WfJRIlIRS,,1N'(JI1R'25¢ No. 427 -.~)X'523 1 May 1987 Hisganics,- Refugees Targeted a or: mas aeist mmigration awl Full Citizenship Rights for Foreign-Born Workers!
In Hispanic barrios from East Los southern neighbors are increasingly Angeles to Chicago's Pilsen to Long integrated economically with the influx Island towns newly populated by of several million undocumented work Salvadoran refugees, in border cities all ers, shutting off the escape valve to el along the 2,OOO-mile frontier with norte could produce a social explosion Mexico, panic is spreading as the in the poverty-wracked Caribbean "Immigration Reform and Control Act" basin. of 1986goes into effect May 5. Although In the U.S., anti-immigrant hysteria the "amnesty" provisions are first to be is fueling racist attacks against His implemented, already employers have' panics and Asians, foreign-born and begun wholesale firing of "illegal ali American-born alike. On successive ens." Thousands of Central Americans days last November, California voters fled to Canada early this year to escape approved a ballot referendum making expected deportation. The president of English the official state language and the Dominican Republic, the Mexican President Reagan signed the Simpson Congress and even U.S. puppet Duarte Rodino immigration bill making it in El Salvador have pleaded with illegal for employers to hire undocu WV Photo Washington to "go slow" on implemen mented foreign workers. Together this Central American refugees from death squad terror imprisoned in concen tation. For as the United States and its continued on page 8 tration camp, EI Centro, California.
. uncowed. Thousands of Soweto resi dents are staying away from work in --....-..-.South Africa------protest against the eviction of rent strikers and in solidarity with the rail" strikers, as young activists set up roadblocks to turn back traffic out of the sprawling township that provides the muscle power for Johannesburg Black Rail Strikers industries. Buses and taxis as well as trains have stopped running, and students have closed the high schools. Mail delivery in the black township of two million hasstopped due to a strike of nearly 7,000 black postal workers Defy Apartheid Regime .which has also disrupted mail service in Johannesburg. With the social power to crush The Los Angeles Times (16 April) apartheid, the black fist of. workers reported the white supremacist govern power broke through the draconian ment was "apprehensive about a new censorship last week, announcing to the wave of civil unrest,that, this time, might world its courageous defiance of the involve workers rather than students." savage South African police state. A South African railways are strategic to six-week black railway workers strike in the economy, equivalent to rail and the financial capital of South Africa, trucking combined in the U.S., which is Johannesburg, suddenly escalated into why, despite the draconian police-state a major confrontation with the racist repression, apartheid rulers hesitated apartheid regime. before moving against the strikers, and On April 21 the government sent why they are now cracking down with a thousands of heavily armed troops and vengeance. The South African black police to patrol rail yards and stations, proletariat has the power to break the attempting to break the strike. The chains of apartheid slavery. What is following day, cops with whips broke up . desperately required to break those a union meeting in the Johannesburg chains is a revolutionary proletarian suburb of Germiston, killing one striker leadership. and seriously injuring another. A few Those Who Labor Must Rule hours later, police assaulted another group of strikers, killing five. But this The fact that thousands of black time the strikers, armed with axes and strikers on the railways were able to defy New Yorktimes clubs, fought back and the apartheid . Railway strikers battle cops in Johannesburg, April 22. the bloody apartheid butchers for six butchers 'took a few injuries for a weeks is testament to their growing change. The downtown Johannesburg ransacked by cops who beat up the of 16,000 rail workers who defied a strength and self-confidence. The strike headquarters of the black-centered unionists and arrested 400. The killings government back-to-work deadline. began in mid-March at the City Deep labor federation COSATU (Congress of occurred after South African Transport But in the Transvaal industrial heart rail station in Johannesburg after a 'South African Trade Unions) was Services (SATS) announced the firing land of South Africa, black labor is continued on page 11 x
We encourage all WVreaders to send letters and telegrams to Judge Warren Parti§ftu Defeu8e Chan, King County Superior Court, £o...... ittee Third and James, Seattle, WA 98104. * * * Federal agents in Los Angeles rounded up seven Palestinians and a Kenyan on January 26. This represented the intersection of "terrorism" hysteria Defense of FSP-Vital to the and anti-immigrant chauvinism. The victims-well-established businessmen, Workers Movement! students and working people-were shackled hand and foot and charged The Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) D.C. SL/PDC lit tables carried their under the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act has been pushed to the wall in a lawsuit petition to the Seattle court. Last week for allegedly "advocating world com by a vindictive ex-member, Richard we sent the following statement to the munism." Along with the American Snedigar, suing to take back a 1979 court: Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee donation of $22,500. In December the and assisted by the ACLU, the eight "The .default judgment against the Washington State Supreme Court Freedom Socialist Party in Snedigar v, have filed a lawsuit challenging the refused to hear. the appeal of a lower wee Times Hoddersen, etal.for refusing-todisclose constitutionality of the "advocating Witchhunt, USA: Julie Nuangugl court order that the FSP disclose their internal organizational minutes and world communism" exclusionaryprovi- . records vitiates First Amendment rights Mungat and
2 " WORKERS VANGUARD now studying (to the tune of $2.5 million) why blacks smoke more than Anti-Smoking Witchhunt whites and trying out ways to get them to stop. That's "social concern" for you A wave of "smokeout" moralism is is Attorney General Meese's push for cine, August 1986). USG(formerlyU.S. in this rotten reactionary climate sweeping the country, spearheaded by a private industry to take its anti-drug Gypsum), which wants to fire "Saturday millions of bucks to take away one of new generation of clean-living Yuppies. "surveillance" into parking lots and night smokers," is a defendant in life's relatively inexpensive pleasures for Among the first areas to outlaw smokers taverns. Harking back to the days of the thousands of lawsuits brought by those who enjoy taking a puff. were that bastion of Babbitt liberalism, totalitarian "company town," USG workers who got lung disease or cancer , So smoking a lot isn't good for your Minnesota, and the beansprout totali Acoustical Products' Co. announced its from asbestos and other fibers the health-but neither is too much liquor tarians of Santa Barbara and Berkeley. policy on tobacco: "If an employee company uses in its products. And while (or prime rib), and Prohibition only In fact, these"young fogies" are running smokes off the job, as wellas on the job, airlines are cutting back on smoking resulted in making the Kennedys and point {ora' section of the ruling class or if they're smoking .in a bar on sections, stewardesses at one airline Mafia rich. People ought to be .able to which has decided it can improve its Saturday night with friends, they might complained recently that they were read, eat, drink and enjoy whatevercon profit-and-loss figures by tightening up sensual activities they want withoutcops on the workforce, all in the name of or yuppie power prudes sticking their "health." In December, the Reagan noses in. We deeply resent "sin taxes," administration ordered curbs on smok designed to make people who want a ing in federal offices. And New York smoke or drink pay for the obscenities State's Public Health Authority issued a of this reactionary government (which diktat (now tied up in legal challenges) still .hasn't bothered to stop federal supposed to take effect May 7 ban subsidies to the tobacco industry, ning tobacco from just about every economic bulwark of Jesse Helms and public place imaginable, as well as in Yuppie the Southern Moral Majority types). workplaces. totalitarians And we're for reopening trade with The United States Army too has butt out! Cuba-as Fidel said, "If it isn't Cuban, declared itselfessentially a "smoke-free" People have a it's not a cigar." environment-the same people who right to smoke. . Karl Marx wrote in 1855 concerning stockpile chemical weapons and whose English liquor laws: "Theclassical Saints nuclear holocaust plans can make the of Christianity mortified their body for whole globe an irradiated smoke the salvation of the souls ofthe masses; enveloped piece of rubble. The whole put their job in jeopardy" (Chicago ordered to" shut off a second air the modern, educated saints mortify the campaign reeks of hypocrisy and cyni Tribune, 25 January). purifying system in the passenger cabins bodies ofthe masses for the salvation of cism: executives living high on prime rib The name of the game is "Increasing in order to save on fuel costs. their own souls" (from "Anti-Church and Cuban cigars (too richly subversive ProductivityThrough On-Site Smoking As for the "secondary smoke" hyster Movement," June 1855). In a rational; for the rest of us), their cocaine-and Control," the title ofan article in Health ia, there's no conclusive medical evi socialist society the money this ruling champagne brokers and PR firms Care Strategic Management (April dence on its ill effects, though obvi class uses to prepare nuclear Armaged telling workers they'd better"live pure," 1985), which points out that "A long ously good ventilation would help don would be used to find cures for increase productivity or get dumped. term rule ofthumb is thatapproximate everybody. But putting scrubbers' on cancer and other diseases, making those . Big Brother is already hard at work. ly 92 nonsmokers can accomplish the company smokestacks, or building pleasures people indulge in somewhat Insurance companies are using a new same workload as 100smokers." Anoth decent housing with air conditioning, more risk-free. Meanwhile, we say "butt urine test which can detect' nicotine er article quotes an economics professor won't help the bottom line-so the out" to these totalitarian snoops. In the traces 24 to 36 hours later, secretly as stating, "The average employed companies pollute the atmosphere like words of the immortal Billie Holiday trapping people tempted to put "non smoker.in the US ... has been estimated crazy and dump on the poor smoker. regarding all sorts of private, personal smoker" on their applications to get to waste 6 percent of his working hours Adding insult to injury in this racist choices, "Ain't nobody's business if I lower insurance rates. Most dangerous to the smoking ritual" (Military Medi- society, an academic research project is do.".
ofAtlanta on his own anti-drugcrusade, while dismissing the threat of racist Julian Bond Defies terror exemplified by the Klan assault on Williams' own march in Forsyth County: "In relationship to what drugs are doing to us, Forsyth County isjusta Drug Witchhunters pebble on the beach"! The' furor over Bond has already led ATLANTA-This city's black political politician to come out against the drug to demands that the overwhelmingly establishment has been thrown into witchhunt. And now he has been made a black municipal workforce and all turmoil by the latest installment of victim of that witchhunt in a vicious prospective city employees be subjected Reagan's anti-drug hysteria. Former nasty racist smear job which targets all to mandatory drug tests. And the white Georgia state senator and SNCC activ of us. head of the Atlanta police "union" has ist, Julian Bond, now head of the The "liberal" Atlanta Constitution now demanded that the entire predomi- . Atlanta NAACP, found himself in the spearheaded the vendetta against Bond naritly black city administration under cross hairs of the Meese police and their when it published "leaked" allegations go drug tests. The sinisterforces at work local surrogates. Bond has long been a made by his estranged wife-which she here have begun to alarm even the black thorn in the side of the white racist rul retracted in a phone call to the paper front men for Reagan's drug witchhunt. Wi~liams ers and an outsider within the black before publication-that Bond and a Julian Bond On April 24, and fellow anti Democratic establishment. In 1966 he number of other black Democratic drug campaigner Dick Gregory were was barred from his elected seat inthe politicians in Atlanta, including Mayor ments) confessed that her information arrested in a' protest denouncing the state legislature for his opposition to the Andrew Young, were "cocaineabusers." "wasn't good enough to go after any of "witchhunt... to defame and destroy Vietnam War. Last year he earned the Alice Bond told the Constitution she them," and "was more" rumor than black leadership not only in Atlanta but ire of the Dixie cup brigade when he had made the totally unsubstantiated anything." But the campaign of scurri throughout America." To be sure, the denounced drug testing as "demagogu charges while "emotionally dis lous personal vilification against Bond . Reagan gang are rubbing their hands ery" and "McCarthyism" in response to traught"-indeed, the night after a continues unabated, with the FBI and a with glee at the spectacle ofa discredited a bait by his victorious opponent John personal brawl with a woman friend of federal grand jury now drawn in as well. black Democratic political establish Lewisduringa bitterCongressional race Bond's. The police captain in charge of In a 14 April press statement Bond ment in the city scheduled to host the in Atlanta's fifth district. Julian Bond the all-white "investigative" team (all lashed out at the Moral Majoritarians 1988 Democratic convention. Reagan/ has been the only prominent black quickly transferred to other assign- who sought to pry into his personal Meese got them over a barrel because, life, declaring it was "not the business of from JesseJackson to.local pols like Wil those professional scavengers and ru liams and Lewis, they've tried to out mor mongers who have made life hell Reagan Reagan in the drug witchhunt. genocidal program of the KKK was for innocent people." While denying The government's anti-drug hysteria Letter... expressed in a banner they carried that that he has ever touched cocaine, he is part of the bipartisan drive to regi day at Cumming: "Kill 'em all. Let God vowed: "As long as I live, I'll never take (continuedfrom page 2) ment the population for war (while the sort them out." It's going to take more a drug test. I think it's an invasion ofmy contra killers are the biggest drug rights activists, from Viola Liuzzo to the than prayers and songs to smash this privacy." traffickers on the continent). Julian Greensboro Five-were looked to as the scum. "Nonviolent strategy" is :and But while decrying "McCarthyism," Bond has been singled out because he protectors of black rights in Forsyth always has been a dead end for black under the gun Bond threatened to fink rankles the racist rulers. He has been a County! So far the only person charged struggle, preaching reliance oil the to the grand jury and "name names" leading figure in the Montgomery-based over the Forsyth march was a black "good will" of the racist oppressor. To about alleged drug use by reporters on "Klanwatch"/Southern Poverty Law marcher arrested for carrying a gun for' smash racist terror means bringing out the Journal Constitution, Which has Center, which; has been repeatedly self-protection in case of racist attack! black and labor power, as in the been crucifying him. Meanwhile, a host bombed, and burned down by the Klan And the Klan felt sufficiently embold successful Spartacist-initiated mobili of Bond's fellow black Democrats in 1983. At the same time, Bond's ened in the aftermath to stage more zation which stopped the threatened added their fuel to the fire. Black city bourgeois liberal politics lead him to the racist provocations including cross .Klan march in Washington, -D.C. councilman Hosea Williams urged suicidal policy of demanding "free burnings on the very outskirts of on 27 November 1982. But that re Bond-to "come forward and deal with it speech" for these fascist killers! We say: Atlanta. quires a break with the Democratic as President Gerald Ford and Mrs. Ford No platform for· racist terror-the There is a widespread desire to front men for Reagan reaction and the dealt with her alcoholism." Even as KKK/Nazis must be crushed through challenge and defeat the escalating fight for a workers party committed Bond was being pilloried by the racist . mass labor/black mobilizations! Hands racist terror in Reagan's America, as the to black liberation through socialist press, Williams was leadinga handful of off Julian Bond! Smash the drug turnout on January 24 showed. The revolution.