soC!: No. 630 ~)(.623 6 October 1995 Racist Rulers Grind the Poor j""', ~ THE POOR' WILL BE \iEARl\! t.I IA.J D II The legislation being rushed through all wings of the Democratic Party along Congress in the last two weeks signals with most of the so-called left joined a return not only to the days before the with Reagan/Bush in waging Cold 1930s New Deal but to conditions rem­ War II, which ended with capitalist iniscent of the 19th century. The already counterrevolution in East Europe and the threadbare social safety net-a by­ destruction of the Soviet Union. The product of generations of struggle by dismantling of social welfare programs working people-which has meant the call this country a "welfare state" is a considered sacrosanct, are under attack. in the U.S. is but the domestic side difference between subsistence and star­ cruel joke. Over the past generation, the Children, single mothers, the elderly, of the "New World Order" of unfettered vation for a large sector of the inner-city real wages of American working people immigrants, the ill or infirm-all the capitalist exploitation. For the men who and rural poor is now being tom to have fallen by 20 percent, while the most vulnerable layers of society are run Wall Street and the Fortune 500, shreds by both capitalist parties. chasm between rich and poor has wid­ being told to drop dead, literally. Time anyone who isn't producing profits The lopsided 87-12 Senate vote Jo ened enormously. One percent of U.S. (2 October) talks of "cutting loose the for them-whether unemployed black throw everyone off welfare after two families now own nearly 40 percent of poor." What the capitalist rulers are ghetto youth or old people in nursing years was a sign of the times. This deci­ the' nation's wealth, more than double doing is killing the poor. homes-has no right to live. sion to destroy the lives of several mil­ the proportion of any West European Gingrich & Co. certainly revel in Yet this arrogant "let them starve" lion single mothers and their kids was country. At the other end of the spectrum, this onslaught against minorities and attitude is fueling a seething anger at the marked by outright jubilation. House the bottom 10 percent of American fam­ the poor. But it is the two pillars of base of American society, which was majority leader Newt Gingrich strode ilies has an annual income of $11,000, Democratic Party liberalism-the labor expressed in the multiracial upheaval that across the Senate floor slapping the the lowest of any Western capitalist bureaucracy and black elected offi­ shook Los Angeles following the 1992 backs of fellow Republicans. "Million­ country except Italy! Many working peo­ cials-who have made the working class acquittal of Rodney King's racist cop tor­ aires celebrating the stomping of the ple get by only by having two or more and poor vulnerable to the ever more mentors. It can be seen today in the out­ poor," commented liberal New York wage earners in the family. And in the savage attacks against them. Over the pouring of popular support-from stu­ Times columnist Bob Herbert. Yet the ghettos and barrios, most people teeter past two decades, the AFL-CIO mislead­ dent youth to trade unionists-for former liberals are reduced to little more than between chronic unemployment, short­ ers have allowed the trade-union move­ Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, who "moral witness." Despite the furious term minimum wage jobs and prison. ment to be gutted by giveback contracts, faces execution in Pennsylvania for his rhetoric of the Republican right, what Now the rulers of this country are two-tier wage systems, runaway shops eloquent defense of the oppressed. It can differences exist between the parties are demolishing the few meager social wel­ and police scabherding. During the Rea­ be seen as well in the fierce picket-line over degree and pace. It was Clinton, fare programs which do exist. Aid to gan/Bush years, almost every major city battles by newspaper workers and other after all, who pledged 'to "end welfare Families with Dependent Children had a black Democratic mayor, who unionists against police scabherding in as we know it" in the '92 elections. (AFDC), Head Start, Legal Services, blamed all social ills on the Republican Detroit. It is necessary to revitalize the Echoing the language of the Republi­ Medicaid, Medicare-all are to be eittler White House while his cops terrorized labor movement by freeing it of the dead can right, the media speaks of the dis­ eliminated or slashed to the bone. Even the ghettos and barrios. hand of the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, mantling of the "welfare state." But to Social Security retirement