Revolution No. 15 September 2018 50¢ You Can’t Fight Trump with the Democrats! Defeat the War on Immigrants Set Them Free, Let Them Stay! By Jacob gans about “American values,”

Internationalist photo posting memes about the Statue Thousands of children were of Liberty and pretending the ripped from their parents’ arms, anti-immigrant onslaught began some as young as five years old. with the raving bigot Trump. Not Tears streamed down their faces us. Revolutionary Marxists tell as Customs and Border Protec- the truth: this capitalist society tion agents dragged them away. has always coined profit from In “protective custody” they human misery. It is a system in faced abuse and, in some instanc- terminal decay. Its barbarism and es, torture. Their parents were cruelty against the oppressed, shipped off to immigration jails here and around the world, con- where they awaited deportation. tinue to escalate, under both Their “crime”? Seeking refuge Democrats and Republicans. from deadly violence in countries We need to put an end to it, by devastated by U.S.-sponsored fighting for socialist revolution. wars, pillage and gang violence Young activists who want to de- imported from the U.S. “I can’t feat the anti-immigrant onslaught go without my son,” pleaded Elsa need a revolutionary program. Johana Ortiz as she was forced Key to this is bringing the huge onto a plane deporting her to potential power of the multiracial Guatemala. “I feel like I’m going Internationalist contingent at June 30 march in NYC against separation of immigrant families. working class into the fight. to die. I feel powerless,” said An- Harrowing images of kids in cages, and re- of youth in the U.S. have been asking them- On April 6, Attorney General Jeff Ses- gélica, another Guatemalan migrant whose ports of these children being stripped, bound, selves: What kind of society do we live in, sions announced a “zero-tolerance policy” 8-year-old daughter was snatched away at beaten, sedated and sexually abused in for- that inflicts this kind of cruelty on defenseless for “attempted illegal entry and illegal en- an Arizona detention facility (New York profit detention centers exposed the myth that children and their parents? try into the United States by an alien” (sic). Times, 17 and 21 June). “A family was sepa- this is the “land of the free.” Large numbers Patriotic liberals wave the flag and slo- Sessions, a living Confederate monument to rated at the border, and this distraught father racist oppression, warned at a May 7 press took his own life,” wrote The Washington conference that “if you are smuggling [sic] Post (9 June) about Marco Antonio Muñoz, a child, then we will prosecute you and that an immigrant from Honduras. Smash I.C.E. with child will be separated from you as required One after another, such stories and im- by law.” (The “law” part was made up for the ages caused rage, anguish and indignation among millions of people across the country. Workers Revolution! continued on page 8 Imperialist “Murder & Torture Inc.” Targets Baruch: A Threat to Us All CIA Out of CUNY Now! The following is a leaflet distributed by CUNY’s diverse student body to further the the CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Revolu- CIA’s “mission” here and around the world. tionary Internationalist Youth at Baruch Col- Since mass opposition and revulsion Internationalist photo lege and other CUNY campuses, following against CIA crimes and infiltration pushed the revelation that the Baruch administration the murderous spy agency off campuses signed on to the CIA’s Signature Schools Pro- during the Vietnam War, the CIA was forced gram, which aims to recruit would-be spies to hide in the shadows at universities coast from colleges with “diverse” student bodies. to coast – but now it seeks to come back The Central Intelligence Agency – U.S. with a vengeance. Baruch (together with the imperialism’s infamous “Murder & Torture University of Illinois-Chicago and Univer- Inc.” – has made an agreement with the City sity of New Mexico) is to serve as a “pilot” University of New York’s Baruch College campus for this new CIA program targeting to implant agents and recruiters on campus. universities across the country. This is a huge national issue sharply escalat- Let’s be clear: the drive to make CUNY ing the drive to militarize the university and students, faculty and staff cogs in the impe- subjugate it to the dictates of the govern- rialist war machine is an attack on us all. ment. The CIA’s website (cia.gov) states that The CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Rev- “as part of CIA’s recruitment strategy,” Ba- olutionary Internationalist Youth call for ruch has been included in the spy agency’s massive protest and exposure to stop the Signature Schools Program. This would use CIA from making our university a base for Protest outside Board of Trustees meeting at John Jay College, March 19. continued on page 2 CIA at Baruch: A Threat, Not an “Honor”

openness to receiv- Statement of the CUNY Internationalist Clubs and ing arms from the Soviet Union. The

Revolutionary Internationalist Youth UN Photo/MB CIA used this as a The following is a leaflet responding Indonesia, Nicaragua and Vietnam. pretext for his as- to an opinion piece by Baruch student Da- Mr. Singh’s opinion piece was di- sassination in 1961. von Singh, in the college’s student news- rected against our leaflet titled “Imperialist All in the past? paper The Ticker. Our response was first ‘Murder & Torture Inc.’ Targets Baruch: Hardly. “Gina published on May 7 on the website of The A Threat to Us All – CIA Out of CUNY Haspel, Trump’s Ticker with a few changes by its editors, Now!” (see page 1). We distributed it to Choice for C.I.A.” including a different title. alert CUNY students, faculty and workers chief, “Played In his recent opinion piece (The Ticker, of the danger the CIA poses, and to call for Role in Torture 16 April), Davon Singh echoes the Central massive protest and exposure to defend all Program,” states Intelligence Agency’s marketing as he claims of CUNY against the spy agency’s attack. a New York Times that the CIA choosing Baruch “to take part Admitting that the CIA orchestrated (13 March) head- in its Signature School Program ... is a pres- military “coups” and other crimes in one line. Yet incred- tigious honor.” When announcing the deal, country after another, Singh adds that they ibly, Singh equates the Agency’s former director, immigrant- carried out “drugging of MKUltra sub- opposing the CIA basher Mike Pompeo, cynically claimed the jects,” trafficked “heroin and opium all as “an organiza- partnership would further “diversity.” Now over Southeast Asia” and use “enhanced in- tion” (or consider- Mr. Singh cites Baruch’s “ethnically diverse” terrogation techniques,” a/k/a torture. This ing it “evil,” in his composition to claim that “Baruch students is all “just business,” he says. It must be words) to espous- ing bigotry against Congo independence leader and prime minister Patrice must accept CIA’s presence.” No, students, accepted as part of “how the world works” Lumumba, 1960. faculty and staff at Baruch and CUNY should and “the price to pay for protection.” Muslims and Lati- oppose, protest and stop this incursion. Its But just who does the CIA protect? And nos. Seriously? We all know that bigotry and unabated. The spy agency has carried on goal is to further the sinister work of the spy who pays the price? In 1952, Guatemalan attacks against Muslims, Latinos and so many its murderous work under successive pres- agency, which seeks to weaponize campuses president Jacobo Arbenz signed a land-re- others are spewed from and put into practice idents, Democratic and Republican, since its founding in 1947. Meanwhile, the fact to serve imperialism, not “diversity.” It is a form bill making it easier for the rural poor by the highest levels of the U.S. government. that Trump’s nominee to head the CIA has threat to our sisters and brothers around the to get small plots of land to help feed them- And as our leaflet noted, Muslim-bashing is a “record of torture” is not a “deal-breaker” world. It is a danger to us all at CUNY, and to selves and their families. The United Fruit how former CIA chief, Mike Pompeo, now for Democrats, the media has reported. our largely immigrant families, part of New Company (now Chiquita), Guatemala’s larg- Trump’s Secretary of State, made his