• black schoolchildren through the streets witchhunttjs 1 MAY 1987 3 ~Y. Area Shipy.ard·Showdown Bureaucrats Isolate Todd Strikers injunctions and round up workers like voting cattle for the racist, strikebreak ILWU Action ing Democratic Party: the bureaucrats are there to police the unions for decaying capitalism. Is Key Throughout the strike, the Spartacist League has put forward a program of militant class struggle. Over 5,000. SAN FRANCISCO, April 23-Strik copies of our 31 March leaflet were ing shipyard workers suffered a serious distributed and well received all over the setback last week as strikers were forced' waterfront. It said what was needed to back towork at Service Engineering and win: Continental Maritime, the second and "The maritime unions must shut the third largest of six struck shipyards. waterfront down tight to win the IBU strike, back off the maritime bosses who This piecemeal strategy of separa.te have targeted the ILWU when its settlements-with ' which the bosses contract expires June 30 and win the broke the 1983shipyard strike-is being shipyard workers strike! What is going used by the labor misleaders to isolate on in the Bay Area is a real test of the largest yard, Todd, and bring this strength between labor and the bosses that the workers can win in mass, militant four-week strike to defeat. The militant struggle!" metal trades union tops have had to Despite red baiting orchestrated by the drive the strikers back to work, and not hoto bureaucracy, over 600 copies of Work without a lot of trouble. The shipyard San Francisco, March 31: Walkout at Todd defied bureaucrats, spread to six ers Vanguard on the strike have been walkout was originally sparked at Todd other Bay Area shipyards. sold to strikers, longshoremen and other shipyards by a one-day Bay Area ports 'Continental workers followed Hanra immediately remove your pickets and maritime workers on the West Coast. shutdown by ILWU longshoremen in han's attempt to cross the line. The yard return your members to work by The union bureaucrats on the Metal support of the striking Inland Boat stayed shut down through the weekend. Tuesdaymorning, April twenty-first." ,Trades Council may have "dealt the men's Union (lBU), and immediately On Monday, April 20, the treacher In the dead of the night union officials shipyard strike a mortal blow by their spread to five other shipyards. Class ous Metal Trades Council bureaucrats dragged themselves out of bed to take treachery, isolating the hundreds of struggle scares the hell outof the pro , used a police escortto try to break the ,down the graveyard shift picket line. workers at Todd along with several capitalist labor bureaucracy-what line. Carpenters official Rick Anderson; The next morning bureaucrats worked smaller yards. From the beginning of shipyard workers need is a leadership the flag-waving lover of, Reagan's the phones and passed out copies of the this strike we have insisted that it was that can win. Now more than ever, a Bay favorite "union," Polish Solidarnose, strikebreaking telegram at the gate. The urgent to combine the social weight of Area-wide maritime/waterfront strike is who had earlier unsuccessfully attempt Continental workers had no .leaders the IBU, the'ILWU and the shipyard needed to launch a labor counteroffen ed to lead some of his pals across picket who would stand up to the International workers as well as linking up with sive against years of concessions and lines, was across thestreet huddling with and went to work in grim silence. related transport workers. Instead all givebacks. company officials and the police. There the union tops-from Walter Johnson The union tops' Metal Trades.Coun were 300 Continental workers at the Crisis of Leadership of the Central Labor Council to Jimmy cil-who have opposed this strike-from gate, with about 40 Pipefitters again The shipyard workers have fought Herman of the ILWU-have conspired the beginning-s-unanimously endorsed picketing. "Screwed by Our Unions" hard, but throughout this strike they to keep these potential allies separate, a sellout deal hailing a 15-cent raise as a was scrawled on one sign. Across the have been leaderless. Virtually the only threatening all the unions. If the "victory." After a seven-year wage street were two dozen cops, many in riot time anyone has seen union officials on shipyard workers strike is defeated, it freeze, 15 cents is worse than an insult! gear. the picket line is when they are trying to will embolden Crowley against the IBU And the truth is the contract is a deep At 7:00 a.m., starting time, a compa cross it or break it! The United Ship strikers and the Pacific Maritime Asso pay cut, as it eliminates travel time and ny bus pulled out of the gate and rolled yard Workers (OSW), a collection of ciation bosses when the ILWU contract shift differential, caps the cost-of-living up to the cops. Two alert pickets quickly burned-out ex-vradicals," never chal expires in June. adjustment, and institutes a two-tier blocked the doors. Despite Anderson's lenged .the bureaucracy's strikebreak Shipyard, maritime and aerospace wage scale with new-hires ("trainees") urging, not one worker boarded the bus. ing. Instead, all they served up were workers from Vancouver, Canada to getting only 60 percent of the journey rate in their first year! Meanwhile, Todd workers are still out, facing a whopping wage cut that will leave journeymenand laborers making $9 to $12 per hour. Strikers erupted in anger over this stinking betrayal. Tlie only one selling this besides the Council is the-reformist Communist Party's People's Daily World (21 April), which applauded it as a "breakthrough settlement." Conspiring with the bosses to get this rotten deal was one thing; getting it by the membership was another story. The. WV Photos union hacks rammed through the April 20: Militant Pipefitters picket holds the line against union tops' scab settlement at Service Engineering on a herding attempt. close vote on April 14and got them back to work the next day. Voting for the The scab driver pulled the bus closer to rallies with hot air speeches intended to Los Angeles know they have a stake in Continental contract started on Wed the cops; again not a single worker pressure the labor traitors for "a little bit the Bay Area strikes. On April to at nesday, April 15, and was supposed to moved. A striker shouted on the more." This while the bureaucrats were Ferndale, Washington, 150 Mobil Oil be extended for a day as strikers' anger bullhorn: "If this contract passed, how knifing the strike in the back! refinery workers stood fast for eight started to boil. Instead, the bureaucrats come nobody got on the bus?" The bus On Monday, April 20, when the ., hours and prevented the unloading ofa cut off the vote and declared the-sellout left empty and the cops marched away. bureaucrats and cops tried to break the barge scabbing on the IBU strike. When ratified. Then all hell broke loose. The Pipefitters line had held another picket line at Continental; the USW was the ILWU / IBU shut down the ports.for day. nowhere to be seen. When the bureau one day in March, the bosses' press Pipefitters pic~et Lines Mean Don't Cross! Later, Cliff Schellin, a Pipefitters crats forced the workers back the next raised the spectre of the 1934 general official, threatened strikers with an day, the USW passed out a pathetic strike, which had cracked the open shop When'Continental workers reported injunction: you'll "probably have to go leaflet which only complained that the in the Bay Area. If labor tears up the to Pier 50 Friday morningthey found an back to work tomorrow." THe fitters traitors didn't hold an "adequate demo bosses' rules and starts playing hardball, angry Pipefitters picket line blocking were furious, stating that it was only cratic discussion." What the strikers workers and minorities can avenge the the entrance, with hand-lettered pro their anger that forced Mazzola's hand. need is not cover-your-ass excuses, but cutbacks and givebacks. In particular, tests against the union tops on the back Strikers yelled out that Service class struggle to beat the maritime ~he, strategic "defense" ind ustry workers of their official union signs. Laborers Engineering-and the entire coast bosses. And they won't get it from the can strike a blow against the war on union B.A. Michael Hanrahan read a' should be shut down. The heat got too USW. blacks and laborandthe bipartisananti Metal Trades Council statementsaying much for the piecard Schellin, who All of these in-bureaucrats, out Soviet war drive which fuels the at the 'strike was over. He jumped into a retreated to his car whining, "Heyfellas, bureaucrats and would-be-bureaucrats tacks at home. But that means a battle pickup truck and tried to break the line. what can I do? I'm just a flunkeyi" betrayed the militant strikers. The first against the labor traitors, their .refor Furious pickets swarmed the truck That afternoon International Plumb rule of the class struggle is to tell the, mist hangers-on and the Democratic while Hanrahan and Pipefitters busi ers and Pipefitters president Marvin truth. Who are ourenemies, who are our .Party. Above all it requires forging a ness manager Joe Mazzola traded, Boede delivered the final stab in the friends? The union tops are knifing the racially integrated, revolutionary work punches. Hanrahan was chased off and back in the form of a telegram from shipyard workers in the back for the ers party dedicated to the-construction the pickup backed away. None of the Washington, D.C. ordering Local 38 "to same reason they bow to strikebreaking of a workers government.• 4 WORKERS VANGUARD Meese Fails to Keep War Criminal from Soviet Justice Nazi Butcher Linnas and the WhiteHouse There was Ed Meese, head of Rea But Soviet witnesses testified that East" of Hitler's Abwehr; and the U;S. gan's "Justice" Department, caught by Linnas ordered women and children rocket program was based on Nazi TASS Estonian death camp commandant the cameras of ABC's Nightline skulk brought to the edge of a ditch and forced scientists such as Wernher von Braun, Karl Linnas in Soviet custody at ing around the corridors of Washington to kneel before their executioners. At who designed and built the German V-2 Tallinn airport. trying to strong-arm some U.S. client times he "personally finishedthe survi missile with slave labor. ' state into taking Estonian Nazi collab vors with a pistol shot." For the White In 1979, due to the efforts offormer counsel of the World Jewish Congress, orator and mass murderer Karl Linnas. House, such sadistic torturers are Congresswoman (now Brooklyn D.A.) replied categorically, "Not once in 40 The Soviet Union had sentenced Linnas "freedom fighters," like the Nicaraguan Liz Holtzman and to give credence to years has anyone proved a case of Soviet to death in 1962 for commanding the contras whose techniques are so chill- ' Jimmy Carter's anti-Soviet "human forgery or perjury by a Soviet-supplied concentration camp in Tartu, Estonia ingly similar. But now the "butcher of rights" crusade, the OSI was set up as a witness" (Time, 20 April). Linnas where 12,000 were slaughtered, includ Tartu" is in the hands of Soviet-justice. Nazi-hunting unit in the Justice Depart himself admitted he was in charge of ing 2,000 Jews. Even though 12 U.S. Soviet authorities now say theLinnas ment. But though it developed some Tartu camp guards, as quoted in the courts over eight years of protracted case will be reviewed, and possibly a new 600-plus dossiers on known war crimi New York Times and Newsday as early review had found the evidence against trial held. For our part, we wouldn't nals in the U.S., to date the government as 1963. In revoking Linnas' citizenship this admitted death camp commandant have been unhappy if a firing squad has proceeded against less than 50, and in 1981,a federal district judge said the "overwhelming," the anti-Communist were waiting for this mass murderer as only a dozen or so have been forced out evidence "overwhelmingly supported" fanatics in Washington went all-out he stepped off the plane in Tallinn. of the country. Meese has systematically the government's case. And an appeals court that upheld the deportation order last May noted, "The irony of Karl "Karl Linnas-heil and farewell." Linnas objecting to execution without due process is not lost on this court." The anti-Soviet unholy alliance to "save" Nazi collaborator and death camp butcher Linnas stretches from Buchanan, Meese and ultrarightist William F. Buckley to Linnas' chief counsel Ramsey Clark, who screamed about Linnas becoming the object of a Soviet "show. trial." (Today a liberal darling, as LBJ's attorney' general ;=~ Clark authorized the bloody repression ~'::..... at the '68 Chicago Democratic conven \ tion and the FBI's murderous COIN il Pat Oliphant TELPRO campaign against black Bitburg, May 1985: Reagan lays wreath at SSgraves. BitburgD: radicals.) As over the Waldheim affair, Meese and Buchanan's crusade for Nazi linnas. the World Jewish Congress has been AP notable in trying to bring Nazi scum to trying to prevent Linnas being turned In many ways the Linnas case was tried to protect Nazis from deportation justice, while most Zionist groups have over to the USSR. As the clock ran out, Bitburg II. In May. 1985, Reagan to Soviet-bloc workers states, and got turned a blind eye toward fascist war while World Jewish Congress officials "commemorated" World War II by Israel to reluctantly accept J dhn Dem criminals in the interests of the anti were home celebrating Passover.Meese laying a wreath before the graves of janjuk, the infamous"Ivanthe Terrible" Soviet war drive. And the CIA "captive tried to sneak Linnas into Panama. But members ofthe Waffen SS "Das Reich" of the Treblinka death camp in Poland nations" cesspool won support in even the Panamanian generals wouldn't division in the military cemetery at where a million Jews were slaughtered. Washington with the argument that accept him, and on April 20 tbe Bitburg, West Germany. This same elite Buchanan.vhowever.. considers the de Linnas should not be handed over to the Supreme Court upheld the deportation Nazi unit in 1941 carried out the portation of Demjanjuk to Israel an USSR because he was an Estonian order. That night Karl Linnas was , execution of 920 Jews near Minsk, in "official lynching." AsMenachem Ro , nationalist fighting Communism, and bundled aboard a Czech airliner. Soviet Byelorussia. Many denounced sensaft, leader of an organization of the U.S. has refused to recognize the Most of those executed at Tartu were the administration's "insensitivity" to children of Holocaust· survivors, wrote, incorporation of the Baltic states into Estonian Communists, and for the ward the victims ofthe Nazi Holocaust, "Mr. Buchanan ...is the ideological heir the Soviet Union. Reaganites that's no crime. In fact, for but Bitburg was.no accidental blunder. of those Americans who never forgave Estonia was part of the Russian Reagan's former propaganda chief Pat For Reagan & Co., the U.S. was on the President Franklin D. Roosevelt for not Empire until the Bolshevik Revolu Buchanan, Linnas and other "accused wrong side in World War II, and they allowing the Third Reich to be victori tion recognized the right of self war criminals" are just "innocent Amer- . wanted an act of "reconciliation" with ous over the Soviet Union" (New York determination of all the oppressed icans" facing "irreparable injury and ' the former .enemy as part of prepara Times,21 April). nations in the tsarist prison house of death" due to "revenge-obsessed Nazi tions for World War III against the In one of his final acts before peoples. The Estonian bourgeois repub hunters" (New York Times, 7 April). Soviet Union. The Reaganauts certainly resigning as the Goebbels of the White lic was set up by the German Kaiser's have no qualms about SS methods. House, Pat Buchanan launched a last army, and reborn under the protection. Shortly after Reagan returned from ditch crusade to keep Karl Linnas from of British naval guns in the Russian civil Bitburg, Einsatzgruppen of the Phila Soviet justice, publishing a diatribe war as 14imperialist armies besieged the delphia police under the orders of alleging Russian "forged documents" Bolshevik Revolution. And "independ Wilson Goode, local black collaborator and hurling anti-Semitic slurs against ent Estonia" was no land of liberty: the of the Fuhrer in the White House, Nazi-hunters. Eli Rosenbaum, general continued on page 12 carried out their "final solution" for the black MOVE commune. For decades, Washington has har bored Nazi war criminals en masse. Some 10,000 of these Hitlerite killers were imported into the United States Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League following the end of World. War II, according to Alan Ryan, former chief of the Justice Department's Office of o $5/24 issues of Wolkers Vanguard 0$2/4 issues of Special Investigations (OSI), who pre (includes Spartacist) International rates: Women and Revolution o New 0 Renewal ' $20/24 issues-Airmail pared the case against Linnas. Another $5/24 issues-Seamail 0$2/10 introductory issues of 40,000 were shipped to Latin America 0$2/4 issues of Spartacist Workers Vanguard such as Klaus Barbie, the butcher of (ediclon en espaaol) (includes Spartacist) Lyon-and over 3,000 reside in Canada Name '-- _ to this day. They were brought in through deliberate government 'policy, Address _ for use in the anti-Soviet Cold War. ______Phone(_'_) _ Barbie's "expertise" was invaluable in tracking West European Communists; City State Zip _ Hitler's Nazis slaughtered millionS. the West German spy network was built 427 Linnas made women and children on the Gehlen organization, formerly Mike c:Mcb IHIYlbie/melllo: $perteclsl Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY10116 kneel before their executioners. the directorate for, "Foreign Armies 1 MAY 1987 5 ~~~-SriLanka~~~-
