary Ann Curtis The reality of the workers state in China could no Free Nationalist Chinal"; ''No Communism!" and longer be ignored. "Keep Free China Free!" they proclaimed, shouting he Vice Premier made very good And the new understanding with Wall Street is "Maoist idiots!" at the RCP, They sang the copy. the gateway to China's full-fledged entry onto the Nationalist Chinese anthem. Deng Xsaioping sporting a world scene. The RCP chanted, "Hua, Deng, KMT, lick the cowboy hat, eating barbecue, She also has gained access to the advanced boots of the I}ourgeoisie!" T trying out a space flight simulator, technology she desperately needs to rise above a KMT demonstrators marched around the block L-____--' sipping Coke, toasting U.S. capital- low level of subsistence. Without the highest level several times, brushing against the RCP. Each side ists and politicians-he was so charming. . of industrial and agricultural production, socialist tried to outshout the other as riot police watched He departed Seattle, Washington, USA vowing progress is impossible, the stuff dreams are made from the hotel entry. The Maoists departed, leaving peace and friendship. He sped home to Beijing­ of. Financial and technical aid are decisive to Deng burning in effigy, and the KMT dispersed. and launched the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in a China's future. Then the Taiwanese for independence appeared cloud of bluster and belligerence. On the other hand, Deng's affectionate, mind­ with their banner: "Mr. Deng, Welcome to Seattle, The Chinese didn't visit factories or wave at the boggling embrace of America's reigning robber but stay out of Taiwanf" cameras in Vietnam. They were an aggressor force, barons is a scandal for a revolutionary leader and Representatives of the Freedom Socialist Party guns blazing to demonstrate their new alliance with an insult to the international proletariat. joined the street throngs to distribute a leaflet the U.S., to dare the USSR to respond, to try to Deng had zilch to say to workers, radicals, welcoming Deng and criticizing his lofty detach­ force Vietnam out of Kampuchea. They were out Americans of Chinese'descent, women, or ment from the American people, his shameless "to punish Vietnam ... to teach them a lesson." oppressed minorities. By ignoring all those sectors courting of the Establishment, and his betrayal of The two journeys, separated geographically, are who have an objective interest in the success of the internationalism. not politically separated. Both signal a growing Chinese Revolution, he demonstrated unmistakably But this wasn't good enough for the deluded identification of top Chinese leadership with that his first loyalty is to the U.S. imperialists. Maoists of the RCP, who roared into their American imperialists. In the U.S., the Chinese bullhorns that the FSP "is really a Trotskyite, delegation spent all its time wining and dining with Stopover in Seattle counterrevolutionary outfit!" A shouting and the ruling class, and in Vietnam Chinese troops Deng in the U.S. was no ambassador of shoving match ensued, and the Freedom Socialist carried out the dirty work of this same class by socialism. contingent staunchly held its ground. means of the criminal incursion against the long­ In Seattle-the closest U.S. port to China­ Deng paid no attention whatsoever to any of suffering Vietnamese. Deng toured the Boeing aircraft plant and port the demonstrations. Shielded by an incredible Heated debate rages around the two events. facilities, met the governor, the mayor, Senators security blanket of troops, police, and the world Was the Chinese visit to the U.S. a victory or Warren G. Magnuson and Henry Jackson, and press, he was effectively quarantined from seeing or defeat for socialism? What did it signify for China's tycoons of finance and industry, and plunged the to page 14 political course? Why did China invade Vietnam, city into an orgy of Deng-o-mania. and what role did the U.S. play in this decision? Is While the champagne flowed and the testimo­ capitalism being restored in China? Arid what . nials reverberated, Seattle streets were thronged about Taiwan? with a mass of the uninvited who had their own Chinese Spellings message for the Chinese. Deng in Yankeedom In front of the posh Washington Plaza Hotel In keeping with China's State Council Deng's historic entry onto U.S. soil after a where Deng stayed, 150 red-jacketed members of usage, the Freedom Socialist is adopting the thirty-year refusal of U.S. capitalism to recognize the anti-Deng, pro-Mao Revolutionary Communist Chinese phonetic alphabet (Pinyin) system of the People's Republic of China represents a decisive Party (RCP) marched in cadence to drums, romanization for most Chinese names and advance for socialists and the entire world working shouting "Death, Death, Death to Deng! Long Live places, but is retaining the more familiar class. It was a tribute to the dynamism of the great Mao Zedong!" (Wade-Giles) spelling for Taiwan, Chiang Chinese Revolution. Pro-Kuomintang (KMT) Chines~rom Taiwan Kai-shek, and Kuomintang. Examples: Deng Despite decades of incendiary anti-Chinese and their American friends unfurled their own Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p'ing); Beijing (Peking); propaganda, the Pentagon was unable to crush banners directly across the street from the RCP. "A Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung); Zhou Enlai China and the White House couldn't starve her. Support Committee of 10 Million for Taiwan and a (Chou En-Iai); Liu Shaoqi (Liu Shao-ch'j).

20 FREEDOM SOCIALIST, SPRING 1979