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.~~il~:'~ X!,n Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377, GPO, New York, N.Y. 10116 ~------Table Introduction of Contents The racist oppression of black Kennedy Square. In that city, heart Don Andrews: "We Need people is historically fundamental to of this country's black proletariat, to Finish the Civil War" American capitalism, It will take a anti-Klan activists at the giant Ford revolution to liberate black Rouge plant demanded the UAW American Workers ' America-a working-class, socialist mobilize to stop this provocation. Revolution Needs revolution in which black workers When the union tops defaulted, the Black Leadership ...... 3 will playa central role. This pamph­ Spartacist League came forward to let presents the Marxist viewpoint of initiate a rally at Kennedy Square: Thousands Mobilize to the Spartacist League on forging "The Klan Won't Ride in the Motor Stop Nazis in Chicago .. 6 revolutionary black leadership in the City!" Coleman Young, black Demo­ fight for black and white working­ cratic Party mayor, threatened to Spartacist Don Andrews class power. treat the Klansmen and the anti-Klan Speaks on Chicago "American Workers Revolution protesters the same, promising to Black Radio Needs Black Leadership" is a sec­ arrest any anti-Klan militants that tion of a speech by Don Andrews of showed up. Virtually all left-wing, Blacks Under the Gun .. 11 the SL Central Committee. The labor and black organizations con­ presentation( given at a Chicago SL tacted by the SL refused to back the Speech at Chicago public meeting last July 10, followed mobilization' in the face of the Anti-Nazi Rally, June 27- the successful SL-Ied labor/black mayor's challenge, clinging to the Myra Owens, mobilization against the Nazis there suicidal perspective of pressuring Spartacus Youth League: on June 27. "Thousands Mobilize to the racist capitalist state to "Ban the "We Have the World Stop Nazis in Chicago" is an ac­ Klan." Nevertheless a "hard core" of to Win!" ...... 14 count of that demonstration. Also some hundreds of Detroit auto included in the pamphlet are two workers, mainly black, came out to Black NYC Transit Worker other items relating to the mobiliza­ join the SL to interdict the fascists Speaks in Europe tion: a radio interview by comrade from downtown Detroit. We reprint Labor/Black Struggle Andrews taped during the weeks of here the leaflet distributed in the building the demonstration, and a tens of thousands which built the in Reagan's America ... 15 speech by Myra Owens, spokesman November 10 labor/black mobiliza­ for the SL's youth organization, at tion among workers and black Finishing the Civil War the June 27 rally, militants betrayed by the inaction of Huck Finn in "Labor/Black Struggle in their "leaders." Racist America ...... 22 Reagan's America" is also a speech, We also include here an account this one by black American union of our youth organization's cam­ Detroit is a militant Ed Kartsen in Paris, Brother paign at Wayne State University in Labor/Black Town Kartsen was the guest speaker at a Detroit against the racist, anti­ Fight Klan Terror! ...... 27 series of international Spartacist communist apology for the Greens­ tendency public forums in Europe boro massacre which appeared in 1,200 Students Say: following the massive European the Wayne State campus paper, the Oust South End peace demonstrations in early July, South End. "No to Gun Control" is a speech Apologists for where we intervened posing the defense of the USSR against U.S.! by SL spokesman Diana Coleman at Klan/Nazi Terror! ...... 28 NATO imperialism and Leninist a San Francisco public hearing June opposition to one's "own" ruling 10. Finally, we include a recent Feinstein Bans class. leaflet issued by Ed Kartsen calling Handguns in S.F. "Huck Finn in Racist America" on his union to act against race­ SL: No to appeared originally in Young Spar­ terrorism, following the lynch mob Gun Control! ...... 35 tacus, monthly press of the SL's murder of a black union brother in youth organization. Brooklyn. NYC Transit Militants Two other items included here Readers are also referred to the Protest Lynch Mob Murder document our campaign of protest SL's 1981 plenum resolution, "For against the 1979 "Greensboro Labor Action to Bring Down Rea­ "Labor Has the Power to gan," adopted by the SL Central Stop Racist Terror!" .... 37 massacre." On 3 November 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, five Committee on 28 November 1981, left-wing union activists were fatally and particularly to the expanded gunned down in broad daylight by section on the black struggle dated Cover photo: the Klan and Nazis, with the conniv­ 15 April 1982. This document ap­ Black auto workers in particular ance of federal and local cops. The pears in our magazine Spartacist, responded to Spartaclst-Inltlated No. 34, Summer 1982. call for demonstration against KKK Klan then announced it would In Detroit, 10 November 1979. celebrate the massacre at Detroit's 4 September 1982 (Credit: WV Photo) 3 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 311, 6 August 1982 ------Don Andrews: "We Need to Finish the Civil War" American Workers Revolution Needs Black Leadership On Ju(v 10 the Spartacist League held a public/orum in Chicago on "Reagan­ ism Breeds Fascism." We publish below an edited transcript 0/ the closing section 0/ the main presentation given by Don Andrews. 0/ the SL Central Committee. The labor movement in this country has to face a few realities before it can really achieve an understanding of its tl long-term historical interest. And what it has to understand and face very squarely is what Karl Marx put his Don Andrews finger on in the course of the last Civil speaking at Chicago War. Marx said then that labor in a mobilization white skin can't be free if it's branded in against Nazis, the black. Now that's a profound 27 June 1982. statement even during that time. This country, the United States of America, today, is a unique nation. It's one nation with two races, and a large, revolutionary leadership whatsoever. the country's meanest racist suburbs. growing Hispanic population. The race The last black organization that even And King's strategy of liberal pacifism. question in this country is a question of promised to fight against this racist the idea that you can wear down your American capitalism's enormous social system was the Black Panther Party. oppressor by demonstrating how much crimes committed against minorities, They appealed to a lot of ghetto youth you can suffer, really invited racist essentially against the black population, who were radicalizing during that attacks. Those who were here, especially and it cannot be evaded. It has to be period. That was the ;ast organization in '66 or before, or grew up here. faced head-on because it is the strategic that even promised b:acks anything. remember the vicious racist mobs that question, the key obstacle that stands in It's not an accide:lI that there's no met King at Marquette Park when he the way of a victorious working-class organization that sta.nds for the elemen­ was stoned to the ground. And when revolution in this country. tary defense of even the most minimum members of SNCC, the Student Non­ Now many of you have never heard of needs of the black population. It's Violent Coordinating Committee, went the Spartacist League before June 27th because of what happened in the civil into Cicero, how they were bloodied up. [the June 27 anti-Nazi mobilization in rights movement. Because of the liberal­ And King betrayed here! He betrayed Chicago]. And I've noticed some blacks, led civil rights movement in this country here. Because after Marquette Park; he who are deeply alienated in this society. under Martin Luther King's leadership. met with Daley and he signed an say: "Well, I like what happened on When it tried to take the civil rights agreement on open housing-okay, June the 27th but I don't know if I'd movement to the North, especially here they had some fine little language on want to throw down with the Spartacist to Chicago, it ran into a situation for paper. Daley did have some fine old League. It has so many whites in it." which it was completely unprepared. legalese on paper, you know, recogniz­ And others would say: "Well, I'll give it The blacks in the North, they already ing that there's a need for equality in a try but I don't know if it's going to had formal equality under the law. The housing and blah, blah, blah. And King work. You know I don't know if it's symbols of Jim Crowism weren't there. then held it up as a great historic going to do any good, because things However they had no jobs, no decent agreement, called the Palmer House have always been bad for black people." housing. And of course they had plenty Agreement. Nothing had changed. But we have to step back and rise above of segregated inferior education and a Nothing had happened. And so after these very impressionistic responses by lot of police terror and murder. that the people in SNCC, the young looking at the actual force of historical So in Chicago, when King's organ­ black militants, began to shout him development of the class-struggle fight ization, the Southern Christian Lead­ down in meetings. They went into for black rights. ership Conference, attempted a drive Cicero by themselves. They lost. They It's no accident today that blacks are for open housing in 1966, it fell flat were courageous. But they lost, because ",ithout organization, without any on its face. Because Chicago has some of they hit a Nazi-infested racist enclave. 4

Now what allowed these racists to do somebody like that! But to pose the movement-where black and white this with impunity? To beat up those question really shows how ridiculous workers struggle against the bosses young militants with the approval of the this strategy is. together. especially in the North-that's Daley Democratic Party machine? It And I'm not questioning King's where you've got a chance to go forward was primarily King's bankrupt strategy commitment to his nonviolent, liberal on the question of fighting special of preaching reliance on the so-called pacifism. But it was, if you really think oppressIOn. "good will" of the racist capitalist about it, a little hypocritical when he And our fundamental program is one oppressors. Reliance on the federal defended the suppression of the Watts of revolUlionar.l' integrationism. We say government, the Democratic Party, to rebellion by federal troops in 1965. But that the destruction of the oppression of fight for black rights. But the cops and in politics personality and motivat,ion blacks in this country can come only the courts (during that period as they do are of secondary importance. What's of through a socialist revolution, that full today-Greensboro's the proof) looked primary importance is the result of equality between blacks and whites can the other way when the racists went into policies. And you have to say that the only come under a socialist planned action. So it couldn't be done then civil rights movement failed to address economy. We are not liberal assimila­ because you couldn't reform the govern­ the basic economic oppression of the tionists. The :-.,; AACP types say that a ment into becoming anti-racist fighters. black masses, which has forced the bulk few blacks integrated into the govern­ That's why that strategy is not only of the blacks in this country, then as ment parliamentary bureaucracy means ineffective but dangerous. today, to the bottom of the social and we have it made. That's liberal assimila­ And if you hear, especially today, any economic ladder-a despised and perse­ tionism. You will not have the assimila­ leftist organization-and the Commu­ cuted color-caste. That means that the tion of blacks with full rights under nist Party is real good at this-try to color line is carried around everywhere racist American capitalism. And there mislead you into thinking that cold­ you go. are'Profound economic reasons for that. blooded racists can be pressured to ban N ow in reaction to the collapse of that So today there are no revolutionary the Klan, instead of us relying on the movement, many of the youth, around leaders of the black population. You got organized strength of labor and minori­ the Panthers especially, they rejected plenty of professional black hustlers like ties, then you ought to pop them with a everything white. "We don't want to Jesse Jackson who talk about Reagan question. Ask them, why would the have anything to do with whites." And cutbacks so that they can get the ear of government want to do something like the cry for "Black Power" went up. some capitalist politician. You know, that, ban the Klan? When they're letting Now things didn't have to go in that you don't see these people down at no them train for race war in military direction. The Spartacist League during Lincoln Park on the 27th because thev camps in Alabama, Michigan and that period of time was much smaller. profit from segregation. They unde~­ elsewhere in this country? Do you really We had been expelled from the Socialist stand. see. When you hear some of these think America's violently segregationist Workers Party in part because we were slick-talking hustlers talking about rulers are interested in settling accounts advocating that socialists go into that "black on black crime." you know what with the Ku Klux Klan and in setting up movement and win those militants over it means') It means that as we make it, as a new department of the federal govern· to the understanding that the labor we expand our black businesses, we ment called the Department to Combat movement had to be won over to the want you to keep those unemployed, Race Terror? I mean that's the logic of perspective of fighting for black rights. those chronically unemployed desperate this: come on, Reagan, I want you to set We fought around that perspective then black youth in line. That's what it up a department to combat race terror. and we fight for that perspective today. means. Black on black crime has Yeah, with Haig at the head of it, Where you've got an integrated labor nothing to do with fighting for jobs or

Chicago, June 27: Black pertlclpatlon key to building entl-Nazl mobilization. 5 anything else. You know, we're sup­ posed to be very proud, though poor, that one of our own has made it and is recognized by the Byrnes. So we have a lot of other awfully respectable black leaders in the city like Lu Palmer-I called him up. I said, "Lu, what are you going to do about this Nazi and Klan issue?" HAw, brother, I can't deal with it. You know we have to put together .... " He was working on the Streeter campaign, pushing for a black mayor of Chicago, putting this forward as a solution to the problems of blacks. Now I just want to comment on those who call for more black mayors as if it's going to make a difference in the situation of the black masses in this country as far as jobs and housing and education are concerned. All you have to do is look at Detroit. All you have to do is look at what [Detroit mayor] Coleman Young has done in terms of San Francisco, 19 April 1980: Anger at Mayor FeInstein's unlon":bustlng breaking one city union after another­ Democrats helped turn out unionIsts to anti-Nazi mobilization initiated by Spartaclst League. AFSCME, the garbage workers. You know, during the Republican Conven­ noticed the terminology: the American this rotten system you've got to stand in tion in Detroit in 1980, what he did? He Dream has been a nightmare for blacks. the front ranks of struggle for working­ told the black population, "You can eat Now they're saying that. And that some class revolution to end this racist beans." That's what he said. Now if blacks in the military will complain of nightmare called America. Because we that's not proof positive that black faces genocide in future American military can't let this country go the way of race in high places don't mean liberation, I involvement. They had a recent study by war, which would profit the Ku Klux don't know what else is! (applause) the Brookings Institution on blacks in Klan and the bosses in this country. Yeah, jellybeans too. the military, about all the blacks that That's why we fight for socialist revolu­ And then he starts talking «his were complaining about the high, tion here and everywhere else. To put madness about self-help: you guys disproportionate number of blacks that an end to this boom-bust cycle of ought to help yourselves out by, you died in Vietnam. capitalism. know, a series of weed-abatement They're telling us that there is no We can go forward if we understand programs. My point is that to the extent solution to racial oppression under that we need to finish the Civil War, we that we have greater class consciousness capitalism, and they are absolutely need a third American revolution. And in the black population, we see that we right. The bourgeoisie recognizes that we can go forward if we understand that have nothing in common with the they plan to do nothing about the vast our capitalist enemies are not invincible. Andrew Youngs, the Jesse Jacksons, the reservoir of chronically unemployed If we understand that it's not in our Maynard Jacksons, who used to be people trapped in the ghetto. They are interest to support the bosses' interna­ mayor of Atlanta and who viciously saying it very openly. The only way tional wars of conquest. the imperialist broke the AFSCME workers strike in blacks can attain their freedom is wars that are fought for their profit. If that city. Because those people are through an American October Revolu­ we understand that the racial divisions pliant tools of the ruling class in this tion along the lines of the Russian within the American working class can country. And that's why they're put Revolution. They understand that's only be overcome through united class there in the first place, to keep the lid on what's on the agenda. struggle. not moral suasion. And finally things. Yes they have a right to run. There's a basTs for this happening. A if we understand that the workers and We're against discrimination in all lot of unemployed whites now never the oppressed must rule. smashing every aspects of this society. But when theydo thought they were going to be standing obstacle standing in its way on the we're not going to follow them or urge in welfare lines or unemployment lines. path to international working-class anybody else to. If they're lucky. Black workers, poten­ revolution. We ran in Detroit last year. And tially the most combative section of the So let us soberly face up to these everything I'm saying here we said to the working class, can lead all the oppressed tasks. We don't have a lot of time. The people out on the street. Ourtune didn't along with their white class brothers and fascists and the assassins and the change because our goal remains the sisters, through a vanguard party. And pogromists, they have a dream-race same: to change the system from top to you've got to join us if you want a war. We have a dream-a war of the bottom! revolution in this country that will give international workers and oppressed Now I just want to end with this. The us all the things we need and deserve, against the oppressors. Let's go for­ bourgeoisie of this country in its that nobody should have to beg for. ward. forward to a workers party. newspapers is openly saying there's no Everybody has a right to ajob-jobs for Workers. blacks, Latinos. all the solution for black rights in this country. all. How you going to get it? You got to oppressed-join the Spartacist League. They're openly saying it! In the pages of fight for it. So the question is posed in the party of the coming American the Chicago Trihune this past week I this country that if you want to change workers revolution!. -6 reprintedji-ofl1 If()r!5.f.1:~ Vanguard No. 309, 9 July /982