) , State Terror, HI.oody Communalism LONDON, April 28-ln the last two weeks, Sri Lanka has been wracked by communalist bloodletting and govern ment terror on a scale not seen for two years. In a series of indiscrimi- . nate terrorist attacks, attributed by the. government to Tamil nationalist groups, hundreds of people were killed in the east and the southern capital city of Colombo. These attacks increased the pressure of ultra-chauvinist Sinha lese forces on the right-wing United National Party (UNP) regime of J.~. Jayewardene, which unleashed bomb ing raids in the northern Jaffna Peninsu la aimed at demolishing Tamil guerrilla bases, which are in heavily populated areas. Groups monitoring the 'north have reported heavy civilian casualties. The wave of killings began during a holiday week when many people were Reuters hotos travelling to visit relatives. On April 17, Re~cue workers sift through wreckage of bus station after bomb killed in the northeastern Trincomalee dis and wounded hundr:eds in Pettah area, Colombo (left); Sinhalese trict, men in military dress stoppedthree father with his dead baby daughter after massacre in the northeast. buses and two lorries [trucks]. Report edly, after freeing the Tamils and partition of India, when trains carrying A recent statement by Lanka's sinister Lankan Tamil guerrilla leaders in Ma Muslims, they simply massacred as Muslim and Hindu refugees were "National Security" minister, Lalith dras and seizing their arms and supplies. many of the remainder as they could, stopped and trainloads of passengers Athulathmudali, seemed also to signal including children. Using machine guns massacred by opposing communalists, awareness of the India factor. "Up to Dual Power and State Terror' and grenades they killed 127 people, the army boarded a train carrying now we have had the power, but we did in the North' overwhelmingly civilians, though some Tamils back from New Year holidays in not want to kill civilians. After all, they . The anti-Tamil pogroms of 1983 30 off-duty servicemen were among the north and gave it a military escort. A are our own people," said Athulathmu instigated by elements within Jayewar them. curfew was slapped on Colombo for five dali (New York Times, 23 April). The dene's ruling UNP forced hundreds of Fourdays later a powerful bomb blew days while helicopters with searchlights government's conduct has amply shown thousands of Tamils to flee to the up at the main bus station in the heart of patrolled above the city. that it considers the island to be solely Northern and Eastern Provinces and Colombo during the evening rush hour, The Jayewardene government re- the property of the Sinhalese Buddhist India. The de facto partition of Lanka majority; it's the spectre of Lanka's was reinforced by increased adminis Indian "big brother" that prompts these trative state power in the north by the hypocritical protestations of family Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam feeling. (LTTE) and the concomitant isolation If the Indian rulers think that the of the government forces. This unstable, situation is getting out of hand, they dual power situation has led to constant could be forced to intervene. They don't war conditions in the north. Repeated like the presence in Lanka of advisers artillery and aerial bombing in Jaffna, from what Lankan premier Premadasa where the army has been holed up in a calls the "loyal ally" Pakistan. (India few bases, has killed hundreds. Schools and Pakistan were again on the brink of and the main hospital have been targets. war earlier this year.) And the Indian Jaffna district under virtual "Tiger" government, which is diplomatically control has been subjected to a brutal UNP-instigated aligned with theSoviet Union and sees mobs torched blockade-rail, phone and fuel have Tamil shops the region as its own sphere of influence, been cut off for months. Lack offuel has in Colombo, opposes U.S. imperialism's appetites not just halted transport but stilled the July 1983. toward strategic Trincomalee harbour. irrigation pumps vital to agriculture, Nor does India like the increasingly Even' firewood supplies have been frequent U.S. Navy visits to Colombo stopped. (which earlier this year reportedly led to In the Eastern Province, policies of a hushed-up "incident" between U.S. Sinhalese colonisation have aimed at warships and a Soviet merchant ship in driving out the Tamils, especially from killing over 100 people and wounding mains uneasily poised atop a seething Colombo port). But Gandhi will bring the area of Trincomalee harbour. The hundreds more. The station is adjacent cauldron of communalist hatreds and no progressive solution to Lanka as Trincomalee district has been the to the Pettah marketarea, where burned fears. While Sinhalese-chauvinist "hard some Tamil nationalists claim. Capital stomping ground of the notorious out buildings from some of the worst liners" howlfor an unrestrained "mili ist India is itself a prison house of Special Task Force police commandos, anti-Tamil attacks of 1983 still stand, tary solution," the J.R. regime is not peoples from the Sikhs to the untouch trained by "ex"-SAS mercenaries from and is the central transit point for unaware of the power politics of the ables. Last year the Indian government Keany Meany Services (KMS-which is workers and peasants travelling into the region. Sri Lanka is a tiny island of 16 showed what it would do to anyone they also assisting the contras in Nicaragua). countryside, as well as civil service million people which could be easily consider out of line by detaining Sri A British cabinet minister, David employees going home to the suburbs. swatted by its giant neighbour to the WV Graphic Waadington, who was in Sri Lanka at Colombo teetered on the brink of a north. India, with a population of 770 the time of the attacks, officially mass anti-Tamil pogrom. In thePettah, million, will risk massive unrest in the o 100 admitted the presence of the KMS crowds of Sinhalese chauvinists at state of Tamil Nadu, where 50 million I I MILES mercenaries. Waddington, the minister tacked Tamils and tried to loot Tamil Tamils live, if it does not prevent the who has spearheaded the British Tory shops but were stopped by police firing destruction of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. government's drive to deny political tear gas. In Welikade prison, scene of According to the New York Times (26 refugee status to Tamils, blandly admit the notorious massacre of Tamil politi April), the Lankan governmentexplains ted that life was "very unpleasant" in cal prisoners in July 1983, Sinhalese the recent massacres of Sinhalese Lanka for Tamils but hastened to deny prisoners tried to break into the areas civilians as· a deliberate:attempt by that they are "conventional refugees." holding Tamil detainees. But the gov Tamil guerrillas "to provoke a violent Thatcher stands by her butchers, and ernment is terrified of an Indian backlash" by Sinhalese communalists J.R.'s other friends, the U.S. imperial invasion as well as of the tremendous against Tamils which in turn will force ists, want the Trincomalee portas a base economic dislocation of uncontrolled the Indian government to act. The for their anti-Soviet war drive. communalist bloodletting. Unlike 1983 Indian High Commissioner in Lanka, Negotiations and truces have been when the army and police permitted and J.N. Dixit, was called to the Foreign followed by renewed massacres, with indeed joined in the killings of hundreds Ministry to receive a demand that the the government using "cease-fires" to of Tamils, this time the government Rajiv Gandhi government should hand build up its armed forces and to try to tried to hold the line against massive over guerrillas who have taken refuge in consolidate its hold in the east. Despite pogroms, while promising the enraged India. "But however outspoken Sri occasional flurries of Indian-brokered Sirihalese chauvinists that the govern Lankan leaders are in condemning negotiating proposals, at the beginning ment would keep order in the south and India," the Times observed, "officials of.this year the government hardened its retaliate militarily againstTamilstrong here [in Colombo] say they know the drive toward a military solution in the holds in the north. Perhaps recalling the odds are against them." continued on page /2 6 WORKERS VANGUARD Spain Workers Strike Against "Socialist" ·Gonzalez Forge a Trotskyist Party!
APRIL 20-For the past three months, the Spanish government of "Socialist" premier Felipe Gonzalez has been rocked by the largest wave of militant social struggle seen in Spain since the mass strikes that followed the death of hated despot- Franco in 1975. From January through March, there were more than 250 demonstrations in Madrid; in April there was strike action virtually every day, totaling over a mil lion workers. In 1982 Gonzalez' Span ish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) came to power on a vague program of "change"; it was returned in }986 under the smug slogan, Spain is "on the right track." But now it is reaping a whirlwind of popular protest against four years of strikebreaking and job-slashing austeri , Alegre/lnterviu ty, brutal repression of'. the Basque Madrid: Mass rally.of public sector workers minority, and "integration" of Spain protests government austerity and layoffs into NATO Europe and the imperialist (left). Hated Guardia Civil called in to break war drive against the Soviet Union. steel workers' plant occupation In Reinosa. Inspired by students' and work ers' struggles on the other side of the proletariat have entered the fray, with ish workers are fed up. The Madrid strations from the cop assaults, and in Pyrenees in France, in February schools strikes and occupations in construction, bourgeoisie had nightmares when thou Madrid a group of fascist provocateurs all over Spain were shut down as a auto, steel, docks, airlines, railways and sands of Asturian miners from the state was given a well-deserved lesson by quarter-million high school students Madrid subways protesting layoffsand owned Hunosa pits marched on the student marshals. When police shot and boycotted their classes. They took to the the government-imposed 5 percent wage industry ministry in Madrid, protesting seriously wounded a 14-year-old school streets demanding free secondary edu ceiling. Transport. walkouts at the plans to ax 6,000 jobs. Among their girl, outraged protesters demanded the cation, state-financed stipends and an beginning and end of Easter vacation chants were, "We must prepare the resignation of PSOE interior minister end to restricted admissions to higher week snarled traffic throughout the general strike," and "This is how the '34 Jose Barrionuevo-the loathsome for education, with its elitist discrimination peninsula. A general strike was called, Revolution started" (Cambio 16, 23 mer leader of the Francoiststudent against working-class youth. The youth and then called off for fear it would be March). The Asturias miners' insurrec "union." ful protests were met by violent police too explosive. Even the slavishly pro tion of 1934, with its popular battle cry Fresh in the minds of demonstrators repression, turning into street battles government UGT (General Workers "U.H.P." (for "proletarian brothers and government alike were the events in that vividly recalled the last years of El Union) headed by PSOEdeputy Nicolas unite"}, was smashed by Franco, leading France where student militants, backed Caudillo Franco. Again as in France, Redondo has rejected Gonzalez' wage to the jailing of 40,000 workers; it was by the threat of massive working-class the students' example found a wider restraints and joined the strikes. In the precursor of the Spanish Civil War mobilization, faced down the govern echo: teachers struck, doctors and recent union elections the UGT lost out of 1936-39. ment of rightist premier Chirac and health workers protested hospital con badly to the Communist Party-led The PSOE's October 1982 landslide social-democratic president Mitterrand ditions, agricultural laborers from the Comisiones Obreras (CC:OO.) which election victory was greeted by West to win major concessions. Fearful of a impoverished southern regions of Ex has adopted a more. radical anti- European social democrats as proof social explosion, the Spanish govern tremadura and Andalucia marched. .government posture. . that Spain had completed the transition ment acceded to a number of the student Newspapers began publishing weekly . Working-class militancy threatens to to "democracy" and was ready to'playa demands-free secondary education schedules of planned protests. escape the control of the labor bureau more assertive role in imperialist Eu and more scholarships-though educa Now the big battalions of theSpanish crats altogether. In the northern Can rope. Gonzalez has .been the Second tion minister MaravaH is adamant that tabria town of Reinosa, angry steel International's point man for "demo open admissions to universities is out of workers occupied their state-eontrolled cratic counterrevolution" in Central the question. The student leaders, some mill in response to planned layoffs, America. By engineering Spain's entry associated with Nueva Claridad (linked taking the director hostage for good into NATO, he secured U.S. bases to Ted Grant's Militant tendency; a measure. Guardia Civil police attempt established under the Franco dictator dissident wing of the British Labour ing to end the occupation ran out of ship which are strategic in the anti Party), called off the boycott. But the rubber bullets and were disarmed by Soviet war drive. But despite ~Felipe's" government faces a further round of strikers, who frog-marched them out of personal popularity and cynical referen protest as university students begin town. (A judge is trying to recover a dum ploys, the Spanish working masses campus occupations. missing submachine gun.) The "Social continue their protests. What is griev Underlying the present round of ist" government responded by bringing ously lacking is a revolutionary van student unrest in Europe is the despera in 1,000 of the hated Civil Guards, guard to lead this oJ>positionto the anti tion and anger of a generation aban including an "anti-terrorist" unit from Soviet NATO alliance and its adjunct doned by the reformist leaderships of the Basque country, helicopters and a the Common Market, and to Gonzalez' the traditional workers parties-social dozen police tanks. In recent days there anti-working-class economic policies. democratic and Stalinist-i-and con have been repeated pitched battles with demned by decaying capitalism to the the Guardia as workers try tocut the rail Popular FrontAgainstthe People misery of unemployment. (Half of line to Madrid with flaming barricades. The international press has concen Spanish youth are without work.) The PSOE mayor quit in the face of trated on the campus protests and the Meanwhile, massive joblessness is used popular repudiation. violent clashes between student demon to sell the PSOE's disgusting racist ley Gonzalez came to office promising strators and the police. Indeed, the de extranjeria (aliens bill), intended to 800,000 new jobs. But joining the armed thugs of the Policia Nacional end .immigration from outside the . Common Market has meant wholesale were soon dishing out some of the brutal Common Market. Thousands of "un "reconversion" (desfruction) of decrepit treatment received daily by the Basque documented aliens"-mainly black Af Cambio 16 Spanish industry so that today unem people in the north: the color of the ricans, Arabs and Portuguese Gyp Spain's "Socialist" premier Felipe ~ ployment is more than 21 percent ofthe uniform may have changed but it's still sies-were rounded. up jn police Gonzalez in anti-Soviet NATO workforce (over three million jobless), the same old Francoist Gestapo. Stu dragnets and held in concentration alliance with Reagan. the highest in West Europe. AndSpan- dents valiantly defended their demon- continued on page 13 1 MAY 1987 7 problem, and we're going to have a ::E < massive wave of immigration." For ""C' Reagan, the Caribbean is America's o". 8" "front yard," and Mexico/Central America is the U.S.' strategic rear which must be controlled at all costs. What they intend to do is militarize the border. In early November, the Immigration and Naturalization Ser vice (INS) announced it will provide its New York City, Border Patrol thugs with 1,000 M-14 30 April 1982: Army rifles and a couple of armored Spartacist personnel carriers to patrol the chain League link fence derisively known by the protests racists as the "Tortilla Curtain." INS vicious racist cops (the hated migra) talk of "bagging INS raids. wets" like gung-ho Green Berets in Vietnam used to brag about "bagging VC.", In April 1985, a U.S. Border Patrol cop fired across the international frontier dividing the San Diego suburb of San Ysidro from Tijuana, Mexico, Labor: Smash Racist Immigration Law! shooting 12-year-old Humberto Carril lo in the back and leaving him bleeding on the ground. This' kind of incident (continued from page 1) ing American jobs" to Mexico, the American policies. As a result ofthe six will become more and more the norm, represented official sanction for the AFL-CIO News (18 October 1986)' year-old Salvadoran civil war (which for in its starkest terms "immigration racist backlash building" against the cheered that Simpson-Rodino "in was supposed to be an "easy win" in control" means killing Mexicans and rapidly growing Hispanic population. cludes key laborgoals"-like"employer order to rev up the anti-Soviet war Salvadorans. But they've tried to sell it by purporting sanctions" on hiring undocumented drive) more than 500,000 Salvadorans In. every period of economic and to legalize the "illegals," providing the workers. have sought refuge in the U.S.