benefits, long In the name of anti-Communism, continued on page J2 0 ~ ~ I Feds' Bloody The Mrs'; GuerriIlL __ ~N Trail of-Terror If'I ~ I SEEPAGE 8 'ft I SEE PAGE 8 r-. Federal Court Turns Down UMWA Militant's Appeal freedom for Jerry Dale lowe! United Mine Workers (UMWA) mili­ an area where company gun thugs from eight Logan County miners accepted tant Jerry Dale Lowe was dealt another Elite Security had been located. The plea bargains and received $500 fines cruel blow in the federal courts. On Sep­ Court of Appeals' decision hinges on evi­ with 120 days of jail time. tember 20 the United States Court of dence that the bullet which struck the In her dissenting opinion, Circuit Appeals for the Fourth Circuit turned scab driver could have come from a pis­ Court judge Diana Gribbon Motz down Lowe's appeal,' condemning him tol Lowe had been seen with one week exposed the legal hocus-pocus about to nearly eleven years in prison for the before the shooting. But the court had "interstate commerce" which was used "crime" of defending his union. His refused to permit evidence that Lowe had to send Lowe to prison: "The vehicle attorneys will be filing a request for re­ sold the gun prior to the shooting! that the decedent was driving was owned argument. All labor must stand up for Lowe was singled out by the author­ and operated by a West Virginia com­ this courageous union brother. ities because he was known as a militant pany in connection with an intrastate On 24 June 1994, Lowe was rail­ defender of the union. While the bosses business transaction with another West roaded on federal charges of "interfering sought to pin the scab's death on Lowe, Virginia company. There was no evi­ with interstate commerce" in the shoot­ they had no evidence to charge him dence that the vehicle had ever been used ing death of a scab contractor at Arch under state laws-for anything. So in outside the state of West Virginia, in con­ Mineral's Ruffner mine in Logan order to make an example of Lowe and nection with interstate commerce or County, West Virginia during a bitter seven other UMWA militants at the Ruff­ otherwise. " of the road to talk to anybody, not even labor battle in July 1993. The scab was ner mine, the coal bosses and the federal But these legal and constitutional to ask them to honor a picket line. That shot in the back of the head while leaving government turned a local contractor niceties have no meaning to the Clinton would be affecting interstate commerce the mine, the fatal bullet coming from into "interstate commerce." Seven of the Justice Department and the bosses' according to them and you're just liable courts as they go after the labor move­ to go to jail." ment and oppressed with a vengeance. Constantly striving to build up its As Lowe';> attorney, Rebecca Ann Baitty, arsenal of repression, the government Che Guevara and the stated, "This decision has enormous increasingly uses this "interstate com­ Guerrilla Road potential for impacting labor strikes .... merce" myth as the "legal" sledgeham­ mer to intervene to break strikes and rail­ On 8 October 1967, heroic guerrilla It would be implicated in virtually any road pickets when the local cops, goons fighter Che Guevara was captured in Bolivia strike situation." Or as Lowe told Work­ and then murdered by the CIA and its local ers Vanguard, if the ruling holds, "You and courts can't do the jobs themselves. operatives. Many leftist organizations at the won't even be able to stand on the side continued on page 4 time saw CastrolChe's Cuba as an alterna­ tive to the conservative Kremlin Stalinist bureaucracy. Today, in the wake of the coun­ ten'evolutions that have swept the ex-USSR Paris Demonstrations for TROTSKY and East Europe, radicalizing youth around LENIN the world are again looking to Che as an inspiring revolutionary fighter. Yet Guevara's "guerrilla road" was capable at best­ Mumia Abu-Jamal under exceptional circumstances--<Jf creating a bureaucratically deformed workers state, bound by the same nationalist dogma of "socialism in one country" that led to the strangulation of the former Soviet Union. The Spartacist League insisted in its 1966 Declaration of Principles on the necessity offorging an international Trotskyist party, to lead the struggle for proletarian political revolution against the anti-working­ class Stalinist bureaucracies, and for socialist. revolution against U.S. imperialism and throughout the capitalist world. The partial character of the anti-capitalist revolutions in the colonial world over the past two decades (China, Cuba, North Viet Nam and North Korea) leads us to reaffirm the Marxist-Leninist concept of the proletariat as the key to the socialist revolution.