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No. 631 .~X-523 20 October 1995 ~,.;i?-'- Racist Backlash Against O.J. Simpson Acquittal

For a moment, it seemed as though Notwithstanding the media circus the whole country had come to a which gorged itself on this sordid standstill: phone traffic plunged, crime, the jury grasped the simple assembly lines stopped, classrooms truth that a conviction would have went silent, even trading on the stock been an open endorsement of fla­ and commodities exchanges ground grant police racism and frame-up. almost to a halt. Then cheers erupted As L.A. Urban League leader John in a chorus that resounded from one Mack trenchantly remarked, Fuhr­ end of black America to the other, man's taped genocidal ravings were from run-down inner-city housing the missing sound track to the vicious projects to swan~ bank offices, from videotaped LAPD beating of Rodney prison cells to black colleges and King in 1991.::rhe understanding that churches. Not only blacks rejoiced. the cops regularly frame people up Amid shouts of "The Juice is loose," is pervasive in the ghettos and bar­ in Times Square blacks and whites rios, and it is widespread as well embraced, whites at Atlanta's airport among other sectors of the popula­ applauded, Latino bus riders in Los tion which have had direct experi­ Angeles cheered. But in city after ence with the racist, strikebreaking city there were scenes of sharp rl\cial thugs in blue. In the coal fields of polarization, as shocked or angry West Virginia, white United Mine whites stood alongside jubilant black Worker militants and their families, co-workers or fellow pedestrians. veterans of bitter class warfare, had One of the longest and costliest, no trouble with the Simpson verdict. certainly the most publicized and A flood of commentaries in the analyzed of criminal trials in Amer­ mass media expressed alarm at the ican history came to a close with an racial fault line in American society explosive climax, as the jury of eight "revealed" by the reactions to the black women, one black man, two Simpson acquittal. The breathtaking white women and one Latino man banality of this "revelation," self­ declared Simpson not guilty of the evident to every ghetto school kid, murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown was supplemented by a hefty meas­ and her friend Ronald Goldman. We ure of hypocrisy, as the capitalist don't know what happened the night press went out of its way to fan they were brutally slain. But we do the flames of race war. To believe Skallj/Dally Breeze know a blatant frame-up when we Vindictive LA. cops seek payback for Simpson acquittal by arresting black youth TV and newspaper reports, not one see one. In the face of ample proof graffiti artists in South-Central. white person in the country sup­ that the police and prosecutors lied, ported the jury's verdict. In fact, the that evidence had been planted, that fas­ jury rightly observed. the legal standard been proven so beyond a reasonable reaction among whites was mixed: de­ cist detective Mark fuhrman-at the "falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" (false doubt. The fact that it Qnly required a spite the media campaign, a Gallup-CNN center of the prosecution's case-was in one thing, false in everything) and the couple hours of deliberation to reach a poll taken a couple of days after Simp­ driven by racist contempt for a black legal definition of innocence, finding unanimous verdict constitute(l a scathing son was acquitted reported 42 percent of man married to a white woman, the Simpson not guilty because he had not indictment of the prosecutio~;s case. , continued on page 8 Farrakhan's Reactionary Dead End . . Million Man March Appeases Racist Exploiters At a time when the murderous racist forgive the oppressors and exploit­ of chattel slavery to the wage slavery the largest-ever march in the capital. rulers of this country are smashing ers for their enormous crimes against of modern industry. It took a revolu­ From the podium Farrakhan echoed every gain Won through the blood and black people, working people and poor, tionary civil war to destroy the South­ Clinton's speech, delivered the same toil of the workers and minorities, the while blaming the oppressed for their ern slavocracy, and it will take a third day in Texas, by laying the blame for nationalist demagogue Louis Farra­ oppression. American revolution, a workers revo­ conditions in the ghettos on the "per­ khan, later joined by former NAACP To hell with atonement! What's lution, to overthrow the whole capital­ sonal responsibility" of black men. president Ben Chavis needed is integrated class struggle to ist system of racist degradation and What about, the vista of permanent un­ and Jesse Jackson, fight for the liberation of black people impoverishment. employment, the assault on health care, r:;~ called a march of a and all the oppressed. Black oppression "Black Men's Rally for Responsi­ the elimination or welfare, the over­ t-- "million black men" in this country is rooted in the bedrock bility," the Washington Post called the flowing prison population and racist o,.,., for atonement. They of American capitalism, from the days October 16 event, which was possibly continued on page 6 o ..- co --4" I'­ No to Sexism, Nationalism! For Revolutionary Integrationism! N lJ"\ N Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution! t-- Government Hands Off Cyberporn! Watch out! Government computer wide range of what the government even the National Security snoops are on the prowl and you could deems pornography. He was busted by Agency (NSA) unable to be their next target. Like high school a postal inspector in Memphis who crack some of the encryption honors senior Paul Kim of Bellevue, downloaded pictures explicitly to nail programs now available to Washington, who losf a chance to a Thomas. Thomas and his wife, Carleen, PC users, -the government National Merit scholarship and possibly were found guilty by a Tennessee jury is zealously trying to clamp entrance to Harvard because he posted and he is now in prison. We say: Dis­ down on them, using export laws class­ the Net. To find it takes computer skills a parody of his school on the World Wide tributing "dirfy pictures" .is no crime. ifying such programs as munitions. This and often code words. It's not like little Web with links to Internet sites that offer Down with the anti-sex witchhunr! has angered powerful capitalist inter­ Susie is going to log on to get info for sexually explicit material. Or Robert This crackdown has a very sinister ests, including American software mane her history assignment and accidently hit Thomas, owner of Amateur Action Bul­ edge beyond the usual moralistic hys­ ufacturers and businesses who seek to "alt.bestiality.Barney"! This crusade is letin Board Service in Milpitas, Calif­ teria and fear'against "smut" and "filth" protect against intrusion on their com­ another avenue toward criminalizing sex­ ornia, who for years has been offering a contaminating innocent children. With munications by competitors (and the uality, and regimenting the population feds). Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) design­ across the hoard. In the name of fighting er, Phil Zimmerman has been the target "child abuse," they want to read every­ of a two-year (!) investigation for pos­ one's mail. It comes from the government For Revolutionary sible violation of federal weapons-export of Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, who Integrationism! laws because his "cryptography for the slaughtered 86 men, women and children masses" went outside the U.S. Zimmer­ in a religious commune outside Waco, Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March" man faces a possible five-year sentence Texas and justified this with the hypo­ calls Fw "atonement," hlaming hlack men and $1 million fine if convicted! critical claim of "saving the children"! Fir the cOllditions (If' their own oppression One government proposal to deal with The Justice Department recently con­ and telling hlack women to stay home. Far­ encryplior{ programs, pushed heavily by cluded a two-year investigation in which raklwn's retrogressi,'e program, an expres­ theClintonadministration last year, was over 125 homes and offices were sion of' hlack separatism, is an accommo­ to require manufacturers to install an en­ searched, thousands of E-mail messages dation to the I'iciou.\· racism inh('l'enl in cryption standard-vetted by the NSA­ were opened and raids were conducted American capitalist society. Forty years ago, known as the "clipper chip." This would in over half of the nation's FBI districts. TROTSKY ,'eteran American Trotskyist Dick Fraser LENIN permit the government to read all com­ A dozen America Online customers were FJ/lght Fir the then-re\'olutionary Socialist munications encoded by that chip. This arrested for swapping digitized sex pho­ Workers Party to inten'elle into the UI!/(ilding struggles for hlack equality with 'a device has since been dropped, in part tos of kids. As both Republicans and program to link this fight with the struggle /(1/' socialist rel'olution, in which hlack because the encryption genie is out of Democrats wave the flag of "family val­ workers would playa leading role. Commenting on the "Back to A/i'ica" mOl'ement the bottle; technology already exists to ues," the reactionary social c1irnate in led hy Marcus Gw'\'ey in the> early part of'this century, Fraser noted that "the Negro get around it. But that has only spurred the country has paved the way for /1uJ\'ement expresses separation at the time (!f'its greatest hackwardness, defeat and the government on a quixotic quest to increased censorship and outright perse­ isolatioll." Fraser's fight F!/' rel'Olutionary Jntegrationism and development (d'the develop a more advanced "clipper chip." cution of so-called "deviants." The war Marxist analysis of'racial oppressioll is a cornerstone (!f'the Trotskyist program today While Newsweek (6 February) screech­ on cyberporn is yet another assault on upheld hy the Sparwcist League. es that cyber (computer) crime is "prob­ the First Amendment. We demand: No Only once during the past 130 years have the Negro masses intimated in any way ably the fastest growing brand of wrong­ censorship or "pornography" laws! that they might take the road of separatism. This was the result of a social catastrophe: doing in America," the real targets are There certainly is a new breed of pred- - the defeat of the Negroes in the Reconstruction. This defeat pushed them back into not vicious criminals but ordinary people ator surfing the Net, but it isn't the child such a terrible isolation and demoralization, that there was no channel for the move­ pursuing their interests in the supposed molester as we would be led to believe. ment to express its traditional demand for equality. The result was the Garvey move­ privacy ·of their own homes. Ever worried It is the government agents posing as ment. This occurred, and could have occurred, only in the deepest isolation and by and distrustful of a discontented pop­ children. The March 1995 issue of Play­ confusion of the Negro masses. The real meaning of the Garvey movement is that ulation, the rulers of this country seek hoy outlines a frightening FBI plot which it provided a transition from the abject defeat of the Negroes to the renewal of to tighten control over every aspect of drew two men into a "chat group" involv­ their traditional struggle for direct equality. It did not at all signify a fundamental our lives. The Senate recently passed a ing fantasies of kidnapping a youth and nationalism .... "Communications Decency Act of 1995" making a sexually explicit snuff film. The division of American society into races cuts across the working class. The that would slap fines of up to $ 100,000 Though no victim was ever targeted nor white monopoly in skilled crafts created an aristocracy of labor corresponding to and prison terms of up to two years on any murder committed, both men were the racial division of society in general. The working class generally accepted the anyone who knowingly transmits mate­ convicted of conspiracy to commit mur­ idea that they secure an economic advantage from the subordinate position of Negroes rials that are "obscene, lewd, lascivious, der and received sentences of 30 years in the working class. filthy or indecent" tl) a minor-i.e., any plus. Playhoy pointed out, "No kids, no But as the roll of the skilled crafts diminishes in modern industry, the possibility kid with a modem.' crime. A government obsessed with the of maintaining an aristocratic division in the working class is revealed as a weapon As to what the government considers idea of snuff films .... And if Uncle Sam against the working class as a whole, dividing it and preventing unified class action "obscene," you can get"an, idea from had not been on the other end of the against capitalism .... the largely successful efforts by arch­ computer, there would never have been Segregation is the foundation of prejudice. The Negroes, in their struggle against reactionary Senator Jesse Helms to cen­ talk of a crime." The appeals judge noted, segregation are