-1O political crisis in the United States hope of residency and eventually, citi All the talk of "illegal aliens" suppos percem of the entire population of that during this century the rulers have zenship .for some of those who've edly "stealing American jobs" is hog tiny country. The money they send back carried out mass deportations. Follow already made it into the USA. The result wash. "Illegals" overwhelmingly work is more than the total U.S. aid, and with ing World War I and the Russian is turning out to be a nightmare of in the lowest-paid, dirtiest, backbreak 40 percent unemployment at home if Bolshevik Revolution, as the message of bureaucratic arbitrariness, which the ing work no one else willdo: stoop labor hundreds of thousands start pouring Communism was spreading among government is absolutely unprepared in the fields, kitchen work in restau back to Salvador it could spell the end of American workers, it was the Red for. Even the Irish are complaining as rants, sweatshop industries and house the shaky U.Sv-backed regime. Already Scare. The infamous Palmer Raids the hopes for leaving impoverished rural hold maids. Nor do they "sponge" off the FMLN guerrilla coalition has issued rounded up 10',000 "reds" and other Ireland are cut off. Millions of people social services: on the contrary, they pay an appeal to returning Salvadorans to immigrants, 'and over 1,000 leftist are now being subjected to an irrational, income, Social Security and sales taxes join the struggle, Thus Simpson militants wete thrown out of the Kafkaesque process that is ripping up like everyone else, while they underutil Rodino has produced the bizarre spec country. In the Great Depression, more their lives. ize services for fear of getting nabbed. tacle of puppet president Duarte writ than 500,000 Mexicans were sent back Reagan has tried to sell his Central And the "English only" baloney has ing secretly to Reagan begging his by U.S. authorities, mostly migrant America war policies by waving the nothing to do with teaching immigrants patron not to send back Salvadoran farm workers. During WW II the bra- . bogey of brown-skinned hordes surging the language of the land; on the up from the south, alternately described contrary, it's a racist ploy to victimize the foreign-born, depriving them of » as a "tidal wave of refugees from ""C Communism" or as the Communist every right. But these nativist appeals menace itself. And just as the war on are having an effect, including among ghetto blacks emanating from the White blacks" who are segregated at the House has sparked lynch mobs from bottom of American society and feel their precarious livelihoods threatened High-teCh New York City to Georgia, the calls repression on the from Washington to "control our by the latest wave of low-wage immi Rio Grande, borders" have led to murderous attacks grant labor. Racist La Migra , on Hispanics. Last July 4, as the U.S. For the American ruling class, the polices border with was hypocritically celebrating 100years drive to "control the borders" is a infrared night of the Statue of Liberty, the domestic response to the economic crisis of U.S. scopes. "contras" of the Civilian-Material As capitalism and part of preparationsfor sistance organized a KKK-style vigi war. It was revealed last year that in lante squad along the Arizona border, April 1984 Reagan issued National kidnapping 16 Mexican workers at Security Decision Directive 52, author machine gun point. izing a nationwide "readiness exercise," refugees, and even giving tacit support cero program was started to bring in It's not just xenophobia in the REX 84, by the Federal Emergency to bills which would provide them farm hands, but after the Korean War, boondocks or nativist fascists in their Management Agency, to test its ability temporary asylum-something the ad when unemployment shot up, in 1954 white robes and camouflage gear. The to put 400,000 undocumented Hispanic ministration has fought tooth and nail Washington proclaimed "Operation racist coalition trying to slam the immigrants in concentration camps in 'until now. Wetback," and "a veritable militarized "golden door" particularlyon Hispanic ,the event of direct U.S. military opera The racist immigration "control and dragnet operation... sent 1 million to and black Caribbean immigrants runs tions in Central America. The Rea reform" act is a threat to everyone. It is 2 million Mexicans to the nearest from the Reagan administration and ganites' nightmares of a "wetback' com not only producing a wave of discrimi jailhouse, detention center, or border their fascist friends to Democratic munist" invasion are the fantasies of nation against anyone who "looks crossing. An atmosphere of nativist liberals and the AFL-CIO union bu anti-Communist crazies-s-but that's foreign," the law is already being used hysteria and anti-Mexican terror swept reaucracy. In fact, the liberals were key who's running the country. However, against all workers, such as the require the land" (James Cockcroft, Outlaws in to getting the "reform" bill passed: the upsurge in Hispanic immigration ment that everyone show proof of the Promised Land: Mexican Immi Simpson is a Reaganite right-winger directly connects the class struggle on citizenship or residency to get a job. This grant Workers and America's Future sensitive to Western growers who are both sides of the border. Among the is the first step to a monstrous' South [1986]). only interested in a steady supply of hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran African-style pass system. Combined Immigration laws have always been farm labor; it was only when New Jersey and Guatemalan refugees fleeing death with the existing witchhunting anti used for political control in the U.S., for' Democrat Rodino went in on the deal, squad terror and the several million immigrant laws like the McCarran example excluding Jews escaping the "liberalizing" the limited "amnesty" Mexican. workers trying to, escape Walter Act, this "reform" lays the basis Holocaust and then bringing in, Nazi provisions, that they got the necessary grinding poverty, there are many who, for a massive expansion of the police war criminals. Today as during the votes. And the job-trusting labor fakers are open to a program of international powers of the state for the regimentation 1920sRed Scare, anti-Communism and are among the worst of this racist lot. In proletarian revolution. of millions. All defenders of labor, anti-immigrant hysteria go hand in addition to provoking trade war against The immigration issue has thrown the minority and democratic rights must hand. A New York Times (27 April) Japan with "Buy American" protection U.S. government into contortions re take up the fight to smash the racist report on the chaos engulfing the ism, and vituperating against "export- flecting the failure of its Central Simpson-Rodino Act and other anti amnesty program mandated, by immigrant laws! Asylum for refugees Simpson-Rodino a week before it goes from death squad terror-Stop the into effect noted that in Chicago, deportations! Full citizenship rightsfor Hispanics are critical of the law while MEASURES SUBMITTED mVOTE OF YQIERS foreign-born workers! the Polish Welfare Association hails it: OFFICIALSTATE LANGUAGE. RequiJes Legislature and state officials to ensure Englishasof- YES 263 "In the Polish community, there's a flcialstatecommonlanguage. Providesfor privateenforcement. FISCal impact: Nodirect effectonthe Smash Simpson-Rodino genuinely positive feeling for what the costsor revenues of thestate or local gtMmments. .' NO 264 Racist Immigration Law! legalization process is going to do," said In addition, to their racist "brown a spokesman. No wonder. While Sal PROPOSICIONES ASER SOMETIDAS AL VOlO DE LOS ELECTORES peril" demagogy and blaming "illegal vadorans from Duarte's death squad aliens" for, everything from unemploy '''democracy'' are deported by the SI • .6t l1liI_OflClM.DB._~__ '_••...... 1 _l.It_,Ift_l1li__11110 ... ~n~.~ .~.ft.~""e~~ •• 263 lfta'..,Jn1iam.tr...... n••n* ment to drugs, the Reaganites have hundreds, and black Haitians fleeing "'u ..- ,..._:..- _-, ... ••~..~ ~ft••,"~_.bftnn. ~ consistently posed the immigration "Baby Doc" Duvalier's island hell were 264 NO _ .---.-. "••lllt •• ' issue in terms of "national security." Ex left to drown by the Coast Guard, anti CIA director William Casey in 1984: "If Communist Cuban, Polish and Afghan Racist in any language: California's "English only" proposition (printed in we have another Cuba in Central emigres are given the red-carpet treat English, Spanish and Chinese). America, Mexico will have a big ment, by both Reagan and the Demo- 8 WORKERS VANGUARD crats. The New York Ttmes (7 Septem ber 1986) reported the statistics: "So far, of the asylum requests decided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the 1986 fiscal year, 75 percent of those from the Soviet Union have been granted, as against 70 percent of those from Rumania, 7 percent from EI Salvador and 2 percent from Guatemala." The Salvadorans are sent to desert hellholes like El Centro in California; like the Laredo prison run for the INS, at a handsome profit, by the Corrections Corporation of America; or the brand new $17 million Oakdale INS facility at a remote site in Louisiana, 200 miles from New Orleans, where last Septem ber a newspaper writer was arrested for WV Photos photographing this immigration prison. Watsonville cannery strikers (left), Phelps Dodge copper miners (right): Hispanic workers in front line of hard And then there's the Corralon (big class battles. ,holding pen), the INS "processing workers are required to prove they stink when the government recently uncle Claude Garcia wounded during a center" in Bayview, Texas, where rape is entered the V.S. before I January 1982 required them to install outhouses. A knife attack that began with the taunt, commonplace. The workers movement and have been here ever since-in other Spartacist comrade who grew up work "Stupid 'Mexicans, always speaking must demand that these American words, they have to document that ing the fields of California's Sacramento Spanish." _ concentration camps be torn down and they've been undocumented. And this is Valley and Napa wine country told The virulent racism of the "English our fellow workers imprisoned there be supposed to be a "self-financing" re Workers Vanguard some of her recol only" referendum led liberal author set free! form, meaning that applicants are being lections of what life.was like for Norman Cousin's, listed as an endorser, "Use 'em, -abuse 'em and send 'em, slapped with heavy fees and by the time Hispanic farm workers during LBJ's to publicly repudiate it. Novelist Gore back" has always been the motto of they get done paying for processing "Great Society" of the 1960s: Vidal, cited by the national "V.S. American employers, who have seen documents, photos, fingerprinting, po "My father was born in Sinaloa, English" organization as a member of its Mexico as a vast reservoir of cheap lice clearance, etc. it will cost them over Mexico; and first carne to the States in advisory board, said: "Obviously, this the 1930s. He's been back and forth labor to be tapped in order to drive $1,000 per individual and almost $3,000 several 'times. My mother carne to' amendment is out to get the Hispanics." down wages at home. Currently they're per family. If they can't pay, then, California from Texas. I grew up Vidal observed that many Mexicans call sending 'em back at a tremendous pace: according to INS commissioner Alan picking grapes, peaches, apples, cher the southwestern United States the 1.8 million in 1986:These are mostly the Nelson, "they're not going to be quali ries.working in the tomatoes. My older "stolen lands"-territories seized after daily Border Patrol pick-ups" but fied" (Los Angeles Times, 17 March). brothers and sisters did a lot of heavier the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. work, like cotton, bucking hay. My following passage of the Simpson Families may be split up, as each mother used to put me in a wooden box "Very rightly, they're refilling these Rodino "reform" bill there was a wave member has to apply separately and out in the field when I was a baby. You lands. They have every right to do that. of Gestapo-like migra raids across the frequently the father came first, bring start working as soon as you can-they Westole the land from them and now' country. And just as in contra gun ing the rest after he found a job. Those gave us a box at the age of 3 or so, Kids they're reclaiming it" (Los Angeles who worked in the fields would always running, "private initiative" is encour who have been laid off or have ever miss the first few weeks of school. Times, 16 October). But one "English aged. INS Western regional commis received unemployment benefits may be "In school my cousins and older only" sponsor who hasn't backed out sioner Harold Ezell, a "Christian" racist rejected as a potential "public charge." brothers and sisters were told they is... Arnold Schwarzenegger, of mono- bigot who says hunting undocumented And naturally -many may hesitate to workers is "fun," and "if you catch 'em, apply, fearing if they're turned down the you ought to clean 'em and fry'em," set migra will then know where to find up an Orange County vigilante mob them. called "Americans for Border Control" This reactionary "reform': is also which cheers on INS dawn raids. But deeply hypocritical. While purporting this isjust preparation for the avalanche to control a "flood tide" of immigration, of up to two million deportations the ,it seeks to ensure there will be a new law is expected to touch off. sufficiently huge flow of' low-wage The Simpson-Rodino Act is a "guest workers" to ensure the profits of viciously anti-immigrant law. It was agribusiness barons (who depend on passed at the last minute after intricate "illegals" for 50-70 percent of their and extensive horsetrading that culmi workforce), high-tech entrepreneurs in nated in a House-Senate conference' Silicon Valley (where -before National chaired by Southern racist kingpin Semiconductor and other chip moguls Strom Thurmond. The difficulties in shut their plants 20-25 percent of the getting it passed reflect the myriad of workforce was "illegal"), Washington, Gilberto Ortiz conflicting economic interests affected D.C. hotel and restaurant owners (at Hispanic women toil in sweatshop. among the powers that be in American least 10 percent of whose workers are capitalism. Thus wliile Reagan and Salvadoran), etc. Without these immi couldn't speak Spanish in the classroom syllabic Conan the Barbarian fame. Meese pushed for the law, the Wall grant workers there will be no fresh or out in .the yard-not only by the Arnold may regard himself an all-round Street Journal opposed any attempt to vegetables for yuppies on Manhattan's teachers but by other kids; who'd call them 'dirty beaner, spic, nigger: and Aryan ubermensch (and a real Ameri regulate illegal immigration. (Reagan's V pper East Side, no canned or frozen everything else. When I was small I can now that he's married into the support was dependent on providing a : vegetables for the folks in Kalamazoo. thought my father was an illegal alien, Kennedy clan), but he is not noted for bracero program to supply farm labor And so that Congressmen in Washing and I was always terrified that the police facility in making himself understood in ers for Califotnia growers.) Whil.~ job ton can replace their illegal Haitian would corne and take him away. We English. used to see the migra ride through town. trusting AFL-CIO tops pushed for maids, the "au pair" program bringing A lot of people were illegal, they lived in Organizers of Prop 63 blithely employer sanctions,' textile unions . in white Nordic girls is being expanded. the worst shacks, they would hide. claimed they meant no harm to immi (lLGWV and ACTWV) among others American workers who fall for the Meanwhile, kids in school whose dads grants. This is a bald-faced lie: witness opposed them because such a large sucker-bait boss propaganda that their were growers would brag that they the fact that they started their offensive section of their memberships are undoc "illegal" class brothers and sisters are would call the migra on the illegals at the end of the season, before they got with a drive against the printing of umented workers. The "amnesty" provi "stealing jobs" should try being a their pay." voters ballots in Spanish and Chinese as sions were thrown in to get liberal migrant farm worker. Hundreds of well as English! Their clear aim is to support, which they did. In the end, five thousands work grueling hours doing disenfranchise immigrants. In 1982,. of eleven members of the Hispanic stoop labor under a hot sun, often with a "English Only" Bigotry V.S..Attorney Joseph Russoniello in California caucus voted for this anti-Hispanic law. backbreaking short-handled'hoe, sleep- launched a secret investigation of voters The amnesty provisions of Simpson ing in broken-down hulks of abandoned Last November 4, by a 3-to-1 margin, who requested ballots in Spanish and Rodino are'full of traps. "Illegal" cars at night. The growers even made a California voters approved ballot Prop Chinese, a witchhunt against unnamed osition 63 declaring English the official groups that "might" have been register language of the state and directing ing non-citizens to vote. This intimida public officials to "take all steps neces tion campaign was of a piece with the sary" to ensure that the role of English is arrest ofelderly black ladies in Alabama -"preserved and enhanced."The measure for registering black voters. In contrast, gives private parties the right to sue for the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, enforcement. This racist law is a direct under'Lenin and Trotsky, extended attack on the huge Hispanic and Asian citizenship to all who worked in the land populations in California, a state whose of the Soviets, regardless of their constitution was written in both Span country of origin. U.S. slams door ish and English-that is, on the people In the wake of Prop 63's passage, on desperate who built California. And just as "Buy "California English" proponents are Haitian refugees, American" ultimately means "kill taking aim at bilingual welfare applica welcomes Nazi Asiahs"-witness the brutal murder of tions, driver's license booklets, etc. The war criminals, Chinese. American Vincent Chin in nototious rightist ex-UiS. Senator S.l. Cuban gusanos Detroit by a racist auto foreman and his Hayakawa says the "problem of Califor and contra scum. stepson who thought he "looked nia" is that the state is "making life too Japanese"-so "English only" has trans easy for people who don't speak lated into "kill Latinos." In Los Angeles English" ...and he intends. to rectify last June, Salvadoran immigrant Ro that. (Hayakawa is infamous for his berto Figueroa was murdered and his continued on page 10 1 MAY 1987 9 who need the programs most are mainly demandraised by no other tendency, is segregated in the poorest areas, with the necessarily part of a struggle to oust the Immigration chauvinist labor bureaucracy. North worst schools-little more than daytime American revolutionaries make clear prisons. The fact is that capitalist our opposition to U.S. imperialism by Law... America is increasingly unable to teach uncompromising support for Puerto (continued from page 9) its youth-white, black or Hispanic-to Rican independence and for significant restitution for the lands stolen from repression of the 1969 San Francisco read, write or speak English correctly. Mexico in 1848. This also helps us in State University "Third World" student Functional illiteracy is at an estimated counterposing