When the gang of Na7i storm troop­ ers drove a rented truck up to the edge of June 27: Labor, Blacks, Lincoln Park Sunday afternoon, they found the site where they planned to stage a provocation against the Gay Jews, Gays Respond to Pride Day march already occupied by several thousand anti-Nazi demonstra­ Spartacist Campaign tors who turned out in response to determined organizing by the SL­ initiated June 27 Committee Against the CHICAGO---Sunday, June 27 here was They came from the steel mills of East Nazis. As the fascists were spotted, the a big victory for opponents of fascist Chicago and the Harvester plant in crowd surged forward chanting "No terror throughout the country. It was Melrose Park. from heavily gay New H itlers in Chicago---Stop the Nazis the largest militant anti-Nazi protest in Town and the largely Jewish suburb of now!" Unable to enter the park, the two the area in decades. with more than Evanston. There were even East Eu­ dozen H itlerites in brown and black 3,000 participating. And the presence of ropean Catholics from North Side uniforms clustered behind a chain-link protesters from a broad cross-section of neighborhoods. But most important in fencc. protected by hundreds of Chicago the Chicago population in a demonstra­ this the most segregated city in the U.S., cops, including a line of mounted tion led by socialist~ is a landmark in with the meanest white suburbs in the cossacks. anti-fascist actions nationally. As Ron­ country. they came from the giant South The whole rally-podium. sound ald Reagan's killer cutbacks and the Side ghetto on Sunday to SlOp the Nazis system and all-charged up to the front Klan/Na7is' guns target black and and defend themselves. "Wherever the lines as anti-Nati demonstrators pressed working people, it is clear that there is Na7is march. that means 'whites only'," against police barricades. The pudgy no future for the oppressed and exploit­ they said. And wherever the fascists are little Nazi Fuhrer paced back and forth ed in this rotting system. The class­ stopped. it means hope for the future of behind the fence like a caged hyena. struggle strategy of the Spartacist black people and all the oppressed. On Next to the jackbooted brown!\hirts of League (SL), for labor/black mobiliza­ June 27 a breach was made in the wall of the American Nazi Party from Chicago, tions to stop racist terror, shows how to fear engendered by the racist front that the SS Action Group from Detroit. fight back and win. June 27 proved it stretches from the Nazis to the White dressed up like a punk motorcycle gang. can be done. House. lamely waved their swastika-embla- 7 zoned shields. But no one could hear Brooks, a young black militant who them as a steady din of anti-fascist worked with the June 27 Committee, chants effectively drowned out their recalled that "even a dog that belonged "death to queers" poison. For an hour to a black person wouldn't cross the the crowd boomed out, "Chicago is a railroad tracks there." But blacks also labor town, Chicago is a black town, know that t hey are No. I on the K lan/ Chicago is a gay town, Chicago is a Nazis' death lists, and you've got to do Latino town, Chicago is a Jewish, something. town-No room for Nazis!" But not everyone sought to mobilize The demonstrators brought out by mass opposition to the Nazis' death the June 27 Committee took over the threats. The mainstream gay organiza­ "public forum" area of Lincoln Park tions chose to "ignore" the Nazis, where the fascists had threatened to making sure that their march didn't goose-step on Sunday. The protesters arrive at Lincoln Park until after the were angry and militant and only the storm troopers were gone. And while massive police presence stopped them labor officials endorsed the socialist­ from driving the fascists out. More than initiated demonstration, many "leftists" 165 uniformed cops were officially on did their best to defeat it. The Commu­ hand, and many scores of plainclothes­ nist Party (CP) got out of the way of this men circulated in the crowd, ostenta­ rally. although various of ih supporters tiously sporting their red, white and blue such as Roth, a leader of the CP's buttons. Thirteen protesters were arrest­ "Trade Unionists for Action and De­ ed during the afternoon, charged with mocracy" group. carne and ~poke. disorderly conduct and released. But the Progressive Labor and il~ Inlernational crowd would not be provoked into a Committee Again,t R;l("iml (PI,j disastrous confrontation with the Chi­ InC AR) worked against the demonstra­ cago police force. The protesters tion. First InCAR honcho Finley drowned out the Nazis with spirited Campbell claimed disingenuously that it chanting for an hour, until the Hitler­ was a "trap" by Mayor Byrne (who lovers gave up and were ushered out by endorsed the Gay Pride march), later the police to a thunderous roar of "Nazis admitting that PL's real position was Out! Nazis Out!" Moral Majority bigotry ("The SL is As the Nazis left, Don Andrews, a stopping the Nazis for a bunch of 'fags' spokesman for the Committee and who are part of thc 'la/.i movement"). member of the Spartacist League Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Socialist wv League (RSL), which postures ,i.s macho Central Committee, declared to the Black people know they are No.1 on cheering crowd, "We did it! We prevent­ the fascists' hit list. Nazi fighters, retreated lor cover into ed them from carrying out their provo­ the gay milieu. The RSL formed a cation!" This was a victory for all decent included Norm Roth (former president. Stonewall Committee which soon crum­ people of Chicago, he said. More than United Auto Workers Local 6). Cliff bled as its defeatist policy was swamped 3,000 demonstrators had rejected the "Cowboy" Mezo (vice president, Steel­ by the organi7.ing of the SL-Ied June 27 appeal by liberals and the official Gay workers tocal 1010), Willie Harris and Committee. Pride Parade Committee to ignore the Joe Lamm (secretary-treasurer and vice Nazis. Instead, representatives of the president respectively of Service Em­ First They Came for the Gays labor movement, gays, blacks, Catho­ ployees International Local 372). A The Chicago outfit which calls itself lics, Jews, Arabs and others came out to B'nai B'rith concentration camp survi­ the American Na7i Party announced block the fascists' attempt to victimize vors chapter mobilized for the demon­ that it would hh the Gay Pride march in homosexuals. Someone had to stop stration, and a Palestinian support Lincoln Park. For years this little band these would-be killers, said Andrews, committee turned out as well. Some of swastika-brandishing thugs was led "so the Spartacist League did this simple feminists and gay groups, the Red Rose by a two-bit Fiihrer, Frank Collin, until decent thing, mobilizing labor and all Collective and various self-proclaimed he was arrested in 19RO as a "child the sections of the oppressed to defend socialists also showed up. molester" and "exposed" a~ half-Jewish. the rights of gays, blacks and Jews in Black participation in the demon­ The Chicago ~a7is were then "cleaned this city." stration was key. To come up from the out" by the !':orth Carolina fascists of The thousands who showed up at South Side to Lincoln Park on a Sunday Greensboro infamy. The Nazis' planned Lincoln Park Sunday came in response 'morning took not only commitment but provocation followed an increasingly to the organizing efforts of the June 27 guts. Black people have been stoned by familiar and ominolls pattern. Working Committee Against the Nazis. More racist mobs when they marched for the fringes of Reagan's anti-Soviet war than 75 individuals representing large integration. Terrorist nightriders have drive and appealing to reactionary sectors of the Chicago community firebombed their homes when they Christian fundamentalists of the Moral endorsed the Committee's call to action. moved into the "wrong" neighbor­ Majority, the fascists proclaimed: More than 250,000 Committee leaflets hood. They remember the cop "Smash the Communist-Queer Alli­ for the protest had been distributed in murder of Black Panther leader Fred ance." Their "Dial-a-'iali" hate mes­ the area over the previous two weeks. At Hampton as he lay in his bed. They sage said to "turn to your hible~ ... to the demonstration members of dozens remember the Nazis' "white power" find out why god says the queers and of local unions were present. Speakers rallies In Marquette Park. Jackie their supporter~ must be put to death." 8

As the June 27 Committee's campaign picked up steam we began getting hate­ calJs from crazies calJing themselves the "Committee to Put Jews in Ovens," who cackled about Auschwitz. Just rhetoric? What about the Jewish couple in Evanston whose home was ransacked and covered with swastikas? The main recruiting pitch of the fascist terrorists has been "White Pow­ er," and their focus has been the Building for neighborhood of Marquette Park, a June 27 among racist pocket of East European "Captive Chicago's black Nations" emigres on Chicago's South community. Side. This has given these little Hitlers a degree of credibility they lack elsewhere. Meanwhile, the homosexual population is an isolated minority here in the heart of "Middle America." The June 27 Committee leaflet, "Who Are These Nazis? What Do They Want to Destroy? sion in favor of giving their support to Chicago-area Jews. Who Do They Want to Kill?" pointed the demonstration to stop the Nazis." Especially among Chicago blacks we out: "The Nazis have targeted Gay Pride A number of officials and union received an enthusiastic response. An Day, because they know that homosex­ militants at the Inland Steel plant in early endorser was Wallace Davis, Jr., uals are the weakest link in their chain of East Chicago (USWA Local 1010) also who was shot in the back by Chicago terror. But in the factories, union halls supported the demonstration. Inland police in 1977, successfully sued the city and neighborhoods, Chicagoans know has been the site of an important picket­ and now heads a black organization that this attack on gays is only a line defense case around class-struggle against police brutality. While the major beginning .... The Nazis have the'ir guns militant Keith Anwar. The largely black TV stations and daily newspapers loaded and pointed directly at you!" We and Latino bus drivers were among the maintained a conspiracy of silence cited the famous statement by German most enthusiastic backers of the anti­ about the anti-Nazi demonstration Protestant theologian and World War I Nazi protest. They took piles of leaflets, being planned, every black radio station U-Boat commander Martin Niemoller, making sure they were placed on every in the city picked up the news and which begins, "First they came for the seat. One drove around the block so that broadcast it across Chicago (see WVON communists, but since I was not a a Committee activist could take up a interview with SL spokesman Don communist I did not protest. ... " collection before getting off. Phone Andrews, page II). Around 63rd and We said, "Chicago is a union town, a company workers formed a small con­ Halsted every liquor store in the black town .... a city of ethnic minori­ tingent that made their banner in a bar. neighborhood took at least 100 flyers. ties." In particular, the Spartacist And people would come up to the League leaflet warned of the Nazi/KKK Understanding that labor could be Committee sound car at stoplights and threat to blacks: next on the fascists' hit list, the unionists ask for stacks of leaflets to hand around. "For blacks-the central and immedi­ were not afraid to defend homosexuals. At the rally, while many left after the ate target of Nazij Klan race­ And they were not the only ones. A Nazis drove off, a lot of blacks stayed to terrorists--a Nazi rally in Chicago is an declaration by the Greek-American the end. Black people know that in this especially ominous provocation. The racist country every rotten thing is going Nali program for blacks makes the Union, printed in the national Greek­ apartheid butchers of South Africa look language daily Proini (24 June), stated: to hit them hardest. And the Nazi/Klan like benevolent liberals. The racist "The Greek people have suffered as few killer psxcho scum are the worst. That's rulers of South Africa think blacks others have from the brutality and blind what brought them out. should be forcibly segregated and violence of the Nazis .... Our dead call For homosexuals the Nazi provoca­ viciously exploited; the Nal.is think they should be exterminated and canned for for the full participation of the Greeks of tion posed an unavoidable political dogfood. Black Chicagoans had better Chicago at the anti-Nazi demonstration choice. Although the Gay Pride Parade turn out in the thousands to stop these in Lincoln Park." A chapter of B'nai Committee sought to ignore the fascists, organizers for racist genocide!" B'rith named for Warsaw Ghetto hundreds of Chicago gays turned out to The Spartacist League campaign uprising hero Janusz Korczak sent out a confront the fascists. Hardly a bar in touched a responsive chord in the city, notice "calling on you to be present in New Town did not have a stack of particularly in the labor movement and Lincoln Park.... We as Holocaust leaflets, and the widely read weekly black community. Early on support Survivors have a moral obligation to Gay Life reported fully on the press came from the International Harvester protest any Nazi rally." In Evanston, conference by the June 27 Committee plant in Melrose Park (UA W Local 6), where the Nazis were driven out of Against the Nazis. On Sunday as the where in 1975 the union had organized a Lovelace Park in 1980, people ap­ Gay Pride parade entered Lincoln Park, civil rights defense guard to protect a plauded Committee leafletters and more marchers cheered our bullhorn an­ black union brother's house from than $100 was collected at a community nouncements that thousands had nightriding racists. The executive board art fair. At the moment of Zionist stopped the Nazis. As a dozen gays of lJAW Local 551 (Ford Sterling terrorist Begin's monstrous crimes in stood around a Committee leafletter, Heights stamping plant) sent the Com­ Lebanon, the question of opposing Nazi one argued that you should ignore the mittee a letter announcing their "deci- murderers at home sharply split Nazis; the rest vigorously objected, 9

"That's crazy ... these people did the also directly provoked arrests. In one to stop the Nazis; it was built in political right thing." case, when marshals were restraining a struggle against liberals and others who The victory party held after the anti­ demonstrator, an RSLer came up would "ignore" the fascist threat. True, Nazi rally at a nearby bar was attended yelling "let him do what he wants"; the there should have been tens of thou­ by 350-400 people, a third of them fellow threw an egg and ten .seconds sands to run off the Hitlerite creeps, and black. Many were interested in talking later was arrested by the cops, while the this time the cops stood in the way. But with members of the Spartacist League, RSL provocateur started screaming we showed it can be done. which had initiated the mass protest about SL "fingermen"! In the context of Reagan reaction and against fascist terror, and learning On June 27, it was not just 3,000 anti­ a bipartisan anti-Soviet war drive, there about Trotskyism. People applauded as Nazis against two dozen fascist punks. has been a sharp political shift to the a new member joined the Spartacus Directly confronting the crowd was the right in this country, including by the Youth League and a chervonetz gold Chicago Police. And those stupid bulk of the so-called "left." As the medallion was awarded to a supporter adventurists who simply identify the Spartacist League increasingly stands for meritorious service at the March 27 state power with these tiny gangs are out as the clear communist pole, various El Salvador march in Washington, D.C. capable of criminal provocations. In the pseudo-socialists have resorted to slan­ The Internationale was sung at the 1930s, Leon Trotsky wrote of an der and provocation against us. In order conclusion. incident in Paris where the Stalinists to keep El Salvador protests "ready for Big Liars Caught Red-Handed But the day thousands streamed into Lincoln Park to stop the Nazis was a day of infamy for the motley crew which makes up the Anti-Spartacist League. Through petty sabotage-Stonewall leaflets pasted over Committee posters, trying to rip up leaflets-the Revolu­ tionary Socialist League in particular tried to undercut the anti-Nazi protest on June 27. First of all, their maneuver in the gay milieu blew up in their face, with full accounts of the fiasco pub­ lished in the local gay weekly. Then after the RSL's Stonewall Committee collapsed, they were unable to organize anyone at all. Worse yet, the supposedly "sectarian" Spartacists managed to bring out more than 3,000. The SL­ initiated June 27 Committee Against the Nazis got numerous endorsements and parllclpation from the labor movement-which isn't supposed to move for anything but dollars and cents, These Nazi creeps claim to be the "master race"! says the RSL. But there they all were occupying the site where the fascists provoked a confrontation with police Teddy" Kennedy, they call on the planned to strut. protecting a fascist meeting. capitalist cops to exclude the SL Faced with the SL's strategy of labor I because of our call for military victory black mobilization translated into "I n this period it is very important to distinguish between the fascists and the to leftist insurgents and for defense of reality, the RSLers resorted to down­ state. The state is not yet ready to Cuba and the USSR. As we have right provocation, trying, again unsuc­ subordinate itself to the fascists; it successfully mobilized labor and blacks cessfully, to turn the protest into a wants to 'arbitrate.· ... Politicallv it is to stop the fascists from penetrating confrontation with the cops. Their usual part of the nature of a pre-Ronapartist, northern urban centers-Detroit, No­ M.O. is to dress up in football helmets 'arhiter' state that the police hesitate. hold hack. and on the whole are far vember 1979; San Francisco, April and heave rocks, resulting in a bash with from identifying with the fascist gangs. 1980; Ann Arbor last March 20 and the police in which the fascists get off Our strategic task is to increase these Chicago on June 27-these fake­ scot-free. This time. in a demonstration hesitations and apprehensions on the revolutionaries resort to ever more that was confronted by mounted police part of the 'arhiter: its army and its police. How') By showing that we are absurd lies to cover their own capitula­ and shot through with more than a stronger than the fascists, that is by tion to the liberals. And these Big Lies hundred clearly marked plainclothes­ giving them a good heating in full view by little centrist clots are then picked up men traveling in groups of up to a of thi, arhiter without, as long as we are and circulated by the far larger refor­ dozen, their scheme was to get young not ahsolutely forced to, directly taking mists to smear the reds. militants to start throwing things. When on the state itself. That is the whole point." security squads of the Committee -letter to the French Communist In Chicago, the RSL claims we Against the Nazis warned them that we League. 2 March 1934 in fingered anti-fascist militants to the wouldn't tolerate any stunts to get Writings of Leon Trotsky. cops and condemns the SL as anti-gay! people beaten and arrested, the RSLers Supplement {1934-40J Their sidekick, Peter Sollenberger, guru let fly with a stream of cop-baiting. They June 27 was an important show of force of the tiny Revolutionary Workers 10