name. The Baruch administrators who kept the York City’s multiracial working class. est landlord, said no. In 1954, the CIA (head- Latin America and Muslim-majority coun- CIA deal secret from faculty and students Some of these dangers were discussed ed by major United Fruit shareholder Allen tries are among the CIA’s primary targets. until it was signed and sealed may hope for at the April 24 teach-in organized by the Ba- Dulles) helped engineer Arbenz’s overthrow. Our leaflet quoted the CIA’s memoran- unawareness about what the CIA is, its histo- ruch chapter of the faculty and staff union. Their property was protected and poor Gua- dum of understanding with Baruch, includ- ry and its role today. Students at Baruch and A faculty member described how the Ba- temalan farmers paid the price: decades of ing references to “simulations,” and asked throughout CUNY should indignantly reject ruch-CIA affiliation “puts populations I military dictatorship, which slaughtered over if prospective recruits would be spying on their classmates. Singh finds such questions the idea that making them cogs in imperial- work with at risk,” “puts me at risk,” and 200,000 Maya indigenous peasants. ism’s war machine is acceptable if it’s done “may make it impossible for me to get a Singh claims the “full context” shows the “outrageous,” “asinine” and “hyperbolic.” It’s all “highly unlikely,” he claims. Re- in the name of “diversity.” As the CUNY In- research visa again.” The main speak- CIA’s work is “incredibly vital.” For whom? ternationalist Clubs and Revolutionary Inter- er, Professor David Price of Saint Mar- Channeling Cold War red-menace propagan- ally? As our leaflet noted, “this recalls the ‘Homeland Security’ course the CUNY tops nationalist Youth leaflet proclaims: All cops, tin’s University, documented CIA efforts da, he writes: “if the United States didn’t in- spy agencies and military recruiters, from to infiltrate universities, and the threat volve itself in other countries affairs [sic], the tried to establish at Borough of Manhattan Community College in 2004, which was the CIA, NSA and FBI to the NYPD, I.C.E. this poses to basic rights as campus pro- Soviet Union would have instead.” What did slated to include ‘interrogation techniques’ and ROTC: out of CUNY! n grams are put in the service of repression this “context” mean in Africa? Congo was a and ‘technology for surveillance.’” Books abroad and at home (including on-campus huge Belgian colony that the king of Belgium like The CIA on Campus (2011) extensively CIA Out Now... spying). Others spoke of how family, as- (backed by U.S. shareholders) had turned into document the Agency’s use of spies and continued from page 1 sociates and teachers of unwary students a vast rubber plantation run by forced labor. informants not only in classrooms, but in the torture, terror and mass murder it car- drawn by pitches about “good government This was very profitable. After Congo won meetings of faculty and student groups as ries out around the world. CIA OUT OF jobs” can find themselves being investi- independence in 1960, the U.S. insisted on well. And can anyone forget the NYPD’s BARUCH AND OUT OF CUNY, NOW! gated by the world’s most infamous spy and backed a new invasion by Belgian troops, use of informants to spy on Muslim students The letters “CIA” are synonymous agency. CUNY Internationalists brought targeting its first democratically elected prime at Baruch and other CUNY campuses? worldwide with racist, imperialist terror – posters showing some of the CIA’s mas- minister, Patrice Lumumba. To defend Congo Embedding the CIA at Baruch continues from the assassination of African indepen- sive crimes in Chile, Congo, Guatemala, against this aggression, Lumumba expressed the drive for militarizing universities that es- dence leader Patrice Lumumba to genocidal Visit the League for the Fourth International/ calated with CUNY’s 2013 hiring of ex-CIA counterinsurgency in Vietnam and Central chief and Iraq/Afghanistan war commander America; the overthrow of elected leaders Internationalist Group on the Internet David Petraeus. While the CIA seeks to use Arbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran, http://www.internationalist.org CUNY students against working-class and Allende in Chile; “extraordinary rendition” Write to the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth: oppressed people around the world, some and “enhanced interrogation” at CIA “black [email protected] argue that Baruch students should at least sites,” dungeons and prison camps from Abu Write to CUNY Internationalist Clubs: [email protected] feel safe from spying here. Singh writes that Ghraib to Guantánamo under Democrats “the CIA is largely not permitted to collect and Republicans alike. Today under Donald intelligence on the domestic activities of U.S. Trump, CIA drone strikes continue to rain citizens, except in certain cases.” Can anyone death from the sky, after becoming a signa- who reads the news believe such claims? The ture program of Barack Obama and Hillary Revolution CIA has always spied “at home,” including Clinton. In Pakistan alone, these “targeted on campuses. Moreover, this got an official killings” have killed over 200 children. Newspaper of the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth, stamp of approval in 1982 through a presi- How does the CIA describe its pact youth section of the Internationalist Group, and CUNY students from dential order known as the “Attorney Gen- with the Baruch administration? The spy the Internationalist Clubs, for the program of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, eral Guidelines.” agency’s website quotes CIA Director Mike published in accord with the Internationalist Group, U.S. section of the Singh writes that under “normal” pres- Pompeo, now slated to become arch-racist League for the Fourth International. idencies, the CIA is used to make “informed Trump’s Secretary of State, cynically spout- EDITOR: Julius Drago decisions.” Under Obama, the CIA carried ing off about “diversity,” using this to pro- Revolution is published by Mundial Publications, P.O. Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY out innumerable drone strikes in Pakistan, mote the CIA-Baruch deal. What does this 10008, U.S.A. Telephone: (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 E-mail: [email protected] Yemen and elsewhere that killed hundreds mean? It means using CUNY students’ dif- No. 15 September 2018 of people, including children. And under ferent national and ethnic backgrounds to Trump the CIA has continued drone strikes more effectively infiltrate, spy on and de- 2 Revolution Baruch College Teach-In Against CIA Incursion By Kaitlan Schools Program is an attempt to turn students and faculty into On April 24, the Baruch College chapter of the Profes- cogs in U.S. imperialism’s war sional Staff Congress (PSC) machine. It is the latest measure – the faculty and staff union to integrate CUNY – the largest at the City University of New urban public university in the York – sponsored a teach-in on U.S. – into the broad expansion Baruch’s participation in the of repressive powers undertak- Central Intelligence Agency’s en by both the Democrats and “Signature School Program,” Republicans since 9/11. which openly embeds the im- In 2004, the CUNY tops perialist spy agency on the mid- tried to establish a “Homeland town Manhattan campus. Titled Security” program at Borough “Dance With the Devil? Baruch, of Manhattan Community Col- the CIA, and the Signature Re- lege, which was to include lationship,” the teach-in focused “interrogation techniques” and on the history of CIA penetration “technology for surveillance.” of campuses, some of its most In 2013, four decades after notorious crimes, as well as the mass protest drove out the Re- Posters prepared by the CUNY Internationalist Clubs were displayed at the April 24 Baruch danger to academic freedom it serve Officer Training Corps teach-in, documenting some of the crimes committed by the CIA. represents. (ROTC), they reestablished it With Baruch’s administration classmates, co-workers and friends. like “How would this affect our research at City College, as well as York and Med- (doubtless with approval from the high- For decades since the Vietnam War and our reputations abroad? How might it gar Evers colleges – though a vote by est levels at CUNY) making it one of the period, the most