proletarian internation strike; for declaring about the Panama 20 percent among adults, and growing. alism to the anti-Yankee nationalism Canal "we stole it fair and square"; and of course, the dreams of some nation which pervades the Latin American for opposing compensation to Japanese alists for an all-Spanish curriculum left." Americans interned during World War would not only be utopian-this is There is no single "Hispanic people" IL) Among the ways they're trying to .an overwhelmingly English-speaking in the U.S. Mexican Americans in the make life difficultfor immigrants is by country-but grossly reactionary for Southwest are not a phantasmagorical seeking to eliminate Spanish and Chi the Hispanic kids. "Chicano nation" but in a real sense an nese translators in hospitals and cam During the 1920s, after U.S. imperial extension of thE Mexican nation. Puer paigning against Chinese and Korean ism's defeat of Germany in WW I; to Ricans in New York and Chicago business signs in Monterey Park, a 40 chauvinists screamingabout "the Hun" come from an enslaved colony of percent Asian L.A. suburb. passed laws forbidding the use of Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley Yankee imperialism, and Dominicans The "English only" gang) xenopho German by German Americans. To California, 1933: Communist-led from a neocolony, but once on the bic demagogy is as ludicrous as it is day's "America first, English only" farm workers strike against starva mainland they form part of the multi- . deadly. Hayakawa blusters about the bigots are likewise trying to "unite" the tion wages and racist attacks. racial U.S. working class. Cubans in danger of "great-grandchildren of im countryfor war. They would agree with Florida-thegusanos and theirchildren migrants" speaking another language. Japanese premier Nakasone's racist flage uniforms was marauding around (many of whom do not share their As if foreign-born workers need to be remark that the intellectual level in the shootingup anyone they considered an parents' counterrevolutionary senti beaten over the head to-understand that United States is "lower" because "there "illegal alien." In some rundown factory ments)-fled a revolution and are now you need to learn English to survive, let is a rather large number of blacks, towns there have been actual race riots, America's Hispanic "success story," alone get ahead, in the U.S.! A studyby Puerto Ricans and Mexicans." (Of as in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1984 averaging almost twice the income and the right-wing Rand Corporation think course, any number of American bour where French Canadians (many them less than half the uriemployment level tank (Current and Future Effects of geois politicians have said the same selves unemployed) torched a poor of Puerto Ricans. Mexican Immigration in California when they thought the microphones Puerto Rican' area. But often the racist Historically, the color bar has been [May 1986]) found that more than 90 'were off.) And they want to use character of attacks has been hidden by . the fundamental barrier to assimilation percent of first-generation Mexican immigration and language laws to the media: in the gruesome slaughter at in the U.S. As Big Bill Broonzy sang, "If Americans born in the U.S. are profi "homogenize" the U.S. like Hitler used the McDonalds in San Ysidro, Califor you're white; you're all right; if you're cient in English, and that by the second the Nuremberg racial laws. Historically, nia, where 21 people were killed and 19 brown, stick around; if you're black, get suc~attempts to force minorities to wounded by a crazed gunman, it was back." The black question is key to the abandon their language lead straight to .seldom reported that this Viet vet kept economy, history and social institutions pogroms: the Armenians forced to muttering about "damned Vietnamese," of capitalist America, growing out of the speak Turkish, Basques forced to speak and almost all of his victims were legacy of slavery and the struggle which Spanish, Tamils targeted by "Sinhala , Mexican, including many farm workers. abolished it, the Civil War. While many only" chauvinism in Sri Lanka. The size of the migration is dramatic. Hispanics are as poor or poorer than Building the Bolshevik Party in the Already the U.S. has the fifth-largest blacks, this by no means determines that tsarist "prison house of peoples," Lenin Spanish-speaking population in the "black and Latino unity" is the preor insisted that the revolutionaryproletari world, even by census' statistics which dained outcome, as Third World na an vanguard party must be a "tribune of place the number ofHispanics at 18 tionalists (such as the Morenoite Inter the people" and champion the fight million. This is a little over 7 percent of nationalist Workers Party) imagine. Far against every form of oppression. Lenin the total population, but the figure is from it. Lately, racist-bourgeois politi opposed official status for any single frequently criticized as much too low. It cians have tried to appeal to Hispanics language and proclaimed: doesn't include many of the "illegals," as a swing group against blacks, as in the "The national programme of working who number as many as nine million (an . hotly contested Chicago elections. In class democracy is: absolutely no estimated three to six million are eligible California, many blacks voted for the 'privileges for anyone nationor anyone for the amnesty), And the numbers are language... ' racist "English only" referendum, partly "Working-class democracy contrapos growing rapidly. lit California, where outof a feeling that"we've been here 400 es to the nationalist wrangling of the they are about one-quarter of the state years and still haven't gotten ours." various bourgeois parties over ques population, more than 56 percent of Within the logic of capitalism, the tions of language, etc., the demand for public school students are Hispanic. At .smaller the pie, the more brutal the the' unconditional unity and complete· present growth rates, Hispanics will amalgamation of workersofall nation struggle for a piece of it. And as alities in all working-class organisa replace blacks as the largest minority decaying capitalism's pie shrinks rapid tions... incontradistinction to anykind . within a very few years. And the influx ly, the struggle for survival is fiercest of bourgeois nationalism." of low-paid workers has meant that the among those for whom society makes it -"Critical Remarks on the overall average income of Hispanics is National Question" (1913) hardest to survive. The basis for united falling sharply: the 'official poverty rate struggle by the. black and Hispanic The Hispanic Questi~n for Hispanics was 29 percent in 1985,up masses is not nationalism, which inevi in North America from 22 percent in 1979, while black tably separate's the oppressed, but com poverty stayed at 31 percent. mon class struggle.' And that struggle The chauvinist frenzy behind the The Spartacist League has taken note requires a conscious Leninist vanguard WV Photo "English only" movement reflects the Undocumented workers will have to of the growing importance of Hispanics as a "tribune of the people," fighting for shell out big bucks to bUy amnesty fact that they are trying to stem an in the United States, and theimpli the program of revolutionary integra in the "land of the free" (provided inexorable tide thatis determined above cations for revolutionaries. In particu tionism, for black liberation through you can pay). . all by economics. Millions of Central lar, we have emphasized the intersection socialist revolution. A revolutionary American and Caribbean immigrants of the black' question and Hispanic workers party with a strong black generation the majority speak English are drawn to the U.S. because they can question in this country. Thus the SL's leadership component must necessarily only. The idea that English is "threat find work here. And as the numbers of 1983~conference document, "Struggle fight to be the party of the Hispanic ened" is laughable, especially since it is Spanish speakers increase, this reflects Against Reagan Reaction," states: . workers and poor. And Hispanic the lingua franca of international itself in everything from official an .....Hispanics are becoming the largest commerce. nouncements to advertising. Signs on ethnic minority in this country. Tend "la ing to stand outside linguistically/ In fact, the "English only" bigots are New York subways announce that culturally the American 'mainstream,' trying to shut down English classes for via del tren subterraneo es peligrosa" the Hispanic populations in America fSPARTACJST~ immigrants and make people give up (subway tracks are dangerous) because are widely diverse, encompassing both -- ..... 01_ I!!!..!!• their native language, cold turkey-or this is vital information they want riders educated petty-bourgeois layers with else. In the midst of the Prop 63 to understand. And fast-food chains in the possibility for'makingit'in America and masses of desperate ex-peasants campaign, L.A. schools turned away Florida put up welcome signs saying who in many areas of the country live 40,000 applicantsfor English classesjust' "bienvenidos a McDonalds" because worsethan the blackmasses and seethe this fall! In OctoberCalifornia governor they want to sell burgers. In California, unions as vehicles for black/whitejob George Deukmejian, a staunch Reagan the' first target of the "California... trusting and accomplic;:es to the racist ite, vetoed legislation to extend bilin deportations.... English" crowd after the victory of Prop "Contrary to prevailing opinion in gual education programs, due to end 63 was plans by Pacific Bell .to set up Latin nationalist milieus, Hispanics are this school year. Bigots claim bilingual multilingual operator services, which on thewholenot below blacksona scale education, a basic right for language the company expected to earn it $100 of socialoppression but above,and can minorities, impedes children from learn million. get out while blacksare locked in as a race-color caste at the bottom of ing English. Nonsense! The California The racists' frustration is taking itself American society. Structurallythis is a state assembly research office found out in mounting assaults on Hispanics black-white country, making the black that more than 80 percent of students in around' the country. In the Bronx, mob question strategic to the American the state's bilingual programs become revolution. As they are absorbed His ".'~.' ..... :' attacks last summer by Italian Ameri -~= ::;-. fluent in English within 2-1/2 years. panics will tend to become assimilated can youths against Puerto Ricans; and mainly to whites, while Caribbean There are problems in bilingual in North Tarrytown: NY a cop riot in blacks and darker skinned will stay education-such as the plight of Puerto June, afterwhich the mayorcalled in the back.As with every newwave of immi SPARTACIST Rican children in New York, with an INS to raid the Hispanic barrio. In the grants, the first wave often faces brutal (Spanish Edition) estimated 80 percent high school drop San Diego suburb of Encinitas in conditions-in this case, particularly $2/4 issues $.50 single issue the superexploitation growing out of out rate, many of whom grow up November, shortly after passage of the undocumented workers' lack of legal Make checks payable/mail tp: without real proficiency in English or immigration law, a gang of 'white Spartacist Publishing Co., rights. Our struggle for citizenship Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Spanish. But this is because the kids teenage would-be Rambos in camou- rights for all foreign workers, a key 10 WORKERS VANGUARD immigrant workers must understand this and seek to integrate themselves into the class struggle here. They can be a vital spark for the North American working class, as their "foreign" origin makes many more open to internation alist and revolutionary ideas. Class-conscious workers must defend Defiant black mine workers in the right of their foreign-born brothers South Africa have struck a signifi and sisters who have made it into the cant blow against apartheid slavery, U.S. to stay here with the same rights as moving their wives and girlfriends everyone else. Some pseudo-leftists such into the all-male hostels ofthe giant as Jack Barnes' anti-Trotskyist Socialist Anglo American mining empire. Workers Party and Bob Avakian's They have directly challenged the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Par migrant labor system in.' which ty, however, call for "open borders," hundreds of thousands of black and the latter publicized a "Breakdown men, stripped ofevery political and the Border" conference in El Paso/ human right, are forced to toil as Ciudad J uarez. This demand, like calls "migrant" laborers in the factories for a "fair" or "non-racist" immigration and mines. Cruelly separated for at policy, is utopian under capitalism. And teast eleven months a year from in fact, an open border ultimately their families, who are made to threatens the democratic right of self starve on bantustan wastelands, determinationof the weakerpower. Eng black workers are imprisoned in the lish is not threatened by the increasing men-only barracks; economic integration of the U.S. and The miners' bold action creates Mexico: how many Anglo youth speak an acute dilemma for the mine "Spanglish"? A truly "open" border bosses who pay lip service to under capitalism would enable Ameri dismantling the male-only com can moneybags to buy up northern pounds. The 600,000 black miners, Mexico, not unlike what they did to who have produced the golden Texas over a century ago. riches ofapartheid, are the Achilles' Hispanic workers are already inte heel of racist South African grated into the proletariat ofthe United capitalism. States. As far backas 1915they played a vanguard role, as Mexican miners organized by IWW syndicalists led a Miller/Afrapix powerful copper strike in Morenci, Arizona at the height of World War I. Seven decades later Chicano miners in the principal vehicle for protest. But the dictate has been challenged by the Natal Morenci again took the lead in fighting South Africa ..., ANC and their supporters, includingthe Supreme Court, yet thousands of men, top leadership of COSATU, seek to Reaganite union-busting by Phelps (continued from page 1) women and children languish in South Dodge, a bitter yearlong strike that shackle the power of black labor to pull Africa's notorious torture chambers ended in defeat. In the 1960s, Hispanic black worker was fired for having been the cart of nationalism. The ANCs while their families fear for their lives. agricultural workers led by Cesar one day late in turning over $20 in fees strategy to "make the country ungov The rail strike was particularly em Chavez' United Farm Workers sparked collected for the state-owned rail agen .ernable and the economy unworkable" barrassing to South Africa's Fahrer a broad sympathy for La Causa. In the cy. The strike spread rapidly to train seeks only to pressure South Africa's P.W. Botha and the Afrikaner-based 1980s, Latina cannery workers in stations throughout the heavily popu rapacious capitalists and their: imperial ruling National Party. With elections to Watsonville, California fought for 18 lated industrial region around Johan ist allies into "reforming" apartheid and the whites-only parliament only days months and managed to save their nesburg, disrupting commuter and permitting some "form" of "power union despite brutal cop and company cargo traffic. At the strike's sixth week, sharing" without bringing down the attacks and treacherous backstabbing SATS' losses were estimated at $100 capitalist system that is at the heart of by the Teamster union tops. million. Heavily armed police began the apartheid superexploitation and Increasingly, the unions have had to patrolling commuter trains and train slavery. come to terms with the wave of stations aftermore than 60 cars were set Internationally, the ANC's 'strategy immigrant workers. The ILGWU (In ablaze at stations in and around centered on imperialist "divestment." ternational Ladies Garment Workers Johannesburg on the rail line to Soweto. But the flight of foreign capital like.the Union), infamous for its jingoist "Buy The rail service is traditionally a GM pullout has been motivated by cap American" jingles, has begun to organ preserve of protected employment of italist profits, not campus protest, and it ize undocumented workers on a mass poorer whites, who constitute slightly has been accompanied by busting the scale in the $3 billion-a-year California more than half of SATS' approximately independent, black-centered unions. In apparel industry. Rad-lib darling Cha 200,000 employees. This is the last stead of being pressured into "re vez actually called on lamigra to go into redoubt of the dwindling white working form," apartheid police-state terror has the fields and arrest "illegal aliens" hired class, and following the mass firing of grown only more savage, Since the as scabs by the growers. But today the black strikers, hundreds of unemployed emergency regulations which permit ILG bureaucrats include a standard whites lined up for their jobs. White indefinite detention without"charge and "INS clause" in their L.A. contracts supervisory personnel at SATS are without access to family and lawyers which requires employers to notify the notoriously arbitrary and abusive. The were introduced last June, it is estimated union when INS agents are sited near' COSATU-affiliated Railway and Har that 30,000 people have been jailed. The the workplace, and to rehire any bour Workers Union, which manage detentions ate supplemented by the Reuters· undocumented worker who is deported ment has refused to recognize and which widespread use ofdeath squads to mur Black unionists ~t Johannesburg and comes back with a new name or . had only 9,000 members at the begin der labor and anti-apartheid activists. COSATU headquarters after cop Social Security number! A class ning of the strike, struck to demand Among the detainees are more than raid. struggle leadership of labor would reinstatement of the fired worker with 10,000 