League (R WL), claimed the "Sparts" Associated Press wrote: "The Chicago militant class struggle leading to the didn't bring people out, the Nazis did. gay parade, its 13th annual, was marred conquest of power by the working class. This is not the first time they have by protesters who hurled rocks, eggs This latter is the strategy of the stooped to slanders.' The R WL labeled and smoke bombs. It was not immedi­ Spartacist League. Detroit, November 1979 a "fraud," ately clear which of the three groups was This is the program for the emancipa­ saying black demonstrators were responsible for the violence and which tion of black people enslaved by the "passers-by" who had been "duped." In . groups the arrested demonstrators chains of racist American capitalism . Ann Arbor, where 2,000 responded to represented." Yet in interviewing a Blacks know the Nazis and KKK are an the SL campaign and ran the Nazis out spokesman for the June 27 Committee, immediate, lethal threat. Recent history of town, the RSL/RWL claim we AP Chicago correspondent T. Lee in Marquette Park was written in black attacked our own demonstration, be­ Hughes had asked: "Were you surprised blood and white terror. But they also cause we blocked their attempt to take it that there wasn't any violence?" Of remember that it was in the Chicago over with their own sound system. And course, the real source of violence is the suburb of Cicero that Martin Luther in Chicago, June 27 their ludicrous line fascists, and the capitalist society that King, Jr. was stoned by white racist is that we brought out thousands, breeds such terrorists. But the capitalist mobs when he tried to bring the liberal­ distributed a quarter million leaflets in press, which treated the Greensboro led civil rights movement north. That little over two weeks, put up 5,000 massacre as a "shootout" between movement ran head-on into the capital­ posters in three days-all calling to "extremists" (equating the leftist victims ist economic basis of black oppression. "Stop the Nazis"-just so that when with their Nazi/ Klan murderers), wasn't And ever since then the token gains for masses came out we could prevent them interested in that story. black rights have been steadily eroded: from doing just that! As Stalin said, June 27 was not merely a gathering of busing dead, CET A terminal and overt paper will take anything written on it. several thousand people who oppose the racism in the saddle from the White But who will believe them after Nazis. It gave a taste, but only a taste, of House to the courthouse. In Reagan's Chicago?! the social power of a labor and black America, more than two-thirds of all The RSL's adventurism is based on its militant mobilization which can sweep black youth are unemployed. Black lack of faith in the capacity and will of away the unspeakable Hitler punks and parents, many jobless and despairing, the working class to fight for the defend embattled minorities. A full­ can't keep their kids off the street and oppressed. Its defeatist sectoralism­ scale mobilization of the workers their grandmothers on welfare. telling each sector of the oppressed to go movement and minorities would send It has become a commonplace to say it alone-and reliance on the liberals these mad-dog elements of the enraged that decaying capitalism underlies racist have the same roots. On March 20 in middle class packing. oppression in the U.S. Most of the "last Ann Arbor, the RSL/RWL sought to As several speakers emphasized, the hired and first fired" haven't had a conciliate the "ignore the Nazis" Dem­ fascists feed off the present depression steady job since the 1974"75 recession. ocrats. Later they denounced the Spar­ conditions. They are the fringe products But many have become demoralized by tacist League for "trade union fetish­ of the anti-Soviet war drive backed by unrelieved oppression. Black misleaders ism," simply asserting a supposed both Democrats and Republicans, a re­ say that salvation can be found in the "failure of the trade-union movement to newed Cold War that seeks to "roll "lesser evil" Democratic Party of Jimmy mobilize seriously against the Klan and back" not only Communism abroad but Carter. After the demonstrated bank­ Nazis." Yet it was precisely labor every gain won by the union movement ruptcy of civil rights liberalism and support that turned Ann Arbor into a and minorities at home. The fascists' radical pseudo-nationalism, many black mass protest. In Chicago they tried to appeal is to increasingly desperate and militants are open to a class-struggle tail after "ignore the Nazis" Gay Priders, backward working-class and lower road to black emancipation. The Spar­ while the SL mobilized labor, blacks, middle-class white layers who are tacist League alone raises that program, Jews and gays to stop the fascists. Those persuaded not by rational arguments fighting to finish the Civil War at last. who walk in the middle of the road are but by force. The Nazis and Klan On the streets of Chicago and Detroit, bound to be run over. And by the end of understand this well: their "propagan­ the SL organizes to crush the race the day on June 27 you could almost see da" consists of lynchings, cross burnings terrorists, to harness the power of labor the tire tracks where the Anti-Spartacist and swastika painting. As it was in to the struggle for equality, building a League had been run over by 3,000 anti­ Germany, the question is: who will win, communist vanguard party that fights Nazi fighters. With their sectoralism, who will die? Will the Red Guards or the for revolutionary integrationism and the RSL/ R WL didn't defend gays; with storm troopers prevail? socialism. our political opposition to sectoralism, The fascists' ultimate function is as It is desperately necessary to fight! we did. capitalism's shock troops to destroy the Failure to do so means descent into race unions, to whip up genocidal racism war and destruction. But the key to against minorities. Today they are small victorious labor/black struggle is the Smash the Fasclsts­ For Workers Revolutlonl gangs waiting in the wings to be used on forging of black leadership in a commu­ a grand scale tomorrow. But in Rea­ nist vanguard party. With only a few In the aftermath, the demonstration gan's America they have demonstrated hundreds and a growing black compo­ of several thousands in Lincoln Park their appeal, occasionally winning tens nent, the Spartacist League was able to against the fascists was the object of a of thousands of votes in white racist bring out thousands to stop the Nazis in violence-baiting media campaign. pockets-North Carolina, Detroit sub­ Chicago on June 27. With a few While TV news accounts said "close to urbs, southern California's Orange thousand militants gained in massive 3,000" were present at the anti-Nazi County. They must be crushed in the black recruitment, the SL can lead the protest, the wire services and daily egg! The means are not small-group way to black liberation through socialist papers said 1,000. "\3 Foes of Nazis confrontations with the cops, or suicidal revolution. In this race-divided country, Arrested During Lincoln Park Rally" and idiot appeals to the capitalist state the Spartacist League is America's last, was the Sun-Times headline. The which systematically protects them, but best hope .• 11 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 309, 9 July 1982

Spartacist Don Andrews Speaks on Chicago Black Radio Blacks Under the Gun We print belo ..... excerpts/rom a radio opposed to that time and that place on made the statement that his platform interview ..... ith Don Andre ..... s of the Sunday? could have been written hya Klansman. SpartaCl~H League and June 27 Commit­ Andrews: The underlying assumption And that is not far from the truth. Thl' tee Against the Nazis hr(Jadcast live on that's behind that is that if you ignore Reagan government certainly has pro­ WVON, Chicago's leading h/ack radio the Nazis and the Klan, they will ignore tected these fascists. .] hey sec the station, on June 26. us. You see, the Klan and Nazis are a possibility of unleashing them, particu­ deadly threat right now. Under Rea­ larly in the context of a resurgent, gan's war against black people, against fighting labor movement that champi­ labor, against women and all minorities, ons the right of labor and blach and all Richard Steele: Why have you formed and gays. in this country, the Klan and of the oppressed. They may need these the Committee Against the Nazis~ Nazis feel that they can come into a shock troops to drown in blood the Don Andrews: Well, the June 27 powerful industrial center like Chicago workers movement. the st ruggle for Committee Against the Na/is was and carry out attacks on one of the most black equality in the future. initiated by the Spartacist League in vulnerable sections of the oppressed, the Steele: I haven't seeil too much in the response to the Nazis and the Klan gays, and then from there to launch a major media about the event on [threat] to march on Gay Pride Day. drive for genocide against black people, Sunday. Certainly the gays are on their hit list. and the Jews. Since Reagan has come to Andrews: Well. they certainly ,didn't but they have other targets in this city. power they have grown enormously: mind playing up Greensboro as a Especially they want to go after blacks, they number 10,000, they have 100,00C "shootout" between two "extremist" and Jews. I understand that not so long supporters. organizations. and of course white­ ago they demolished the home of a Steele: Also psychologically they have washed the KlanjNa/i killers. Where Jewish family in Evanston. And they gained probably a lot of strength based was the liberal outcry when the anti­ would like to preach their "White on what is the perceived attitude of the racist militants were gunned down in Power" madness in the city of Chicago. current administration. broad daylight in Greensboro':) One of Steele: Why not have a demonstration Andrews: Yes. Bill Wilkinson of the our purposes, since the major media at another day, at another time, as Klan, shortly after Reagan was elected, have maintained a conspiracy of silence on this issue, has been to make this an 1I issue among blacks and Jews and working people in thi~ city, and other Stop the .wI ethnic minorities, and the response we Prt"V«atlon arc getting is very, very po~.iti\'e. There are a lot of angry people who do not :INS A,unst want to sec the Nazi/Klan filth raise and Blocks their heads in this city, to get a recruiting station in order to recruit to genocide. '1, I,6ft They dream of their death camps; they dream of making Chicago a vast cemetery of Jewish, black and labor corpses. We have to do everything in our power through a labor-led fight to organize black people, Jewish people and all of the oppressed to ~top the Nazis and the Klan from raising their heads in the city. Steele: l.et me ask you, what is the Spartacist League~ Andrews: We're a labor-socialist or­ ganization and, very simply put. our struggle is to build a racially integra ted workers party III this country that can fight for the rule of the work ing class. Labor's power Is key to defense of minorities. Talking about combatting Nazi/ Klan 12

terror in the industrial centers through­ By the way, our organization, in out this country: I'm from Detroit, and terms of defending the democratic rights one 'of the things the Spartacist League of homosexuals. we have done that even did along with militant auto workers before there was a gay movement, right in the aftermath ofthe Greensboro because our party views itself, and we kil1ings was we were able to mobilize are in reality, the tribune of the people. blacks, many of whom were auto We want to fight every single instance of workers, socialists and black youths, to oppression and tyranny that this capi­ stop the Klan from riding in downtown talist government visits on people, Detroit. This was in the face of deter­ because the only way we're going to get mined opposition on the part of [May­ out of this situation is by stopping the or] Coleman Young and the Democratic Nazis and the Klan and laying the basis Party administration, who threatened for an integrated fight for jobs for all. to arrest anti-Klan militants who That's why on June 27 it's so important showed up. Also in San Francisco in that we turn out masses of people who April '80, labor, minorities and gays are the enemies of fascism. The Sparta­ stopped the Nazis from celebrating cist League is a socialist organization ~{ ~, iff • Hitler's birthday. Our strategy is one of which has initiated this, but we can't do WV Pilato 'mobilizing the power of the labor it by ourselves. We are a smal1 socialist Don Andrews movement, alongside its al1ies, to organization of black and white revolu­ prevent such race-hate organizations tionaries who have a vision of a better ways a possibility of some direct from gaining a foothold. world, a world in which the working confrontation" Steele: What's the City's attitude at this class can rule and black people can Caller: Sure it bothers me. But what are point? final\y have their equality. That costs you going to do'! If we don't stick Andrews: WeB, they would like people money, that means time and dedication, together and be there, what're we going to stay home. They would basical1y like and that means bodies. We think a lot of I to do? Every word they said tonight is to give the Nazis and the Klan a people will see its importance by being really true. It's getting worser and platform on Sunday under the guise of there on the 27th. worser. their "right to Constitutional1y protect­ * * ,.. ,.. ,.. Steele: So basically. your feeling is the ed free speech," which is another way of Caller: I'd like to say I appreciate their cause far outweighs the negative saying the "right" to organize lynch cause, and I'm certainly going to be at thought. ... mobs against blacks and others. From the park. Another thing, they are also Caller: Just like the lady [said] who the very beginning we have been very against Catholic people. called just a while ago. Why would the determined to make one thing absolute­ Steele: You're talking about the Nazis. government let them [the Na/is J demon­ ly clear: our strategy is to avoid Caller: Yeah, and the Ku Klux Klan. I strate like that" Why'l Anything a black confrontation with the police. We are don't know how they could let them be person tries to do, they cut it down. out there to demonstrate our outrage ,.. ,.. ,.. ,.. ,.. there with a Nazi uniform. I believe against the Nazis and the Klan. what he is talking about tonight. Steele: There may be people who are Caller: I would like to ask. do they Steele: So you're going to be out in not affiliated with any organization, and foresee a possible reformation of the support, is that iI" you have no control over them. Black Panthers, or some other ethnic Caller: I certainly am. I told my organintion that will fight. maybe Andrews: The truth of the matter is, husband I'm going to be there. I just physically, against the Nazis? where does the violence come from? wanted to give credit for what they're Who has been maiming and murdering Andrews: Well, I'd like to comment on doing. and bombing black people's homes and that. First of all, black people today are other minorities' homes from coast to ,.. ,.. ,.. * ,.. absolutely leaderless. rhey're vulner­ coast in this country? The violence able. they're disorgani/ed and they are Caller: I want to appreciate what comes from these race-hate terrorist full of despair. Because. for the most they're doing too. Every black person organizations. I can spel1 that out very part, the black "leaders" in this country, should be there. Al1 of those Jews out graphical\y. For example, even in what they're about particularly now is there in Evanston, when they [the Nazis] Detroit recently three Klansmen were finding another racist Democrat to sell were supposed to march out there, they convicted for blowing off the hand of a to us. People have their eyes on Teddy stopped them. And that's what we black woman. I have a friend who was a Kennedy. Do you know what Teddy should do. Every black person, every phone worker in California, who was Kennedy did when the racist mobs were Jew and everybody should be down shot down off a pole by the Ku Klux menacing and attacking hlack school­ there. I'll be there. I will. And I want to Klan. And also Greensboro, These are children in Boston during the fight for get the number where I can send some not isolated incidents. This comes in a school integration" Absolutely nothing. money to help them along. Where context of a decaying economy, a He turned a blind eye. should I send the money to? crumbling capitalist economy that On the question of the Black Panther cannot provide the smal1est reforms. Steele: l.et's get you a phone number, Party and what happened to it. I'd like They are taking away every single gain and then you can call. What is that to commcnt first of all that the only way that black people and working people number again" black people can attain their freedom is have fought for in the past, and so these Andrews: That's [312] 427-0003. through joint struggle. united struggle Nazi and Klan organizations feel that Steele: Let me ask you a question with white workers, And we haven't it's open season on blacks and working before you go. Doesn't it bother you seen that in years. The idea of blacks people and Jews and gays. about the prospect that there is al- attempting to overturn racist American 13 capitalism by themselves without being The fight against the Nazis and the Andrews: We have gays in our organi­ part of a socialist organization of Klan is the fight against the rotting zation who are socialists. We are workers of all races is the road to defeat. system that we live under. We say that socialists and we have all types of people And the Black Panther Party, despite the factories, the banks, the mills and in our organization. You hear Reagan the heroic effort of many of its militants the mines-we want to mobilize the and everybody talking about getting the to fight against the racist status quo, had working class to take these into their government off our back. Well we're for no strategy that could show the way out. own hands, to fight for their own the government getting out of the Unfortunately they were a nationalist government. You'll be hearing from us bedrooms. People should be able to be organization, which meant that they because the fact of the matter is, we have what they want to be. And as far as we're wrote off the working class, the white the only program that can stem the tide concerned, we don't surrender to that and black workers. And that's where the of racist attacks, that can stop the anti-gay bigotry. We fight it tooth and power is in this society-in the factories, layoffs when we fight for sit-down nail. The crucial issue is the gays are on where the black and white working strikes in the plants, that actually has an the Nazis' and the Klan's hit list. They people face their enemies. answer to the two bankrupt capitalist want to go after them because they're parties. You know, if the Ronald isolated, and we want to prove just the Steele: Isn't that power right now being Reagans of the world tell you to stay opposite: that there are intelligent, eroded by the fact that there are many away from groups like the Spartacist thoughtful working people, decent people who are obviously out of work, League that fight on the basis of people in this city who will rally to the people are scared about their jobs? I principles, then people better start cause of defending the democratic rights would think that people are so con­ checking it out. of the oppressed, gays and everybody else. cerned and hesitant about speaking out The Spartacist League, as I indica ted in many situations because your first earlier, is a small socialist organization. Caller: But the gay professionals, the thinking is, "I want to keep my job." We have been in existence since 1963, gay businesses are just as much anti­ fighting for black rights and fighting for black as the Klan. That's why I take a Andrews: Well, first of all we have to the interests of the working class. We neutral point of view. And I hate to see understand about the demoralization also participate on our socialist pro­ any group pull in blacks, to use blacks. and despair among working people, gram in elections. I ran for city council Andrews: Well, is it in the interests of who's responsible for it? It's the fat cat in 1981 in the city of Detroit on the black people along with oth\!r oppressed labor sellouts who have given up every program I'm talking about right now, sections of this society to stop the Nazis single gain imaginable. Look at Doug for labor/black mobilizations against when they try to come to a city like Fraser, who sits on the board of the Klan, for sit-down strikes against Chicago? directors of the Chrysler Corporation­ layoffs, and for fighting the anti-Soviet Caller: I think that any group which is he gave away five billion dollars and war drive. which is one of the important cancerous, which is backstepping, now is talking about giving up more to aspects of the political program of both which is an oppressive group should not the greedy companies. The only way to capitalist parties. have certain rights. And Ijust think it's a respond to such a situation is for the very bad atrocity to have people use workers to use their power through sit­ Steele: And part of that is through what downtrodden people. down strikes, to occupy those plants and you are planning to do on Sunday. as it to appeal to other sections of the relates to the Nazis .... Andrews: The Democratic Party does working class and the poor. The Andrews: Yes. it's part of a whole that. Spartacist League, especially in the struggle to change this system from top Caller: That's right. current period, has fought for this to bottom. so that we have a workers Andrews: So we're against the Demo­ perspective. Our supporters, for exam­ government, a planned economy in this cratic Party. ple in the Ford River Rouge plant in country. The question of jobs for all, the Caller: Well what party are you in favor Detroit, recently energetically fought question of decent housing, the question of? of decent education, the elimination of for a two-day sit-down strike through­ Andrews: I'm in the Spartacist League. Klan/Nazi terror. People will see how out southeast Michigan, but especially We're in favor of building a workers barbaric this system is, that it can't even centered on the powerful Ford River party in this country, and our work on provide the slightest reforms, the small­ Rouge plant, to show the way out to the behalf of black people, on behalf of the est improvement in the people's condi­ concessions/ giveback fever. working man and working woman and tions of life. We can't get our justice What I'm pointing out is that the on behalf of defending the democratic under this system, and that's why we black workers who are at the point of rights of gays, is part of our struggle to have to build a racially integrated production, like their white class broth­ change this whole society. In Boston we workers party .... ers and sisters, in united struggle can were the only ones calling on the labor turn this situation around by fighting • • • • • movement to stand by those black for jobs for all. You've got a lot of Caller: I am black and I think that I schoolchild ren in the face of those racist impoverished blacks and other minori­ would have to take a neutral stance on mobs out in the streets. The fact is that ties who are trapped in the ghettos and this issue, because I'm not pro-gay nor our perspective of the way to achieve the barrios in this country who would am I pro-Klan. It just appears to me that black freedom is to base yourself on the love to join a picket line that is to fight when the economy is bad and everything power of the labor movement. It sounds for jobs for all. And of course, the only seems to fall apart, blacks are always like you've given up on the fight. But way we're going to get that is to dump called upon to rally behind this group there are others who see the necessity of the labor fakers, the so-called leaders of and that organization. I would just like building a racially integrated workers these major industrial unions who see to throw the question out, if it's not too party. Black workers have potentially their role as defending the interests of demeaning to your two guests, as to the power to lead the kind of fight we are the company. whether they are gay. talking about.. 14 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 309, 9 July 1982

Speech at Chicago Anti-Nazi Rally, June 27 Myra Owens, Spartacus Youth League: "We Have the World to Win!"