constantly clearing the ground for the emergence of class conscious­ sor the National Endowment for the Arts. "Even to talk of such awful crimes is ness in the working class as a whole .... The Exon amendment passed by the Sen­ abhorrent, but the extent of what occurred The dual nature of the Negro.. struggle arises from the fact that a whole people ate would restrict even profane language was just that, talk." regardless of class distinction are the victims of discrimination. This problem of a in cyberspace, and a bill introduced by Even talk is verboten under "family whole people can be 'solved only through 'the proletarian revolution, under the lead­ Utah Republican Orrin Hatch "would values" rules. FBI agents complained of ership of the w'orking class. The Negro struggle is therefore not the same as the expand the reach of child pornography minors and adults discussing sex in the class struggle, but in its independent character is allied to the working class. Because laws to encompass wholly imaginary, on-line "chat rooms." The anti -sex witch­ of the independent form of the Negro movement, it does not thereby become a computer-generated pictures" (Nation, hunt has meant no sex education, birth national or separatist struggle, but draws its laws of development from its character 16 October). control given out in two letters (NO), as a racial struggle against segregation and discrimination. Civil liberties groups are rightfully attempts to crush youthful sexuality ... -Richard Fraser, "For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Question" alarmed at the far-reaching dangers of and now they want to outlaw talking (January 1955) these bills; Jerry Berman of the Center about it in your own room! Talk about for Democracy and Technology com­ "safe sex"-no one's going to catch a plained, "What they're trying to do is sexually transmitted disease from a design a whole city to look like Disney megabyte. And for some kids, like a gay World." More repressive and draconian teenager who lives out in the boonies, measures are on the way, including crim­ this may be his or her life line to sanity inalizing both photos and computer­ or self-esteem. !~!.!~!!m~~!!.f!.~~'!.~ ~ generated fantasy images. David Wasch The bipartisan campaign against cy­ DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: George Foster worries that "Iawmakers ... threaten to berporn is a truly obscene campaign to EDITOR: Jan Norden transform a medium that personifies free persecute kids in the name of sheltering EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Carla Wilson communication into one where posted PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller them from digitized dirty pictures while CIRCULATION MANAGER: Shauna Blythe love letters between husband and wife countless families are about to be thrown EDITORIAL BOARD: Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, could be grounds for arrest and impris­ into the streets to starve as welfare Len Meyers, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg onment for indecency" (New York Times, "reform" takes hold. The real violence The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth 20 June). With 30 million users on the and crime of society flows from the mass Internationalist) . Internet (a communications system ini­ immiserization of the population by the Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly. except skipping three alternate issues in June, July and August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December. by the Spartacist tially created for Defense Departmentre­ greedy capitalist class. As the economy Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York. NY t0007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 searchers) the government desperately goe~ down the tubes and the bourgeoisie (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377. GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $10.00122 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York. NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard. wants to assert control. intrudes into every aspect of our lives, Box 1377. GPO. New York, NY 10116. For all the hysterics around rampant they now seek to make virtual reality, Opinions expressed in signed articles or leNers do not necessarily e:Apress the editorial viewpoint. pornography on the Internet, the truth well, virtually illegal...but it won't be a The closing date for news in this issue is October 17. is that sexually explicit matter accounts virtual prison they'll throw you into. No. 631 20 October 1995 for a very small proportion (less than Down with the cyberporn' witchhunt! one-half of I percent) of materials on Government censors butt out! • 2 WORKERS VANGUARD Interilatiooaf OutcryOverD.eatliS-.rJq'_ull\,Miirate Execution of Filipina Maid Stopped TOKYO-Last month, an Islamic court in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) con­ demned aJ6-year-old Filipina maid, Sarah Balabagan, to death by firing squad for killing her employer in self­ defense after he assaulted and raped her at knife point. Coming after the execution of ·another Filipina maid in Singapore earlier this year, the death sentence against Balabagan provoked international outrage. Demonstrations were held in the Philippines and else­ where calling to save Sarah. As the outcry mounted, on October 14 the court announced that, following inter­ vention by the UAE president, the death sentence had been revoked in ex­ change for blood money from Balaba­ gan's family. The death penalty is barbaric and an outrage against humanity. We call for the abolition of capital punishment, in the UAE and the Philippines as well as in Japan and the United States, two of the Independent few imperialist countries which enforce Free Sarah 8alabagan! Sixteen-year-old maid (left) still in prison this practice of state murder. Ironically, in the United Arab Emirates after death penalty lifted. Above, protest the fact that the feudal emirate has a at UAE consulate in Manila. pre-capitalist legal code provided the device-exchanging blood money for blood violence-to save this woman's life. But we warn that alth"ugh the At the age of 15, Sarah Balabagan left government of General Fidel Ramos who have crossed borders lured by death sentence against Sarah Balabagan Mindanao in the Philippines in order appealed the verdict, demanding a bigger promises of good jobs, only to find them­ was dropped, she is not out of danger, to help support her Muslim family, only monetary award for the rape and a reduc­ selves viewed as expendable commodi­ and demand that she be immediately to find a life of vulnerability, degra­ tion in sentence. The UAE's response ties, ruthlessly exploited without legal released and granted safe passage out of dation, unremitting toil and brutality. was to order a retrial with new judges, or trade-union protection and readily the country. Shortly after her arrival in May 1994, who subsequently convicted Balabagan thrown away when their labor is no The case of Sarah Balabagan has high­ documented in letters she sent home, of premeditated murder and ordered her longer needed. Held in contempt, vul­ lighted the conditions faced by the sev­ Sarah's employer demanded that she execution. nerable, and isolated, foreign women eral million Filipino .overseas contract "surrender her virginity" in exchange for A recent news article in a Gulf states workers are frequent victims of rape, workers (OCW) scattered around Asia. money and gold. When Sarah refused, magazine referred to Filipina maids beatings;lI1d whippings hefore laughing Almost 1.5 million work in Saudi Arabia she was raped at knife poi.nt. Attempting in the country as a "minefield." Other prison guards, and in general are treated and the various Persian Gulf oil sheik­ to fend off her attacker, she managed to reports put the spotlight on hehead­ no better than animals. doms, including the UAE, where they­ grab the knife and stab him "in defense ings of women in public squares as secu­ A 1994 report from the Phiiippine along with OCWs from Sri Lanka, India of my life and honor" (Today [Manila). rity measures instituted by the Saudi Overseas Workers Welfare Administra­ and elsewhere in the region-perform 27 June 1995). royal family to ensure stability. The tion states that Saudi Arabia topped the much of the backbreaking labor and The case was originally brought to more than 150.000 Filipino workers in list of countries ahusing Filipino work­ personal services for a feudalistic elite. trial in June of this year. Balabagan was the UAE have held "prayer sessions" ers, but rape and sexual abuse cases were Recent newspaper reports have revealed found guilty of manslaughter. sentenced for Balabagan ever since she was sen­ highest in "poor, little" Kuwait, the that Saudi Arabia has executed at least to seven years imprisonment for "abus­ tenced. And a strike by Filipino work­ country which sparked U.S. imperialist­ eleven women over the last three years, ing her right to self-defense," and fined ers at a natural gas development in led murderous war against Iraq under the while hundreds of foreign women work­ $42,000 in "biood money." At the same Qatar over working hoors and pay last banner of "freedom and democracy." The ers have been ferociously lashed in the time, the court awarded her $27,000 July no doubt impressed the sultans UAE (which recently began granting Gulf states. In Japan, where abuse of in compensation, a virtual acknowledg­ and emirs who lord it over.. lheir sub­ loans to its male citizens aheady mar­ Filipina "hostesses" and factory workers ment that she had been raped. Feeling jects while relying on the menial labor ried to "foreigners" to finance taking a is rampant, the mpre than 100,000 Fili­ the heat for its inaction following the of slaves and foreign workers without "local" woman as their second wife) is pino contract workers have been follow­ hanging of Flqr Contemplacion in Sin­ rights. one of three countries in the world ing Balabagan's case closely. gapore this past March, the Philippine These anachronistic absolutist rulers to which the Philippine government are propped up by billions of oil dollars has banned contract labor by "non­ and Western arms. The firing squad professional" women workers because and executioner's sword are part of a of rampant sexual abuses. In the last six whole panoply of state terror by these months of 1992, four foreign maids autocratic regimes which cannot tolerate attempted suicide there. even a breath of democratic rights. The London Independent recently BOSTON But the overseas workers, strategically published a five-part series (9-13 Octo­ located in the oil and other industries, ber) exposing the normally secretive Spartacus Youth Club Class Series are the Achilles heel of the Gulf statelets; "killing fields" in the Gulf, whose vic­ Saturdays, 2 p.m. Next classes, October tims include Saudis, Filipinas, Sri Lan­ 21: The Marxist UnderStanding of the State And while the petty royalty seek to hide kans, Nigerians, Indonesians and Pak­ and Imperialism; October 28: The Russian TORONTO any hint of opposition through rigid cen­ Revolution of 1917; Boston University, sorship, there are mumblings of discon­ istanis. Among the most horrendous CLA (College of liberal Arts) Room 418, Saturday, October 21, 7:30 p.m.: cases are that of 19-year-old Sithy National Chauvinism Is Poison to Class tent. The FinancialTimes (13 October) 725 Commonwealth Ave. Farook from Sri Lanka, executed by a For more information: (617) 666-9453 Struggle-For Quebec Independence! noted that the case of Sarah Balabagan Speaker: Charles Galarneau, Spartacist "has sharply reminded United Arab Emir­ seven-Illan firing squad in the UAE last Canada Editorial Board; St. Paul's ates authorities of their over-dependence April on charges of killing a four-year­ CHAMPAIGN/URBANA Centre, 427 Bloor Street w. (just west of Spadina) on imported labour." Out ofa total pop­ old after becoming desperately over­ Spartacus Youth Club Class Series ulation of 2.5-3 million, some 70 per­ wrought by her job of caring for 17 chil­ Spartacus Youth Club Class Series Alternate Thursdays, 7 p.m. Next class, cent are "foreigners," including 750,000 dren; and a Filipina worker in Saudi November 2: 1917-The Russian Revo­ Alternate Mondays, 7 p.m. Next class, Arabia, Leonarda Akula, who was pub­ October 30: The Marxist Programme; Intel'­ workers from India and another 400,000 lution; University of Illinois-Champaign/ from Pakistan. licly beheaded for killing her employer Urbana, lIIini Union, Room 217 national Student Centre, 33 St. George Street (north of College) and his wife (after they imprisoned her For more information: (312) 663-0715 For more information: (416) 593-4138 Female and "Foreign" in their house) and their 18-year-old son who tried to rape her. NEW YORK CITY VANCOUVER Filipinas, even in their own country, The author of the Independent series, Robert Fisk, writes: Spartacus Youth Club Class Series Spartacus Youth Club Class Series are viewed as objects to be kept in "their Alternate Fridays, 7 p.m. Next classes, Alternate Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Next place" in accordance with the pervasive "The nature of the Islamic trials and the October 20: The Revolution Betrayed; classes, October 26: Marx's View of Eco­ anti-woman attitudes reinforced . by cruel methods of execution call into November 3: Women's Liberation through nomics; November 9: The State: Lessons organized religion, both Catholic and, in question the morality of the West's mil­ Socialist Revolution; Spartacist Public itary and political support for Saudi Ara­ of the Paris Commune of 1871; Britannia the southern islands, Muslim. But the Office, 41 Warren Street (one Community Centre, Room L4, 1661 Napier bia and other Gulf states whose suppos­ block below Chambers Street) (off Commercial Drive) nightmare which befell Sarah Balabagan edly civilised values were defended by For more information: (212) 267-1025 For more information: (604) 687-0353 eXemplifies the status of women and 500,000 US, British and other Western the particular plight of fo'reign workers continued on page 10 . 