black children and youth under away, whites are divided over Botha's mobilize real union muscle to demand: full back pay; elimination of all racist the age of 18. The jailing ofchildren, in repressive policies, both on the right, Stop the deportations! Smash the racist practices within SATS, full pay for the particular, has provoked mass, multi where there is a growing fascist move immigration law! Full citizenship rights strikers and no reprisals. racial protests. In response, on April 10 ment, and on the left. To please the for foreign-born workers! Brutal repression against anti South Africa's racist Reich outlawed all . right, Botha sent the army into Zambia Despite all the racist barriers, His apartheid organizations like the African forms ofprotest against detention, even on April 25, killing four. The raid panic immigrants are rapidly National Congress (ANC)-backed Unit the sending of telegrams, circulating evoked widespread protest in South integrating into American society. ed Democratic Front has made the petitions, posting bumper stickers or Africa, which was suppressed by cops There are, hundreds of thousands of black-centered unions, particularly the wearing T-shirts with slogans such as using whips, tear gas and shotguns for Salvadorans who have been driven into 500,OOO-strong COSATU federation, "Free the Children." This draconian the first time against white students. the imperialist heartland, escaping from Some liberal whites, especially on the USc-backed death squads who have college campuses, have joined the murdered their loved ones and com- victims ofapartheid oppression-black, . rades, and millions of Mexican workers South Africa: coloured (mixed-race) and Indian-in are to be found in the fields and factories Razor's Edge demanding the dismantling of white of the Sun Belt. Mexican nationalists supremacy, and one-man, one-vote repeat the lament of conservative Order your packet majority rule. But class exploitation dictator Porfirio Diaz: "Poor Mexico, featuring a selection is the motor force for the disen so far from God, so close to the United of articles from franchisement of apartheid's victims; States." Proletarian internationalists Workers Vanguard, their emancipation requires a social greet the fact that massive infusion of Young ~p-artacus and revolution. Hispanic workers from south of the Women and Revolution. What is urgently needed in South Africa is an integrated revolutionary border can serve as a human bridge for $1.00 revolutionary class struggle throughout workers party, a Bolshevik party, the Americas. Build a world party of Order from: committed to the expropriation of socialist revolution to link up the Spartacist Publishing Co. South Africa's wealth by its producers Box 1377 GPO struggles from the Southern Cone of $1.00 in a black-centered workers govern South America to the belly of the New York, NY 10116 ment. Smash apartheid-For workers imperialist beast!. revolution! • . 1 MAY 1987 1950s. The bloody anti-Tamil pogroms Sri Lanka ... - of 1983 were the extension of this pol icy in the face of 'mounting Tamil (continued/rom page 6) discontent. north though last Mayan army offen The peoples of southern India and sive against Jaffna Peninsula ground to Lanka are part of one interpenetrated a humiliating halt. Underlining its.mili gene pool. In Lanka, Sinhalese and tary control of the Palk Strait separat Tamils can tell one another apart only ing Lanka from India, the Lankan by small details of dress and, of course, government on April 24 sank a boat by their language. And the Buddhist alleged to be carrying munitions from revival, the basis upon which Sinhalese India to the Tamil fighters. nationalism rests, is purely a 20th cen Prodded by the recent terrorism, the tury invention. government launched the wave of In Ceylon, once freed from colo bombing raids on Jaffna, then extended nialism, but unable to satisfy the the bombing further into the Northern expectations of the masses given the and Eastern Provinces, reportedly kill failure of'struggles for social revolution, ing hundreds of Tamil civilians. A the pressure toward a unitary national dragnet of 5,000 troops was deployed entity-one language, one religion-has AP and new plans to settle 5,000 armed Military·occupatlon of Jaffna, August 1981. been merciless and bloody. The former Sinhalese in the Trincomalee district Jewel of Asia has come increasingly to were announced. And Parliament has resemble Northern Ireland. Central Telegraph Office in 'May last plantation workers, imported by the For the oppressed Tamils ofthe north again extended the four-year draconian year. British in the 19th century, and the "State of Emergency." and east, the strategic Tamil 'plantation In a leaflet published on 14 August "Ceylon Tamils," who have shared the workers, the young women textile work Murderous Nationalism 1986, the Spartacist League/Lanka, island for many centuries with the ers of the Colombo sweatshops and the sympathising section of the internation Sinhalese. The plantation workers his peasants fighting multinationals' seizure The Sri Lankan government has al Spartacist tendency, wrote: torically have not sympathised with the of their land-for all the oppressed, blamed the LTIE and the Eelam "It isthemainresponsibility ofallTamil separatist struggle for Eelam, and Jaye Sinhalese and Tamil alike, ground down Revolutionary Organisation (EROS) militant groups who are struggling for wardene has co-opted their union lead Eelam to prevent such racialist activity by the miserable poverty and bloody for the recent attacks, though both and whoever indulges in suchactivities er, the despicable Thondaman, as a warfare-the plight of Sri Lanka, "a organisations have denied responsibil mustbe exposed and strongly criticised UNP minister and even granted citizen tropical paradise in perdition" (I.e ity.Provoking an orgy of Sinhala com and should be rooted out. Tamil ship to many ofthe formerly "stateless" Monde, 23 April), cries out for a munalism . against the Tamils would militants have not reacted because they plantation workers. do not consider it to be important." revolutionary class answer. Down with certainly suit strong forces among the At the same time, the regime is under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Sinhala-ehauvinists, including in the The sordid character of the Tamil attack from the rival Sinhala commu "Emergency Regulations"! No to com army and UNP, but the Tamil petty groups' nationalism is also shown by nalists of the SLFP led by Mrs. Banda munalist bloodletting! For the right of bourgeois nationalist groups are quite their murderous internecine conflicts. ranaike, who say the government is Tamil Eelam! Trinco must not fall into capable of carrying out such acts of The Tigers have effectively wiped out "incompetent" in suppressing the Tam the bloody hands of U.S. imperialism! murderous indiscriminate terrorism in the TELO, PLOTE and EPRLF Tamil ils, while fanatical Buddhist monks . For the federated workers republics of demonstrate demanding the president's Eelam and Lanka, part of a socialist resignation. In the government and the federation of South Asia! •. army, including at the top, there are mutinous elements who think that J.R. is "soft." The government has accused the. petty-bourgeois, Sinhala-racialist, Linnas ... ex-Guevarist J VP of raiding army (continued from page 5) campsfor arms. It is widely alleged that Communist party and later all political the JVP was responsible for the 'murder parties were banned under martial law. of Daya Pathirana, president of the Unlike Lithuania, Estonia was not part Independent Students Union, a group of the traditional Jewish Pale; on the eve ing espousing a "Nicaraguan road" of of World War II, it had fewer than 5,000 Spartaclst joint Sinhala/Tamil struggle, in De Jews out of a population of one million. comrades cember last year at Panadura near Co But fascism flourished and Jews were joined Tamil lombo. The Sinhalacommunalist forces run out of the universities. As war demonstrators protesting racist whipped up by the UNP may well .approached, in 1940Stalin annexed the state terror in swamp the regime, leading to unre Baltic states to extend the defense Lanka, Boston, strained communal civil war. perimeter of Leningrad to the west. January 1985. In a case which encapsulates the When Hitler invaded a year later, the ruling powers' worst fantasies, 23 Baltic nationalists greeted the Nazi Sinhalese and Tamil radical intellectu torturers as liberators. The New York als in Colombo have just been indicted Times (22 April) noted: under the Emergency Regulations and "AftertheGerman invasion, some 3,000 the Prevention of Terrorism Act for an Estonian Jews managed to save them pursuit of their perspective of looking to guerrilla groups in the Jaffna area, alleged plot to overthrow the govern selves byleaving withtheretreating Red India for salvation. After the massacre though the latter retains strength in the Army. Many of the 1,000 Jews who ment. The utter paucity of proof in this remained were soon killed. of 150 Sinhalese in Anuradhapura in east. On this basis the LTTE are case exposes the fact that the real "By 1943, the Germans had set up May 1985, the Tigers officially denied claiming the mantle of undisputed sole "crime": is the mere thought of joint several labor and death camps in carrying out the attack whilejustifying it representative of the Tamil people. Tamil/Sinhalese struggle; Estonia, and Jews from other areas as a reprisal and demonstration of the The bonapartist Jayewardene regime were sent there.... is mindful of Indian reaction and its own "Afterthe war.when Moscow affirmed ability to strike in the Sinhala areas.. Revolutionary Class Struggle its control. Soviet Jews settled in EROS claimed responsibility for. the . basket case economy. J.R. has also at:" .the Only Answer Estonia. drawn like others by the bombings of an Air Lanka plane which tempted to reinforce the division be relatively high standard of living." killed 15 foreign tourists and of the tween the economically critical Tamil Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was known for centuries, used to be called the Jewel of It was the heroic fight by the Soviet Asia. At the time of independence from people, 20 million of whom perished in Britain in 1947, it had the highest the monumental battle against Hitler's armies, that saved what is left of East SPART~CIST standard of living and literacy of any LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY rural country in Asia. Ceylon was a European Jewry on this planet today. National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116. (212) 732-7860 polyglot community-in fact, aborigi FOR's American "democracy," how nals who predated both the Tamils and ever, in league with the Zionist estab-· A~lanta Detroit Norfolk Sinhalese still existed. Historically in lishment, was silent on the Holocaust Box 4012 Box 441794 Box 1972, Main PO Ceylon there was heavy Arab influx and refused entry to the U.S. to Jews Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 235~1 from the 10th century, and European fleeing Nazi barbarism. On April 22, colonisation from the 16th century Karl Linnas was finally returned to the Boston Los Angeles Oakland Estonian Soviet Republic. One survivor Box 840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz 8ta. Box 32552 onward. The Muslim population is pre sumably derived from both Moghul and of the Tartu death camp, Maria Garsh Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 nek, whose mother and father were (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 (415) 839-0851 Arab antecedents, with Malay immi killed there, told the Soviet newsagency ~ grant inclusion. There are also Chris Chicago Madison San Francisco tians among both the Sinhalese and TASS: Box 6441, Main PO c/o 8YL, Box 2074 Box 5712 Tamil populations. "There is no and there cannot be Chicago. IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701 8an Francisco, CA 94101 forgiveness to those who left blood (312) 663-0715 (608) 257-8625 (415) 863-6963 From independence on, the Sinhalese stained. tracks. He was guiding mass Buddhist majority pressure has been executions. He invented tortureswhich .Cleveland New York Washington,D.C. relentless against the ethnic minorities. make mybloodruncoldeven now, after Box 91037 . Box 444, Canal 81. 8ta. Box 75073 First to be destroyed were the few but 40 years have passed." Cleveland, OH 44101 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 very valuable Eurasians, the "Burgh However the Soviets dispose of this (216) 881-3700 (212) 267-1025 (202) 636-3537 ers," at the top of the civil service and heinous criminal, it will be too good for military cadres. Then came the aban him. And it is up to the American Toronto donment of the English language in . workers to drive out the imperialist TROTSKYIST LEAGUE Box 7198, Station A order to eliminate the hold by the island rulers, the protectors of Nazi war OF CANADA ~ Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 Tamils on the bulk of the substantial criminals, so that never again will such (416) 593-41~8 civil service, centrally through the an imperialist slaughter drown the "Sinhala Only" campaign of the mid- world in blood.• 12 WORKERS VANGUARD division of laborin which Maurin would Spain ... represent the POUM in the Republican parliament while Nin would make pa~e (continued from 7) verbal criticisms of the People's Front. camps awaiting deportation. At one The same issue of the LCR's Combate point the number of foreigners held in has an article. by Nin, "After the custody in Barcelona was so great that Elections of February 16,", in which empty rooms in police barracks were "two short paragraphs" were omitted used to house them-e-provoking an "for reasons of space." Yet these ominous demonstration by the cops! paragraphs are where Nin calls for "the Muslims in Spain's North African most complete independence of the enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, were sub workers revolutionary movement from jected to a vicious rampage of racist the bourgeois parties," and proclaims: terror by the Spanish' colonial popu " ... the policy of the People's Front lation-mainly military personnel does not correspond to the vital interests of the proletariat and of the when they tried to protest this law ." ubio/Cambio 16 revolution in the present moment." depriving them of all citizenship rights. Madrid: Thousands of students demonstrate for free education and an end -from Victor Alba, ed., Yet the PSOE and the wretched Com to anti-working-class discrimination at Spain's universities. La Nueva Era (1976) munist Party(PCE) organized a demon In fact, this "Dossier" mentions none steam-has been canceled in the "pub together with the "Euros" and liberal stration supporting this nefarious legis of Trotsky's writings on Spain, and not lic interest." As a leader of the PCE's "progressives." lation. These traitors spit on the most just for "reasons of space," since he Catalan affiliate, the PSUC, put it: The key to victory is the construction heroic traditions of the Spanish prole repeatedly emphasized that "the Popu "On the day after D-Day, the question of a Trotskyist vanguard which as trib tariat, which insurrected against the lar Front is the main question ofprole in the workplaces will be, 'Now what?' une of all the oppressed is alone capa Moroccan War in the 1909 semana tarian class strategy for this epoch" and And since one doesn't have the answer, ble of linking the disparate social strug tragica (tragic week) in Barcelona. And it was better not to give rise to the "the best criterion for the difference gles wracking Spain to the organized now Spain's admission to NATO and question." between Bolshevism and Menshevism" might of the proletariat in fighting the Common Market has been sealed in -El Pais [Madrid], 7 April (1936), and that "there can be no greater for a workers government. But the Basque blood, as the fascistic death The Spanish proletariat has again crime than coalition with the bourgeoi Liga Comunista Revolucionaria (LCR), squads of the GAL ("Antiterrorist demonstrated its capacity for struggle sie in a period of socialist revolution" Spanish section of Ernest Mandel's Liberation Groups"), trained and re and sacrifice. As thousands of produc (1939). Today the Mandel USec rejects . fake-Trotskyist United Secretariat, also cruited by the Guardia Civil, murder tive workers are thrown on the scrap everything Trotsky's Fourth Interna ETA refugees handed over to Spain. All heap by decomposing capitalism, it is participated in the historic betrayal of tional stood for over the crucial battle with the approval of "Socialists" Gon necessary to defend the very existence of 1975-77: refusing to break with the ref leading up to World War II. The zalez and Mitterrand. our class. That means a determined ormist bureaucracies and offering up international Spartacist tendency (iSt) Felipe Gonzalez' "popular front" struggle to oust the reformists who the treacherous Menshevik formula of has uniquely fought for proletarian grovels before the Franco-appointed betray the workers' struggle, and to two-stage revolution in the shape of opposition to class collaboration (see king, Juan Carlos II, with his strutting replace them with an authentically the ruptura democratica (democratic "No 'Critical Support' to Popular breakthrough). Since that time, the generals and reactionary bishops, sub communist leadership. In 1977 Spain Frontism" and "Toward the Interna LCR has been in total disarray, suffer ordinating the workers and oppressed to was in the throes of a prerevolutionary tional Trotskyist League!" in Spartacist ing a hemorrhage of cadre and engaging reactionary Spanish capitalism. But as situation as a massive strike wave No. 27-28, Winter 1979-80). From our in a quest for its own Lilliput version of with all class-collaborationist alliances, threatened the rickety bonapartist state inception, the iSt has sought to reforge the popular front. over time it has managed toalienatejust inherited from the blood-drenched a Fourth International that Trotsky In 1982, the LCR hailed Gonzalez' about every section of the population, Franco