The Nazis are using the gay demon­ stration as a scapegoat. The real focal point is the black community. But we are here today to stop them again, and we will if they show their faces! It is only the Spartacist League and the Spartacus \\es-· '" Youth League who raise the fight to stop the Nazis and the Klan. There is not one black organization, like Rev. Daugh­ c;,ca~, try's Black United Front or Ben Chavis' National Black I ndependent Political Party or Jesse Jackson's Operation ....:7 ~ PUS H, that even raises a finger to stop Myra Reagan's Cold War drive or even to Owens fight against the Nazis and the Klan. Z,i~ Their main concern is building a future in the Democratic Party. But there's no future for you in the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. They're both equally dedicated to the anti-Soviet war drive that fuels the growth of the Nazis and the destruction of humanity. both ruling parties. Remember Tom revolution or death for black people in So we need our own party, you need Metl.ger, the grand dragon of the Ku this country! your own party, which is a workers Klux Klan who got the Democratic It is blacks who will be in the forefront party, a party that will fight in your nomination in San Diego? Neither party of fighting against the Nazis and the interests. And that party is the Sparta­ has anything to offer black youth in this Klan. If the cops don't get blacks, the cist League and its youth group, the country. But the Spartacus Youth Nazis will. Remember the Black Pan­ Spartacus Youth League. With the League does, and we want you to join ther Party leader Fred Hampton, growth of the Na7is and the Klan, there us. Just like we said on EI Salvador, it murdered here in Chicago? Remember are candidates of the Nazis and Klan in applies to blacks: Take a side! It is Ron Settles, murdered by the Signal Hill police in Long Beach, California? Recently two black G Is were killed in - Germany by a Nazi-lover, and one of them was a sergeant in the Army. And just last week a black transit worker in Order Now! New York was murdered by a racist I enclose $._ for ____copy(ies) of gang. "Solidarnosc Polish Company Union It's great that you're all out here to for CIA and Bankers" at $1.00 each. fight the Nazis. But the fight is not over today. We must continue to fight and we must win that fight. The Spartacus

Address ~ __ . ______~ Youth League has a future for blacks. Come and join the organization that City ____ ~ __ .~ ______. initiated this demonstration. Have a shot at something else besides being the State ______. ___ .. Zip ---.- .-- ,,-,---,---1) burnt-out ash of history. There are some Phone ______.. of you out there who want to fight and Make checks payable/mail to give a shot at socialism. So come and Spartacist Publishing Co . join the Spartacus Youth League. Join Box 1377 GPO. New York. NY 10116 us today, because tomorrow might be too late. We have the world to win!. 15

reprintedJrom Workers Vanguard No. 310, 23 July 1982

.______-'1----- ______~ ______· ______Black NYC Trar~sit Worker Speaks in Europe Labor/B'~ack Struggle in Reagalfs America 'I

position and left the workers with the feeling that they have the ahility to fight Oust the Labor Fake'~­ around their interests using their own Break with the Democ~"ats! organilations and could win. But today this situation is no longer For a Class-Struggle Worker's Party! the case. Gains which the workers have won as a result of that strike have now been almost entirely hacked away. An example of this is what occurred with a As part ol a campai!(n ol protest threatening for somt' time. He closed black motorman by the name of Jesse against Ronald Reagan's European tour down the citv the cotlrts threw him in Cole. This was a motorman who was .last month to heat the anti-Soviet war jail because i; is illega,l for the transit killed as a result of management drums, the international Spartaeist unions to strike, and he' told the judge incompetence. He was instructed by the tendency organized puhlic meetings in that he could drop dea,l in his black management of the transport system to six European cities on the theme "The robes, that he would stay out on strike ignore the signal safety on the rail. As a Main Enemy Is at Home'" We print until it was successful, unt.;1 it won. result, his train crashed into another below edited excerpts ol the speech hy M ike Quill died just after H e got out of train that was sitting just ahead. Jesse guest speaker Ed Kartsen. a black jail. The strike was solid and the result Cole's cah was crushed and he was American trade unionist. to the Paris was that the Transport Worke rs Union seriously injured. The head of the meeting. won the settlement that broke th e record Metropolitan Transit Authority imme­ as far as wage increases anal other diately went on television to explain to • • • • • demands, far ahead of any , union everyone why it was this motorman's So, Reagan is here in Europe to throughout the United States at the fault that this accident had occurred. realign and harden up his anti-Soviet time. It put the union in a very pow,erful Instead of organizing an emergency alliance. He's instructing them that despite the pressure from members of various peace movements composed, I assume, of great numbers of people who don't exactly like the idea of glowing, that they'd better get in line with the leader of international counterrevolu­ tion, that is, with U.S. imperialism's war drive. They had better get in line with the nuclear destruction of the USSR. What I want to talk about is what Reagan's anti-Soviet war drive means for the American working class. I am a member of Transport Workers Union Local 100 in New York City. This is a union which organizes transit workers, those who run the trains and buses. This union keeps New York City, the center of international finance, running. My union went out on strike in 1966, a successful strike that set a precedent for unions throughout the United States. Its leader, a president by the name of Mike Quill, found out that he was dying and so he decided to marry his mistress and Guest speaker Ed Kartsen addresses educational (.~onference call a strike, a strike that he had been Trotskyists. 16 rescue squad, he spent the money of the transport system on organizing this campaign against Jesse Cole. He had the power to turn off the third rail power to the transport system, which was neces­ sary to allow the rescue squad to go onto the tracks. The power was left on for over an hour after it was known that the accident had occurred. So Jesse Cole did not die for any other reason than the management allowed him to bleed to death in the cab. Or to put it in simple language, he was killed by the Transit Authority. I and a handful of other militants decided to do something about this. It was our intention to close down the entire transit system for Jesse Cole's funeral. And we were also determined to organize the entire union to get.out that m .! day in respect for Jesse Cole. This was important because we didn't want any 20 March 1982: I Anti-Nazi mobilization chased Nazis out of Ann individual militants to be victimized if Michigan. they acted on their own. But our union medical treatment! whatsoever for inju­ binding arbitration by the.government. leadership went on another kind of ries, since this i~l the facility that they The result of this binding arbitration campaign; they went on a counter­ normally use. S ,0 this issue, along with was that some major gains of the campaign to get everybody to work that the issue of Re agan's campaign against Transport Workers Union were taken day. About 200 of us showed up to the labor, as well ,tas his anti-labor move­ away by the government. And this has funeral. and the system continued to ment against.' the USSR were issues I widely angered many transit workers. run. This is because of the leadership of raised as par t of my campaign for Local While John Lawe advocates the our union, not because of the many 100 preside nt. binding of the workers to the govern­ i hundred~ of militant workers who felt a I raisec/ the issue that the working ment with respect to the contract it is deep sense of outrage at what happened. class in America must fight politically also the binding of the working class Our leadership plays the role of a for power if it is to defend its interests politically to the ruling class through the middleman. as typically union bu­ against:the capitalist attacks, Not only Democratic Party, He's on a campaign reaucrats do, between management and the iss Ale of striking. but also the issue of to force union members to pay a the workforce. They are the voice a wo'/kers party to fight for a workers contribution to various Democratic of management inside the workers gov('/rnment as critical issues for the Party politicians as the way to get rid of movement. vict,.ory of the working class. Now, .John the anti-strike laws, And most of the LaiWe won in the elections because he American fake-left support this same Fight for Power! sl)ccessfully demoralized broad sections strategy of reliance on the left wing of I ran on a campaign for president of (Jf the Transport Workers Union. He the Democratic Party. As I said, I was my local because this kind of leadership did this by allowing a strike to be lost the only one to fight both for the can never defend the most basic interests about a year and a half ago. After about perspective of a workers party as well as of the American working class, nor the a week of striking, the governor of New for the right to strike in the last election. basic interests of workers anywhere in York and the city mayor were about to The Communist Party supported a the world. I ran primarily on the right to give in, But just before the city and the candidate running for the presidency of strike. on the right of labor to use it~j'! state capitulated, which was to happen Local 100 who ran on a program against organilation and the only weapon it hrJs within 24 hours. as we found out later going out on strike. The Communist to defend its interests. I also linked r ny on, our leader John Lawe agreed to go Party-supported candidate, as a matter campaign to the fight against the ra,cist back under a much lower wage agree­ of fact, voted an endorsement of John policies of the city administration. ~ ilnce ment and under penalties from the Lawe's giving up of our policy in the most of the most critical elements I.)f the Taylor Law. which is an anti-strike law. union of "No contract, no work." Only workforce are black. The consequence was that Lawe suc­ afterwards, when the elections were over The union today is typicall.y por­ cessfully impressed on the workforce and after the negotiations were overthey trayed as lalY and stupid and th at this is that if you strike. you will lose. One of came out against binding arbitration. primarily the reason for the run-down the major reasons why he got away with New York City transit system. J There is a this whole campaign has a lot to do with case which I raised in my carrJpaign over Ronald Reagan. Labor/Black Mobilization to the closing of a hospital r5ydenham] When the air controllers union went Smash Klan/Nazi Terror which primarily serves i poor black out on strike last year. Ronald Reagan I want to now talk about the situation people. It was closed bee ,Ruse the New smashed that union. And leaders like with respect to blacks in the United York City mayor clairr,led that there .John Lawe instructed the transit work­ States. Reagan is on a campaign against wasn't enough mone~1 to keep the ers that what happened to the air labor and he's also on a campaign emergency ward open. IBy doing this he controllers will happen to you. So he against the few remaining gains of the condemned thousand s of blacks to no forced us to accept in our last contract civil rights movement. This is resulting 17 , in increased activity on the part of fascists. The program of the'l<.u Klux Klan, whicQ is the home-gro\! In Ameri­ can fascist \ organization, i~. to drive blacks back into slave labor. Reagan is carrying 0ut their prograim from the White House in terms of CJestruction of the gains of the civil rigt Its movement. The difference the Klan' has with him is that he's not creating mass death camps and organizing slave la .bor on a massive scale. Of late the 'most. notorious case of Klan terror was v vhat occurred in Greensboro, l'fort~, Carolina, and I wan't to briefly go i,nto the implications of this Greensboro} massacre for Ameri­ can workers and blacks. What happe'.led there was the massacre of left',sts, trade-union organ­ izers, civil righ.ts workers and a black WfDman, with the knowledge and col­ la,boration o~i the American govern- 1J,\ent. It is a,. documented fact that there were federiil agents in the car from which the 1.(u Klux Klan and the Nazis emerged. I think the results are generally known, t hat the Ku Klux Klan and WV Photo Nazis op' ~ned fire on this demonstration Detroit, November 1979-Black workers say: "The Klan Won't Ride in the and mu rdered in broad daylight five Motor City!" people, shooting them in the chest and head. -rhe Ku: Klux Klan got off scot­ Greensboro massacre, there was a was clearer that day than that the free w hen the ~rial came up. In fact the mobilization of blacks, workers and mobilized force of the working class was wholf; incident was videotaped and this leftists on the same spot in order to stop the force that could smash fascism. was 'presented' at the trial, but it did not them. The important lesson to learn is This year there was a mohilization in stor', the racist, terrorists from getting off that the same liberals who request the Ann Arbor, just outside Detroit. There scot-free. Arid the message behind government to defend the citizens a group called the SS Action Group, all owing the Ku Klux Klan to get offfor against the fascists, these liberals had a another fascist organi/ation, wanted to celrrying out this vicious act of terror in voice in the form of the local mayor by demonstrate around the slogans of "Kill b.road daylight is that it's OK to kill the name of Coleman Young, a black Commies" and endorsement of Ronald 'olacks, reds, trade-union organizers, mayor. He threatened the blacks, trade­ Reagan's policy in EI Salvador. There that the government gives sanction to union workers, the leftists all with arrest were two mobilizations. one initiated this kind of activity. if they showed up the day that the again by the American section of the The reason for this is that there is an fascists were to come. But that didn't international Spartacist tendency and enormous amount of unemployment stop efforts to mobilize the black another by the liberals. the latter to taking place in the United States today. community, the trade-union force. Five demonstrate to "ignore" the Nazis. The In particular, in the Midwest, places like hundred militants, many from an auto results in Ann Arbor were that U A W Detroit, where there is a massive black plant called River Rouge. showed up locals around that region. transport working-class population being thrown fully prepared to deal with any fascists workers around that region, as well as onto the :streets, auto factories being that might come and, as well, fully AFSCME workers, endorsed the cam­ closed down. Because of attacks against prepared to go to jail. They were the paign to mobilize on the spot where the social services by the Reagan adminis­ most militant workers throughout Nazis said they were going to come, So tration many of these blacks face no Detroit, the potential leadership of the that day, a crowd of 2,000 students, means to survive, that is, no welfare. entire black and white workers of trade unionists and leftists appeared on These masses of blacks are becoming Detroit. The handful of fascist punks the spot where the Nazis said they were more and more the targets of groups like understood that there would be no going to come. When the Nazis drove by the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis in a very possibility for a fascist demonstration in a car they looked at this kind of real way. Ku Klux Klan and Nazi acts of on that spot that day and if they did the mobilization, and went over to the terror have increased more than 425 consequences would be dire to their site of the "ignore the Nazis" percent according to the Justice Depart­ health. demonstration. ment ~ver the last few years. This was a workers victory. The Sections of the "Stop the Nazis" It is, fortunate that the Nazis and the lesson was that only the working class demonstration heard about this and Ku Klux Klan have met some resistance under a militant leadership can success­ about 1,500 of these demonstrators of late' in the United States to their terror fully stop the fascists. I'm proud to say gathered around these few Nazis and activity. When the Nazis and the Ku that I chaired that rally and it was also to expressed their outrage at their l the Klux Kla,n wanted to demonstrate in the credit of the Spartacists of the Nazis'] provocation. Many projectiles dowl,ltown Detroit in celebration of the United States who initiated it. Nothing were thrown in their direction. It's 18 unfortunate that they were able to even demonstrated in the 1950s in the In 19,'i5 in Selma, Alabama Martin walk out of town, although there were McCarthy period, things like the Smith Luther I\',ing had a march for voting some injuries to these Nazis. The police Act were used against the then­ rights wh ere he relied on the federal rushed in to defend them and help them revolutionary Socialist Workers Party, troops, sta.le troops and the local police escape. The state played the role of and against the Communist Party, which to defend th'e march against Klan terror. protecting the fascists, because they supported the creation of this law. The result W,'lS that a black woman was have a perspective to use those fascists Now I want to raise just one more shot to death by the Ku Klux Klan with as a weapon against labor, against example. During the civil rights move­ the full knowl'edge, there again, of an blacks, the poor and minorities. ment in the United States Martin Luther FBI agent. The FBI agent wrote, in fact, King and the Democratic Party pushed a book talking ~ lbout his entire experi­ this idea that black people have to use ence inside the K u Klux·Klan and every Capitalism Means time he reporteu' that the Klan was Black Oppression the same kind of non-violent resistance as Gandhi used. The objective of this about to carry out; 10 act of racist terror, There is a political tendency in the pacifism was to embarrass your enemy he says that his own bosses told him just United States expressed again by the with your blood, in other words, if you to go along and ob serve. This was in Communist Party which calls for are beaten on the streets you shouldn't contrast to the FB.rs ·infiltration of "banning the Klan," that is, laws by the raise your hands in defense or strike groups like the Black' Panthers, where bourgeois government to make organi­ back in any way, but allow the racists to they set up the execution of Bl.ack zations like the Nazis and the Ku Klux beat you. This is the liberal tradition Panther leaders, like Fred Hampton in Klan illegal. In the context of Reagan's which is endorsed by the Communist Chicago, who was murde. fed in his slet~p,. America this strategy is viewed widely as Party, Socialist Workers Party and all The attacks on black' people, the lunatic, particularly since Reagan is those parties which can be termed attacks on civil rights are I-lroof that tbe carrying out aspects of the Ku Klux social-democratic in the United States. liberal lie of reforming d'le capitalis~t Klan's program himself. and [because This policy also has the expression of government for black lil )eration i!i of] the way anti-"extremist" laws have calling for the federal government to nothing more than anilh.lsion. The been used in the past, that is, primarily intervene in cases of racist violence in oppression of black people is as funda­ against militants and leftists. As was order to protect blacks. mental to American capitalisnl as is the' exploitation of labor, imperiatlist war and their anti-Soviet war drivt. '., Black i' liberation is tied up [with] the Iib\~ration of the entire American workin~~ class from capitalist oppression. Black people in the United States constitute a race-color caste. Tha tis, blacks are concentrated in the industl"ial working class, the semi-employed and the army of the unemployed. This hilS been the position of blacks ever sinc e Reconstruction was put into flames b}' the Ku Klux Klan. The Civil War in the United States, which was supposed to free the slaves, what this war actually meant for the rulers of America was a war to keep the Union together, keep the South from seceding. There was no original intent to free the slaves neces­ sarily but it became an important political issue during the war which was instrumental in the winning of the North. The winning of the war was the SUBSCRIBE NOW! only primary objective of the Northern Name capitalists.' Address ______After the war, the Ku Klux Klan was allowed to carry out a campaign which ______Phone( instituted segregation. This campaign of racist oppression which was instituted at City ______State ______Zi p ______=_ so that time remains in effect to this very day. The civil rights movemen't was I $5/24 issues of Workers Vanguard Ll $2/4 issues of supposed to get rid of this institutional­ (includes Spartaclst) International rates: Women and Revolution ized oppression of black people and L.l New U Renewal $20/24 issues --Airmail partially did in the South. But today, $5124 ISSUOS - Seamail 1.1 $2/10 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard black people find themselves in a worse LJ $2/9 Issues of Young Spartacus (includes Spartacist) economic situation than before the t;ivil rights movement. So nothing can be Make payable/mall to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, New York 10116 more apparent than that without the overturn of American capitalism which 19