20 OCTOBER 1995 3 Free, -Quality,lntegrated Education for All! Boston Schools: Liberals Attack A wealthy white Boston lawyer, they consider expendable. Their class Michael McLaughlin, has brought suit priorities are clear: when it comes to agamst the city's school department. black America. they only have money for Taking his cue from the national forces more prisons and more cops. of racist reaction, who seek to smash Affirmative Action The abominable level of public edu­ affirmative action and bury the corpse cation in Boston is a direct result of the of busing for school desegregation, message that any and all programs that like John Hancock and Joseph Kennedy malign neglect that came in the aftermath McLaughlin's suit alleges that his daugh­ aid minority youth in education are on Sf. As one of three public schools in of the smashing of school busing in the ter was denied access to the presti­ the chopping block. the city requiring a highly competitive mid-1970s. Indeed, it was Northern lib­ gious Boston Latin examination school These attacks on affirmative action are entrance examination, Latin sends nearly eral Democratic Party-controlled Boston because of "reverse discrimination."' a very real threat to students because 85 percent of its graduates to college. where school desegregation was killed Claiming that "all vestiges of unlawful Boston public schooling, mirroring Boston Latin has always been a bas­ by an alliance of violent racist bigots in discrimination have been el'iminated," inner-city education across the country, tion of race and class privilege. As soon the streets with pusillanimous limousine McLaughlin seeks to overturn the racial is, in a word, abominable. This was .as their kids are ollt of diapers, wealthy liberals in Congress who made sure that guidelines established after the pitched highlighted earlier this year when the families send them to the best private no buses with black schoolchildren battles in the early 1970s to desegrygate Jeremiah E. Burke high school lost its schools and tutors so that they can pass rolled out to their leafy suburbs w~ere Boston schools. regional academic certifiCation. Situated the exam to get into Latin. So much for the good schools are. Although hardly McLaughlin claims he took the action in. the middle of the poor and black a level playing field for the working­ adequate even as a solution to school reluctantly and doesn't want to become Grove Hall section of Roxbury, Burke class and minority youth competing for segregation, the busing programs of the a poster boy for the anti-affirmative had no librarian and one guidance coun­ a desk"at Latin! In a city school system '70s were often initiated and weakly action crowd. But his action was imme­ selor for 940 students. Ata hearing that is estimated to be only 18 percent implemented by federal judges in the diately hai led by arch-reactionary James last March, frustrated parents wanted white and with rapidly growing black aftermath of the mass social struggles cif Kelly. the president of the Boston City to know why the soon to be decertified and immigrant populations, Boston the civil rights movement. Council who got his start in city poli­ school resembled a prison (Boston Globe, Latin is still more than half white. Yet The Spartacist League and the Spar­ tics with the brick-throwing anti-busing 30 March). to the likes of McLaughlin, the guide­ tacus Youth League took an active part bigots in South Boston, and by Kelly's Burke High is hardly alone-fourotlier lines which allow blacks and Hispanics in the fight to defend school busing. We friends in the ultra-racist South Boston schools are listed on academic probation only 35 percent of the coveted school's fought for the formation of labor-black Information Center. Recently, McLaugh­ for lacking such basics as chalk, toilet places must be ripped up. defense guards to protect black children lin resigned from a law firm that' had paper and working clocks. Sixty percent The very existence of elite schools like from the racist mobs. Against the crim­ been involved in pro-ci\lil rights litiga­ of Boston's public high schools are either Boston Latin is predicated on the main­ inal illusions in and reliance on the cap­ tion so that he could pursue his reaction­ decertified, on probation or on warning tenance of race and class inequalities. italist state, we particularly opposed the ary court suit. status because of their inability to meet Obviously, if quality education were free call by left liberals and the Socialist Before this suit is even resolved. an already egregiously low academic stand­ and available to all children. there would Workers Party for "federal troops to Bos­ emboldened mayor Thomas Menino i~ ards which. even when passed, often pro­ be no need for competition for schools ton." Against the narrow limits set by already doing away with the racial guide­ duce functional illiterates. like Latin. The Spartacus Youth Club the federal judges, which tended to pair lines for adlTli~sion by restricting admis­ Boston Latin, on the other hand, rep­ fights for .Vee quality education for all. poor white districts like South Boston ~ions by quotas at an experimental ele­ resents one of a tiny handful of presti­ Even a basic democratic demand like with poor black districts like Roxbury, mentary school in white West Roxbury. gious "public" schools which turn out this is anathema to the capitalist class pitting them against each other, we This. along with incoming sc~ool super­ the next generation of leaders. Steeped because it would require millions of dol­ called to extend husing to the suburhs intendent and 'top Clinton aide Thomas in Boston "Brahmin" tradition (and gin). lars and the racist American ruling class so poor kids, black and white, could get Payzant's desire to reopen the debate Latin is the oldest school in the country has consciously written off the futures of a fair shot at a real education. over affirmativc action. sends out a clear (founded in 1635) and boasts graduates large numbers of inner-city blacks whom continued on page 10

:X;;;/ /~ .- //,,) /(/ ... ' . 4/1' O\.~\"~- i, IUPlE.sT~us\"G ~IOO~\ . I: .;>, BUSING '810 \\\~ SUSUI\P · ," f • Boston, 1974: Anti-busing racist mob goes after i IHTEGRATEO~~ \\\1~ Haitian worker. E\\\lCATION fUR. t..\.\.\ '. Spartacists fought for integrated 'ART AC\St t~t..GUt I~'{\ working-class defense of busing and its extension to the suburbs.

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4 WORKERS VANGUARD -~

lizing labor in defense of black and His­ panic neighborhoods under attack. Futility of "Review Boards" So what can be done? In Chicago, U.S. Representative Bobby Rush complained that atroCities like the murder of Joseph DC aw Gould take away from "good police offi­ • • cers who diligently do their jobs." Such whitewashing of the police is grotesque In the wake of Los Angeles cop Mark coming from former Black Panther Fuhrman's;rac.ist spewings, heard by vir­ Rush, whose comrades Fred Hampton tually the entire population of the United and Mark Clark were slaughtered in their States except for 12 jurors sealed off by beds in 1969 by racist cops and the FBI. Judge Ito, the media has been filled with To the racist government which is out "rogue cop" exposes and hand wringing to eliminate welfare, slash Medicaid and about why nobody seems to trust the gut Medicare, the killer cops are dili­ cops. It's really pretty obvious: the cops gently doing their jobs as they gun down lie, they're corrupt, they're vicious-and minority youth and fill the prisons and as every black and minority person in death rows with black and Hispanic men. the U.S. knows, they're deadly racist There's police brutality, racist police killers. And that's just in normal times. terror, and then there's Philly. In Phila­ Now it's worse, as the capitalist rulers delphia, where Mumia Abu-Jamal was have decided to let the poor and the inner put on death row by a cop frame-up-and cities rot, slashing what pathetic rem­ a bomb dropped by a police helicopter nants of social programs still exist, aban­ on the MOVE commune in 1985 killed doning even the pretense of caring for eleven black people and burned down broad sectors of the population. To carry a black neighborhood-some 100,000 this out, the ruling class requires a brutal arrests are presently under review as bla­ army of repression. While legal lynching tant racist frame-ups. Finally, in 1993 under the racist death penalty escalates they set up a police "advisory commis­ (40 prisoners have already been executed sion" after years of legal wrangling by this year, more than one a week, the most the cops to kill it. On September 19, the since capital punishment was reinstated panel held its first hearing, on the case in 1976), the cops are carrying out lynch of Moises Dejesus, and all hell broke law in the streets. According to FBI sta­ loose. tistics, in 1989, nationwide 369 people Several hundred police jammed into were killed by the cops, while by 1993 AFP the room, disrupting the proceedings in the figure had risen to 455-weII over Cop terror in Miami. city council chambers with jeers of "kan­ one a day! garoo, kangaroo" as witness after wit­ Their reckless contempt for human man, Aaron Williams, was beaten to Park for letting her grandchild pee ness told how in August 1994 police beat life was starkly revealed in Chicago this death by 12 cops. And San Francisco against a tree. Meanwhile, the police run the 250-pound tow-truck driver to death. summer. Joseph Gould, a black resident is still seething after 22-year-old Brian riot: days after a mob of New York cops Moises' mother, Rosa, said she had of a homeless shelter, was trying to earn Sullivan was gunned down in 1993 by terrorized hotel guests during a police called an ambulance when her son suf­ some change washing auto windshields the SF cop known as "the bogeyman," convention in Washington, D.C., the fered one of his frequent seizures, from on the night of July 30. Off-duty cop who'd wracked up dozens of civilian NYPD staged a mammoth operation an old brain injury. Instead, the police Gregory Becker came out of a nightclub complaints. spearheaded by a tank-like armored com­ arrived, beat and handcuffed him and and reportedly became so enraged at the In New York, the election two years bat vehicle clanking down Avenue A to threw him in a patrol car. But it didn't presence of this "squeegee man" that he ago of Republican mayor Rudolph Giu­ evict a few dozen artists and anarchist stop there. The cops pulled Dejesus out went to his car, pulled out a gun, held liani, who narrowly won with the Staten squatters on the Lower East Side. And of the cruiser's smashed rear window, it to Gould's skull and pulled the trigger. Island vote, was a green light for the this past weekend, an army of cops beat him mercilessly with long flash­ Then the cop just drove off. But thugs now dressed in militaristic "navy clashed with a crowd of hundreds who lights and nightsticks, and continued to witnesses got his license number and blue" (closer to SS black) uniforms. gathered in an East Village project after hit him as they dragged him a half block Becker was arrested the next morning. From Harlem and Washington Heights police shot a "drug suspect" in cold and threw his limp body into the police However, Cook County State's Attorney to Brooklyn and the Bronx, New York's blood. wagon. Jack O'Malley and a compliant judge Deadliest have been on a rampage. Even The direct link between the mayor's In March, District Attorney Lynne office and racist cop terror reached chill­ Abraham said her own "investigation" ing expression in January, when two His­ of the Dejesus a(rest found no criminal panic youths, Anthony Rosario, 18, and misconduct by the police. She said he his 2 I -year-old cousin, Hilton Vega Jr., died of coronary arrest caused. by cocaine were executed outright by twtrcops who and prescription drugs-a claim that had served as Giuliani's bodygua'rds dur­ even the city's medical examiner is back­ ing his campaign. After the killings, the ing away from. As the hearings opened mayor personally ca!led one of the shoot­ in September, Fraternal Order of Police ers, Detective Patrick Brosoan, to con­ head Costello lashed out against Demo­ gratulate him! Anthony Rosario's mother, cratic mayor Ed Rendell, telling him, Margarita Rosario, has been fighting for "Call off the hearings! You created it, justice, and has launched a $100 million you can kill it." Rendell, a pro-death pen­ civil suit against the police department, alty former prosecutor who handled the the two cops and the City of New York. original arraignment of Mumia Abu­ After a Bronx grand jury cleared the Jamal in 1981, is too soft for Costello. killer cops in April, buying the lie that Instead Costello backs the Republican the two murdered youths were robbers, challenger, Joseph Rocks, whose brother the Rosar1o family hired a respected is vice president of the Philly FOP. The pathologist to do an independent autopsy; cops went to court to block the panel she concluded that Vega and Rosario from compelling police to testify, and "were prone on the floor at the time of shut down the hearings for a week. the shootings." In August, the Civilian continued on page 11 Complaint Review Board (CCRB), a supposedly independent "all-civilian" agency (in reality staffed by five mayoral Protest demonstration at Bronx courthoLise; last July 7, against NYPD execution of Anthony Rosario and Hilton Vega Jr. and other victims of racist and three NYPD appointees) determined Spartacist League police. that the two cops had "used unnecessary Public Offices and excessive force." dropped murder charges down to official according to the NYPD's own statistics, Meanwhile the cover-up continues. -MARXIST LlTERATURE- misconduct for not reporting he'd dis­ there were 54 deaths at the hands of The CCRB has ceased its investigation Bay Area charged his weapon! police during 1994-31 from gunfire pending the outcome of an FBI probe Thurs.: 5:30·8:00 p.m .