regime. Yet Spanish capitalism would have recognized. "great victory" and proclaimed that Today in Spain, after a decade of Spain now had a workers government. demoralization on the left, the winds of The rest of the Trotskyoid left was the class struggle are again blowing equally ecstatic-the Partido Socialista strong. The perennial coup threats of de los Trabajadores (PST), Spanish the post-Franco period (used by the / operation of the late Nahuel Moreno, reformists to claim that militant struggle proclaimed the PSOE's triumph at the was inopportune) have receded, but not polls a "workers victory." In last May's disappeared: a rightist officer was Just elections, the LCR abstained only absolved by a military court despite because it didn't see in the "United Spanish evidence he was plotting a coup fi RepUblican Left" a feminist/ecology/gay liberation nanced by Libya. And although the soldiers on the equivalent of the northern European repression in Euskadi (the Basque way to the front, Green parties that could attract'"new country) is as brutal under the Socialists vowing "U.H.P. vanguards." (In the 1984 U.S. elections, as under the Francoists, now that every Unite, Proletarian the LCR favored yuppie Democrat Brothers." Sign region has its empty "autonomy" Gary Hart!) And lest there be any doubt says, "Better to statute, the wave of "autonomist" as to its popular-front loyalties, the die than consent struggles is being displaced by general LCR made a special point on the 5o.th to tyranny." social protest throughout Spain. It is anniversary of the ~ panish Civil War to therefore doubly urgent for Spanish rehabilitate the centrist POUM (Work workers to defend the right of self ers Party of Marxist, Unification) of determination for the Basque country, Andres Nin and JoaquinMaurin, and to Catalonia and the Canary Islands, and alibi its joining the People's Front! demandthat imperialist Spainget out of A special "Dossier" published in the its North African colonial outposts. eroding its working-class support while was saved by the treachery of the PCE LCR's Combate (1 February 1986) A Trotskyist party in Spain will driving the petty bourgeoisie into a and PSOE tops and the union mislead 'notes that the POUM's action in the defend all the democratic rights tram frenzy. While thousands of Spanish ers who signed the Moncloa pacts with 1936 elections "produced a well-known pled underfoot by a "democratic" state women demand the.elementary right to . Franco's king and former Falangist polemic within Trotskyism" marked by whose armed forces still yearn for the free abortion on demand, the Catholic politician Adolfo Suarez. Juan Carlos "insults" and a lack of understanding for days of the stiff-armed salute and church was mobilizing mass demonstra reigns today not by the grace of god but this "revolutionary party." Itwas at best pounding jackboots. This is integral to tions gooned by fascist hoodlums of the "leftist" misleaders Santiago a "tactical problem," holds LCR hon the fight for socialist revolution in the against the government's timid liberali Carrillo and Felipe Gonzalez. cho Miguel Romero; the POUM could Iberian Peninsula, as part of the social zation of anti-abortion laws. As Gon Having sabotaged that key opportu have voted for the popular-front candi ist reconstruction of Europe, against the zalez uses up his credit with the Spanish nity, the once-hegemonic Communist dates without joining, as the Mandelites cycle of popular fronts which pave the masses and the military waits in the Party is now split into Gerardo Iglesias' . regularly do. But, he adds, "no sensible way for reaction and the anti-Soviet war wings, the crisis of proletarian leader PCE,Ignacio Gallego's PCPE (Com person" could today consider that drive that threatens. global holocaust. ship sharpens. munist Party of the Peoples ofSpain) what's involved was "betraying the Forward to a Trotskyist party in Spain, and a rump group around the former revolution." Who might make such a Spanish section of a reforged Fourth Crisis of Proletarian Leadership herald of "Eurocommunism," Carrillo. "senseless" accusation? They don't International! • When the Catalan PSUC lost a majority mention Leon Trotsky's bitterattack on Simple trade-union struggle is utterly of its working-class base in a .left split "The Treachery of the POUM" (Janu inadequate to defeat the concerted (known as the "Afghans" for their ary 1936)accusing it of "betrayal ofthe offensive of the Spanish capitalists and support to the Soviet Army in Afghani proletariat for the sake of an alliance Spartacist League their "Socialist" government. What's stan); we noted that a sizable section of with the bourgeoisie." Trotsky repeat Public Offices clearly posed is a general strike to smash the Spanish proletariat was groping in a edly emphasized that this centrist party Gonzalez' anti-working-class austerity confused manner toward a more mili bore a special responsibility for the -MARXIST L1TERATURE , program. Such a strike would need to be tant class-struggle perspective-reject bloody defeat ofthe Spanish proletariat Bay Area defended against the scabs and cops by ing the gross betrayals of Eurocommu for failing to present a revolutionary FrL: 5:00-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 3,:00-6:00p.m. 163,4 Telegraph. 3,rd Floor (near 17th Street) armed workers defense squads. It must nism and affirming their pro-Moscow answer to the betrayals of the Stalinists, Oakland. California Phone: (415) 83,9-0851 produce organs of struggle that mobilize loyalties in-the face of a new Cold War social democrats and anarchists. broader layers of the workers and (see "Spanish CP Rips Apart," WVNo. Not only does the Spanish LCR Chicago Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.rn.. Sat.: 11:ooa.m.-2:00p.m. oppressed-strike and factory commit 295, 18 December 1981). But old-line repudiate Trotsk:y on Spain, they even 161 W. Harrison st. 10th Floor tees, leading to soviets. In short, linking Stalinists grabbed the helm, forming the come out to the right of Nin. (This .Chicago. lllinois Phone: (3,12) 663,-0715 up the workers' struggles in a test of PCPE, whose support to Gonzalez' former "Left Communist" had re New York City strength with the bourgeoisie inevitably 1982 electoral victory demonstrated nounced Trotskyism to joinwith former Tues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m.• Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. poses the question of which class will that it is no alternative to Carrillo/ Right Oppositionist Maurin in forming 41 Warren St. (one block below Chambers St. near Church SI.) rule. And the reformists fear this. So the Iglesias-style reformism. And now the POUM.) In' the months before the New York. N.Y. Phone: ,(212) 267-1025 CC.OO.'s call for a one-day "general Gallego has returned to the fold in the destruction of the POUM and murder strike"-to allow workers to blow off "United Left" popular-front coalition of Nin by the .Stalinists, there was a 1 MAY 1987 13 New Haven Strikers Fight for Their Lives Uretek Poisons Workers ! NEW HAVEN-Workers at the Uretek Immersed in this poisonous atmos textile plant here are fighting to keep the phere, workers toiled iJ1 the basement of boss from. literally killing them with . an aging, poorly ventilated plant, Members of toxic chemicals. They have struck the unaware of and unprepared for the largely Hispanic sleazy Connecticut polyurethane manu dangers they faced. workforce picket facturer since February 20 demanding Uretek workers were not provided Uretek; fighting that he clean up the operationwhich has with respirators or gloves nor were they for union left more than half of them with liver trained in working with the chemicals. recognition. disease. Notoriously indifferent to the They ate lunches at their work stations effect of the chemicals it uses on its because they couldn't get break time, workforce or the surrounding commu sometimes warming their meals in the Miller/NY Times nity, Uretek has already been convicted drying ovens. Workers complained of er Bob Cornick told Wv, "I guess the are threatened. The labor movement of felony charges for illegally storing nosebleeds, heavy vomiting and general workers have to fall dead before the must mobilize its strength to organize and dumping.hazardous wastes in 1984. dizziness. Their horrendous situation government will shut it down." Mean such sweatshops, demanding full citi Company president Harold Hoder came to light last fall when local while, production is limping along with zenship rights for foreign-born workers! refuses to talk with the workers or the hospitals noted an abnormally high a few scabs and management personnel, "We will never go back in there International Ladies Garment Workers incidence of noninfectious hepatitis in while another plant at the site also again-not until everything is safe, and Union (lLGWU)' which is trying to the area. Investigations by the Yale owned by Hoder, Chern-Tech, is going with a union too," says Luis Lopez organize them. The arrogant Hoder New Haven Occupational Medicine full blast. (Guardian, 22 April). The kind of claims the capitalist "right'.' to sacrifice Program discovered that all of the The superexploitation and horren solidarity the Uretek strikers urgently the lives of workers to squeeze out "his" victims were' from Uretek. Subsequent dous bodily destruction of the Uretek need is for Connecticut labor to mobi blood money. tests showed that 36 of the 58 workers workers is symptomatic of the condi lize mass pickets to shut down Uretek Conditions at Uretek are hideous, tested had significant liver abnormali tions facing immigrant and Puerto and Chern-Tech. Simple enough, but it even by sweatshop standards. The 66 ties, linking the ailments to the use of Rican workers who have moved into the requires a class-struggle leadership man, largely Hispanic workforce DMF. aging factory towns of southern Con committed to fighting bosses down the worked seven days a week, 66 hours or ILGWU organizers contacted the necticut. Capitalism kills: in the line. There are thousands of plants like more, for minimum wages of $3.35 federal Occupational Safety and Health Stamford-Bridgeport-New Haven area Uretek poisoning workers across the $6.25 an hour and no medical benefits. Administration about the Uretek situa you've also had turnpike bridges col country which the laborfakers are doing The plant produces polyurethane-. tion, but OSI;IA refuses to touch it lapse and high-rise buildings fall on nothing about. The fight for' decent coated fabrics used to make tarpaulins, during a strike, claiming it can't do construction workers, burying them working conditions, a living wage, sleeping bag mattresses, etc.-for the anything until' the plant is at full alive. And as decaying U.S. capitalism health care, jobs for all, full rights for military among others-and uses a host production! A 1.979 OSHA study indi attempts to raise declining profit rates immigrant workers, are all part of a of highly toxic chemicals, including cated that a toxic situation existed at by slashing wages, undocumented political struggle against the racist benzene, toluene, 'organic peroxide, Uretek and the bureaucrats in Washing workers are hired for the worst jobs at capitalist system, which devours work methyl chloride and dimethylforma ton sat on it and did nothing. Two weeks starvation wages. One Hispanic Uretek ers' lives, literally killing thousands and mide (DM F). (A recent study in the New ago a superior court judge fined the worker told WV, "They offer $4 or $5an spitting the rest onto the scrap heap England Journal of Medicine shows company and a company vice president hour, and it sounds good to us, but it is when they're used up. Towagethatclass that people exposed to legal limits of $255,000, a fraction of the $10 million for the lowest work. It's for work no struggle through to victory requires a 'benzene over a lifetime face a 154 times fine that could have been levied on these American would do." And as the bosses workers party fighting for all the greater risk of contracting leukemia.) wanton criminals. As ILGWU organiz- squeeze the most vulnerable, all workers oppressed.•
Klan to keep black people "in their death. penalty, lately in the realm of cy" by Anthony Lewis, Center for Death place." Indeed, the Supreme Court's civilian "spies." They have the fulsome National Security Studies, July/ August present-day approval of a double stan support of' Democrats like Senate 1985). "Preventive detention" is to be dard for blacks is a familiar echo ofpre majority leader Robert Byrd, a "former" massively applied, and in case you have Penalty ... Civil War standards in the South-in Klansman, who recently ranted that the hope of eventually defending yourselfin (continued from page 16) Georgia, for instance, killing a black . two Marines charged with spying-in the court, the already-in-place RICO laws criminal justice system" and the most slave was not considered a serious crime Moscow embassy affair are "not fit to will confiscate all your "criminal" assets sacred "principle" of all is "the validity (a significant' historical point made by live." In 1972,in the wake of a decade of beforehand. They already have concen of capital punishment in ourmultiracial Justice Brennan in his dissenting opin civil rights protest and faced with a tration camps for aliens, and long society." So what if blacks are many ion). The passage of the Fourteenth rising tide of antiwar protests, the deceased Democratic Senator Hubert times more likely to receive the death Amendment in 1866 was an attempt to Supreme Court in a 5-to-4 decision Humphrey has bequeathed us the penalty, argues the court.i''discretion is give blacks "equal protection of the ruled the death penalty an unconstitu "emergency" detention camp provisions essential" and "disparities" are "inevi laws," but today the Supreme Court tional "cruel and unusual punishment," of the McCarran Act. table" in "our criminal justice system." openly joins the Old Confederacy. because of its arbitrary, and capricious Topping the list in this program Why is this so? Because racism is The bourgeois revolutions of the 17th application. '. , of preventive counterrevolution is the another unstated "principle" of this and 18th centuries and the Enlighten But the respite was shortlived; by death penalty. From Sacco/Vanzetti criminal ruling class which, foreseeing ment doctrine that all men are created 1976 the court reinstituted the death and the Rosenbergs to the anonymous troubled times ahead, increasingly views with certain inalienable rights chal penalty under a policy of so-called thousands who have died at the hands of the death penalty as key to keeping itself lenged the barbaric death penalty. "guided discretion." On the very eve of the state, the American bourgeoisie has in power. . Capital punishment has been, in the last Jimmy Carter's inauguration, the exe sought to maintain itself by repeated It is indicative of the reactionary two hundred years, abolished in every cutions began. And with the election of exemplary executions for the sheer character of the death .penalty that its major advanced capitalist country ex Ronald Reagan, the push for legal purpose oiinstilling terror. It isan index leading practitioners are in the Dixie cept for the U.S. and South Africa. In lynching was on, especially from Demo of the grisly quality of "life" in the USA crat Deep South. Three states-Florida, both countries, the death penalty is the cratic state governments. in 1987 that a Jim Crow death pen Texas and Georgia-account for more legacy of racial subjugation which The spearhead of the present reac alty is certified by the Supreme Court. than two-thirds of all executions carried denied to whole peoples fundamental tionary legal tide is Reagan's attorney The bourgeois Enlightenment of the out in the U.S. since 1977.Between 1900 human rights, reducing man to a beast general Edwin Meese, who is assidu 18th century phased out such barbaric and 1967 more than half of all execu of burden and the disposable property ously trying to codify the legal frame methods as the rack and stonings, and tions were carried out in the South. of his master. In the racist apartheid work for a police state. Meese has set proclaimed equal rights for all. But now, Many of these were rape cases and police state which has never known a himself the task of dismantling the Bill in capitalism's death agony, the most nearly all those executed were blacks. bourgeois-democratic revolution, there of Rights and Reconstruction Amend advanced "scientific" methods are Most of these, like the Scottsboro Boys, is no need to pay even lip service to ments, whose efficacy is'directly related being applied in a revival of state were frame-ups designed to whip up formal equality; the forcible subjuga to social struggle. Thus Meese targets sponsored butchery with an openly racial hysteria. On death row today is tion and denial of rights to non-whites is two landmark Supreme Court deci racist edge. institutionalized and legalized. Johnny "lmani" Harris, a black man on sions, by-products of the civil rights Humanity is being pushed backward The recent Supreme Court decision Alabama's death row since 1974 for movement-the famous Miranda deci to barbarism by a decadent class that was particularly heinous. Made in light allegedly killing a guard. Harris was sion requiring the police to inform refuses to leave the stage of history. As originally jailed for life on a rape charge, of the massive empirical evidence that arrested suspects of their rights and we wrote a decade ago (WVNo. 141,21 capital punishment is overtly: racially another prohibiting evidence obtained shortly after his family moved into a January 1977), after the execution of discriminatory, it means white neighborhood and received racist that racist without a valid search warrant Gary Gilmore: threats. He insists he is innocent but was murder is. legalized and institutional because, in his words, "they only help "The reinstitution of the death penalty forced to plead guilty by his court ized. The brutal cop murders of Eleanor guilty people" (New York Times Maga is not just another legal argument lost appointed lawyer, who