perpetuates racism in America, black repression against the masses there. detente was used as a cover for building people will continue to be oppressed. Reagan has something in store for the up American nuclear power. So Reagan .. workers in Russia and Poland similar to is here going around Europe claiming to Defend Blacks, what he has executed on the American be the biggest peacemaker, and not only Defend the SOYiet Unlonl working class: goodies like unemploy­ is he a big peacemaker, but he's much So today we find that black people are ment, fascism and racism are widely more peaceful than Brezhnev, and supposed to go along with Reagan's understood to be the intent behind his because Brezhnev is not as peaceful as campaign in America for "freedom" for calls for "freedom, liberty and justice." him, Brelhnev must be blown up. workers in Poland from oppression. Septem ber 19 was not only the largest It's only through the active defense of Reagan, who is carrying out a campaign working-class demonstration in Ameri­ the gains of the USSR by the American against civil rights, who is encouraging can history, it was one of the most working class and by working classes the mobilization of fascist terror, is integrated in history. It was so big that it around thc world that it is possible for supposed to be the leader of the scared the bureaucrats themselves­ the imperialist policy of a Third World "freedom" of masses of workers. But they weren't expecting a half a million. War to be stopped. And this means that black people in general never cried for Many workers came to that demonstra­ there must be socialist revolution in the Solidarnose, despite the fact that the tion not with the intent of a token show United States. And there must be entire liberal left, the Democratic Party, of force, but willing to close down that political revolution in the USSR in the Republicans all the way to the city and to offer concrete acts of labor order to defend the gains of the Russian fascists, all shed many tears for Solidar­ action to bring Reagan down. Many Revolution. It is the same issue as the nose. It was too vivid in their minds that were asking why their unions hadn't defense of the gains of my union: as I there is massive unemployment and gone out in support of PA TCO, why the have to fight to get rid of my bureaucra­ impoverishment in the black communi­ airplanes were still getting fueled, why cy so too the Rlls~ian workers must fight ty; they observed Haitians being herded they were still getting repaired, because to overthrow their bureaucracy. So, all into concentration camps. they wanted that strike to win and they workers around the world have a stake Masses of American workers didn't knew from the power that was demon­ in the unconditional military defense of go for this pro-Solidarnosc campaign strated that day that they had the ability the USSR against imperialism. either because Reagan is supposed to be . to win. The demonstration in Washing­ the fighter for workers "freedom" after ton was critical because in America the he smashed an American trade union. only force that can bring Reagan down Blacks, Labor-Rely on There were only a handful of trade­ is the force of labor. It's the only force, Your Own Strength! under a leadership that is determined to union bureaucrats who came out to Discussiun period demonstrate against the government overthrow capitalism, that can stop Questioner asks ahoUl the role of crackdown in Poland-and this in World War III. Martin Luther Kinfi in the 1960s civil contrast to half a million workers who The Stalinists, whose international rights movement. came out on September 19 last year to policy of detente, which reflects their It was not Martin Luther King that protest against Reagan. Reagan doesn't policy of "ban the Klan" in the States, won those gains. It was the masses of want freedom for anybody either in will never bring peace. Because it was blacks who were taking to the streets to Poland or in Russia, he is not against the under previous administrations that fight for those gains that won them. What Martin Luther King did was to step into that struggle, disarm it and sell a few reforms as the price for his disarming it. For example there were laws which were supposed to result in integration of schools, integration of housing, integration of higher education which were the selling points of the civil rights movement. Once the groups of agricultural black workers in the South and industrial black workers were demobili7ed, when they were no longer Ollt in the streets arming and organizing, these rights were taken away. For example in Boston in 1972, the [school] busing program was being attacked by mobs of racists on the streets, by the beating up of black children and the destruction of buses. .j Now this right of busing was supposed i to be a right already won by. Martin Luther King. But the racists on the streets were fighting to take it back. The only possible force to defend that right was effective, organized workers and WV Photo blacks of that city. As a matter of fact Reagan "rollback" targets everyone. Some of 12,000 fired air controllers I went to Boston mvself into a .hown here marching in Washington last September 19. demonstration to demand"the defense of the black children that were under them any more. And the opportunity sold out or isolated by the political attack in the city. But the liberals in that exists for working-class militants to power of the bourgeois state. city had a countermobilization there form a party that will fight in a too. They called for reliance on the revolutionary way for a workers govern­ For Revolutionary police and for federal troops, just like in ment. That is, a party based not on Integratlonlsm the civil rights movement. reform, not on social democracy (unlike Summary The result is that today there is no the workers parties that have been This is a very interesting discussion. more busing program-the racists formed here in France and in Britain), The question on how black people succeeded in terrorizing enough· blacks that is, a party that is pro-strike, pro­ became integrated into the ind ustrial and burning enough buses that the working-class, a party that is for the proletariat is the first one I wanted to courts have rescinded further busing overturn of capitalism and the establish­ deal with. Blacks from the rural programs. Throughout the United ment of a workers government. American South provided the industrial North with cheap labor. In fact, the fact that blacks are a source of chea p labor is one of the motivating forces for maintaining black oppression. The first mass migration occurred during the labor shortage of the First World War when large numbers of workers from the North were sent here to Europe to fight the imperialist war. The second mass migration occurred during the Second World War where labor shortages again opened up a need for large numbers of industrial workers. But blacks are also, as I have stated before, used as a pdlitical weapon, as a scapegoat to be blamed for the capitalist crisis. When many of the soldiers returned from Europe by 1919 there was massive rioting over jobs in the streets of cities like East St. Louis and Chicago. During these riots, black workers were

Regan/Newsweek attacked on the streets of these cities and intimidated to the point where it was National Guard tanks rumble through Detroit to suppress black ghetto explosIon In 1967. evident that if there was any resistance to their unemployment and their pover­ States, the whole program of This is the type of workers party that ty, they were to be the victims of racist integration of schools has been rolled we talk about, and we raise this terror. A similar event occurred in 1943 back and Reagan is pushing it back concretely around issues like the smash­ in the streets of Detroit against black toward total annihilation. So the ruling ing of anti-strike laws, establishing workers of that city. class gave the masses of blacks strike committees-every opportunity, So this all goes to show that black absolutely nothing-they fought for it in other words, to raise a strategy of people are placed in a strategic position by reliance on their own force and the workers revolution, which emerges in the American working class and have only way it can be defended is by concretely in every sharp working-class a deep interest in revolution in the reliance on their own force. And that's struggle. United States. And black workers have why the liberation of black people must Briefly, one more example. In order a lot less illusions in the "democratic" be a central part of the liberation of the for the Transport Workers Union to win character of the American government, American working class through in New York City, we have to strike in any kind of egalitarian character to socialist revolution. directly against a Municipal Assistance bourgeois society, and are much more Corporation which is made up of some open to a revolutionary strategy. But For a Class-Struggle of the most powerful banks and trusts in this of course doesn't mean that under Workers Party! the world. In order to win such a strike, conditions of despair that blacks will Questioner asks about the call for a the most effective strategy is to demand not tum to reactionary politics. During workers party in the United States. the expropriation of these banks, for the period of the 1919 riots, the Ku Klux First, on the workers party. As some free subways that are clean, decent and Klan marched through the city of of the comrades here have expressed, nice to ride on-an issue which in New Washington numbering near the mil­ the American working class has no York City would mobilize many mil­ lions. Under these conditions there was party at all. The two major political lions of workers. In other words, it is a massive "back to Africa" movement, parties are both bourgeois parties. The necessary to carry out a political fight which became popular amongst Ameri­ leadership of the American trade-union that would galvanize the workforce of can blacks. But because black national­ movement is in tight collaboration with the city. And that fight must end in the ism accepts the racist status quo, blacks the Democratic Party. When the Ameri­ workers either attaining a sense of can't fight for their liberation under the can working class explodes in respect to power through winning the strike, and a politics of nationalism. As a matter of labor actions, the opportunity will exist sense for a need for a political organiza­ fact, the head of the "back to Africa" to go beyond the labor bureaucrats. The tion to express that power, or it will end movement invited the Ku Klux Klan to workers will no longer want to listen to in the defeat of workers because of being speak to one of their conferences.

" 21

The same causes for the "back to oppression can lead to a workers mobilized militants who had authority Africa" movement during the 1920s revolution. amongst their fellow workers who would say, "Where the hell were you, were the cause for the growth of black Black Liberation Through Communist Party, when we needed you, nationalism after the civil rights move­ Socialist Revolution ment. It was frustration with the when we had to go out on strike-you limitations and the apparent impotence Just one other point to conclude. This told us not to." And many of the blacks of Martin Luther King's strategy and point intersects both black nationalism who had experienced the Communist 1 the policy of passive resistance that won as well as the history of the American Party's betrayal in the 1930s became masses of black people over to black Communist Party. A Pan-Africanist by Pan-Africanists and anti-communists. .\ separatism. The thing that rang the toll the name of Pad more uses a proof that Now what sets the conditions for the of the end of the civil rights movement communist organizations are racist by class struggle in America right now, as was a number of black riots which going back to the Communist Party's some of the comrades have mentioned, occurred in the mid-I 960s. That is, activities during the war [WWII] in is that American society is no longer the blacks in the mass would no longer America. Why they say it's racist is great economic power that it used to be. accept limitations of passive resistance because the Communist Party in the If there are steak lines in Poland it and continually being the victims of United States under the instructions of cannot compare to the cheese lines in racist terror. But all of these riots were Stalin liquidated their exemplary work America, where hundreds upon hun­ viciously suppressed-tanks in one case to fight against racist oppression and dreds of poor people last winter stood were rolled down the streets of fight against the imperialist war, and out in the cold for hours to get a chunk Detroit--and 50 blacks were killed. The instead subordinated themselves to the of stale cheese. And this is more and fact of massive disenchantment with the imperialist war and in support of the more the situation with the masses in civil rights movement led to the growth racist policies in the military and in America, which still has the image to the of black nationalist organizations. American society. In fact when a rest of the world as rolling in gold. It's There were two tender.'::les amongst demonstration was called for Washing­ no longer' the case; the American the black nationalists: one was for ton against racist practices in the army economy is' on a sharp decline and the what's called black capitalism, and the and in American society during the war, American government is going towards other, represented by the Panthers, was the Communist Party campaigned war. called revolutionary nationalism. Those against it. So it is that the obligation on the part who were for black capitalism proved so So it was widely believed among of the American working class must be blatantly reactionary that their organi­ black Communist Party members that to stop the United States from going to zations quickly became ineffective and the Communist Party had become war, which means to stop the anti­ prominent leaders of this movement dominated and controlled by racism. Of Soviet war drive and to defend the gains found themselves in the Democratic course it was Stalinism and Stalinist of the October Revolution. It is widely Party. The Black Panthers on the other policy that made blacks feel [betrayed understood that this most powerful hand attempted to carry out a revolu­ by] the Communist Party. And many economy in the world is now going the tion based on the unemployed of the workers who were told not to strike by road of Great Britain. And so too will ghetto. They armed themselves and they the Communist Party felt the same way. France and Germany, and so too will began to march with arms and advocate For those who point to the American Japan, unless the crisis of capitalism is going up against the state. The conse­ working class as anti-communist, one of resolved in either of two ways. It will be quence was that virtually every Black the reasons is the activities of the resolved either in barbarism through Panther leader was either jailed, killed Stalinist Communist Party. It was nuclear war or it will be resolved by or if he managed to survive through the possible for the McCarthy period right­ socialism, that is, with the international whole procedure of bourgeois repres­ wingers to throw Communist Party seizure of power in all countries by the sion wound up either an evangelist or a members out of the unions because they workers of all countries .• member of the Democratic Party. The best expression of the black nationalists was those nationalists who attempted to International Spartacist Tendency Directory win over the workers in Detroit. But Address Address here, although they won tremendous correspondence to: correspondence to: authority from bot h the black and white Llgue Le Bolchevik, BP 135-10 Spartaclst Spartacist League J workers, their commitment to black Trotskyste 75463 Paris Cedex 10 League/U.S. Box 1377, GPO nationalism led them to betray the fight de France France New York, NY 10116 ! for a militant revolutionary workers USA party. And instead there was a fight in Spartacl8t Spartacist Publications their own organizations which resulted League/ PO Box 185 Spartaclst Spartacist Publishing Co. Box 4508 in sections abandoning the working Britain London, WC1H 8JE Stockholm England 10265 Stockholm class and seeking to split off black Sweden workers from white workers in order to make community work the most impor­ Trotzklstlsche Verlag Avantgarde Trotskyist Trotskyist League Llga Postfact'! 1 6747 tant struggle. This flows from the League Box 7198, Station A Deutschlands 6000 Frankfurt/Main 1 of Canada Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 conception that the main division of West Germany Canada society for them was race and not class. So, in America, only a strategy of Lega Walter Fidacaro Spartaclst Spartacist League revolutionary integration which unites Trotsklsta C.P. 1591 League 01 GPO Box 3473 d'ltalla 20101 Milano Australla/ Sydney, NSW, 2001 the black and white working class Italy New Zealand Australia against all forms of class and race ------,-- 22 reprinted from Young §p.artacus No. 101, Summer 1982

Finishing the Civil War Huck Finn in Racist America

"I was late for class one day. And 1 published racism- in this country re­ Black professor Allen Ballard, in a walked into a classroom on the second mains so pervasive and violent that the letter to the New York Times (9 May), floor of a junior high school building. book can set off, as it apparently did in where there were alreadv three desks recalled how he felt when his predomi­ thrown out the window. !'our kids with Warrington, Pennsylvania, "verbal and nantly white junior high school class bloody noses and two with teeth physical harassment" of a black eighth­ read Huck Finn aloud: missing. And it was because one of the grader by white classmates. "I wanted to sink into my seat. Some of kids used that word .... " Certainly the book is anti-racist in its the whites snickered, others giggled. I "That word" was "nigger," [a word central intent, a powerful indictment of can rccall nothing of the literary merits of this work that you term 'the greatest printed in Young Spartacus not without a racist society. Liberal columnist of all American novels.' 1 only recall the pain] the single word which encapsu­ Russell Baker (New York Times, 14 sense of relief I felt when 1 would flip lates race relations in America, where April) nicely summarized the world that ahead a few pages and see that the word tens of thousands of desperately op­ Huck and the runaway slave Jim saw as 'nigger' would not be read that hour." pressed blacks and Latins face a future they traveled the Mississippi on a raft, The word "nigger" is a program. It of poverty, degradation and hopeless­ "a real American landscape swarming means not only racist terror and lynch ness under capitalism. This story of with native monsters": mobs but that the victims "deserve it." classroom violence was recounted by a 'The people they encounter are It's fightin' words and everyone in this teacher comrade to a meeting of the drunkards, murderers, bullies, swin­ country, black and white, knows it. And New York Spartacist League as part of a dlers, lynchers, thieves, liars, frauds, it's not just, as Ballard put it, a child abusers. numbskulls. hypocrites, discussion on the current controversy windbags and traders in human flesh. "reminder of the degradation visited around Mark Twain's classic novel, All arc white. The one man of honor in upon [ our] ancestors during slavery," Huckleberry Finn. this phantasmagoria is black Jim. the but an encapSUlation of what it means The discussion was prompted by a runaway slave. 'Nigger Jim: as Twain today to be black in racist America-the series of four articles by liberal colum­ called him to emphasize the irony of a shame, the frustration, the rage, the society in which the only true gentleman nist Nat Hentoff (Vii/age Voice, begin­ was held beneath contempt." fear. Learning what "nigger" means is a ning 4 May). A civil libertarian known major event in the life of every black for his crusading against censorship, We publish elsewhere (see page 26) an person. Hentoff has come out in favor of the extract from Huckleberry Finn where That word has a lot to do with teaching of Huckleberry Finn and the boy Huck makes his decision to growing up black in a society in which against the efforts of black parents and stand by the slave Jim, against every­ blacks are a desperately oppressed school administrators in several com­ thing he's ever been taught. Convention­ minority and yet so closely integrated munities to have the book, which uses al morality, religion, respect for private with the rest of society, at the bottom, the word "nigger" some 160 times, property are all allied in the service of that by and large blacks and whites removed from junior high school human slavery. Huck's honesty, com­ share some of the same racist values. It's compulsory reading lists. passion and loyalty lead him to go the internalization that hurts most. As Hentoff observes, Twain's 1884 against the racist values he's been taught Malcolm X in his autobiography says masterpiece has often been the target of and believes: "All right then, I'll go to that when whites t