notorious agency of capi- endanger our students and their families? the Medgar Ever College Council ousted first colleges to spearhead this sinister talist repression worldwide could barely Why weren’t we consulted?” ROTC from that campus the following program nationwide, the City University show itself publicly on U.S. campuses. At a time when mainstream liberals year. In 2013, the CUNY administration is targeted yet again by the same imperi- Over the past years it has pushed to make pitch the CIA and other blood-drenched also made the deliberately provocative alist forces that have brought death and its presence “acceptable” once again – for spy agencies as friends of “freedom” and political decision to hire David “Death destruction to countries around the world on-campus spy recruitment to again be allies of Democratic “resistance” against Squad” Petraeus, former CIA chief and – places that the families of so many “business as usual.” Baruch’s compact the Trump White House, the CUNY Inter- commander of the Iraq and Afghanistan CUNY students came from. A number with the CIA was quietly announced on nationalist Clubs and Revolutionary Inter- wars, to lecture on “public policy” at the of those speaking at the teach-in high- the agency’s website in August 2017, fly- nationalist Youth face the task of helping Macaulay Honors College. These steps, lighted the very real threats posed to stu- ing under the radar at first, until it came educate a new generation in the ABCs urged by the right-wing American En- dents, especially those from immigrant to the attention of faculty members ear- of why “CIA” is and always has been a terprise Institute and undertaken by the and Muslim families, by the CIA “part- ly this year. “Many here at Baruch were synonym for imperialist mass murder all unelected Board of Trustees that dictates nering” with campus programs and or- disturbed by the news,” stated teach-in around the world. Distributing thousands over CUNY, are part of a concerted drive ganizations, spying in classrooms, trying moderator and Baruch PSC chair Vin- of copies of our leaflet “CIA Out of CUNY to militarize CUNY. The CIA-Baruch deal to enroll students to be spies for impe- cent DiGirolamo. He noted that faculty Now!” (April 2018), reprinted in this is- is the latest installment. rialism, and interviewing their families, and staff members were asking questions sue, we emphasized that the Signature continued on page 18 stroy those that racist U.S. imperialism puts would embed CIA agents on campus to pus security and the NYPD carry out a cop dum boasts that the CIA already has a “track on its hit list here and around the world. present a shiny image of this bloodstained riot inside the main entrance to the Baruch record of onboarding [sic] quality talent from The CIA site quotes Baruch president Murder Inc., rope students in, make student campus. The CUNY and city cops violently Baruch College.” We demand that all the Mitchel Wallerstein touting the “exciting ca- organizations complicit in its dirty work, and attacked students who were there to pro- files on their recruitment activities at CUNY reer options” that “the CIA-Baruch” program doubtless develop a network of professional test tuition hikes outside a Board of Trust- be opened up and published now. will provide “both in the US and abroad.” snitches and finks. There was widespread ees meeting, pushing them up against plate Teach-ins, resolutions by faculty and What do “careers” in the CIA mean? Just outrage when the NYPD’s spying on Muslim glass windows, beating them and dragging student bodies, rallies and demonstrations – take a look at who Trump has named to take students and campus clubs was exposed. The women students across the floor by the hair. these will be crucial in building widespread Pompeo’s place as head of the agency: career CIA openly setting up shop at CUNY should In 2013, the CUNY administration made opposition to the threat posed by this CIA in- agent Gina Haspel, who, as reported in New be met with an outpouring of opposition. All the provocative political decision to hire war cursion. The faculty/staff union (Professional York Times (13 March), has played a key role cops, spy agencies and military recruiters, criminal David Petraeus, former CIA chief Staff Congress) must take a stand and bring in the CIA’s “torture program.” from the CIA, NSA and FBI to the NYPD, and ex-commander of the Iraq/Afghanistan out its members. Large-scale student involve- And the Baruch administration? It I.C.E. and ROTC: out of CUNY! wars, to “teach” at CUNY’s Macaulay Hon- ment is crucial. Today, with immigration cops promises to “coordinate with CIA on all The memorandum states that along ors College. Like returning the Reserve Of- threatening ever-increasing deportations, and communications related to the program pri- with workshops and other “activities,” the ficers Training Corps to CUNY, bringing in the menace of ever new wars hanging over us or to its dissemination to the student body.” CIA would carry out “simulations” on the “warrior scholars” like Petraeus was urged all, thousands of CUNY students have a vital So the Baruch tops are volunteering (or are Baruch campus. What will they simulate? by the right-wing American Enterprise Insti- stake in opposing the drive to make CUNY a they getting paid?) to serve as a blatant PR Waterboarding? Other torture and interro- tute. A campaign demanding “David ‘Death staging ground for CIA terror. agency for the CIA. Their “memorandum of gation techniques? Setting up a “black site” Squad’ Petraeus, Out of CUNY Now!” was In line with the Democratic/Republican understanding” with the CIA states that the secret prison? More prosaically, will your launched by CUNY Internationalists and war party’s endless colonial carnage abroad, program will use CIA agents as “Campus classmates be spying on you and reporting? included a series of united-front protests. At- “The Company” (as the CIA is known) is in Ambassadors,” promote “networking ac- This recalls the “Homeland Security” course tempts at intimidation, and the CUNY tops the forefront of those seeking to shred the tivities with student organizations,” “build the CUNY tops tried to establish at Borough unleashing a brutal NYPD attack on stu- most basic civil liberties here at home. The sustainable relationships with key universi- of Manhattan Community College in 2004, dent demonstrators, failed to silence those CUNY administration and Board of Trust- ty staff and personnel,” hold events on “the which was slated to include “interrogation determined to defend the university against ees have shown yet again that they are eager business of intelligence” and carry out a techniques” and “technology for surveil- the drive for militarization, as the campaign partners in the dirty work of trying to turn “campus advertising campaign.” These and lance.” This sinister program was spiked by drew widespread support. other details from the August 2017 CIA-Ba- a protest campaign initiated by the CUNY Now those who want to subjugate CUNY into one big “war college.” In defense ruch memorandum were leaked to a group Internationalist Clubs (see “Militant Protest CUNY to the CIA are at it again, and seek to of our sisters and brothers around the world, based out of the City University’s Graduate Sinks BMCC ‘Homeland Security’ Pro- up the stakes. The leaked memorandum ex- and our rights here as well, bring out mass Center, CUNY Struggle, which quotes ex- gram,” Revolution, March 2005). cerpts bring out some important information. protest demanding CIA Out of CUNY Now! cerpts in a March 15 posting to its website In November 2011, the CUNY tops However, much is still hidden by the univer- CUNY Internationalist Clubs (cunystruggle.org). showed what they really think of students at sity administration, and needs to be dragged Revolutionary Internationalist Youth So the Signature Schools Program Baruch and all CUNY when they had cam- into the light. The CIA-Baruch memoran- 18 March 2018 September 2018 3 Learning from Museum Exhibition on the War Vietnam: A Historic Defeat for U.S. Imperialism By Guadalupe and Maeve of the other from the U.S. Army’s infamous slaughter of up to 500 civilians at My Lai Going to school in the U.S., students in March 1968. (City College has a center learn little about the Vietnam War. What is for “global leadership” named for a war taught is superficial at best, if not downright