• Sat.: 1 :00·5:00 p.m. There is the hollow thud of repetition and another 23 who "died while in police into "possible civil rights violations," 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) to cop executions in the streets. On Sep­ custody." This was a 42 percent increase while the cops have been protecting and Oakland. California' Phone: (510) 839-0851 tember 6, in San Francisco's Ingleside over the previous year, with the vast defending the con man and police in­ Chicago district, yet another young black man majority of victims black and Hispanic. former who set up the two young men. Tues.: 5:00-9:00p.m., Sat.: 11 :00a.m.-2:00p.m. 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor was killed, shot in the back of the head Many others are thrown behind bars In 1992, the formation of the "civilian" Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 at close range as he was riding away on for what Giuliani terms "quality of life CCRB by black Democratic former a bicycle. This time it was two black violations," as the courts and prisons are mayor Dinkins drove the cops into a New York City Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. cops who did the shooting. William filled with subway "fare beaters," the frenzy; led by then-candidate Giuliani, 41 Warren St. (one block below Hankston Jr., 29, had been in a park bomeless, indigent "squeegee men," kids 10,000 white cops stormed City Hall: In Chambers St. near Church St.) which cops had targeted in their phony . suspected of playing hooky from school. the face of such racist cop bonapartism, New York, NY Phone: (212) 257-1025 "war on drugs." In June, another black A grandmother was arrested in Central the Spartacist LeagUe called for mobi- 20 OCTOBER 1995 5 Zionist state of Israel was founded on a program of racial separatism and "Jew­ Million Man ish capitalism." And there are deep par­ allels between Farrakhan's program and March ... that of the current right-wing consensus (continued from paRe 1) in American bourgeois politics. When Clinton was elected in 1992, the NOI police terror? These are non-issues for leader hailed the yuppie racist's plan for this apostle of "black capitalism," whose welfare "reform" and called to "cut fed­ message is "do for self." eral spending" (Louis Farrakhan, ,A This march was a reactionary appease­ Torchlight for America). As journalist ment of the capitalist rulers. Clearly, most Don Terry noted in the New York Times participants in this massive outpouring (15 October), "In many ways, Mr. Far­ of black men were not there because rakhan is a conservative, and on the sur­ they agree with Farrakhan's racist tirades face, at least, some of the rally's themes against "Jews and Asian immigrants or echo those heard at Republican gather­ because they have bought into his vision ings: God, loyalty, family, discipline." of "black capitalism" in a racially seg­ Various liberal black integrationists, regated society. But despite the outrage feeling the pressure to jump on the ban

However, some black feminists de­ If any Musllm-wht'tht'r hp '··.;·r:. the capitalist system. As American Trot­ nounced the. march, most· prominently be an Imam or Just a rich skyist Richard Fraser wrote in his -sem­ Angela Davis. But Davis et al. can offer man-backed a fool Uke Mal­ inal work, "For the Materialist Concep­ no solution for triply oppressed black colm In bUilding a MosquE'. tion of the Negro Struggle" (January women workers, because such refor­ ht' would be a fool htmself 1955): "The dual nature of the Negro mists are beholden to Clinton's Demo­ Only those who wish to bt' struggle arises from the fact that a whole cratic Party, which pushes the same It'd, to hell, or to their doom. people regardless of class distinction are will follow Malcolm. The die "family values" reaction as Newt the victims of discrimination. This prob­ is !M"t, and Maleolm shall not Gingrich or Louis Farrakhan. For our t'scape, especially aftf'r such lem of a whole people can be solved part, we recall that the vanguard of the eVil, foolish talk about his only through the proletarian revolu­ abolitionist movement against slavery­ bt'nefactor (Elijah Muham­ tion, under the leadership of the work­ John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Har­ mad) In trying to rob him of ing class." Adopting Fraser's perspec­ riet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and the the divine glory whl('h Allah tive of "revolutionary integrationism," Grimke sisters-stood for the common­ has b est 0 wed upon him. the Spartacist League deClared in one of ality of interests of all the oppressed. As Such a man as Malcolm Is its founding documents, written at the Frederick Douglass proclaimed, "Right worthy of death, and would time of the ghetto struggles of the '60s: ha v(' met with death tf It had is of no sex-Truth is of no color." In not be-en for Muhammad's' 'The Negro people are an oppressed our struggle for socialist revolution to ('onfldt'nce in Allah for vic· race-color caste, in the main comprising eliminate black and women's oppres­ the most exploited layer of the American tory over the enemit's working class. Because of the genera­ sion, we stand on the tradition of these tions of exceptional oppression, degra­ radical-democratic revolutionaries. M~'ED I dation and humiliation, Black people as Despite the efforts of his "main­ a group have special needs and prob­ stream" allies to downplay his role, Far­ lems necessitating additional and special forms of struggle. It is this part of the rakhan made it very clear that in going Months before Malcolm X was assassinated, Farrakhan (then known as struggle which has begun today, and "big time" he had no intention of toning Minister Louis X) declared Malcolm was "worthy of death," while Muhammad from which the most active and militant down his virulent anti-Semitism and big­ Speaks called for his head to roll. sections of Black people will gain a deep otry. On the eve of the march, a two-day education and experience in the lessons conference was held in Washington fea­ of struggle. Because of their position as a call went out from the podium for apartment complexes in Baltimore, Chi­ both the most oppressed and also the turing Farrakhan's notoriously anti­ everyone to wave a dollar bill in the air cago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and most conscious and experienced section, Semitic deputy Khallid Muhammad who as a symbol of the potential for black Pittsburgh. The NOI rent-a-cops serve revolutionary black workers are slated to spewed diatribes against Jews, white "empowerment." This scene of hundreds the racist rulers in carrying out repres­ play an exceptional role in the coming women and "race mixing." And a couple of thousands of men waving dollar bills sion of black youth no less than the gov­ American revolution." of days earlier, Farrakhan himself, in a - "Black and Red-Class encapsulates the fraud of "black capital­ ernment's official killers in blue. And in Struggle Road to Negro Reuters TV interview, declared that not ism": the idea that a significant black Farrakhan's black capitalist utopia this Freedom" (1967), Marxist only did he consider Jews to be "blood­ bourgeoisie could be consolidated in rac­ serves a greater purpose: profits. He Bulletin No.9. suckers" but that this applied toa whole ist America is a reactionary utopia. In writes that if the NOI were given "unhin­ Farrakhan's program of enforcing a list of ethnic groups: the face of a genocidal drive that is dev­ dered" rein, "we could effect a change strict separation and a return to Jim "Many of the Jews who owned the astating the ghettos, Farrakhan & Co. in the lifestyle of our people that would homes, the apartments in the black com­ Crow segregation could only be realized munity, we considered them bloodsuck­ preach accommodation to the racist cap­ allow us to do more with less wages." through a victory of the most extreme ers because they took from our commu­ italist status quo. right-wing racist forces in this country. nity and built their community but didn't As we wrote last year, in an article For Black Liberation Through Grotesquely, a significant number of offer anything back to our community. reprinted in the Spartacist pamphlet Socialist Revolution! . unions supported Farrakhan's march, And when the Jews left, the Palestinian series Black History and the Class Strug­ Arabs came, Koreans came, Vietnamese Many march partiCipants, and some particularly public employees unions in and other ethnic and racial groups came. gle No. II (August 1994), "Farrakhan speakers, compared Farrakhan's "Mil­ Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. The And so this is a type and we call them Is Bad News for Black People." Farra­ lion Man March" to Martin Luther only force that could benefit from unions bloodsuckers." khan's hostility to militant black struggle King's 1963 march on Washington. This throwing their weight behind a racially With such views, it's no wonder that Far­ is underscored by his vendetta against was the high-water mark of the liberal and sexually exclusionist program is the rakhan is more than willing to collabo­ Malcolm X. While today he tries to claim civil rights movement. It was intended Ku Klux Klan. rate with white-supremacists like Cali­ the mantle of Malcolm, two months by its liberal Democratic Party organiz­ The march takes place against the fornia Nazi Tom Metzger. Even back in before his assassination, Farrakhan pro­ ers to defuse the militancy of sections backdrop of a steady immiseration of the the 1960s under Elijah Muhammad, the claimed that Malcolm was "worthy of of the movement, notably 'the Student whole working class, with real wages NOI got funding from Texas ultrarightist death." In his 1993 Savior's Day speech, Non-Violent Coordinating 'Committee dropping by over 20 percent during the H.L. Hunt and cultivated relations with the NOI leader thundered, "we dealt with (SNCC), and steer the movement into last two decades. The absence of serious the American Nazi Party and the KKK. him like a nation deals with a traitor." the calmer waters of legislative reform class struggle is centrally due to the role This is a suicidal trap for black people, Despite his anti-white bombast and to get rid of Jim Crow segregation. Mal­ of the union bureaucracy and the related who would be the first victims of a fas­ the NO! program which still calls for colm X aptly called -that march the dispersal and co-optation of labor radi­ cist takeover. "complete separation in a state or terri­ "Farce on Washington." What does that cals. The labor police of capital have The petty-bourgeois hucksters of the tory of our own," Farrakhan seeks to hire make Farrakhan's march, which blames presided over the destruction not only NOI seek ~ to pit one . sector of the himself out to the racist capitalist rulers black people for their oppression and of millions of jobs but also of large sec­ oppressed against others because their as' a cop over the ghetto masses. After tells the women to stay home? tions of their own organizations without program is to become the "bloodsuck­ patrolling the Mayfair Ma'nsions housing When the civil rights movement "went lifting a finger in struggle. It's no won­ ers"-that is the capitalist exploiters-of project in Washington, D.C., in the early North," it came up against the realities der, then, that they turn a complete blind "their" people, claiming the ghetto as '90s the NOI Security Agency won con­ of black