"Hey, you see any niggers here'!" and his response, "No, I haven't seen any in Greensboro three weeks." From that point on, he Massacre, resolved, "I'll never call another black November 1979. man nigger." Nelson Johnson What we have in the Huckleberry kneels by victim of Finn controversy is potentially a ques­ KKK/Nazi tion of conf1icting democratic rights. On murderers. Killers were acquitted by the one hand is the right to read ali-white jury. whatever you want. On the other hand is the right not to be called "nigger." In Warrington, Pennsylvania, in the after­ math of a violent attack on a black Below: Stars and student by white classmates, the parents Stripes raclsm­ and school administrators arrived at a screaming "Kill compromise: Huckleherrl' Finn would him," anti-busing thugs attacked black not be required reading at the junior lawyer, Boston, April high school leveL but it would remain in 1976. the school libraries and could be taught

teacher-the anti-racist views of the teacher being simply taken for granted-and what you get is education. Unfortunately, education takes place not in some kind of neutral vacuum, but in a violent, racist society. We can share Mr. Hentoffs convic­ tion that failure to read Huckleberrv Finn weakens a child's education. And it's logical for him to feel that even the danger of racial brawls in the schools must not be allowed to interfere with education, because for liberals educa­ S. Forman/Boston Herald American tion is in a fairly simple and linear way the road to progress. Liberals like to in high school. This seems to us a understand why some black parents believe that knowledge is the way out of reasonable compromise. But not to M r. don't want Huckleherry Finn taught in the degradation of the ghetto, not just Hentoff. For him the racist incident in their children's classes. The Warrington for a "talented tenth" but by the Warrington represents a professional parents are under no misapprehension millions. But it's the hard fact that the challenge: "What happened in that that the book is, in the words of one illiterate black tenant farmers who eighth grade class is a boon to any black school administrator in Virginia, migrated to the cities to take jobs in reasonably awake teacher.... Talk "racist trash." According to Hentoff: aircraft plants at the beginning of World about a book coming alive!" But we "These parents agreed that M r. Twain War II probably got a better education don't live in a controlled laboratory himself was not a racist. Why. Huckle­ in six months than most black kids do experiment like liberals imagine. The herrr Finn, they said, is strongly anti­ slavery and anti-racist. But the book is today in six years, because today's compulsory teaching of a book full of too subtle, too difficult, for eighth­ moribund economy has no need for the word "nigger" in the racially charged graders to understand in terms of Mr. these kids as future skilled workers. atmosphere of the school system in a Twain's intentions. All that the kids, Chronic unemployment, "education" in white and black. see is 'nigger'." desperately oppressive (and exploitat­ ghetto schools while social services ive) America can lead to ~ome "educa­ For Hentoff, the answer lies in learning undergo cutback after cutback, poverty tional" experiences which we intend to to "see past" that word. It's a question of and despair, lumpenization and crime­ eradicate. enlightened pedagogy. Take a bunch of these are the prospects black youth face. Hentoff makes an honest effort to kids, a good book, a classroom and a Hentoff at bottom looks toward educa- 24

tional reform: he's afraid complacent fundamentalist religion .... 1 was told nomically integrated into white society educators will produce "yet another before I can remember by my mother at the bottom. Only proletarian socialist generation of adults who never learned and my father that I would never use revolution can bring real equality for that word or I would be beaten. And in school how to think for themselves," what they are is first generation out of black people (and simple decency as if white racism and black shame were the South, they got jobs in the factories. suggests a bit more than that). Uncom­ mainly traceable to flaws in the educa­ They're not liberals at all; they support­ promising struggle for the democratic tional process. By extension, then, ed Reagan. But they know what that rights of blacks and other minorities is word means, that this word is a enlightened teachers ought to produce program .... There's no such thing in key to the forging of an integrated proud blacks and anti-racist whites. this country as racial equality but there revolutionary workers party whose What we need is not "educational is a status quo. And one of the parts of victory will destroy the racism which is reform" but proud, able black commu­ this status quo is that you do not use rooted in every capitalist institution, nists in the vanguard of smashing racist that word. And for example when from the military and the courts to the you're in a factory and somebody starts American capitalism and constructing a using that word you call them on it, schools. new social order of equality and because those are fighting words and Mr. Hentoff, for all his sensitivity, freedom. they have to be fought out right there. remains genuinely perplexed that black "Fifteen percent of my school went on parents should be so touchy about the There are junior high school class­ to college, at the most. And it would be rooms where integrated middle-class unheard of that the students in their word "nigger." Rhetorically he inquires, honor students can have positively majority would want to read a book. "Is this[black] child so fragile, so without uplifting experiences. These are Mr. And they wouldn't read Huck Finn. intellectual and emotional resources, Hentoffs model. There are also cop­ They would see one word." that a book can lay him 10wT' In other occupied inner-city hellholes where What was most striking in the words, why are these black parents so students and teachers alike are grateful discussion was that for so many com­ defensive'? Well. M r. Hentoff. "nigger" to get home in one piece. At the rades, the formative political experience isn't just a question of a book. The Spartacist League discussion in New of childhood was a turbulent encounter potential for racial violence and murder lurks not very deep beneath the surface York, comrades from a wide variety of with racism, and generally centered on of this country. Malcolm X began his backgrounds discussed their experi­ the word "nigger." The race question is autobiography with this story: ences in school. One speaker described a not just one more democratic issue, but "When my mother was pregnant with segregated white school in the deep the key to the American socialist me, she told me later. a party of hooded South where the school song was Dixie revolution. Ku Klux Klan rider, galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night. and the school flag was the Confederate "What we need," observed one flag. "You didn't use that word in the Surrounding the house, brandishing speaker, "is Civil War part two." The their shotguns and rilles, they shouted South unless you wanted a fight." American Civil War liquidated slavery, Another white comrade described a for my father to come out. Mv mother but a great powerful bourgeoisie, not went to the front door...... working-class high school in Los the working people, were the victors. Defensive? Well, as Godfrey Cambridge Angeles: Therefore, in democratic terms, the once observed, paranoia is an occupa­ "I come from a family that's split. They're all from the South, some of victory that was won in that war is tional disease of black people. them are Klansmen and some of them partial. One hundred years later, blacks And it isn't just ancient history! This aren't. They come right out of the are both socially segregated and eco- country is seething with race hate right

Chicago Historical Society

:"'~ r ....\',1

~-"-' .. c ...... ',,·;-· )-'~ := Fugitive slaves (above) fleeing Maryland to Underground Railroad depot In Delaware. Black corporal (right) In Union army. Northern bourgeOisie was forced to arm blacks to smash the slaveholders' rebellion. 25

Abolitionist John Brown (left) was hanged for leading 1859 Harper's Ferry raid to secure arms for a slave revolt. Black Union troops (right) liberating slaves In North Carolina In 1865.

now. Goaded by economic contraction, can get it, but racism isn't just academic. revolution that will free black people. Reagan reaction is on the rise among Huckleberry Finn is a wonderful book. And Mr. Hentoff better not be fooled­ whites and so is the fascistic "fringe" of Well, "Night and Fog" is a powerful there's a lot of them out there just like that reactionary wave. Five red anti­ anti-Nazi documentary about the con­ that. The whites in this country, in their racist activists were gunned down in centration camps. But only sadists large majority, are pervasively, deeply broad daylight by the fascists in Greens­ would suggest making it compulsory for racist. Their historically ingrained racist boro, North Carolina, and in several the children of Buchenwald survivors to attitudes can be overcome, not by states outside the South fascist candi­ see it. abstract pedagogy, but in action-in dates have polled hundreds of thou­ No matter what "nigger" meant to strike situations where black and white sands of votes. In the heart of the Huck Finn, who certainly knew no unity against the boss is visibly the only industrial Midwest, labor mobilization other word for black people, today it way to win; in revolutionary strug­ to stop the race-terrorists has become a means the speaker is not "just" a racist, gles to smash the bosses' government. life--or-death question. but one of a hard core that will go down Black liberation through socialist It's an article of faith for liberals that fighting rather than accept a socialist revolution! • the bad old days described by Malcolm X are gone and will never come back. But the civil rights veneer established under the pressure of liberal-led, mass­ SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY based struggles is skin-deep. Lenny National Office Chicago Madllon Bruce captured the depth of bigotry in Box 1377, GPO Box 6441 c/o SYL this country when he said that when New York, NY 10116 Main P.O. Box 2074 (212) 732-7860 Chicago, IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701 Lyndon Johnson took over the presi­ (312) 427-<>003 dency they wouldn't let him talk for the Ann Arbor New York first six months-it took him that long c/o SYL Cleveland Box 444 P.O. Box 8364 Box 91954 Canal Street Station to learn how to say "Nee-Grow." Jim Ann Arbor, MI 48107 Cleveland, OH 44101 New York, NY 10013 Crow is not dead-look at what's (313) 862-2339 (216) 621-5138 (212) 267-1025 happened to busing over the past few Norfolk years. AUanle Detroit Box 4012 Box 32717 P.O. Box 1972, Main P.O. Education's a good thing when you Atlanta" GA 30302 DetrOit, MI 48232 Norfolk, VA 23501 (313) 961-1680 Berkeler:t0akland San Francllco P.O. Box 2552 HOUlton Box 5712 Box 26474 Oakland, CA 94604 San Francisco, CA 94101 Houston, TX 77207 SPARTACIST (415) 835-1535 (415) 863-6963 BOlton LOl Angelel Bound Volume Box 840 Box 29574 Walhln9ton, D.C. Central Station Los Feliz Station P.O. Box 5073 No. 1 Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Washington, D.C. 20013 (617) 492-3928 (213) 863-1216 (202) 636-3537 Spartaclst Issues 1-20 February 1964-July1971 TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA $25.00 Toronto Vancouver Order from/make checks payable to: Box 7198, Station A Box 26, Station A Spartacist Publishing Toronto. Ontario M5W 1X8 Vancouver, B.C. V6C 2L8 Box 1377 GPO, NY, NY 10116 (416) 593-4138 26 reprinted from Young $partacus No. 101, Summer 1982 Mark Twain Against Slavery

but deep down in me I knowed it was a from lie--and He knowed it. You can't pray a The Adventures of lie-I found that out. So I was full of trouble, full as I could Huckleberry Finn be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write by Mark Twain the letter-and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight 0ff. and I went to the raft. and set down in the my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to '\ paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, nothing. I thought till I wore my head and set down and wrote: sore. but I couldn't see no way out of the Miss Watson your runaway nigger trouble. After all this long journey, and Jim is down here twb mil<: hclow after all we'd done for them scoundrels, Pikesville and Mr. Ph~lrs has got him and he will give him up tor the reward if here was it all come to nothing, you send. everything all busted up and ruined. HUCK FINN. because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make I felt good and all washed clean of sin him a slave again all his life, and for the first time I had ever felt so in my amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty life, and I knowed I could. pray 'now. But dollars. I didn't do it straight off, but laid the Once I said to myself it would be a paper down and set there thinking­ thousand times better for Jim to be a thinking how good it was all this .;1/ . happened so, and how near I come to slave at home where his family was. as Alvin Langdon Coburn being lost and going to hell. And went long as he'd got to be a slave. and so I'd Radical bourgeois democrat Mark better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and Twain In 1908. on thinking. And got to thinking over tell him to tell Miss Watson ~he~e he our trip down the river; and I see Jim was. But I soon give up that notion, for look-out. and ain't agoing to allow no before me, all the time, in the day, and in two things: she'd be mad and disgusted such miserable doings to go only just so the night-time, sometimes moonlight, at his rascality and ungratefulness for fur and no further, I most dropped in my sometimes storms, and we a floating leaving her, and so she'd sell him tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the along, talking, and singing, and laugh­ straight down the river again; and jf she best I could to kinder soften it up ing. But somehow I couldn't seem to didn't, everybody naturally despises an somehow for myself, by saying I was strike no places to harden me against ungrateful nigger. and they'd make Jim brung up wicked, and so I warn't so him, but only the other kind. I'd see him feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery much to blame; but something inside of standing my watch on top of his'n, stead and disgraced. And then think of me/It me kept saying, "There was the Sunday­ of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; would get all around that Huck Finn school, you could a gone to it; and if and see him how glad he was when I helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, ~ome back out of the fog; and when I I was to ever see anybody from that that people that acts as I'd been acting come to him again in the swamp, up town again, I'd he ready to get down and about that nigger goes to everlasting there where the feud was; and such-like lick his hoot!; for shame. That's just the fire." times; and would always call me honey, way; a person does a low-down thing, It made me shiver. And I about made and pet me, and do everything he could and then he don't want to take no up my mind to pray; and see if I COUldn't think of for me, and how good he always conscquence~ of it. Thinks as long as he try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, was; and at last I struck the time I saved can hide it. it ain't no disgrace. That was and be better. So I kneeled down. But him by telling the men we had small-pox my fix exactly. The more I studied about the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't aboard, and he was so grateful, and said this, the more my conscience went to they? It warn't no use to try and hide it I was the best friend old Jim ever had in grinding me, and "the more wicked and from Him. Nor from me, neither. I the world, and the only one he's got low-down and ornery I got to feeling. knowed very well why they wouldn't now; and then I happened to look And at last, when it hit me all of a come. It was because my heart warn't around, and see that paper. ' sudden that here was the plain hand of right; it was because I warn't square; it It was a close place. I took it up, and Providence slapping me in the face and was because I was playing double. I was held it in my hand. I was a trembling, letting me know my wickedness was letting on to give up sin, but away inside because I'd got to decide, for ever, being watched all the-time from up there of me I was holding on to the biggest one betwixt two things, and I knowedit.· I in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor of all. I was trying to make my mouth studied a minute, sort of holding my old woman's nigger that hadn't ever say I would do the right thing and the breath, and then says to myself: done me no harm, and now was showing clean thing, and go and write to that "All right, then, I'll go to hell"-and me there's One that's always on the nigger's owner and tell where he was; tore it up .• 27 Detroit is a LaborIBlack Town Fight Ian Terror!

Detroit: Black and white Jabor militants oust KKK­ Greensboro: Anti-Klan protester beaten by cops after hooded foremen from River Rouge. Klan kills his comrades.

The Klan said they're turning up in arrest. We say no to Coleman Young Every decent person had better have Kennedy Square to celebrate their ... and Coleman Young better think an ironclad right to live here. Greensboro, North Carolina killings! about it. The Klan-Nazi race killers America is going down the tubes. We're going to Kennedy Square to must be stopped while we still,can. Chrysler was bled dry by vampire oppose Klan terror and murder! Make Coleman Young back down. bosses. Now with mass layoffs they Mayor Coleman Young said we He wasn't elected by Georgia want to set black and white at each who oppose the Klan have no more cracker Jimmy Carter but by black others' throats. Whose town is this? rights than the KKK killers, that we votes. This town is filled with hard­ Come out-it's us or them I Drive the should not show our faces on fear of working, mainly black auto workers. race kjllers out of Detroit! Down with Klan Terror! • For the Right of Southern Black Armed Self-Defense! • For Factory Seizures Against Layoffs! • Oust the Bosses' Tools in the Labor Movement! • For Independent Black and Labor Candidates Against the Democratic Party! • Build a Workers Party!

Kennedy Square, Detroit Rally Saturday, November 10, 1:00 pm Be There I Initial list of Endorsers: For More Information: 868-909S Frank Hicks. UAW Local 600. Ford Rouge Robert F Williams author of Negroes WIth Guns. Reverend rom Tinsley St Paul United Methodist Edith Fox UAW Local 3 ASSOciation for Human Rights Church. D/llralt Pete Camarata Teamsters Locat 299 of Lake County Meny Anne Courtney. co-founder. Women's Justice MarVin Martin UAW Local 600. Ford Rouge Patrick Martin. UAW Local 600. Ford Rouge Center. DetrOit Charles DubOIS. UAW Local 600, Ford Rouge Portia Maddox UAW Local 600. Ford R:JUge Don Alexander DetrOit Executive Committee. Jackie Jordan Executive Board member. Reverend MarjOrie Lyda Lyda/Hunt Institute Spartacist League CWA Local 4050 Malt Prince. UAW Local 600. Ford Rouge T opal DubOIS NatIOnal Committee. Charles Parker. Teamsters Local 299 Black Student Union. University of Michigan. Sparwcus Youth League Bill Hampton brother of murdered Chicago Ann Arbor Norman KOlinski UAW Local 235 Black Panther leader Herb Boyd Instructor at the Center for Malek TOW91 anti-shah, antl-Khomelnl fighter from Kenneth Granquist: UAW Local 600. Ford Rouge Creative StUdies. DetrOit Baluchistan. Teaching ASSistant. Wilham Graham UAW Local 600. Ford Rouge P;" QUinlan Teamsters Local 247 Michigan State University 28

reprinted from [QU!Jg !$p({rJJLfJl.l No. 87, Decemher 198()-January 1981 1,200 Students Say: Oust South End Apologists for Klan/Nazi Terror!

We reprint he/ow the preamhle 10 a cameras and scores of spectators in Iy worthy of strong action at Wayne pelitio/l circulated at Warne 5,'latl:' Greenshoro. North Carolina. Cold­ State-a school with a hlack and Uni\'ersity demanding the rl:'lIlovalfrolll hlo()ded racist murderers have been working-class student population in a their pmts of' those respon.lihll:' jt)r a given a license to hunt hy the November predominantly hlack city. South End editorial apologizingj!)r the 17 verdict. "It's a victory for white In order to apologize for what is a Grcc/lshoro Klan! Nazi killer.\'. The America." gloated Harold Covington. racist and rigged verdict. Nuttle's accompanying article on page 30, "771l' head of the Na/i Party, editorial carefully suppresses many of South End \'.\'. Warne 5;tate ,')'tudenl.\," For those of us who are the intended the central facts of the trial. It fails to tells the slOry o( the students' .light /() victims of Klan/Nazi terror-~hlacks. mention that the KKK/Nali attack was regain cOlltrol o( their newspaper. trade unionists. Jews. socialists. civil televised and witnessed by millions of rights activists-·the North Carolina viewers. It omits the fact that t he jury aC4uittals are an outrage. a threat and a selection was by any criteria a sham, Remove the Apologists for clear ca~e of racist injustice. excluding black jurors on the grounds of The South End. however. in its 25 "preconceived prejUdices against the Racist Murder From the Novemher editorial hy Mike Nuttle. Klan." It omits the fact that the FBI South End! "Leftists Hinder Justice at Greensboro gave the decisive testimony supporting Tria\." apologizes for the acquittals and defense allegations that the fascists shot alibis for racist murder. This "journalis­ in "self-defense." Nor does it report that An all-white jury acquitted five Klan/ tic" service to Jim Crow "justice" would a "former" FBI informer was in the lead Nali memhers who shot to death five be cause for widespread protest action vehicle of the KKK / Na/i caravan. anti-Klan protesters and supporters of on any campus unfortunate enough to According to Nuttle, the "question the Communist Workers Party (CWP) have Nuttle and his ilk making editorial was. merely. who shot first'l" The anti­ in broad daylight. in front of television policy for its newspaper. It is particular- Klan rally took place in the black neighborhood of Morningside Heights. Having learned the precise location of the rally from thc Greenshoro police, KKK/Nazis drove as far a, 100 miles to get there. They did not do this to shoot in "self-dcfense"! The fascists calmly unloaded their semi-automatic rines from their car trunks and opencd fire on the dcmonstration, slaughtering five protesters. The cops were conspicuously absent. Some of thc CWP supportcrs drcw and ineffectually fired pistols, useless against the fascist,' rifles. The KKK/Nazis left tht~ scene umcratched. "Who shot first" is not the question. The question is: Why are five Klan/Nazi assassins alivc and we\l and aC4uitted in North Carolina while five CWP sup­ porters lie in their graves:> The answer is racist "Justice." The Grcensboro aC4uittals arc hardly a unique instance of racist outrage in United States courts. f"herc's the fa­ mous Scottsboro Hoy\ case. nine black youths framed-up for rape in Alabama in 193 I. The only known slIniving "Scottsboro Boy" was pardoned in the fall of 1<)76 after 45 years of unrelenting South End editor Burnett calls cops on Ad Hoc Committee activists.