criminal who got his start trying to cover false. This is useful for those who want youth up the My Lai massacre: Colin Powell.) to keep believing in the lies of U.S. imperial- One of the items with the most indel- ist “democracy” – not just Trump-style right ible impact was a short video titled “Napalm wingers but the Democrats and reformist left Girl,” made from images taken in 1972. (You groups that tail after them. After all, most can watch it on line at vietnamwar.nyhistory. U.S. imperialist wars were mainly brought to org/videos/napalm-girl.) The viewer sees a you by Democrats, from World Wars I and II plane drop four napalm bombs on a village (Wilson, FDR) down to Kennedy and John- called Trang Bang, which the National Lib- son in Vietnam, on down to the Clintons and eration Front had occupied as part of its fight Obama in our times. against the U.S. puppet regime of South Viet- True, most students know the govern- nam. Soon you see a 9-year girl, named Kim ment lies all the time, but even those that Phuc, running toward the camera in terror. know something of the criminal nature of Her clothes have been burned off, and skin the the U.S. war on Vietnam have seen few Heroic National Liberation Front (“Viet Cong”) and North Vietnamese all over her body has been burned by napalm, of the images bringing this reality home. In combatants fought and won against U.S. war machine. This victory against which was dropped on the Buddhist temple school, we are mainly taught that the U.S. imperialism inspired workers and oppressed around the world. where she and her family were hiding. Run- war against Vietnam was a “mistake” – as attempt to burn and poison the Vietnamese Searing Images of ning with her are other terrorized children. if this genocidal war was just the result of a into submission. Yet despite the horrendous Imperialist Terror war of terror they waged – which we learn Nearby, an old woman carries a baby whose misunderstanding or conceptual error. The Last school year, members of the Hunter so little about in school – the imperialists skin, charred by the napalm, is hanging off standard liberal version is that U.S. policy College Internationalist Club and Revolu- were defeated by the heroic Vietnamese. in shreds. makers were led astray by seeing Vietnam tionary Internationalist Youth went to see the That was a big victory for our side, the These images were among those that, through Cold War lenses. In reality, the war exhibition titled “The Vietnam War: 1945- workers and oppressed around the world, for millions of people around the world, resulted from the system of imperialism, “the 1975” at the New-York Historical Society. who saw that imperialism was not invinci- came to symbolize the horror of the im- highest stage of capitalism,” which cannot (The oldest museum in the city, founded in ble and were inspired to stand up and fight. perialist system. Viscerally affected by be explained away or reformed away as just 1804, it still spells New-York with a hyphen.) 1 This is a far cry from the story told by seeing them, as young revolutionaries our some mistaken policy. U.S. imperialism’s The exhibition offered important historical many liberals and social-democratic left- comrades are more determined than ever war on Vietnam was part of its drive to crush materials in the form of photographs, videos, ists, that U.S. politicians finally understood to help defeat and overthrow that system. any challenge to its domination, particularly posters and letters. In this review focusing on the “mistake” with the help of the antiwar This was further underlined when at a re- social revolutions like the one waged by the what we saw at the exhibition, we can only movement and finally “brought our boys cent session of our Marxist study group we incredibly courageous workers and peasants touch on a number of points, while encour- home.” Right-wingers parallel this with showed Hearts and Minds, a documentary there. aging everyone to read a prior Revolution ar- claims that America would have won the on the war made in 1974 which is still con- It was for these capitalist objectives ticle that deals with the war in greater depth: war but was “stabbed in the back” by lib- sidered one of the best made in the U.S. that the U.S. imperialists’ war in Vietnam “U.S. Imperialism’s War Crimes and Mass erals in Congress and the media. This goes killed an estimated three million people. Murder in Vietnam,” in Revolution No. 10 From the “French War” to the with rightists’ lying fabrication that protest- They dropped over 7 million tons of bombs, (October 2013). ers supposedly spat on returning soldiers, “American War” more than twice the amount dropped by all The Historical Society exhibition had when the truth is that left-wing activists The exhibition began with an explana- sides in World War Two. This went together many parts and sections, but the searing im- helped set up innumerable G.I. coffee shops, tion of events leading up to the war. Four with the massive amounts of napalm (jellied ages of the war made the strongest impact. clubs and newspapers in line with growing years after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs gasoline) and Agent Orange they used in the These included photos of U.S. troops, and opposition to the war among soldiers and on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, intended as 1 those of the U.S.-installed dictatorship of Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin explained this sailors.2 a direct threat against the Soviet Union, in depth in his crucial book Imperialism: The South Vietnam, burning huts in villages sus- the USSR successfully tested an A-bomb Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), published 2 See Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, pected of harboring guerrilla fighters from in 1949. That same year, the imperialists the year before he and Leon Trotsky led the Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (NYU the National Liberation Front (NLF – also “lost” China when the victory of Mao workers revolution in Russia. Press, 1998). known as “Viet Cong”). A part on “The Air Zedong’s Communist-led peasant army War” carried out by the U.S. gave a vivid, overthrew capitalist rule there. U.S. impe- horrifying idea of what is meant by phrases rialism was determined to “contain Com- like “carpet bombing.” And a sense of what munism” and roll it back no matter what. it meant to brave this onslaught was con- The Democratic administration of Harry veyed in a recording called “Women Driv- Truman, followed by Republican Dwight ing the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” made for the

Nick Ut/AP Eisenhower, paid 78% of the costs of the Vietnamese Women’s Museum in Hanoi by war that France launched in late 1945 in its Bui Thi Van, who risked her life over and attempt to keep Vietnam as a colony, seek- over driving a truck that delivered supplies ing to wipe out Ho Chi Minh’s Commu- to the liberation forces. She was one of the nist-led independence forces (Viet Minh). many young women who played key roles The “French War,” as the Vietnamese 3 in the revolutionary struggle. called it, laid the basis for they later called Another part of the exhibition was the “American War” against Vietnam. “My Lai Massacre.” Here visitors were In describing this background, the confronted with large-scale photos of dead exhibition also dealt briefly with the U.S. bodies – mostly children – piled one on top imperialists’ Korean War (1950-53), which 3 One of the most inspiring stories is that of the killed an estimated three million people teenage women of the NLF’s Perfume River and was cynically legitimized as a “police Squad, who helped launch the NLF’s rising and action” by the newly-formed United Na battle against the U.S. and South Vietnamese tions. Some of the anti-Soviet doomsday Famous photo of children fleeing after napalm attack on Trang Bang district forces in the city of Hue in 1968. See “All-female Perfume River combat squadron helped change propaganda from that period was shown, in June 1972. Nine-year-old Kim Phuc (naked, center) suffered extensive outcome of Vietnam War” (Japan Times online, as well as a short film titled Why Korea? burns on her back. The U.S. dropped over 400,000 tons of napalm on 28 January) and “The Women Who Fought for This Truman-endorsed “documentary” Vietnam while killing three million Vietnamese. Hanoi,” New York Times (6 June 2017). continued on page 6 4 Revolution YDSA Conference 2018 “Democratic (Party) Socialism” Gets Millennial Makeover By Angie Dems administer capitalist rule spread illu- ence of the YDSA. We sions in reforming the capitalist state. wanted to meet youth