oppression-in jobs, housing, eye to hideous conditions for blacks and their exclusive market. During the rally, tracts to guard federally subsidized schools-which are rooted in the very other oppressed minorities. structure of American capitalism and can­ What is required is forging a revolu­ m < ro not be eliminated through legal reforms. tionary leadership of the workers move­ ):> 3 Frustration in the Northern ghettos ex­ ment, including through a political strug­ o Q. ploded in a series of ghetto upheavals gle against the sellout leadership in the in the mid-'60s, which were brutally put unions, whose first loyalty is not to the down by cops and National Guard troops. workers but 'to the capitalist system. We Simultaneously, the federal government Trotskyists continue the tradition of the sought to buy off discontent and create Communist International in Lenin's day, a layer of black middle class and pro­ which proclaimed itself "not simply the fessionals as a buffer against black organization of the enslaved white work­ unrest. Today, there is a greater disparity ers of Europe and America but equally . Delegation of in income among blacks than among the organization of the oppressed colored American Nazi Party whites, with 20 percent of black families peoples of the world" whose duty is "to at 1961 Nation of earning' half of all black income. encourage and support the international Islam meeting in This layer, which continues to endure organization of the Negro people in their Washington, D.C. the daily humiliations of racism, has struggle against' the common enemy." Farrakhan treacherously seeks seen the openings which they were We seek to forge a multiracial vanguard "common ground" afforded slam shut, especially for their party which can lead the proletariat at with genocidal children. Predisposed by their relatively the head of all the oppressed in a struggle fascists on basis of privileged position to buy into the sham for workers revolution, to replace the anti.Semitism and of "black capitalism," many members of capitalist system, whose decay is so segregationism. the black middle class are turning in painfully evident in America's inner cit­ despair from the goal of integration and ies today, with a socialist society that some have provided an audience for can realize the promise of emancipation Farrakhan's demagogy. The outlook of and equality for all. _ 20 OCTOBER 1995 7 California cop training film on domestic Simpson violence-but because they wanted to break the news of his ex-wife's death to him gently and help care for his chil­ Acquittal ... dren! Then Fuhrman jumped over the (continued from page 1) fence to scour Simpson's estate-with­ whites said the jurors made the right out a search warrant. Writer Joe Doma­ decision. Yet a steady stream of racist nick, author of a book on the LAPD, vitriol was directed at Simpson's black remarked: "Mark Fuhrman went over the lead attorney, Johnnie Cochran, at the wall at O.J. Simpson's house simply majority black jury, at every black per­ because that's what he always did." son across the country who saw in the Indeed, it was a striking expression of verdict a brief glimpse of justice. the arrogant bonapartism of the police Simpson's acquittal was met with a and prosecutors, who chafe at the most bloodthirsty outcry. Reeking with racist minimal constraints, that they treated arrogAnce, yuppie lead prosecutor Marcia this case as though they were dealing Clark declared: "Liberals don't want to with an anonymous ghetto youth saddled admit it, but a majority black jury won't with an apathetic and underpaid public convict in a case like this." Los Angefes defender. The seemingly endless list of Times columnist AI Martinez scurrilously slipshod omissions, constitutional viola­ ranted, "The Johnnie Cochran Troupe did tions and outright lies in the Simpson everything but tap-dance and tumble investigation make sense only if it is before a jury that wouldn't know DNA understood that the cops and prosecution from the PTA." With incredible chutzpah, do not depend on getting evidence to high-flying white executives and subur­ secure a conviction. banites moaned that Simpson beat the Racial polarization in response to Simpson The American "justice" system is pre­ rap only because of his wealth! We didn't acquittal: as black dicated on Jrame-up-of the guilty as hear these screams of outrage when white students in Illinois well as the innocent-whether out of multimillionaire Claus von Bi.ilow got college cheered, many vindictiveness or sheer laziness. The off on appeal on the charge of attempted whites expressed shock. cops' word is usually all it takes, occa­ murder of his wife. sionally augmented by some "scientific" It's striking that in the forefront of the Myung J. Chun evidence churned out in a police crime uproar were feminists and liberals, who 0.1. got the same frame-up treatment picket-litle battles in the Midwest point lab. Most ofthe time, it works. One homi­ presumed Simpson guilty from the start. meted out daily in the ghettos. But the to the basic Marxist understanding that cide cop inadvertently made that clear The National Organization for Women fundamental divide in this deeply racist the workings of the profit system itself when he complained, "There are people (NOW) in L.A. organized screaming pro­ society, as in every capitalist country, is will provoke social struggle. What is doing life without parole who have been tests against the acquittal. On the Op-Ed not race but class. With his millions, 0.1. needed is a multiracial revolutionary convicted with one-tenth of the evidence pages of the New York Times, liberal Simpson was able to buy himself an ace workers party to fuse the anger of the that they had in the Simpson case." But feminist Maureen Dowd fumed about team of lawyers. The sentiment of one black ghetto masses with the militancy Simpson's "dream team" of high-priced Simpson going free: "hide your wives Seattle man was repeated nationwide: "If and social power of white West Virginia lawyers', experts and investigators­ and daughters." Black columnist Bob it had been me or anybody else, or any miners and the integrated urban working though arrayed against a massive pros­ Herbert lashed out at the "degrading spec­ other black man," he said, "without the class in a struggle that sweeps away the ecution effort backed by the full power tacle" of black people "furiously cele­ money and without the fame, he'd be in entire machinery of capitalist exploita­ of the state and well over a million brating the Simpson verdict," maligning jailor on death row or dead already." tion and oppression. dollars in corporate "pro bono" fund­ it as "a collective dance on the graves Former Black Panther Geronimo ji ing-had the resources to unravel the lies of two innocent people." Anthony Lewis Jaga (Pratt) has been in a California The Capitalist State­ and discredit the DNA tests. William pointed to the prosecution's "conclusive" prison for 25 years, framed up for a Frame-Up, Inc. O'Dell Harris, a black man from West evidence and dismissed defense claims crime the government knows he did not The central strand in the prosecution's Virginia, did not: he spent seven years that the cops framed Simpson, asking commit. And Mumia Abu-Jamal remains case was the "testifying" of fascist cop behind bars before it came out that the incredibly: "What motive would they on death row in Pennsylvania, innocent Mark Fuhrman. Months earlier, this DNA evidence used to convict him had have to do that?" What motive?! What of any "crime" but his eloquent and out­ swastika-wearing racist pig had boasted, been fabricated by a police chemist. world does Lewis live in? spoken defense of the oppressed. As "If I go down, they lose the case." Then What was on trial in the Simpson case came the bombshell expose of Fuhr­ was the LAPD and, by extension, every man's genocidal rantings on 12 hours of police department in the country. The audiotape. Judge Ito allowed the jury to cops-black as well as white-act as an hear only the tiniest portion of Fuhr­ occupying army in the ghettos and adopt man's repeated slurs of blacks, Hispanics a corresponding mentality of racist con­ / and Jews, and not one mention of 18 tempt against all black people. Liberals incidents he nauseatingly described of leapt to denounce the Simpson verdict L.A. cops beating suspects, coercing tes­ because, no less than the conservative timony, lying, destroying and manufac­ right, they. are committed to upholding turing evidence. BIH the evidence they the sanctity of the capitalist state. If any­ were allowed to hear and see was more thing, in recent years liberals have placed than enough to convince the jury that themselves in the vangt,tard of the drive the prosecution's star witness was a lying for "law and order" with tht

8 WORK.E~S VANGUARD evidence. Many of these measures rep­ struction of the Soviet Union has led mans of this country were to take power, nents of integration, the WL blithely resent a frontal assault on the Bill of those who own the equity and debt of Jews would be in peril as well as blacks. claimed, "the issue in Warrendale is not Rights: the Fourth Amendment's ban on America to fantasize about an infinite More pronounced has been ihe femi­ race." And in the Simpson trial, .North unreasonable search and seizure (already vista of pure profit and untrammeled nist outcry over the Simpson acquittal. & Co. declare that "Racism ... is only a vitiated by numerous Supreme Court exploitation. This is the banner of the Tammy Bruce, the rabid leader of the secondary and incidental basis of the decisions), the Fifth Amendment's guar­ Gingrich/Dole Congress (with Clinton L.A. chapter of NOW, barely tried to oppressive role of the police." antee against self-incrimination, the limping along behind it), pushing a fan­ restrain her bloodlust for a Simpson For years, the Northites have pre­ Sixth Amendment's promise of the right tastical scheme of a utopian capitalism lynching party. Simpson was a reprehen­ sented a "colorblind" version of "social­ to counsel and a public trial. which can somehow pay for a huge mil­ sible wife-beater, but that doesn't prove ism" that dates back to the American Viewed in combination with the cur­ itary machine and rid itself of an enor­ that he was a murderer, as the feminists social democracy before the impact of rent onslaught on the rights of immi­ mous debt while slashing taxes for the and the prosecution wO!lld have it. Sex­ the Russian Rev01ution was felt. In the grants-including naturalized citizens­ rich, all simply by demolishing social ual relations between black men and early part of this century, Socialist Party and the massive intrusion of Christian welfare for the poor. white women are an explosive issue in leader Eugene V.. Debs once declared, Coalition religious bigot(y into poli­ Meanwhile there is growing despair this profoundly racist society. It is "We have nothing special to offer the tics, this assault on constitutional rights not only in the black ghettos but in the enough to recall the Scottsboro case of Negro." But North has more in com­ reflects a reactionary yearwing to return Idaho hillsides and in the Midwest Rust nine young blacks in the 1930s who were mon with Debs' social-chauvinist oppo­ the Constitution to the exclusive benefit Belt. The expressions of this despair are, nearly lynched on the false charge of nent, Milwaukee "sewer socialist" Victor of those it initially was intended to cover: however, sharply differentiated along raping two white. women. Countless Berger, who was an open racist. property-owning men who were of course race lines. In the ghettos, and even more black men in the Jim Crow South were Marxists have a different, and coun­ English-speaking, Protestant and surely so among the black middle class, there lynched for nothing more than "reckless terposed, tradition. A defining political "white." Over the ensuing two centuries, is an openness to pseudo-nationalist eyeballing" of white women. That's what struggle in the early socialist movement including a revolutionary civil war, the demagogues like Louis Farrakhan. happened to 14-year-old Emmett Till in was over the case of Alfred Dreyfus, a definition of "citizen" came to include Among whites who now feel cut out of Mississippi 40 years ago. and nobody Jewish officer in the French general staff many-though by no means all-ofthose the "American dream," there's a ten­ was tried for. his' murder. who was framed up in an anti-Semitic people resident in the United States. dency to look to rightist answers, includ­ The Simpson case provided an excru­ witchhunt. Dreyfus was no leftist or The achievement of substantial legal ing eccentricities, blaming current social ciating contradiction for opportunists worker any more than 0.1. Simpson is, equality for black people, beginning after and economic ills on, e.g., immigrants, whose politics are based on tailing after but rather a conservative militarist and World War II, was also heavily motivated the "ZOG" (Zionist Occupation Govern­ various petty-bourgeois forces, from supporter of French imperialism. None­ by U.S. imperialism's felt need to look ment), satanism and single black welfare feminists to black