refused to can Bumpurs and Michael Stewart in New zine, 12 October 1986). before .an increasingly reactionary any witnesses on his behalf. Harris York City, the hideous MOVE massacre Meanwhile, a JUstice Department Supreme Court. It is one among many became an activist in Inmates for in Philadelphia and the Ku Klux Klan brief argues that the government should proofs of the failure of capitalism in its death agony to fulfill its promise of a Action, resulting in his being targeted by lynch rope are proclaimed the "law of have the powerto carry out"warrantless . decent life.. .. Only the victorious prison guards. Also on death row 'is the land" in racist America. electronic surveillance ... warrantless proletarian revolution that overthrows former Black Panther and MOVE entries ...infiltration of organizations the bourgeois state will abolish the supporter Mumia Abu Jamal, framed Democrats Back [and] disruption of organization's," and death penalty for good and smash the Reagan/Meese Reaction prisons, in the course of rooting out on a cop-killing charge in Pennsylvania., no court should be able to challenge the whole vicious cycle of crime. pun This legal terror is part and parcel of In every way the Reagan administra such activity if it is for so-called national ishment and repressioh caused by the extra-legal terror of the Ku Klux tion has been seeking to expand the security ("The New Imperial Presiden- capitalism." • 14 . WORKERS VANGUARD ... l!! day strike in 1983, they really struck, 's a tT using their strategic industrial knowl Philly MOVE'.. .C edge to short-circuit the trains while (continued/rom page 16) Mayors of murder:'-;;; Rizzo led vicious ~ inspiring transit workers up and down Wicker. Merle Austin and Janet Hollo 1970 raid on ~ the coast with hardclass struggle! But in way. Among the Africa brothers. at Black Panther ~ the '86 transit strike, TWU Local 234 separate men's facilities. are William headquarters (left). ~ president ,Roger Tauss praised the Phillips. Edward Goodman. Delbert Incinerated bodies -5 mayor of murder's negotiating skills: he Orr. Charles Sims. Carlos Perez and pulled ,from rubble s is"extremelygood at this kind of thing"! of Osage Avenue Last July, when 13,000 AFSCME Michael Davis. Mumia Abu Jamal. a in aftermath of MOVE sympathizer and former promi Goode's 1985 sanitation workers struck, the Murderer nent black journalist in Philadelphia. is MOVE massacre. of Osage Avenue responded with a on death row. on lying charges of killing back-to-work court order, claiming the a cop. Free Ramona Africa and all the union was jeopardizing the "health and MOVE prisoners! safety" of the city! AFSCME leaders caved in to Goode, and the strike was Goode & Rizzo: Murder, Inc. .broken under the threat of mass firings Despite Wilson Goode's hopes, the and fines. The bourgeoisie voiced its MOVE massacre will not disappear. approval: '~Mayor Goode's Handling of' Even Goode's hand-picked commis Strike in Philadelphia Partly Restores sions condemned his "grossly negligent" Confidence in His Ability to Lead," act of ordering the "unconscionable" headlined the Wall Street Journal (23 bombing. and the "unjustified homi July 1986). cide" of five children..Two grand juries In January. Goode again took aim at are continuing to investigate the massa tlie sanitationmen through District 33 cre. Recent testimony by a cop involved president Earl Stout, whom Goode in the assault revealed that top Philly claimed was blackmailing the city over . police officials ordered fragmentation snow removal. Goode had nine union material (designed to kill and maim) men arrested for "theft." charging they included in the bomb dropped on the . UPI were lounging around on the street corners when they were supposed to be roof. Another grand jury is digging into bringing up the MOVE deaths." Young to keep the lid on the innercities. working! Stout vowed to "make Goode the corruption scandal over rebuilding The only way Goode can resurrect his Not one of these front men even con pay," saying the mayor had broken his the 61 houses on Osage Avenue de- , political career is by opposing an open demned die murder of MOVE. Racist stroyed in the firestorm. racist in November-and his name is pig Rizzo's remark regarding dropping promise to stop hiring non-union con tractors. But Stout, one of the first to A public 'television Frontline docu Frank Rizzo. The former police chief the bomb on MOVE noted the role of support Goode for mayor in '83. is a mentary is scheduled for nationwide and mayor is expected to win the these black overseers on the capitalist broadcast May 5. and a detailed account Republican primary. setting up a choice plantation: "Just imagine if it would of the bombing. Attention, ,MOVE! between two "mayors of murder." As have been another mayor. a white This Is Americal, by Margot Harry. a police commissioner in the ·60s. Rizzo mayor. This city would still be having staff writer for Revolutionary Worker, was notorious for his stormtrooper problems" (Philadelphia Inquirer. 31 has just been published. However, the attacks on the black ghetto of North Marchj.. ' grand juries originally scheduled to Philadelphia and against SNCC and ,In 1984Wilson Goode was brought in finish in April now say they will not Black Panther Party militants. In by the Philadelphia insurance compa complete their work until after the August 1970 Rizzo raided the offices of nies and banks and installed as mayor. the BPP. dragging Panthers onto the This former insurance adjuster and streets. .stripping them naked in a parole officer rose to prominence after Free "weapons check." A Democrat at the his appointment as head of the Public Ramona time. he went on to be elected mayor for' Utilities Commission. There he got Africa! two terms. from 1972 to 1980. "hands on" experience in "crisis man Rizzo is the architect of the city's agement" when the nuclear reactor at vendetta against MOVE. He targeted Three Mile Island nearly melted down the largely black radical organization in 1979·! The PUC's stonewalling after kingmaker' in the Philly :Democratic for five years; MOVE members and TMI matched Goode's performance in machine. His capitulation during the supporters suffered over 400 arrests. the wake of the MOVE massacre. AFSCME strike followed his damning In the fall of 1977.cops barricaded the After the MOVE bombing. Goode's silence after the MOVE massacre. Powelton Village neighborhood where stock with the capitalists plummeted. MOVE had its house. laying siegeto the Trying to refurbish his image among Free Ramona and commune for afullyear culminating on blacks, this March he had the gall to All MOVE Prisoners! 8 August 1978.when 600 cops moved in host a "summit" on homelessness in for the kill. In full view of TV cameras. Philadelphia! How about starting with The Philadelphia. city unions have Delbert Africa. a former Panther. was the 250 people burned out on Osage real power and have shown they're not brutally stomped and beaten by three Avenue! Goode promised they'd be afraid to use it. From the combative WV Photo. city unions to the heavy battalions of stri~e, 'SWAT cops '(one of whom would later back in their houses by Christmas of '85; PhUly city workers July 1986. the ILA. they should have shut the city Goode, Rizzo, both strikebreakers. appear in the Osage Avenue massacre). but a year after the bombing, the houses Twelve MOVE members were. framed still weren't .ready, andeven now the down over the MOVE massacre and primary. And the Frontline program is up because a cop died (likelykilled in the roofs leak! Compare this telling indict driven Goode out oftown! The contin being blacked out in Philadelphia until police crossfire). and wereslammed into ment of the profit-driven capitalist ued silence of the labor tops over the after May 19! .prison for terms from Jl to 99 years. It is system to the Soviet experience with the imprisonment of the MOVE members is Both candidates in the Democratic a sad testimony to the bankruptcy of Chernobyl disaster. Twelve months a crime. In Chicago, transit workers in Party primary were behind the May 13 the reformists' "black empowerment" after the nuclear accident last year, the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308 bombing. Wilson Goode. who declared schemes that today Philadelphia work planned economy provided new homes passed a motion demanding Ramona be "I'd do it again .... is opposed by Edward ers and blacks are given a "choice" for over 90,000 people displaced by the freed. This should inspire Philly union G. Rendell. his former district attorney. between the butchers of 1978and 1985. disaster. ists to do their duty and come to the who supplied the arrest warrants giving The civil rights movement died "Up aid of the MOVE prisoners, victims Goode the excuse he needed to go in. North" when it collided with the City Unions in Goode's Sights of a massacre aimed at all blacks and The white liberal Rendell now laments bedrock of racist American capitalism. Goode regained much of the support workers. that "this city has suffered enormously ~here blacks are ghettoized, lurnpen of the capitalists who run Philadelphia In the wanton, hideous murder of because of MOVE." Rendell com ized and terrorized even without Jim when he took on city unions in 198.6. In eleven black men, women and children plained that the Soviet ambassador to Crow laws. In the wake of the ghetto the. past decade, transit workers and on 13 May 1985 we see the hand of the United States. on a CBS Face the explosions of the mid-·60s. the bour teachers have repeatedly struck when Meese. Carried out with the advice and Nation show. "when asked about the geoisie installed black Democratic their two-year contracts expired. When consent of the FBI, the bombing of treatment of dissidents. responded by Party mayors like Detroit's Coleman SEPTA rail workers went out in a 108- black America bore the signature of the Reagan years. Not only Wilson Goode wants it forgotten. With the Reagan A Scartacet Pamphlet 75c administration in tatters, the labor bureaucrats are working overtime to keep workers and blacks chained to the Democratic Party. The reformist tails on the Democraticdonkey campaigned for Goode in '84, and no doubt will support him again in November, either .1 8lac~ Soldiers openly·or backhandedly, professing the IJ- IItlte . "lesser evil." ; . 1m Cro. Mi'jfarr We communists of the Spartacist League want to sear into the memory of I i the working class the racist crimes ofthe capitalist class enemy. We are fighting \/1 to forge a multiracial workers party to lead a working-class socialist revolution that. will achieve black liberation. _75¢ (32 pages) 75¢ (32 pages) Among the first tasks of therfuture 25¢ (16 pages) 75¢ (32 pages) workers government will to avenge Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 13n GPO. New York, NY 10116 tre the MOVE martyrs of 13 May 1985.• • 1 MAy 1987 15 W(JltIlEltS ""'(JII'I) Goode, Rizzo: Malors of Murder • , ven-e I •
phia Inquirer (31 March). As impris oned MOVE member Sue Africa cried Free Ramona Africa out at the trial of Ramona, "The whole city of Philadelphia is trying to wash the blood of MOVE people off their hands." and All Most of the left won't touch it either. The courageous MOVE prisoners have MOVE Prisoners! been ignored by the Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party, Workers World, who at the time rushed to alibi Mother's Day 1985, the 13th of May, the black mayor and -blame the victims a cop bullhorn delivered the ultimatum: for the massacre. "~ttention MOVE. This is America;" The Spartacist League has from the Then the hideous siege and mass murder beginning raised international protest began. Hundreds of Philadelphia po against this racist obscenity, holding lice, armed with Uzi machine guns, forums to honor thememory of the sniper rifles, M-60 and 50 calibre ma MOVE martyrs, offering a platform to chine guns and armor-piercing antitank MOVE family members to speak of guns launched an assault on the Osage their outrage and· their pain. The Avenue home of the MOVE commune. Partisan Defense Committee, a non A satchel charge with the powerful sectarian class-struggle legal defense military explosive C-4, dropped from a organization in accordance with the political views of the SL, has taken up police helicopter, turned it into a fiery' UP1 inferno. Eleven black people, including Eleven members of MOVE family, including children, were. massacred by the cause of the MOVE prisoners. five children, were deliberately inciner Wilson Goode's firebombing in the service of Reagan reaction. Support for these class-war prisoners is ated. Laughing during the assault, cops not an act of charity but the class duty of fired on MOVE members 1.rying to of line" in Reagan's America. In the massacre), Ramona has been denied those on the outside toward those inside escape the flames, driving them back to wake of the bombing, the "mayor of parole because above all she refuses the the walls 'of the capitalist prisons. their death. murder" has gone after the combative obscene condition that she not associate Ramona Africa is today in the It was a willful, racist massacre of city unions-teachers, transit and sani with her MOVE family upon release. women's prison at Muncy, Pennsylva people who called themselves Africa, tation workers. And the full force of The Philadelphia mayoral primary nia, along with seven of her sisters, people who had committed no crime. state repression continues to bear down election takes place on May 19,yet none including the mothers ofall the children Philly's black Democratic mayor Wil on the sole adult survivor of the MOVE of the candidates in either capitalist murdered in thefirebombing. The seven son Goode gave the go-ahead for the massacre, Ramona Africa. Serving a 7- party can touch the MOVE massacre. are Consuewella Dotson, Susan Leon, calculated cold-blooded murder, a year term for "criminalconspiracy" (i.e., "MOVE Appears a Taboo Issue in Janine Phillips, Debbie Sims, Alberta threat aimed at all who dared "step out she has lived to bear witness to the Mayoral Race," headlined the Philadel- continued on page 15 Down with Racist Death -Penalty! The Reagan/ Rehnquist Supreme thoritative statistical study of over 2,400 . to show you were in some wayan Court has spoken, and its message is: murder cases in Georgia by Professor "accomplice" in a crime such as a death, especially for blacks. Striking David Baldus of the University of Iowa robbery where someone got killed. Last down the last sweeping legal challenge . Law School. The Baldus study "showed year the Supreme Court ruled that to the death penalty, the highest court in that II percent of all those charged with anyone who is against the death penalty the land outrageously approved by killing white victims in Georgia and 22 can be excluded from juries, thereby 5-to-4 Georgia's capital punishment percent of the blacks accused of killing ensuring that you'll get a hanging jury, system despite overwhelming evidence whites - were sentenced to death, as often one with no blacks on it. Earlier, that blacks who kill whites are given the against I percent ofthose charged with the "high court" ruled that death row death penalty far more frequently than killing blacks" (New York Times, 23 inmates could be executed before their those who kill blacks-22 times more April). legal appeals had been exhausted. In frequently, according to a study cited in Yet the court incredibly ruled that this racist America, the death penalty is the case. The court admitted that the did not violate the Eighth Amendment above all for black people. (As of study "indicates a discrepancy that prohibiting "cruel and unusual punish March I, there were 1,874 inmates on appears to correlate with race" but ment" or the Fourteenth Amendment's death row, 41.5 percent of whom were arrogantly concluded that this was a supposed guarantees of "equal protec black.) And needless to say, we are "potentially irrelevant factor" and not tion of the laws." Anyone claiming. speaking only of those who are lucky "constitutionally significant." Thus they racial bias, the court ruled, "must prove enough to make it to court-these days, wound the legal clock back to the 1857 that the decision makers in his case many blacks are simply executed on the Dred Scott decision, when the court acted with a discriminatory pur~ose" spot by the cops, who know they canget decreed that blacks had "no rights which a virtually impossible legal task. The away with it. the white man was bound to respect." court dismissed the "apparent dispari . . Now even blatantly racist legal lynching ties" as "inevitable"-racism isfor them Death Penalty in Racist America gets the Supreme Court stamp of a natural and unchangeable part of the Breslauer/AP Liberal opponents of the death pen approval, and the spectre of mass "judicial process." Adding insult to Austin, Texas: protesters demand' alty see it as 'an aberration in a "civilized executions hovers over the nation. injury, a New York Times (24 April) freedom. for death-row prisoner democracy." They can't explain why The legal challenge to the death editorial noted that the majority opin Clarence Bradley. capital punishment survives and even penalty was made by the NAACP Legal ion by Justice Lewis Powell even threw thrives in late 20th century America. Defense and Educational Fund on in the facetious-sounding oral argument lined up for the gas chamber, the electric . The answer, disguised in legal gobbledy behalf of Warren McCleskey, a black of Justice Scalia that"the next thing you chair, the lethal injection, the noose or gook, is in the court's majority opinion: man convicted in 1978 by a jury of know, ugly people will charge discrimi the firing squad. In a separate deadly McCleskey's claim, wrote Justice Pow eleven ~hites and one black of killing a nation too." ruling in the same week, the court ruled ell, "throws into serious question the white cop during an armed robbery in The executioners are already salivat that you don't even have to kill anybody principles that underlie' our entire Atlanta. Fund attorneys cited an au- ing at the thought of all those bodies. to get the death penalty-they just have continued on page 14 • 16 1 MAY 1987