Since the 2016 presidential elec- Internationalist photo Thus the “socialist candidates” glow- interested in fight- tion, the Democratic Socialists of America ingly described by the New York Times (28 ing against the racist, (DSA) has ballooned in membership. Its April) “sound less like revolutionaries and capitalist system but rapid growth was fueled by widespread more like traditional Democrats who seek a who are new to leftist disgust among “millennials” at the blatant return to policies in the mold of President politics and, in many racism, sexism and xenophobia of Donald Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.” Re- cases, know little or Trump, as well as the business-as-usual packaging FDR’s imperialist liberalism as nothing of any “so- politics of Clintonite Democrats. In particu- “socialism,” in order to lure people back into cialist” group besides lar, the DSA benefited from its enthusiastic the Democratic party, discredits the very the DSA. We had our embrace of Bernie Sanders’ presidential word – which since Marx and Engels’ Man- literature table out- campaign. The “independent” senator from ifesto has meant a classless society based on side the conference, Vermont who ran for the Democratic nomi- abundance and a radical reduction of human which was held at the nation had a long record of working closely labor time, built through the workers of the American Univer- with the Democrats in Congress, and helped world overthrowing the bourgeoisie and all sity Washington Col- round up votes for Hillary Clinton. Nonethe- its murderous parties, seizing the means of lege of Law. Featured less, many leftist-inclined youth thought his production, and planning their rational use prominently was the “democratic socialist” label had something for human needs, not profit. in-depth Internation- to do with socialism. Thousands joined the alist pamphlet about DSA and its youth group, the Young Demo- New Faces in High the history and politics cratic Socialists of America (YDSA). Democratic Places of the DSA published Some hoped to push the DSA to the left, If new DSA/YDSA members had any last February.2 These even wean it gradually from the Democratic doubts about diving headfirst into U.S. im- issues should be of in- Party. In reality, they have been pulled fur- perialism’s Democratic Party, the leadership terest to members who ther and further in, as door-knockers and expects these to evaporate in the light of re- want to know the real envelope-stuffers for a slew of candidates cent gains in the quest to rejuvenate the par- story of where their endorsed or fielded by the DSA. The goal: ty after massive millennial disillusionment organization and its nudging the oldest and most experienced in the Obama/Hillary Clinton years. This politics comes from capitalist party in the world to the left, to give quest got a big boost with the victory of Al- – topics DSA/YDSA it a new look, new blood and a new appeal. Revolutionary Internationalist Youth literature table exandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s 14th leaders seek to shield Thus the DSA’s purpose continues to be what outside YDSA convention. Congressional District Democratic primary. them from. it always has been: refurbishing and “realign- After the DSA endorsed her campaign, Oc- How much this is the case was shown ing” the party of Hiroshima, the Bay of Pigs Yet as I sat through various panels, there was asio-Cortez joined the group. Her primary in August 2017, when some of our comrades and the Vietnam War. Socialism? Hardly. nothing but abject reformism, among them victory over House Democratic Caucus went to distribute communist literature to A flood of favorable coverage in the big- one called “Democratic Socialism on the chair Joseph Crowley won her mega-media people attending the DSA’s national conven- business media has greeted the DSA’s work Ballot.” The real focus was exploring the dif- plaudits as “the new face of the Democratic tion in Chicago, Illinois. Here too the goal on behalf of the Democrats. This would seem ferent “tactics” to secure electoral victories Party.” Even Democratic National Commit- was to discuss revolutionary politics with odd if the DSA were radical, but its fans in for “socialists,” generally running openly as tee head Tom Perez said she “represents the new members, many of whom knew little the big-business press assure readers, accu- Democrats while sometimes donning the in- future of our party.”1 about what the DSA is all about. DSA tops rately, that it isn’t. After all, “as anyone who dependent label while pressuring the Demo- This was followed by the DSA’s en- did their best to prevent that, literally lead- has paid serious attention to most demo- crats. Basically the only way the working dorsement of Cynthia Nixon, the former ing new members away from our table by cratic socialists knows, they aren’t talking class entered the picture was in discussion on Sex and the City star who is running to be the hand. The notorious Chicago police were about seizing the means of production or how to get working-class people to believe the Democratic candidate for governor of called on our comrades multiple times, while establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat,” voting for DSA-backed candidates would be New York. (She too has now reportedly DSAers did everything from spit on our leaf- notes the Daily Intelligencer (13 August). in their interests. There was a lot of talk about joined the DSA after getting its endorse- let “The ABCs of the DSA” (The Interna- A revolutionary party running against all taking advantage of the fact that working- ment.) Nixon is a prominent ally of NYC tionalist No. 50 [Winter 2017]) to march by bourgeois parties could sometimes use the class people often just vote for the Democrat- Mayor Bill de Blasio, who like Democratic repeatedly chanting “We killed Rosa!” This electoral platform to spread its program for ic candidate, even if they don’t know them. mayors across the country is the boss of the referred to Rosa Luxemburg, author of the overthrowing the dictatorship of capital and In line with the claim that whether to run as cops choking and gunning down black and crucial Marxist classic Reform or Revolution, establishing a workers state. Counterposed part of the imperialist Democratic Party (or Latino youth. Social democrats (“demo- who was murdered on the orders of the Ger- to that, DSA candidates running to help the other bourgeois parties) is “a tactical ques- cratic socialists”) aspire to administer the man Social Democratic government in 1919. tion,” what was striking about this was its “special bodies of The DSA’s Deputy Director, David Du- overt cynicism. armed men” of the halde, boasted on Facebook: “I am a social capitalist state – the democratic enforcer extraordinaire.” (He has What “Reformism” Means, and Order Now! opposite of Marx and since moved on to become Senior Electoral Why Marxists Oppose It Engels’ call for so- Manager of Bernie Sanders’ “Our Revolu- Another panel touched on the nature cialist revolution to tion.”) Meanwhile the Trotskyists’ presence and role of the state. One panelist went on A 70-page pam- smash it. outside the conference brought a veritable about “equitable resource distribution” as phlet analyzing the In February, social-democratic Twitter storm. The most an alternative to the “historic failure” of organizational and members of the popular epithet was “newspaper Trots” – ap- collectivized economies. Another said “we political history of Revolutionary In- parently reading and/or distributing newspa- will need the U.S. bureaucratic state to get the Democratic ternationalist Youth pers is bad. Who knew? The next thing you tasks done.” This handily encapsulated what (Party) Socialists (RIY), youth section know, they’ll accuse us of reading books! of America. Marxists mean by reformism: the idea that of the International- So while traveling to D.C. this Febru- the capitalist state can be re-tooled to serve ist Group, traveled to ary, we looked forward to talking to some the working class, and that capitalism can Washington, D.C. for people who actually do want to be socialists, be reformed (through “tax the rich” schemes US$5 the national confer- including shipping but didn’t expect a warm reception from the and so forth) to be “equitable.” 