nationalists. Sam theless, genuine socialists did not wait good internationally-not least in its mothers. In the absence of sharp class Marcy's Workers World Party decided for Dreyfus's tormentors to admit they competition with the Soviet Union in the struggle leading to a decisive fight for that after the Fuhrman tapes, "racism were carrying out a frame-up-which the Third World. However, even as citizen­ political power by the working class, this eclipsed the 9ther critical social issue French army high command finally did ship rights were extended to broader sec­ is a recipe not only for increased racial tors of the population, these rights-nota­ polarization but ultimately for one-sided bly the Second Amendment right to bear genocidal race war. arms-were simultaneously attenuated. Yet this widespread disaffection also Now, some significant elements of white creates an immediate problem for the rul­ racist reaction, exemplified by the nativ­ ing class. If there is one thing on which ist groups who designate black people various sectors of the population agree, as "Fourteenth Amendment citizens," are it is that the government can't be trusted. placing a large question mark over the Clinton's draconian "counter-terrorism" very extension of citizenship to freed bill has run aground on distrust over the black slaves. We call for full citizenship feds' murderous assaults at Waco and rights for everyone who lives here. Ruby Ridge. And, even before the Simp­ The capitalist rulers have imple­ son acquittal, cops and prosecutors were mented a barrage of new legislation complaining that it is getting increas­ aimed at bolstering their powers of ingly difficult to get largely black and repression, while dusting off old legis­ Hispanic juries in the inner cities to con- lation. The recent conviction in the NYC . vict. The- Bronx, for example, ha~ an "terrorism" trial of blind Egyptian cleric acquittal rate of over 47 percent for black Omar Abdel Rahman and nine other defendants in felony cases. An editorial Islamic fundamentalists on charges of in the Wall Street Journal (4 October), titled "The Jury's Right," wrote that "we "seditious conspiracy" is an ominous 010 precedent for widespread police-state would be fools not to see that the Labor must be mobilized to fight police terror: union contingent in Philadelphia frame-ups. The ten were not even Simpson jury is trying to tell this country demonstration on August 12 for death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. charged with carrying out a crime, but something important." The verdict, said simply with a "conspiracy of intent." this mouthpiece for finance capital, sent in the spotlight-domestic violence" only a month ago, 100 years after the Sedition laws have historically been used "a large message" about the criminal jus­ (Workers World, October 12). And· if fact-but rallied to his defense as part to go after leftists and labor activists, tice system: "They don't trust it. Neither Fuhrman's genocidal rantings had not of the fight against anti-Semitism and from the 1919-20 Palmer raids which do a lot of other people." been revealed, would that have swung all aspects of political reaction. rounded up thousands of foreign-born Reflecting similar concerns within the the balance the other way? Russian Bolshevik leader v.1. Lenin leftists in the afte~math of the 1917 Rus­ bourgeoisie, William J. McDonough, One group which had' no contradic­ had in mind the Dreyfus case and sim­ sian Revolution to the World War II pros­ head of the Federal Reserve Bank of tions is the Workers League (WL) of ilar instances of chauvinist persecution ecution of 18 Trotskyist leaders. Most New York, recently warned: "We are David North. In the last coup)e of years, in writing that the revolutionary van­ recently, the feds attempted to use sedi­ forced to face the question of whether this dubious outfit has written "off the guard of the proletariat must be a tri­ tion laws in a failed 1989 case against we will be able to go forward together trade unions as any sort of working-class hune o{ the people, fighting against three members of the Ohio 7, New Left as a unified socie.ty with a confident out­ organizations and denounced the right to every manifestation of oppression and radicals who were already serving time look or as a society of diverse economic self-determination for oppressed nations. anti-democratic discrimination. Follow­ on another frame-up conviction. groups suspicious of both the future and Now, the WL has become the "left wing" ing Lenin's example, the Spartacist With bipartisan support, the capitalist each other" (New Yorker, 16 October). of outright racist reaction. In a commen­ League calls for a revolutionary work­ rulers are trying to turn the United States Yst even more far-sighted capitalist tary co-authored by WL supremo North, ers party which champions the cause of into a "democratic" police state. The spokesmen have no answers, because at these racist pro-cop "socialists" sounded all the oppressed. The Simpson case occupation of the ghettos proceeds apace bottom this is an irrational system pred­ like a press release from the prosecution: confirmed yet again that, despite the with the militarization of the Mexican icated on anarchic market forces which "A very wealthy man was able to manip­ changed demographics of American border. As Johnnie Cochran aptly put it, lead to the destruction of productive ulate the legal system and, as in this case, society with the influx of Hispanic and "The vision of America has become capacity and of ever wider layers of the literally get away with murder." North Asian immigrants in recent years, black barbed wire from sea to shining sea." working population. And that necessarily alibis the cops, dismissing "claims of oppression remains, as it has always The latest report from the U.S. Sen­ means increased police repression. frame-up" which "confuse routine slop­ been, the cornerstone of reaction in tencing Project shows that fully one third piness, lies and arrogance with a genuine the U.S. We fight for Mack liheration of all black men in their twenties are For a Leninist Party, Tribune of the People! conspiracy to manufacture a case." Since through socialist revolution. now either in prison or on parole or pro­ Siinpson was not a leftist or a worker, Large numbers of black people under­ bation-up from 23 percent six years The Simpson trial provided a graphic they claim, he could not have been stand that the whole system of police ago--Iargely as a result of the "war on illustration of the suicidal character of the victim of a police and government frame-up and judicial persecution is drugs." Meanwhile, some three million ethnic and sectoralist politics in rac­ frame~up. And what of racism? Not an loaded against them. But this racist kids and their mothers are about to be ist, capitalist America. Ronald Gold­ issue for North, who explicitly equates "injustice" system will not be defeated deprived of even the most minimal means man's father-whose lawyer was ear­ "white racism and black nationalism" as in the courtroom with high-priced law­ of existence, as Clinton/Gingrich/Dole lier Fuhrman's spokesman!-violently "mutually complementary." yers. In recent years, the SL and the Par­ abolish welfare. This is the pathology of denounced Cochran for comparing Fuhr­ This is far from the first time that the tisan Defense Committee played a key capitalism in its death agony. man with Hitler in his summation speech. WL has acted as bloodhounds for· the role in organizing the fight to free death Behind the current escalation of Cochran's statement was eminently true. cops. When SWP militant Mark Curtis row political prisoner Mumia Abu­ police-state terror is the drastic decline Referring to Fuhrman's genocidal call to was framed up on bogus rape charges Jamal. We seek in particular to mobilize in the living standards of wide layers of "place all the n --- --s on a pile and burn by Des Moines, Iowa cops and prosecu­ the social power of labor to free Mumia the population. The discontents wrack­ them," Cochran warned: "There was tors in 1988, the Northites scripted the from the clutches of his would-be exe­ ing America stem from the decline of another man not too long ago in the world summation for the prosecution, which in cutioners and abolish the racist death U.S. capitalism as an are'a of production who had those same views .... This man, many cases was virtually identical with penalty.,For the one third of young black in the world market, signaled by the this scourge, became one of the worst the WL statement. And in 1992, the men in the clutches of the cops and August 1971 fall from the gold standard people in the history of this world, Adolf Workers League acted as spokesmen for' courts, for the millions of welfare moth­ at the height of the losing, imperialist Hitler, because people didn't care or a white racist backlash against the pres­ ers and children facing starvation, for war in VietQam. Even as wide swathes didn't try to stop him." It takes the mind­ ence of a school named after Malcolm X the working class as a whole, the pro­ of American industry and millions of set of a bigoted Zionist to see this as in the predominantly white Warrendale gram of revolutionary class struggle to unionized manufacturing jobs have been black anti-Semitism or any kind of triv­ area of Detroit. As school doors were sweep away the capitalist oppressors is devastated, the counterrevolutionary de- ialization of the Holocaust. If the Fuhr- defaced with swastikas by avowed oppo- the only road to liberation._ 20 OCTOBER 1995 9 pines, where 2,000 people a day leave Since the 18th century when the first Court decision Milliken I'. Bradley which Filipina'Maid~ .. to work ,overseas. Contemplacion was migrant workers left the islands to labor exempted Detroit's richer and whiter viewed as a hero and victim among a as orange pickers in Hawaii, their num­ suburbs from desegregation. In Boston. 3) (continued from pa[;e great majority of the Filipino working bers have swelled to more than 5 million successive relaxing of guidelines along troops after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in class; at least three movies were pro­ and their destinations have expanded with massive white flight to parochial 1990." duced about her life, drawing many thou­ around the globe. The Marcos regime schools and the suburbs made desegre­ Indeed, the imperialist "Desert Slaugh­ sands who could identify with her fate. sped up this human export industry in gation efforts all but a dead letter. ter" of Iraq was not about morality but While the Ramos government hypo­ the mid-1970s when he urged Filipinos The rump of the busing program now about control of oil and U.~. imperial­ critically mouths words of condemnation to go abroad to earn hard currency and shuttles minority students from one ist domination. But while denouncing of Balabagan's sentence, it is careful not reduce unemployment. Today, the Phil­ side of town to another, but integrates the Arab oil sheikdoms for their cruel to push too far. As one government offi­ ippines is the world's largest labor nothing. EV'en this pathetic pretension and inhumane treatment offoreign work­ cial put it, "We intend to keep our rela­ exporter, embracing some 10 percent of is under attack as Kelly promises to ers and wondering what the Gulf War tions with the' U.A.E. It is one of the the population, who remit the country's press forward his agenda of openly was aJrabout, the Independent "forgets" friendliest countries to the Philippines" biggest source of foreign currency-an segregated "neighborhood schools." to mention the plight of domestic ser­ (Asiaweek, 29 September). It is also a estimated $3-6 billion annually. Most of The assaults on affirmative action and vants in Britain-enslaved not only by busing in Boston are but one still frame (fJ sheiks who have moved there, but also u from the horror movie playing nation­ ~ 0) wide. The New York Times speculates by expatriates who have returned and o brought their servants with them-doc­ s. that as many as 1,000 pending court suits umented in Bridget Anderson's book, are seeking to throw out already attenu­ Britain's Secret Slal'es, published by ated school busing orders. Desegrega­ Anti-Slavery International. tion programs have already been elimi­ And in the U.S., a whole industry of nated in Norfolk, Virginia and Oklahoma City. Recently a federal judge in Denver garment sweatshops is based on Asian Spartacist Group not only reversed a 21-year-old program and Latina women workers. often work­ Japan demands ing in literal slavery. In the article "USA: "Full Citizenship for school desegregation, but upheld an Immigrant Women Workers Expose Rac­ Rights for Foreign amendment to the Colorado Constitution ist Abuse" (Women and RCI'oll/lion No. Workers!" at rally prohibiting any school busing to achieve 42. Spring/Summer 1993). we wrote of against police racial balance. In the case of Missouri the conditions of Latina_ maids. Now roundup of Iranian v. Jenkins, the U.S. Supreme Court inval­ immigrants. both legal and "illegal." are immigrants in idated a desegregation order imposed on the targets of a racist backlash symbol­ Tokyo in 1993. the