'. 29

Petition the South End Refused to Print To: Student Newspaper Publications Board; Rouge Militant Caucus, UAW Local 600 Robert Katz, Chairman, Civil Rights Com- The Student Faculty Council (Publications Committee); mittee, DetrOit Bar Association The Wayne State University Board of Governors: Willie Jenkins, Laborers Local 334 Brian Taylor, Former South End writer We, the undersigned, demand the South End editor-in-chief Nelson Johnson, Survivor of Greensboro massacre John Burnett and managing editor Mike Nuttle as well as all Chuck Green, Former Bargaining Com­ those responsible for the vile apology for racist murder which mitteeman, UAW Region 1-B appeared in the 25 November editorial "Leftists Hinder Justice James Lafferty, Attorney Nathan Head, WSU Institute for Labor and at Greensboro Trial" be removed immediately. The present I ndustrial Relations editorial policy of the South End as exemplified by Nuttle's Rohlann Callender, Administrator, Uni­ deeply reactionary defense of Klan/Nazi murder is an affront versity City A District Council Ned Smokier, Attorney to the student body as well as to the black and white working Sheldon Tappes, Former International people who constitute the majority of the city of Detroit. That Executive Board member, UAW the students at Wayne State reassert control over what is Jimmie Terrell, District Committeeman, UAW Local 900 nominally a forum for our diverse opinions and views is Jack Splane, Urban Alliance long overdue. Wayne State News and Letters Bob Fitrakls, Wayne State DSOC Over 1.200 students, faculty and cam­ Mildred Smith, Past Chairman, University Harold Stack, WSU Weekend College pus workers of the Wayne State University City A Citizens District Council; Bev Scott. Attorney community. as well as concerned activists PreSident, Research Park Non-Profit Hugh Davis, Attorney across the country have endorsed the HOUSing Dave Cohen, WSU Institute of Labor and petition including Dan Bremer, Board of Directors, Flint Industrral Relations ACLU Geri Hill. WSU Institute of Labor and Region 1-A, UAW H. Samuel Kemp, Student Publications Industrial Relations Detroit NAACP Board member, Wayne State University George Corsetti, Attorney Honorahle Claudia Morcom Reverend EdWin A. Rowe, Director, Wes­ Eric Bockstael, WSU Weekend College Senator Jackie Vaughn, III, Michigan ley Foundation, Wayne State Unversity Gary BenJamin, Attorney Legislature, Effie Ambler. Professor, Wayne State Mark Magidson, Attorney Ohie Matthews. Coalition of East Side University Gene Brooks, WSU Institute of Labor and Mllllsters Reverend Dave Kidd, Central Methodist Industrial Relations Reverend James Wadsworth, Inter­ Church Rudolph Jones, Student representative to denominational MI nisterial Alliance Kathy Callahan, PreSident AFSCME Local the AcademiC Affairs Committee of the Ron Aronson, Professor Wayne State 1640 Board of Governors UniverSity, member New American Spartacus Youth League (Organizational affiliation listed for pur­ Movement ChriS Alston, Founding member UAW poses of Identification only)

state persecution. Another landmark of trying to burn down the home of a black verdict were not, as it happens, CWPers. racist "justice" is the "Kissing Case" in couple in the predominantly white The Wayne professors, the Student­ which a seven-year-old and a nine-year­ suburb of Romulus. Faculty Council vice president, the old were given 14 and 12 years respec­ Just as those who deny or try to former South End editor, the Spartacus tively for "attempted rape" in Monroe, minimize the reality of the holocaust arc Youth League, campus and city union­ North Carolina in 1959. Their "crime" rightly taken as Nazi' sympathizers ists who protested knew the CWP was was having been kissed by a white despite pious disavowals, so the South shot down in cold blood not just because playmate. In the I 960s, many Black End's attempt to pass off racist terror as it was foolishly innocent in baiting the Panthers never made it to court. The a little "racial animosity" only made Klan. The CWPers were assassinated cops simply murdered them. as they did worse by those who protested against it, because they were active union organiz­ Fred Hampton. indicts the South End as a gross ers, avowed "reds" and militant sup­ 1\ ut! Ie perversely accused the CW P of apologist for Klan/Nazi murder. porters of black rights. ·It could have staging its own execution: "Perhaps The targets of Nuttle's editorial are been us-it could have been any anti­ they needed martyrs for an issue that those who protested at Wayne State racist militant, any radical professor, would rekindle the flickering fire of against the Greensboro verdict and the any black auto worker. racial animosity," "Flickering"') The surviving CWP members. Sounding like The South End editorial might go newspapers have recounted a few of the· J. Edgar Hoover incarnate, Nuttle over in some lily-white bible school in more grisly and recent examples of amalgamates CWP and Wayne State Mississippi, but it won't go over here! racist terror: the shooting death of a 15- protesters who, he speculates, are There are those who might even argue year-old black girl in Youngstown by engaged in "a cruelly manipUlative game that apologists for white racism and threc white youths; six blacks murdered whose intentions are to possibly set the Klan/Nazi murder have a place in the in Ruffalo (two of them with their hearts scenario for even greater attempts at "academic community," exercising their cut out); four black women wounded by mass manipulation." He sees no freedom of speech. This moot point Klansmen in Chattanooga (resulting in "manipUlation" by the state in securing certainly applies to Nuttle & Co.-but the acquittal of two of three Klansmen the acquittals of five known murderers. they will have to find a platform other standing trial). Recently in Detroit, two As Nuttle knows, but does not mention, than making editorial policy for the Klansmen pleaded guilty to plotting the the Wayne State students, faculty and official student newspaper at Wayne murder of a black man, another to workers who protested the Greensboro State. 30 Campus Newspapers Condemn Racist "Justice" in North Carolina ...

The Hilltop Voice of the /-Iow,mj Community'

'-·--'--,1 'Brace Yourself for Battle' Thl .. rd~1 Mondav (''''<''"In!/:. a dul1ln~ On"hl'f 28 d",batt' ..... Ith ['re~ld('nt !Immv Wi''' dt'iIVl'rt"d In 1~larlc 'I t

.Iu.tlce? Wflat 'u.tlce? OPINIONS ---Don Jrillenbllrg ---.. --...... ---.... Racism rears its ugly head I Only justice suffered at Greem,boro in Greensboro ~~~~~r-~--~~~------~ WHILE SO~ UJo' the cllllenry deludl'<1 1ts..'U I1llo Uunkmll; that cIvil nRf!t.... problems wl're ~ol\'ed by the- rt"form..~ of the la!1;" 19&b, .thoK: (,~el> an' bt>~ thrralf'ned It -- -,~ ...... --~,..--~~~- eTfie The politics Ca11!pus of racism rrcho

Nuttle's editorial must not be passed Burnett and Nuttle took over and has demonstrators for their uwn slaughter. off as an aberration, a horrible "mis­ subsequently left, authored a letter to Disgusted by ihis 25 November editorial take" which will never happen again. the editor in October 1979 which entit led "l.eftists Hinder .J ustice at Since Nuttle and Burnett assumed their defended the FBI against self-confessed Greensboro Trial" by Mike Nuttle, res~ective posts as editor-in-chief and and / or well documented charges that it Wayne State students began a fight to managing editor, the South End has engaged in large-scale disruption, infil­ regain contrul over their newspaper and engaged in other racist apologia, heavily tration and murder set-ups within the to remove those responsible for the vile laced with red-baiting and slander. civil rights and black movements. apology for Klan/Na/i murder. Many • A Nuttle editorial entitled "Klans­ Once a paper which defended the students were fed up with the South man, Nazi make Leftists See Red" rights of blacks and labor, the South Emf's consistently reactionary editorial appeared in the 30 June South !:'nd. End has become a nest of apologists for policy as well as by the paper's arrogant Nuttle denounces as "violent and racist murder. The 25 November edito­ refusal to publish letters to the editorfor disruptive" a protest against the fascists' rial must be the last such reactionary some months, attempt to get a City Council permit to filth to be inflicted on the Wayne State The WSli Spartaclls Youth League march in Detroit. The editorial attempts campus from the pages of our paper! • (SYL)joined other outraged students to to portray leftists as instigators of "race form the Ad Hoc Committee to Oust riots," South Dill Apologists for Klan/Nazi • A South End campaign in June The South End vs. Wayne Murder and circulated the petition 1980 aided an attempted frame-up of the State Students reprinted above. Over 450 students Spartacus Youth League for an arson at signed within the first two days of the the Student Center Building. A grossly When an all-white jury in Greens­ petition campaign. Many helped circu­ inaccurate front page article and Nut­ boro, North Carolina acquitted five late it among their friends and in their tle's editorial of 23 June implicated the Klan/Nazi murderers November 17. classes, Some st udents first read the SYL in the arson; the editorial resorted student newspapers nationwide pub­ Nuttle editorial at the Ad Hoc Commit­ to willful libel, labeling the SYL as lished outraged editorials, anti-Klan tee literature tahk; so revolted were they "violent, deceptive hypocrites." The cartoons and reports of protests against by its current editorial policy that a South End then arrogantly refused to the racist verdict. But, in the heart of section of the student popUlation had publish a petition protesting this smear black and working-class Detroit, the simply ignored the paper. campaign signed by more than 80 WS U official Wayne State University newspa­ students, faculty, and other individuals. per, the South End, saluted the acquit­ 1,200 Say "Oust Burnett/Nuttle" • Marie Lazzari, who joined the tals, apologized for the racist murder But this gross apology for racist terror South !:'nd editorial staff at the time and placed the blame on the anti-Klan could he neither Ignored nor tolerated!

,, 31 ... South End Apologizes for Fascist Murders! ,__ rr----v -SO-'''''cit-''h -En----..dJ ~~~ lfl """'. \ Le.!!~~~Y~i~,~ ~~ j U~!!,~:,.~: ..~.~:,~,ns~~~? b<~~~,~L", 'l"'dy<~ Klansmen and two Nazis innocent of own slogans and banners. The time to question was merely who shot firsl? murder and riot in th" death .. of five act is now' All out'" Why would the 'CWP members refuse to communists at a 'Death to The Klan' "Racist justice?" testify and then make a big issue of "Racist roily last fall. How can this trial be labelled "Racist Justice?" The protestor.. wer~ killed during a justice" when witnesses against the accused One can only speculate. canfrontati(m at a march .• pansored by klansmen refused to testify for the prosecu- Perhaps they needed martyrs for an Issue the Communists Workers' Party. tion? One can't protest "Racist justice" after that would rekindle the flickering fire of racial Protestors who survived the hindering the execution of that justice. animosity. shooting labPlled th,' trial a sham and , One can't label a trial a 'sham' and then Perhaps it was a manipulative tactic. Most refused to testify for the prosp-cution. " retort to the trial's outcome by accusing Pres i- people already hate the Ku Klux Klan and its This is a partial account of the outcome of dent Carter and President-Elect Reagan of racist philosophies. But this may have been a the Greensboro trial by Associated Press and fostering a "racist America." tactic to try to equate the klan with the courts, United Press International compiled and One can't attack the judicial system as be- or at least imply that the courts favor the printed by the Detroit Free Press. ing unfair to minorities after failing to aid that klansmen and their racist beliefs. Hence, we The following is another account of the same system in prosecuting those accused of arrive at "Carter's/Reagan's raCist trial's outcome, as it appeared in a leaflet committing atrocities against minorities. America" as the villians in the flyer distributed at a demonstration to "Protest It reeks of hypocrisy. ' distributed to announce the protest of "Racist Racist 'Justice' in Greensboro." It is impossible to say whether or not justice." "Monday an all·white jury in testimony from members of the Communist Perhaps it's a cruelly manipulative game, Greensboro, North Carolina let 8ix Workers' Party would have convicted the whose intentions are to possibly set the Nazi/Klan murderers go free! This klansmen. However, attorneys for the scenario for even greater attempts at mass amounts to a KKK license to kill Blacks, klansmen contended that the klansmen had manipulation. other minorities. unionists and le/tist... killed the communists in self-defense because One can only speculate when motives are at Meanwhile the victims of last the communists fired first. question. However. one thing is mdoubtedly \ November's Greensboro ma.. 8acre are Apparently, there was not enough evidence true. still up on chargps for 'inciting to riot.' to prove the klansmen wrong. Five people are dead. This is jU8ticc in Carter's/Reagan's Also, one must remember lhat the But who shot first? And why were they . racist America. Come to the

Feinstein Bans Handguns in S.F. SL: No To Gun Control! SAN FRANCISCO--Mayor Dianne Feinstein has just signed into law her draconian ban on handgun ownership, demanding gun owners turn in their weapons in 90 days or face up to six months in jail and a $500 fine. (Of course, the law exempts cops and a few select groups such as store owners and "gun collectors.") The new law had been approved by the Board of Supervisors despite the protests of hundreds of people from a broad spectrum of the population-white conservatives, the National Rifle Association, the White Panther Party and a group called Gay Spartaclst spokesman Diana Guns. So-called "progressive" labor Coleman addressing leaders like Charles Lamb of Hotel, public hearing on Restaurant Employees and Bartenders gun control In Union Local 2 and the IL WU's Jimmy San Francisco, Hermanjoined with the guardians of the 10 June 1982. bosses' "law and order," such as former SF sheriff Richard Hongisto (now an SF supervisor), in supporting the disarming of working people. But in the first two days of its passage able applause as she finished. We reprint proposed here. If guns are banned, only no one had turned in their guns; instead below her testimony: the cops and the Klan will have guns. the Police Department reported receiv­ Police and fascist violence are on the rise ing a lot of calls about qualifying for a • • • • • in this country, and gun control would permit, and the local DA held off My name is Diana Coleman, and I'm leave blacks and other minority people enforcement pending a legal battle. speaking on behalf of the Spartacist defenseless in the face of racist terror. Meanwhile, the ominous anti-gun of­ League. As socialists we oppose Fein­ Feinstein and the police chief talk fensive is spreading: Berkeley passed a stein's gun control measure and all of about fighting violence, but the best-· similar ban, Oakland is talking about the other gun control measures being organized perpetrators of wanton hand- holding hearings, and a statewide November ballot initiative threatens to put a freeze on all handguns with a Incluye: registration requirement. eEl Wall Street Journal adora Just as the gun control proponents try al sindicato patronal polaco to appeal to anti-black racism over elAlto a la contrarrevolucl6n de Solldarnos~' street crime, many of the anti-gun- eEl "soclallsmo de mercado" es antisoclallsta . control witnesses at a June 10 public e Obreros polacos en movlmlento hearing in SF tried to make use of racist eLos dlsldentes del papa arguments. All more or less openly agreed that cops should have guns. All US$1 except one, that is. Spartacist League spokesman Diana Coleman rejected controls as a threat to minorities in particular, pointing out that "if guns are banned, only the cops and the Klan will have guns." (To their credit, the Gay Guns' spokesman was the only other speaker to note that gun control hurts blacks, women and gays.) giros/cheques a: Spartaclst Publishing Co. Box 1377 GPO While some conservatives and racists New York NY 10116 EE.UU. hissed and interrupted Coleman's re­ marks, she was greeted with consider-

------_.. _------36 gun violence are the cops. Yet of course these thugs in blue are deliberately ·f 1111 exempt from the liberals' gun control •• \I! q campaign. What about the kind of ~ violence we saw last September at the ""'" • ~. anti-Duarte EI Salvador demonstration • , when mounted police charged demon­ ~ "I strators in an example of unprovoked ~ police brutality? And more generally, 'Ii the wholesale murder of the Black Panther Party by cops and the FBI? And the everyday police violence that every black ghetto in this country, from Watts to Miami, has endured? [SF police chief] Murphy and Hongisto want gun control because they want the cops to have the monopoly on guns. We were shown earlier in the hearings the gun that killed [ city supervisor] Harvey M ilk, and we were told that this is an argument for gun control. But it isn't. Because Feinstein's ordinance would allow selected individuals to keep their guns. And of course off-duty cops or ex-cops like [Milk's murderer] Dan White would never have trouble getting a permit. The gay Democratic clubs are for gun control-well, maybe if Harvey Milk had had a gun he wouldn't be dead now. And maybe if the old people at the International Hotel had exercised their constitutional right to bear arms, [then SF sheriff] Hongisto would have been a little less free in sledgehammering down World Black Panthers demonstrate against gun control at California state capitol, their doors. 1967. Then there's the rising tide of fascist violence in this country, and of course Nazis from preaching and practicing chauffeur at taxpayers' expense. And they're armed to the teeth. When the racist terror in this city. Those who rely she's telling those of us who have to ride Nazis wanted to celebrate Hitler's on the police to protect them from the the Muni bus that we shouldn't be birthday in San Francisco, the police fascists will soon find out that a goodly allowed to have a gun-or for that gave them a permit, and Feinstein and number of those who burn the crosses matter, unions, decent working condi­ the Board of Supervisors agreed­ and wear the white hoods at night are tions or affordable housing. She's a advising people to ignore this threat. It wearing blue uniforms during the day. representative of the ruling class of this was only a united front of unions and Labor / black mobili7.ations to stop the country, who are determined to make minority organizations organized by the fascists! the working class pay for capitalism's Spartacist League that stopped the These days the liberal-authoritarian, crisis. (Shouts of "Out of order!") So "we know what's good for you" move­ while restraints on the fascists are being ment takes in everything from gun relaxed, the push is on to disarm the control to outlawing smoking and working class, especially blacks, as part banning pornography. The smugness of of a drive toward a bonapartist state Price: the whole thing is repulsive to the aimed at keeping working people down. $2.00 average person who has to live in the We better fight these anti-democratic grubby real world. So the liberals try to measures while we can. make gun control palatable by appeal­ Gun control kills. It kills blacks in ing to everyone's real fears of being particular. It kills in the service of a mugged, raped or murdered. There's no desperate ruling class which long ago solution to crime under capitalism, but became a bar to human progress and self-defense is sure a whole lot easier will seek to maintain its position when you've got a gun. Unlike the through naked state terror. It is this feminist alternative of karate lessons, class and its thugs which must be the handgun is rightly seen as the Great disarmed, through victorious proletari­ Equalizer. an revolution. No to gun control! For The hypocrisy of people like Feinstein the right of black armed self-defense Order from: is appalling. She's known to have against racist terror! For labor/black Spartaclst Publishing Co. Box 1377. GPO. New York, NY 10116 carried a .38; she's got a bodyguard; mobilizations to stop the fascists! she's got a private limousine and a Thank you very much .• 37 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 312, 3 Septemher 1982

NYC Transit Militants Protest Lynch Mob Murder "Labor Has the Power to Stop Racist Terror!"