1 See “Alexandria DSA/YDSA honchos. What was their con- Such notions were long ago demolished Order from/make Ocasio-Cortez to the ference like? Various left groups have spread by some of the most important works of checks payable to: Rescue of the Demo- illusions that the DSA is moving to the left. basic Marxism. Many of these are the kind Mundial Publications, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, cratic Party,” The In- 2 To get a copy of this pamphlet, DSA: Fronting of hard-hitting polemics that thin-skinned New York 10008, U.S.A. ternationalist (August for the Democrats, visit www.internationalist. continued on page 17 2018). org/orderhere.html. September 2018 5 more, resistance to Diem’s terror soon grew diers, who linked the Vietnam War... into a full-fledged NLF guerrilla war. genocidal war against continued from page 4 Southeast Asian peo- Internationalist photo JFK, LBJ Escalate ple to racism in the trumpeted the claim that the U.S. stood for Imperialist Terror “freedom and democracy,” while “com- armed forces and “at munism [is] ... predatory, aggressive and Taking office in 1961, Democrat John home.” One of the in need of military containment.” We noted F. Kennedy ramped up backing for the South exhibition displays the murderous hypocrisy of such attempts Vietnamese dictatorship, funneling weapons, shows an NLF poster to brainwash people in the U.S. (where the money and “military advisors.” These in- directed to black GIs, Korean War was widely unpopular) with cluded Green Beret counterinsurgency forc- stating: “The racists claims that millions of Koreans were being es that trained the U.S. puppet troops of the in the States are the killed in order to bring them “democracy.” “Army of the Republic of Vietnam” (ARVN) very same as those In Vietnam in early 1954, the Viet Minh as well as local death squads specialized in who want Negroes to decisively defeated the French at the battle murdering opponents of the regime. The fact die in Vietnam!” One of Dien Bien Phu. (The French government that the NLF was winning control of much of the murals made had turned down a U.S. offer of two atomic of the countryside, while the flamboyantly for the exhibition in- bombs to prevent this.) At the Geneva Con- corrupt Diem was increasingly detested, led cluded a poster based At the Vietnam War exhibition. ference held later that year, the imperialist Kennedy to approve Diem being bumped off on the famous state- powers pushed through a supposedly tem- in a military coup in early November 1963. ment by boxing great Muhammad Ali: “No there reflected Tet’s effect on U.S. politics: porary division of Vietnam along the 17th When Kennedy was assassinated later that Viet Cong Ever Called Me N----r.” One of it led Johnson to announce he would not parallel. While in the north capitalist rule month, his vice president Lyndon B. Johnson the items on the war’s cultural impact in run for reelection, while sectors of the U.S. was smashed (with the establishment of what took over the presidency. the U.S. is a short video juxtaposing stark bourgeoisie came to the conclusion that their Trotskyists call a bureaucratically deformed The exhibit portrayed LBJ as hav- images of the war, and of homegrown rac- side’s victory in Vietnam was highly unlikely workers state), the southern half was given ing “other things on his mind,” namely his ist oppression, with a song by Motown star and the war was bad for their long-term in- back to the defeated imperialists’ collabora- Great Society domestic legislation, in keep- Marvin Gaye based on the experiences of terests. This “bourgeois defeatism” led some tors, landlords and capitalists. Reunification ing with the liberal fairy tale of a president his brother, who “was fighting ‘for Ameri- Democratic politicians to posture as “peace” was promised through elections that would with good intentions forced into a bad war. ca’ [in Vietnam] and coming back to racism candidates. However, as discussed in the supposedly be held in 1956. This plan was Yet the reality was shown in materials in the and hostility and segregation and poverty exhibition, Johnson’s vice president Hubert abetted by the Stalinist bureaucracies mis- exhibition on the “Tonkin Gulf incident,” and struggling to get a job.” (The video can Humphrey was nominated by the Democrat- governing the USSR and China, in line with LBJ’s lying pretext for vastly escalating the be watched on line at vietnamwar.nyhistory. ic convention in Chicago, as antiwar protest- their anti-revolutionary doctrine of seek- war. After a series of U.S.-sponsored com- org/videos/whats-happening-brother.) ers outside were brutally attacked by cops. ing “socialism in one country” (their own) mando attacks and spying operations along Another display focused on students Humphrey was then defeated in the presiden- through “peaceful coexistence” with the im- the North Vietnamese coast in early 1964, living through the war in South Vietnam. tial elections by Republican Richard Nixon. perialists. The U.S. installed the dictator Ngo Johnson claimed U.S. spy ships had been A letter by an American teacher in Vietnam The section on 1968 also mentioned the as- Dinh Diem to head the puppet state of “South the victims of “aggression.” With this casus described the effects of the war on students sassinations of Martin Luther King and Rob- Vietnam” it created, canceling the promised belli (official pretext for war along the lines at a teachers college, who had become ac- ert Kennedy, as well as the Columbia Univer- elections, which Eisenhower said Ho Chi of “Remember the Alamo,” “Remember customed to the sound of artillery fire and sity strike of that year. The NYPD bloodied Minh would have won by a landslide.4 the Maine,” etc. down to today), Johnson mortars resounding through the night, and students protesting Columbia’s connections Subsequent parts of the exhibit showed got Congress to approve the Gulf of Tonkin the daily letters from family members an- with the war machine and its plan to build anti-communist propaganda from the Unit- Resolution giving him carte blanche with nouncing the death of relatives or the de- a gym in Morningside Heights, with Harlem ed States Information Agency, the State De- no need to formally declare war. struction of their homes. Unfortunately, residents relegated to a backdoor entrance. partment propaganda arm established by By 1965, Johnson had sent 200,000 the display did not include materials from The next portion of the exhibition was Eisenhower in 1954, and traced the origins troops to Vietnam, and was raining death these students themselves, let alone stu- titled “Searching for an Exit.” It described of the renewed insurgency in the South. from the sky both north and south as part dents in North Vietnam, which would have ways the U.S sought to wind down its in- This included Diem’s forcible relocation of of Operation Rolling Thunder. Three years added significant historical insight. volvement in the war and quell discontent much of South Vietnam’s rural population, later, the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam The Tet Offensive over the rising death toll of U.S. soldiers. his repression of Buddhists (his local sup- exceeded 500,000. In a detailed section on The turning point of the war was (On display were books open to consecutive porters were primarily Catholic landown- the military draft, the exhibition went out of 1968’s Tet Offensive, a coordinated assault pages showing names and photos of U.S. ers), and the onslaught he launched against its way to give the idea that it wasn’t really by NLF and Democratic Republic of Viet- soldiers killed in the space of a week, most former members of the Viet Minh who had so bad, and focused on ways people got ex- nam (North Vietnamese) forces on U.S. of them younger than 21.) In 1969, Nixon fought for independence against France. emptions (including being in college). Such positions in cities and towns in the south. began to pull troops out and changed the Despite the execution of many Viet Minh methods were inaccessible to the working- The exhibition describes the brutal retali- draft into a lottery that eliminated student veterans and the imprisonment of thousands class youth who were