Kansas City school system with Clar­ ized by California's Proposition 187. ence Thomas delivering a consenting In Japan, we well remember Maricris opinion. Sioson and the 32 other Filipinas Whose The capitalist class puts only as much deaths in 1991. while working as "host­ money into education as it thinks it can esses." were covered up as the Philippine top market for imported Philippine prod­ the OCWs are women who are employed get back from an exploitable workforce. embassy in Tokyo refused to seriously ucts. Meanwhile, Ramos hands down mainly as domestics at the lower end of The vicious and gratuitously racist cut­ investigate. Sioson was 21 when her death sentences at home and whips up the pay scale. backs in education, like the genocidal bruised, battered and stabbed body was nationalism in the form of praising the Demonstrations in defense of Filipina cutbacks in welfare and health care, are returned to her home in Manila. One stranglehold of Catholicism on the Phil­ maids have included contingents from coldly calculated to reduce the cost of young woman was thrown' out of a win­ ippines while denouncing the "fanati­ trade unions. But even in the case of the one of capitalism's most important com­ dow, another was drowned in a bathtub. cism" of Islam. This past summer a task left-led KMU labor federation, under the modities, labor power, the cost of a new These women were enticed from their force of 3,000 police and presidential cover of socialist rhetoric. their real pol­ generation of wage slaves. With virtually impoverished homeland, forced into guards backed by armored cars descend­ itics are nationalist reformism, putting no jobs available, the bourgeoisie sees prostitution or imprisoned in factory dor­ ed on the Muslim quarters of Manila in pressure on the bourgeois ruler of the no reason to spend a cent for black people, mitories and subjected to all kinds of a pre-dawn raid, arresting 300 suspected day. Ultimately, the fate of the thousands and reverts to its historically normative abuses. Their male counterparts scrimp "gang members," an obvious attempt to of other Sarahs, Flors and Leonardas, animus against the very prospect of black to make a living as dock workers at the intimidate the Muslim insurgency move­ and of the increasing millions of foreign equality. As we said in a leaflet protesting port of Yokohama or as day laborers ment in the south. workers throughout the world, depends the University of California's knifing of throughout the country. Working in some After overthrowing the dictatorship of on the forging bf a revolutionary inter­ affirmative action in admissions, "Hav­ of the dirtiest, hardest jobs, they are sub­ the hated Ferdinand Marcos. General nationalist vanguard party of the prole­ ing eliminated millions of manufacturing jected to non-payment of wages when Fidel Ramos poses as a democrat and tariat. Equality of wOlpen and elimina­ jobs, effected genocidal cuts in welfare they can find work, and suffer systematic defender of OCWs. But whether under tion of poverty are tasks that cannot be and gutted the public health care system, abuse of their health. Marcos or Ramos, as the obedient solved short of socialist revolution on the ruling class now wants to declare In a leaflet calling for defense of servant of U.S. imperialism and executor aninternatiorral scale. thai they never have to hire a black person the rights of foreign workers distrib­ of the dictates of the International Mon­ The outcry over the threatened execu-. again" (or provide him or her with any­ uted on May Day 1993, the Spartacist etary Fund, the Philippine government tion of Sarah Balabagan must not fall thing apprqaching an education). Group Japan demanded full citizenship has kept the majority of the population silent. Only when those who labor rule Even before the takeover of the federal rights for all foreign workers and for for­ at or below starvation level so that they will the sheiks and their executioners, judiciary by nutty ultraright Reaganite eign workers to be integrated into the must leave the country to earn a living. holdovers of medieval backwardness, as conservatives and the rise of racist same unions as their Japanese brothers A spiraling escalation in the price of well as their powerful imperialist patrons Clinton/Gingrich reaction, the American and sisters. rice and other commodities and a threat­ who have repeatedly el)gulfedthe world bourgeoisie, a class in decay, had proven ened increase in oil prices, combined in the flames of modern, warfare, be itself. manifestly incapable of fulfilling "The Sun Never Sets on a with Ramos' repeated calls for emer­ swept from the stage of history. _ as basic a democratic right as equal access Filipino Worker" gency powers and attempts to implement to a decent education. The fight for qual­ Similar to the furor unleashed follow­ police-stare measures (such as detention ity integrated schooling as part and parcel ing the execution of Flor Contemplacion, without trial and a national identification Boston ... of the struggle to desegregate every aspect of social life in this country will the case of Sarah Balabagall" has un­ system) have brought large numbers of (continued from page 4) leashed a cry of qutrage in the Philip-. protesters into the streets. take nothing less than a socialist revo­ At the height of the racist tide against lution. For this monumental task we need busing, the liberals conspicuously turned a revolutionary workers party that can their backs on 'integration in educa­ lead the integrated working class to burn tion, beginning with the 1974 Supreme the racism out of American society. _ STATEMENT OF ()WNERSHIP, reque~ted circulation: (I) Sales through dealer~ and MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION catTier~. ~trcct vcndor~. and counter sales: IIAXS; (2) (Required by 39 U.S.c. 3685) Paid or requc-.;tcd mail:-.ub:-.criptions: 2.796: c. Total paid and/c)r requested ,'irculation (Sum of 15b( I) and I. Puhlication title: Work('r.\ \illlgi/ord. 15h(2)): 14.2X4: d. Froe distrio.ution by mail: 326: ~. Publication nl'.: O<.J-X770. c. Frcc di~tribution ~)utside the mail: 0: f. Total free 3. Filing date: 2X Sept(,lllher 1'1'15. di ... trihution (Sum of 15d and 15('): 326; g. Total dis­ SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY 4. Is~ue frcquency: Bi-weekly (exccpt 3 altern;.ltc trihution (Sum of 15c and l'if): 14.610: h. 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10 WORKERS VANGUARD nearly beat Rodney King to death. In a carried signs with flag-waving appeals, in-the-wool defenders of the profit sys­ L.A. Cuts ... city which has a gap between rich and such as "Boeing-Stay in the U.S.A." tem. Today, every worker in the country poor that ranks third behind Calcutta and and "Export Planes;-Not Our Jobs." . says the union-busting assaults began (continued from page 12) Rio de Janeiro (Nation, 19 September), One striker who has worked at Boeing with the defeat of the PATCO air traffic country club set, but stiffed largely the ruling class relies on racist cop terror since 1966 told the New York Times (14 controllers in 1981, but Machinists then­ minority L.A. County. from the likes of Mark Fuhrman and his October), "Our biggest competitors are president William Winpisinger ushered Buried in the voluminous media cov­ cohorts to contain any manifestation of not McDonnell Douglas and the. Airbus in this avalanche of defeats by refusing erage of the crisis is the fact that the social protest. While L.A. mayor Riordan consortium of Europe. It's workers in to call out the lAM airline mechanics county's contract with Local 660 expired moans about "belt tightening," he still Mexico and Poland." With 70 percent of 10caJs who had ~he power to shut down on September 30. Instead of hanging the managed to .hire 600 more cops in the its sales made overseas, Boeing is the the airports and defeat the anti-labor health care workers out to dry, what's past year! nation's largest exporter and increas­ offensive. A leading light of the Demo­ called for is a strike by all L.A. County To wage a real fight against these racist ingly uses foreign labor to drive down cratic (Party) Socialists of America workers to spike the threatened layoffs. genocidal plans requires a political strug­ the cost of production and increase prof­ (DSA), Winpisinger once said, "We've Such an action would have a broad gle to oust the pro-capitalist union bu­ its. But protectionism only protects the stuck by the Democratic Party through appeal to all public employees who face reaucracy and break with the Democrats. bosses' profits, scapegoating foreign thick and thin, whether the candidate was the government's austerity ax and to the What's desperately needed is to build a workers for the destruction of jobs at a dog, a dead horse, or a winner." millions who depend' upon public health class-struggle leadership in the unions home and whipping up anti-foreigner Today, lAM chief Kourpias continues care. County workers understand that and a revolutionary workers party that racism. The union tops are especially tar­ to tie the fate of the union to the Dem­ without a job, they will face the same will unite the oppressed behind the social geting workers in Japan, where the entire ocrats. As with the rest of the sellouts impossible situation that public hospital power of the working class to sweep away fuselage and other major components of running the AFL-CIO, this has spelled patients do today. the decaying capitalist system which is the new 777 are made. defeat. As we wrote at the end of the Many of the rank and file who have visibly destroying health care as it inten­ There is no doubt that the strikers are strike in 1989 (Workers Vanguard No. turned out in the thousands for protests sifies state repression. _ determined to beat back the' arrogant 491, 8 December 1989): "From PATCO over the past few months don't buy the aerospace giant's union-busting attack. to Eastern to Boeing, it's the workers roll-over-and-play-dead approach of the But doing so requires unleashing the who pay the price for the class collabo­ union leadership. When Local 660 gen­ Boeing ... lAM's considerable power, which along­ ration of these labor lieutenants of cap­ eral manager Gilbert Cedillo tried to tout (continued from page 12) side other unions can shut down produc­ ital. Break with the Democrats! We need his "partnership" idea to a demonstration the workforce from 166,000 in 1989 to tion at Boeing and choke off its profits. a workers party to fight for a workers of 500, he was drowned out by chants 105,000 today-slashing more than The strikers need a fighting alliance of government!" _ ' of "no privatizations." SEIU 660, with 15,000 machinist jobs in Washington Boeing workers in the U.S., Japan and its highly integrated membership, was state alone. Workers "have watched their everywhere else that jet parts are being one of the most prominent unions in last colleagues· vanish as work previously produced-international workers soli­ Lynch Law ... year's campaign against Prop. 187. done in Renton or Everett has been darity, not trie bleating of chauvinist (continued from page 5) Then as now, the union leadership fun­ moved to Mexico, Poland, China, or union tops. The lAM bureaucrats are Capitalist America is Philly writ large neled the just outrage against this rac­ Alabama," according to the Seattle Times running this strike like a script from for black people. There can't be any real ist measure into the Democratic Party, (8 October). The company now wants Clinton's Japan-bashing White House, civilian "review" of the police because using the demonstrations to solicit vol­ over half of its airline production work and that's the same protectionist class they are the armed fist of state repres­ unteers to get out the vote for Kathleen done by outside contractors. The Asian collaboration the UAW tops have pusned sion: they have the guns, and the courts, Brown, who was calling to militarize the Wall Street Journal (16 October) re­ while giving up hundreds of thousands· and the jails. Hiring minority cops, border. ported Boeing plans to produce as many of auto workers' jobs since the 1970s. appointing "independent" commissions The health care crisis has sharply high­ as 1,500 tail assemblies in China. Last year alone, Boeing dropped the ax to investigate, establishing powerless lighted the union leaders' slavish loyalty Boeing workers were especially infu­ on some 12,000 workers. review boards to review, electing liberal to the Democratic Party. SEIU 'Interna­ riated by company pleas that "our cus­ The last Boeing strike in 1989 was 'Democrats and black mayors won't tional chief John Sweeney, who is run­ tomers-airlines and governments alike ground down after 48 days by the lAM change this fundamental fact. ning for AFL-CIO president, has inter­ -tell us our products simply Cost too tops, who let supervisors finish the Today's pious media hand wringIng vened in L.A. seeking to demonstrate his much," as Shrontz and Boeing president planes and ship them out. Now once seeks to pin blame on a few "rotten claim to represent "new blood" to revive Phil Condit whined in a pre-strike letter again they are content to let scabs go apples" for the most