Militants in the NYC Transport union and black organization in the city Turks' funeral (which had already been Workers Union (TWU) are calling on should be mobilized." held!) and to push for attendance at a the union to defend its members after The 23 June leaflet provoked broad pro-Democratic Party lobbying "rally the lynch mob murder of black union interest among transit workers. TWU for jobs" in Albany called by the state brother William Turks in Brooklyn on head John Lawe was flooded with AFL-CIO tops. Key to Cherry's pitch June 21. The militants have been phone calls from union members urging was the attempt to paint Kartsen as campaigning in the TWU for an a TWU demonstration in Brooklyn. It some kind of wild man fanning the effective union response to the racist also prompted Arnold Cherry, the flames of racial violence. To do so he assault which killed Turks and injured TWU's leading black "dissident" and had to pass off the Turks murder as little two other black TWUers. The workers head of the Transit Workers Coalition different from garden-variety subway were on their way home from the Coney of bureaucrats, to issue a leaflet of his crime. Island shop when they were set upon by own a few days later. The undated With Lawe and Cherry united in a mob of club-swinging racists on Cherry leaflet denounced "Extremist opposition to union action, it was left to Avenue X in the racially polarized groups like the far left Spartacus [sic] anti-union black demagogues to seek to Gravesend area. Immediately following League, which ran Karstan [sic] for use the lynch mob killing for their own this outrage, black TWU Local 100 President of Local 100 in the last pro-Democratic' Party purposes. First member Ed Kartsen and two other election." Cherry claimed the militants Roy Innis, a black demagogue whose TWUers issued a leaflet dated 23 June were "using the death of a fellow transit political career was capped by his demanding the union "organize an worker for their own purposes." apologetics for the South Africa/CIA­ immediate rally and march of mourning Cherry's own "proposal" was to backed UNIT A faction in Angola and solidarity-starting right at the criticize Lawe for not asking TWU against the nationalist MPLA rebels, Coney Island shop entrance. Every members to take time off work to attend called a demonstration over the Turks killing. Then it was the turn of Rev. Herbert Daughtry, best known for systematically channeling black discon­ tent into anti-Semitic scapegoating in Crown Heights. Both rallies attracted a e~­ couple of hundred black participants and a rather larger number of local ~. ~t~\ racist youth who lined the sidewalks ~ shouting racist slurs and threats. Cherry kept his distance from these i:tis rallies, but they fit in with his basic perspective, which he shares with Lawe: to throttle the power of the unions, counseling the wdrkers and oppressed to place their hopes in the election of June 27: Democrats. Cherry and Lawe may Transit militant acquiesce to a few blacks occasionally Ed Kartsen blowing off steam in Innis/Daughtry­ addresses style rallies, but must oppose independ­ SL-Inltlated ent mass mobilization by the working mass anti-Nazi people against the racist system, which demonstration could blow the lid off the Democrat/ In Chicago. union bureaucrat alliance. What is needed is a real show offorce expressing the TWU's determination to defend its members against the rising threat of racist and fascist-inspired violence. The TWU. as well as other city unions with a high proportion of

-~~ ------~------, 38

minority workers, must take the lead in independently mobilizing the organized 31 July 1982- strength of the labor movement in alustcfllaiu Nclus defense of the elementary democratic rights of blacks. [ (Queens) News (/..ong Island) The perspective of massive labor j BROOKLYN 1 black mobilization against race­ terrorism was put forward by Kartsen in Transit workers plan rally his union election platform last fall. Kartsen and TWU brother David Brewer campaigned on an anti­ to protest Turk's slaying By AN(,EI,A JONF.8 I» 011 our kneel and play tbe le4Idt'r.ihlp U 01'1(' of Wi IS attackl"d all of us arf' a tta('ked, " he!ilud capitalist, anti-racist action program ",,,,.IIt,d,,,,, N~w.St4/1 row tNt wUOOuld play " Somt' mf'mben 01 the Tralllit Wocktn; Turks, 34, II. TA car mamtf'nanCf man Hut TWlJ Pre$lI1t'nl John Lawe told IIw centering on defense of the right to Unlor,ITWU' outr.,edoverthemurder and two fellow f'mploy_ were attackt"!i In Am N~ lholt tM" IS opposed to ",ny of fellow-worker WtJhe Turb last month the Gn~esot"nd area of Brooklvn as l11f!'y orpnlted ~florUi by hili ml:'mbershlp to be<'oml:' Involved In publicly decrymg .~ qlrc the membership to orpmu II e:uled a BIIlel shop on Ju~ Z2 Tum wa! the Turk's murder strike (see WV No. 293, 20 November :!~~ ~(jorre~t ramI aelll api .., all bea~n aocl stomped to death, while hili r{}-wOf"lu~rs Dennis IJIXon oInd Donald "A demOlllitl'il\lOn would mflame the wnole thmg," Iw mamtamed "It III 1981). Earlier, Kartsen had fought for Ed KartM'n, II lIllnal/m.lnl~T"III~ man Cooprr were usaulted Pomtull to the mayOf"'s "flood 01 "In Koch and R~.... n'5 Arr.encIL," !.aId a! thr 21Mh Stf'fft lIlgnalsOOp, &.aId 'It 18 Union open _son 011 BlacD and the work crocodile INrs rOuowll1il the tra,edy," Kartaen, "unioolllll and BlaCKS are ;.~h~!J~I;o:~J~=e~~'mber the TWU to shut down the "Train to the for~:' and mamtalned that TWl! worbrs Kar1sen accused the mayor of subhuman" Silld ht !\as been In clOlie contact with Roy KariMn and other TW1J mernNors are Innl9, leadfor of thto COOJress of Racial rt~~()f" :t~~ J)('oteclIOJl from Mayor Plane" in solidarity with striking air pe.~~~~alc~~~r~t :=r~~~~" callma for In Immechate moblhl.llllon of Equality ,CORE' and feels tht' he asked IhIt oraam~ labor force throughout Ihr :f;:i~I~~~lIbl~~~~I~I~~~t:~:: ~vt' traffic controllers, in hopes of galvaniz­ !.a;~W~'T~~~:~II::a~o :;O:,n~,:,,~~~; He Cited tM dNth 01 Black motorman cltytolpeall-oolaaamltraCI5tattacks ing similar actions by unions like the Machinists, which stabbed the P ATCO NYC black press publicizes militants' call for unIon action. strikers in the back by continuing to service the airplanes. It is this kind of "leadership" of the 1980 transit strike leaflet issued by Kartsen demanding the concrete action, he argued, which is has fostered widespread defeatism TWU answer the Turks murder by a needed to get the unions off their knees among the TWU ranks in the face of the mobilization of integrated union power. to defeat givebacks and union-busting. city bosses' present speed-upjunion­ The leaflet signed by Kartsen and two But this proposal was torpedoed by busting offensive against the TWU. other TWU militants is dated 20 Lawe and Cherry, whose disastrous We publish below the most recent August.

ness of this issue. One black TWU sister to be guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, "Labor Has the Power called us to tell us how her son has been Cherry says: "Their call for the use of to Stop Racist Terror!" followed and harassed on his way to guns by transit workers must be de­ work. The union hall was flooded with nounced." If brother Cherry is against phone calls demanding union action. the right of self-defense, what is he for? It's been two months since the lynch But the Lawe leadership has done Answer: he's for gun control and for mob murder of TWU brother Willie nothing but work to sabotage our call more cops, the corrupt racist brutal Turks. Our black union brothers, as well for a TWU mobilization in Gravesend. thugs whose job is to protect the as the black people who live in the Martin Bellamy, VP of the motormen's property of the bosses, and never mind encircled projects in Gravesend, live division, had the nerve to tell me that if I the lives of transit workers. Cherry's under the threat of continuing racist and wanted something done about the Turks red-baiting attack against the mobiliza­ anti-labor violence. Brother Turks' lynching I should write a letter to Koch. tion of TWU power goes together with murder was no isolated incident. A Koch-the one who loves to hate us! his support to Democratic Party politi­ Jewish TWUer was hit with a baseball John Lawe went so far as to go on the air cian [Frank] Barbaro. He has to be bat and blinded in one eye by the racist on a black radio station (WBLS) to against the independent mobilization of thugs. The Amsterdam News says that promote his opposition to a mobiliza­ labor's power so he can present his at least two of the racist killers are back tion of TWU power in Gravesend politician friends as the only alternative on the streets. Despite a supposed because it would "disturb our good for workers fed up with Reaganism. crackdown by the cops, nothing has relations with management." Lawe Cherry claims reds are trying to use changed. starts by giving up the strike weapon "to transit workers-while he hustles TWU A couple of weeks ago on August 7 a achieve better relations with manage­ votes for the Democratic Party! The six-year-old black girl had to flee for her ment" and now he wants us to surrender Democratic Party is in the business of life from a knife-wielding racist in to the racist lynch mobs! cynically using workers and minorities Gravesend. Arnold Cherry's response to this call to get into office. Once elected, they Our union has the power to put a stop was to come out with a dirty red-baiting support the interests of the capitalist to this crap. We could dispatch squads attack claiming that "extremists" are class against workers and minorities. Ed of flatbed trucks with thousands of using the Turks murder for their own Koch, that TWU-hating racist, is a TWU brothers and sisters prepared to ends. In his leaflet titled "Turks' Killing member of the same party Cherry wants defend our members and smash these Not Just a Racial Issue" he repeats us to vote for. Koch started off just like updated versions of the Ku Klux Klan Lawe's arguments: "All over the transit Barbaro-a liberal Democrat. He cam­ southern lynch mobs. system, workers are traveling in fear of paigned for workers' votes, and once Right after the Turks murder I put life and property"-as if lynch mob elected went on a campaign to smash the out a call for union action to stop these terror is no different than your average workers' organizations (our unions) for racist attacks. This call has been met everyday mugging. the Big MAC bankers. Jimmy Carter's warmly by many individual transit In response to our support to the right Democrats paved the way for Reagan workers who realize the deadly serious- of armed self-defense, which is supposed by demoralizing and infuriating the 39 working people. Under the Democrats, area. The fascists grow in times of to protect ourselves against their racist the government broke strikes and massive economic hardship and social terrorism. started the war build-up that Reagan chaos. Their program is union-busting A lot of working people are pretty continues. It was under the Democrats and genocide. The working class must demoralized by the no-struggle "strate­ that even the most minimal democratic nip these racist killers in the bud! gy" of the American union "leaders." gains won by the mass civil rights And the labor movement has the The will to fight back is there but it's movement were taken back in the power to do it. The Spartacist League, held down by union "leaders" who want streets. the group that Cherry attacks in his us to believe the Democrats are some The black Democrats under the leaflet, organized a militant mobiliza­ kind of "answer." The biggest and most leadership of people like [Black United tion of 3,000 people in Chicago against a racially integrated labor demonstration Front leader Herbert] Daughtry and provocation by the Nazis. I supported in U.S. history took place last Septem­ [CORE head Roy] Innis cynically used and participated in that important ber 19 in Washington. Half a million the blacks down in Gravesend to stage a demonstration, along with many other unionists came out to show their march into the racist stronghold in a call unionists, on June 27th. But think what opposition to Reagan. The size and for police protection. Those marches 33,000 TWU members, taking the lead militancy of that demonstration sur­ were a display of weakness and isolation to mobilize the workers and minorities prised and scared the AFL-CIO brass. which will provoke more racist violence. of this city, could do in Gravesend! They're scared to fight the givebacks Then the Democrats went home and left Supporters of the Communist Party and cutbacks, scared to fight Reagan; the Gravesend blacks to face the call on the capitalist government to they tell us nothing can be done except inflamed racist thugs and the racist "ban" the fascists. And the Socialist wait for election day and vote Demo­ cops. Workers Party thinks genocide is c~atic. But we don't want Jimmy Carter A mobilization of integrated union debatable. SWP supporter Mark Fried­ back! We need to bring Reagan down in power in Gravesend would expose man, now a TWUer here, debated a the fight for a class-struggle workers impotent Democratic Party tactics like Klansman on TV in San Diego! Any­ party fighting for a workers govern­ those marches. It could show a way body who thinks they can debate the ment. We need to mobilize our real forward for the oppressed working fascists had better expect that while strength as unionists and our real allies, masses all over the city-the unions, not you're debating one, another one is the working people and all the op­ the Democratic fakers, as the real putting a bomb in your car. The fascists pressed, to smash racist terrorism. We champions of the working people and are not interested in debating "ideas"­ don't need more petitions to Koch and minorities. No wonder the political they are terrorists organized for murder­ more begging marches in Albany, we agents of the Democrats in our union ous action against blacks and other need a fighting labor movement with an like Lawe and Cherry oppose such a minorities! anti-capitalist perspective. mobilization! The fascist thugs are emboldened in -Ed Kartsen What reared its head in Gravesend Reagan's America. They have polled was not simply ethnic street gangs but tens of thousands of votes in several Endorsers: David Brewer the potential recruits for fascism. The communities, and they are growing. The Keith Anwar KKK has been reported leafleting in the labor movement better get itself in gear August 20, 1982

PUBLICATIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPARTACIST TENDENCY

Workers Vanguard Spartacist Britain Biweekly organ of the Spartacist League/U.S. Marxist monthly newspaper of the Spartacist League/Britain $5/24 issues (1 year) International rates: £2.00/10 issues $20/24 issues-Airmail $5/24 issues-Seamail Spartacist Publications Spartacist Publishing Co. PO Box 185, London WC1H 8JE, England Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116, USA Le Bolchevik Spartacist Canada Newspaper of the Trotskyist League of Canada Publication de la Ligue trotskyste de France $2/10 issues 1 an (9 numeros): 30F Hors Europe 40F (avian: 60F) Etranger: mandat poste International Box 6867. Station A, Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X6 Canada BP 135-10,75463 Paris Cedex 10, France Spartakist Australasian Spartacist Herausgegeben von der Trotzkistischen Liga Monthly organ of the Spartacist League of Deutschlands Australia and New Zealand Jahresabonnement 8,50 OM $3/11 issues (1 year) in Australia and seamail Auslandsluftpostabonnement 10 OM (1 Jahr) elsewhere Postfach 1 67 47 $10/11 issues-Airmail 6000 Frankfurt/Main 1, West Germany Spartacist Publications Pschk. Ffm 11988-601 GPO Box 3473 Verlag Avantgarde Sydney NSW 2001, Australia -----spartacist Literature----- Solidarnosc: Polish Company Union for CIA and Bankers $1.00 A Marxist analysis of Solidarnosc' role in the service of Reagan's anti-Soviet war drive. A revolutionary program to defend and extend the historic gains of socialized property forms in Poland. What Is Permanent Revolution? $ .50 "Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution" by Leon Trotsky. Lenin and the Vanguard Party $2.50 The development of the Bolshevik Party from Kautsky and Social Democracy to the Communist I nternational. Essential for understandi ng the necessity of the vanguard party as the vehicle for victory of the proletariat. The Great Coal Strike of 1978 $1.50 The true story-from the miners' side of the barricades: class war in Harlan and Stearns; wildcats in the coalfields; the bankruptcy of Arnold Miller and Miners for Democracy; crisis in the UMW. Cuba and Marxist Theory (Marxist Bulletin No.8) $1.50 Selected documents on the Cuban question, 1960-1966. Basic Documents of the Spartacist League (Marxist Bulletin No.9) $3.00 Includes: "Declaration of Principles of the Spartacist League" "Provisional Organizational Rules and Guidelines" "Black and Red-Class Struggle Road to Negro Freedom"

Black History and the Class Struggle $ .25 Contents • John Brown and Frederick Douglass: • Sit-downs Not Soup Lines! Heroes of the Anti-Slavery Struggle Fight or Starve! • Forward to a Workers State! • Washington, D.C., November 27: Finish the Civil War! Stop the KKK!

What Strategy for Black Liberation? Trotskyism vs. Black Nationalism (Marxist Bulletin No.5 Revised) $2.50 Selected documents and articles on the black question in the U.S., 1955-1977. Contents • Preface to Revised Edition • Soul Power or Workers Power? The Rise • Preface to First Edition and Fall of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers • For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Question • Black Power and the Fascists • For Black Trotskyism • Black Power-Class Power • The Negro Struggle and the Crisis of • Behind the "Roots" Craze Leadership • Quotes from Frederick Douglass and • The Secret War Between Brother Klonsky Malcolm X: Developing a Social and Stalin (and Who Won) Conscience • Rise and Fall of the Panthers: End of the • Quotes from "Roots": Romanticizing an Black Power Era Individual Heritage

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