hideous abuses. But the federation. Sweeny, who is a member to employees. Shrontz pulls down a cool' through the picket lines while appeal.ing while liberals tout civilian review boards of the Democratic National Committee, $1,500,000 and Condit over $800,000 to the NLRB, the capitalist goverrment's as a means to rein in "rogue cops," as wangled a private meeting with Clinton, each year in salary, not counting the anti-labor board. To win this strike it's Marxists we know that the Mark Fuhr­ who coughed up some federal funds, millions in bonuses its top executives n~cessary to mobilize the massive power mans are no aberration in a society resulting in the "victory" of 2,800 lay­ "earned" when Boeing's stock soared of Boeing's workers to shut down the founded on exploitation and impover­ offs! And while the Local 660 leadership last year. But while the bosses play hard­ flow of profits. Bring out the more than ishment of the working masses by the concentrates its fire on Republican gov­ ball, lAM International president George 20,000 members of the Seattle Pro­ ruling class. Liberal calls to reform the ernor Wilson, whose presidential primary Kourpias "tours" the picket lines boast­ fessional Engineering Employees Asso­ police are dangerous illusions meant to bid based on anti-immigrant racism just ing of meeting with Clinton to beg for ciation, whose leaders tell their members keep the lid on their victims' righteous bombed out, it is in fact the Democratic "national policies to respond to inter­ to cross the picket lines. Their contract anger. majority on the County Board of Super­ national competition in ways that expires in December, but engineers To avenge the deaths of Anthony visors which is implementing these strengthen domestic production." better understand that their fate will be Rosario, Hilton Vega, Joseph Gould, deadly cuts. Boeing is counting on the lAM sealed with the outcome of this strike. William Hankston-and so many hun­ When pink slips were issued for the bureaucrats to divert the power of the Teamsters should refuse to touch any­ dreds of others-and win justice for all originally slated layoffs on September striking membership into the trap of pro­ thing to do with Boein~, incoming or the victims of police terror will take a 15, the County Sheriff's Department pro­ tectionisl1). With their blanket theme of outgoing. Boeing has billions tied up in workers revolution to dismantle capital­ vocatively announced a "tactical alert" "American work for American workers," high-tech production facilities and 777 ism's machinery of repression. Then we showing that the state intends to enforce the lAM misleaders are channeling jumbo jets in production; p'tn' them in can set about building a classless society its austerity program with its racist workers' anger against "cheap foreign union hands by occupyinM the plants, eliminating all forms of social oppres­ thugs in blue. L.A. rulers remember only labor" instead of against the greedy backed up by mass picket lines. sion and establishing genuine, equality, too well the massive outpouring of rage bosses. At an October II rally outside Workers must sweep out the current and racist police terror will be consigned at the 1992 acquittal of the cops who Boeing's Seattle headquarters, strikers gang of union, bureaucrats who are dyed- to the history books._

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As expected, the "prosecutor in robes," Judge Albert pamphlet, The Frame-Up of Mumia Abu-Jamal, exposes Sabo, ruled on September 15 against death row political in detail the prosecution's case of lies, tl")e coercion of prisoner MUmia Abu-Jamal's petition challenging his witnesses and the FBI's COINTELPRO terror campaign 1982 conviction and death sentence. Sabo's decision fla­ against Mumia and the Black Panther Party. Order bun­ grantly disregarded the massive evidence presented of a dles of the special campaign issue of Class-Struggle police and prosecution frame-up. Mumia, a former Black Defense Notes and The Frame-Up of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Panther, courageous journalist and supporter of the Phila­ 25 copies of either publication for $10. For only $1, buy delphia MOVE group, is now closer to a legal lynching. A the PDC's button: "Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the notice of appeal to the Pennsylvania State Supreme Racist Death Penalty!" Get your local bookstore to stock Court was filed on October 10. As the legal battle goes Jamal's powerful Live from Death Row. Contact the PDC forward, we must redouble our efforts to fight for Jamal's for speakers, to arrange showings of the PDC's video, freedom. As Mumia himself said after winning a stay of From Death Row, This is Mumia Abu-Jamal: The video can execution on August 7, the stay was an attempt by the be purchased for $30 from the PDC at the address below. state "to blunt the edge off of a growing and militant anti­ Contributions of $5 or more to the PDC include a year's death penalty movement.. .. Let us utilize this precious subscription to Class-Struggle Defense Notes. time to build a stronger and broader movement, to not ;,"'J: Send prot,sts to: Governor Tom Ridge, Main ~.I}1 'stay' one execution, but to halt them all!" ...... : 3 Capitol Building, Room ~25, Harrisburg, PA 17120. _- .. Ridge changes his phone and fax number daily to try and free ....i.~.~a'l OrganiZE! protest! Pass motions demanding stay ahead of the growing movement for Jamal! As we go AJa_tfle"'$f".pt~ 1 Jamal's freedom in your unions, campus, com­ munity and church organizations. Get your union or to press, the numbers are: phone (717) 787-2500; organization t6 make a contribution and join rallies and fax (717) 783-3369. protests for Jamal. Publicize Jamal's case in your union Funds are urgently needed! To get a new trial and Spread the word: order bundles or organization's ne'!'l1~I.etter. Get on the Partisan Defense 4 overturn the death sentence could cost over a Committee phone tree to organize in your area. million dollars. Make a contribution today to the Bill of of the PDC. pamphlet! Rights Foundation (earmarked "Mumia Abu-Jamal Legal Write to Jamal to express your Spread the word! The current issue of the PDC's Defense") and mail it to: Committee to Save Mumia 5 solidarity: Mumia Abu-Jamal, 2 Class-Struggle Defense Notes is devoted to the Abu-Jamal, 163 Amsterdam Ave., No. 115, New York, NY AM8335, SCI Greene, 1040 E. Roy Furman struggle to save Mumia Abu-Jamal. And the PDC 10023-5001 .. Highway, Waynesburg, PA 15370-8090.

For more information: Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013 • (212) 406-4252

20 OCTOBER• 1995 11 WfJllKEIlS """,Il, . FigbtL.A.H8spital~Sellts0 Oe.adly· Attacks oRlmlRl~1

LOS ANGELES-"Bad things are going monitoring of high-risk pregnancies, care" to undocumented workers and their York to L.A., local officials are mounting to happen. I think people will begin to biopsies, immunizations, AIDS testing, families while requiring that health care a drive to simply eliminate public health die." This was the grim diagnosis of Dr. dialysis and a host of other services. The workers notify immigration authorities facilities through privatization, creating Brian Johnston, Director of Emergency racist rulers of this decaying capitalist of "suspected illegals." The passage of a for-profit system in order to eliminate Services and Chief of Staff at White system have made it clear that they Prop. 187 triggered a 20 percent drop in care for millions of the uninsured (2.6 Memorial Medical Center in East L.A., increasingly see the ghettoized poor as patient visits to clinics serving this million in L.A. County alone) and bust as he commented on the Los Angt;les a surplus population which they have no population and resulted in a number of the unions of the highly organized public County Board of Supervisors' proposal intention of employing, educating, hous­ senseless deaths. sector. to close six comprehensive health cen­ ing, feeding or providing health care for. The cutback crisis in Los Angeles In the Los Angeles area, more than ters, 28 of 39 neighborhood clinics, 200 private concerns have bid to oper­ ~" ...... \~ slash 75 percent of outpatient services ate the clinics. Fearing a proliferation at county hospitals and layoff, ~;f;;;) 1 of "medical mills" dispensing inferior demote Of transfer more than 5,200 SlOt ! health care, one prominent expert said health care workers in the nation's fPtifMIi(S' of those bidding for contracts, "We second largest public health system. have had some providers that, very The killer cuts were originally KI.tP frankly, I wouldn't allow to touch a slated to take effect October I. At the (UtU(S patient" (Los Angeles Times, 27 Sep­ last minute, hoping for a political pay­ Q~.M,! tember). Yet rather than opposing this off in the '96 elections, President Clin­ union-busting privatization outright, ton rechanneled $354 million in fed­ the leadership of Service Employees eral funds to the beleaguered L.A.' International (SElU) Local 660 is call­ County public health system. The clo­ ing for a "public-private partnership" sure of most facilities was temporarily in a "restructured" health system. suspended, but even with the federal For the last several months, L.A. funds, the "restructuring'" continues. County workers have rallied in angry The Board of Supervisors has taken protests outside meetings of the deadly aim at the highly organized and Board of Supervisors. During the integrated workforce, ordering 2,800 summer, sickouts by 900 workers layoffs to begin October 15. In addi­ closed many offices of the Depart­ tion, it is implementing a union­ ment of Social Services. In Septem­ busting drive to privatize clinics that ber, spontaneous sickouts by nurses remain open, while reducing by one­ at County-USC Medical Center, a pri­ quarter outpatient services at county mary target for downsizing or possi­ hospitals and decreeing a 5 percent 'h ble closure, repeatedly shut down the AP pay cut for all county workers. Hospital workers protest mass layoffs and deadly cuts in Los Angeles' public health trauma unit and emergency room. Yet These cuts will have catastrophic system. faced with the loss of thousands of effects on the well-being of millions jobs, the response of the Local 660 of largely black and Latino poor and Their message: "Drop dead." takes place as Democrats and Republi­ tops has been to beg for funds from working people for whom county fa­ Servicing a huge immigrant popula­ cans nationally take the knife to medical 'Washington and Sacramento. To no one's cilities provide their only access to tion, the county health care system has benefits, arguing over just how many bil­ surprise, the state came up with the funds even minimal health care. The public been tops on the racist rulers' hit list lions to cut from hyalth care. (The House to bailout affluent Orange County, clinic system handled more than two since California's Proposition 187 was Republican proposal wbuld, slash over which for years sunk its funds into stock million patient visits last year, providing passed last year. This immigrant-bashing $450 hillion from Mttdicare and Medi­ market speculation to, avoid taxing, the lifesaving medications, chemotherapy, measure seeks to deny "non-emergency caid over seven years!) And from New continued on page 1J

'Machinists: Don't Buy' Protectionist Poison! Victory to the Boeing Strike! OCTOBER 16-0ver 32,000 Boeing gutting the strength of the lAM during workers in the Seattle area, Portland, a lax period of production. Boeing CEO Oregon and Wichita, Kansas walked off Frank Shrontz boasted to the Wall Street the job at midnight, October 6. after vot­ Journal (5 October) of "pre-positioning ing down an insulting company "offer" of inventory and building ahead" to pre­ demanding hefty givebacks on health pare for a strike. Outlining the employ­ insurance and the right to contract out ers' strategy, Al'iatiol1 Week (9 October) union work. Members of the Interna­ observed: "Management personnel could tional Association of Machinists and t:inish in-process atrcraft to meet urgent Aerospace Workers (lAM) voted three­ delivery deadlines. Other airline custom­ to-one to strike after the union's nego­ ers might welcome a few weeks' delay tiating committee recommended turning in the delivery of the costly equipment." down the contract. On October 3, hun­ In fact, one week into the strike Boeing .dreds of angry sheet metal workers. delivered the first of thirty 767 freighters riveters, crane operators. toolmakers, to United Parcel Service in Seattle. electricians and others marched through Despite a temporary decrease in air­ Boeing's giant Everett, Washington craft orders, enormous profits continue jumbo jet plant at lunch time chanting to roll into Boeing: $856 million in 1994 "Strike! Strike! Strike!" and over $1.2 billion the year before. Boeing, the world's largest producer It is mainly through "outsourcing" that of commercial aircraft for over three dec­ Shrontz & Co. have already reduced Striking Boeing workers rally on October 11 in Seattle. Occupy the plants! ades. hopes to jack up its profit rate 'by cOlltillucd Oil page f f Down with protectionist pOison!

12 20 OCTOBER 1995