drafted to kill and be ation faced by the Vietnamese people, as deferments. The term “Vietnamization” was killed in this dirty imperialist war. Increas- coined by Nixon to describe the gradual 4 well as the reaction of the American pub- How the U.S. set up “South Vietnam,” with ing numbers of soldiers and sailors came out lic. This section included the part on My transfer of operations from the U.S. military the help of the very same “State Department against it, as shown in another documentary socialists” that today’s Democratic Socialists Lai that we have described above, where to the ARVN, a strategy later employed by we have shown in our study group: Sir! No of America cite (accurately) as their forebears, hundreds of civilians were murdered by the the U.S in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same Sir! The Suppressed Story of the GI Move- is discussed in “‘Democratic Socialism’ in the U.S. military. One of the most harrowing time, Nixon further escalated carpet bomb- ment to End the War in Vietnam (2005). Service of U.S. Imperialism,” in the Interna- photos was titled “The Execution,” which ings of Vietnam, and began bombing Cam- Opposition was particularly strong tionalist pamphlet DSA: Fronting for the Demo- captures the moment before South Viet- bodia and Laos as well. crats (February 2018). among African American and Latino sol- nam’s chief of National Police summarily The exhibition displayed political but- executes a member of the Viet Cong on the tons and pins showing the polarization What “Social-Imperialism” Looks Like streets of Saigon during the Tet Offensive. between supporters and opponents of the Republican senator John McCain “John McCain was an American hero, There was also a photo showing the war. Thus, some had slogans like “Victory was an imperialist war criminal notori- a man of decency and honor and a aftermath of the Viet Cong’s audacious at- in Vietnam.” Another was “Support Our ous for bombing civilians in Vietnam; friend of mine.” tack on the American Embassy in Saigon, Boys” – with reformist left groups like the war-mongering from Indochina to Af- – Senator and Democratic “socialist” in which they seized the embassy for six Socialist Workers Party then trying to spin ghanistan, Gaza, Iraq and Syria; and be- presidential contender Bernie Sanders hours. This dramatic and humiliating set- the patriotic appeal by adding “Bring Them ing an all-purpose racist reactionary. “John McCain’s legacy represents back for the U.S. imperialists pointed to- Home Now.” The pacifistic slogan “Bring “I admire President Nixon’s courage” an unparalleled example of human ward their coming defeat. Around the world, Peace to Vietnam” then got a more radi- for ordering “the mining, the block- decency and American service.... He the Tet Offensive inaugurated the series of cal spin on one button with the addition of ade, the bombing” of North Vietnam as meant so much, to so many.” mass protests and upheavals of 1968. This the words “Support the National Liberation part of his scalation of genocidal terror – Democratic congressional candidate reached a high point in the May-June events Front.” We also saw a button saying “Hunt- (which included the bombing of Hanoi’s and DSA member Alexandria Ocasio- in France that saw 10 million workers rais- er College Mobilize Against the War.” Vari- Bach Mai civilian hospital) in 1972. Cortez (25 August 2018, on her Twit- ing the red flag over the factories they oc- ous posters urged people to write their sena- – John McCain (2008) ter account). cupied in a general strike that showed the tors and representatives urging an end to the When McCain died on August 26, Remember this when you hear Sand- potential for revolution in countries of the war. Much more interesting were the photos his imperialist colleagues and would-be ers, Ocasio-Cortez & Co. praised by pseu- industrialized West together with those op- and videos about Vietnam veterans, some of colleagues fell all over themselves glo- do-socialist groups purveying what Lenin pressed and plundered by imperialism. whom had become quite radical, speaking rifying this enemy of the world’s op- called social-imperialism: socialism in The exhibition’s section on the Tet Of- out and protesting against the war. pressed. The paeans of praise included: words, imperialism in reality. fensive also included a part on the U.S. presi- The last section of the exhibition, “Af- dential elections of 1968. Materials shown termath: 1973 & Beyond,” covered some 6 Revolution CUNY Prof. Who Was Tortured by U.S. Military Speaking Out Against the U.S. War Machine Glenn Petersen is a professor of anthro- After the Ramparts1 report on CIA spy- pology in the Department of Sociology and ing came out, the CIA sort of went under- Pat Arnow Anthropology at the City University of New ground in terms of campus spying. Now they York’s Baruch College. He has been a vo- are pushing to make it more and more OK cal opponent of Baruch’s participation in the for the spy agencies to do open recruitment CIA’s Signature Schools Program and other on campus. Can you tell us more Baruch? aspects of the drive to militarize CUNY, such In terms of the president of our cam- as hiring former CIA head David Petraeus pus, Mitchel B. Wallerstein, he was Deputy and bringing the Reserve Officers Training Assistant Secretary of Defense for Coun- Corps back to some CUNY campuses. terproliferation2 Policy in the Clinton ad- Petraeus, who is no longer at CUNY, ministration. The Faculty Senate passed a was hired in 2013 to “teach” a public resolution that Baruch should get out of policy course at the Macaulay Honors this Signature Schools Program, that it was College. Before he was appointed as CIA inappropriate. We voted 21 in favor and 2 director, Army general Petraeus com- opposed to the resolution. manded U.S. forces in Afghanistan and [Professor Petersen then addressed the issue Iraq, where the Special Police Commando of the Reserve Officer Training Corps, which death squads he and his right-hand man was brought back to CUNY in 2013, a po- James Steele organized were notorious for litical decision made by the administration in torturing and “disappearing” people. response to calls by sectors of the ruling class Professor Petersen (shown speaking in 2012) has opposed drive to militarize In response to calls by sectors of the to “diversify” the military’s officer corps.] CUNY, CIA “Signature” program, citing his experiences during Vietnam War. ruling class to eliminate the “problem” of I went through this with ROTC. We There is something there. They keep a good travel-around, and I could get some ROTC’s absence from the country’s largest couldn’t get it out of City College because going back to that well. The American En- training and come back to this job.” So, I urban public university, CUNY tops brought it’s just too deeply embedded there because terprise Institute did a study about finding enlisted right after my seventeenth birthday. ROTC back to City, York and Medgar Evers of Colin Powell3 and that’s the politics of it. the proper place to reintroduce ROTC in I was still in boot camp in the summer of colleges in 2013. The American Enterprise How do you understand the connec- NYC, and CUNY was the place because of 1964 when the Gulf of Tonkin happened.5 Institute, a right-wing think tank, issued a tion of this CIA-Baruch pact to CUNY hir- our student body. Well, that’s exactly what Later, when we left Vietnam, we’re report in 2011 pushing for the military to ing David Petraeus back in 2013, and to the CIA said about Baruch – it’s the student flying over these incredibly beautiful little target the New York region, and CUNY in the reintroduction of ROTC? body. There’s certainly a pattern of CUNY islands and it’s paradise. I thought, “How particular, calling to “make restoring ROTC People were out in front of the Ma- being excavated. A rich vein of students can I find a way to live on one of these little to the Northeast and urban areas a prior- caulay Honors College protesting Petraeus – Latino students or Arabic-speaking stu- islands?” I said, “I’ll become an anthropolo- ity” (On Petraeus and ROTC, see: “David every time he went there. CUNY finally dents – who they can use. The Associated gist and I can go live on an island like that.” ‘Death Squad’ Petraeus, Out of CUNY “solved” that problem by shifting him over Press did a whole series about the NYPD When I got out [of the Navy] I got a GED, Now!” and “How the Bourgeoisie Brought to John Jay, where they drove him into the infiltrating Muslim groups on campus. went to a small state college in California, ROTC and Petraeus to CUNY,” Revolution basement so he didn’t have to go through Yes, they were spying on Muslim stu- then got a fellowship to Columbia where I No. 10, October 2013.) Early the following that. I teach a course with a psychology pro- dents at Brooklyn College and several oth- got my PhD. I spent my career working on year, the Medgar Evers College Council fessor called “War and the Arc of Human er CUNY schools.4 Pacific islands that were American colonies ousted ROTC from that campus. Experience,” and it’s about what leads peo- They did it at Baruch as well. One of taken from the Japanese in WWII, and try- Petersen’s views on these and related ple into war and what happens to them – the our graduates joined the Army to become ing to atone for having been in the war. issues were shaped by his experiences as trauma that comes out of it. We teach it at an Arabic translator. They finished basic But the CIA had a big investment in try- a former Navy flyer in Vietnam who was the Macaulay campus and it’s quite con- training and went to translator school and ing to prevent these islands from becoming tortured by the U.S. military as part of sciously portrayed as an anti-Petraeus thing. when they got there, the Army said they independent, and I was conscious that the “training to resist torture.” Petersen be- couldn’t get security clearance. And one of CIA was trying to coopt what I was doing. Fi- 1 came an active opponent of war and joined Ramparts was a New Left magazine that the reasons was that they had prayed with nally, the islands of Micronesia got indepen- other vets in throwing their medals over published an exposé in 1967 revealing that the Muslim students at Baruch. dence, and because I was here in New York the CIA was funding the National Student the White House fence in a 1971 protest. You spoke before about your time in City, because I had lived in the villages out Association, one of the largest student groups This June 19 interview with Revolution has the U.S. military during Vietnam. So, were there and spoke the language, they appointed in the U.S. at the time, and using it for U.S. been edited for publication. foreign-policy objectives. you conscripted? Can you describe the cir- me to represent them at the United Nations. 2 Counterproliferation refers to efforts by the cumstances under which you joined? So, there’s that aspect on the CIA. The I ran away from home when I was six- other is that I had to go through prisoner of How did you get involved with the fac- U.S. and other imperialist countries to pre- vent countries without nuclear weapons from teen – hundreds of miles away – lied about war training. I was trained, and I was tor- ulty opposition to the CIA-Baruch compact? obtaining them. my age and got a job. I’ve got a tenth-grade tured. They made it absolutely clear there It’s a legacy from the Vietnam War, 3 Colin Powell, a City College graduate, be- education, I’m working on an assembly that during the Korean War, American pris- my feeling about having fought in Viet- came a U.S. Army general. Under George W. line, and I’ve got no future. And I’m think- oners of war had signed all kinds of docu- nam. I’ve spent the last 50 years in one Bush, he was the Secretary of State who lied ing “OK, I can go to the military, I can have ments admitting to American use of germ, way or another trying to deal with that. A about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq as biological and chemical warfare, and they colleague stumbled upon a memo that the a pretext for launching an imperialist war that 4 These included Baruch, CCNY, Hunter, La continued on page 18 CIA put out saying it had established this killed millions and continues to this day. As an Guardia and Queens College. See, for ex- relationship with Baruch. He sent it to me, Army major during the Vietnam War, he played ample, www.cbsnews.com/news/nypd-infil- 5 This refers to the “Tonkin Gulf incident,” Lyn- and I immediately went to the Faculty Sen- a leading role in covering up the 1968 My Lai trated-muslim-student-groups-for-intel/ and don Johnson’s lying pretext for escalating the ate and the [CUNY faculty-staff] union. massacre, in which U.S. troops murdered hun- “Defend Muslim Students at CUNY,” Revo- war against Vietnam. (See “Vietnam: A His- Together we started working on it. dreds of villagers. lution No. 13 (November 2016). toric Defeat for U.S. Imperialism” in this issue.) of the events after the war and changes in ism from southern Africa to Central Ameri- workers states) against imperialist attack or eration has grown up amidst unending U.S. the U.S. that came out of it. The draft was ca. As Revolution noted in the October 2013 counterrevolution from within. “Key to this wars. The imperialists’ use of torture, chemi- eliminated in 1973 and Nixon resigned article on U.S. war crimes mentioned above, is the working people of those countries car- cal weapons and indiscriminate murder in over the Watergate scandal in 1974. This the Vietnamese fighters’ victory was “a social rying out a proletarian political revolution Vietnam has been repeated again and again, section also discussed the horrific effects revolution, without which there could be no that establishes workers democracy – like against the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan and of Agent Orange, with a touch display genuine national liberation for peoples op- the soviets (workers councils) of Lenin and so many other countries. Yet in Vietnam, so- featuring photos of Vietnamese children pressed by capitalist imperialism.” In defeat- Trotsky’s 1917 Bolshevik Revolution – and cial revolution brought the biggest capitalist with birth defects caused by Agent Orange. ing the imperialists and their local puppets, a policy of revolutionary internationalism to power on earth to defeat. We understand that Many still suffer the consequences today. our article stated, the revolution reunified the extend revolution worldwide.” capitalism’s unending wars are an inherent The exhibition did not, of course, really country as a single “workers state, albeit one The biggest thing we took away from the part of a global system of imperialist domi- address the biggest outcome of the conflict: that is bureaucratically deformed.” Salut- exhibition is what the U.S. war on Vietnam nation – one that can only be stopped through the defeat of the U.S. imperialists in Viet- ing the courageous Vietnamese fighters, we showed about the barbarism that the rulers of world-wide socialist revolution. Seeing the nam, and how this reverberated around the Trotskyists defend Vietnam (as well as the this country are willing to inflict, in order to violent and disturbing images in this exhibit world, inspiring struggles against imperial- Chinese, Cuban and North Korean deformed uphold the interests of capitalism. Our gen- reinforced that understanding. n

September 2018 7 the power of the working class, including its Immigrants... vital immigrant component, together with continued from page 1 youth looking for how to struggle effectively Ross D. Franklin-Pool/Getty Images occasion.) Tearing children away from their against all forms of oppression, it is crucial parents was part of this campaign to terror- to break from the Democratic Party and all ize immigrants, with Sessions telling Fox capitalist politicians. The Revolutionary In- News (18 June) “I hope people will get the ternationalist Youth and CUNY Internation- message.” People got the message, all right. alist Clubs work to win students and youth to On June 30, tens of thousands marched and helping build a revolutionary workers party. rallied across the U.S. demanding an end Our banners, signs and chants in the recent to the child-snatching policy and denounc- protests have included these crucial slogans, ing Immigration and Customs Enforcement calling to reunite the separated children with (I.C.E.) – the agency responsible for round- their parents and demanding: Set them free, ing up and deporting undocumented im- let them stay! Full citizenship rights for all migrants. At least 30,000 marched in New immigrants! Mobilize worker/immigrant York City, 50,000 in Chicago, a reported action to stop deportations! Smash I.C.E. 70,000 in Los Angeles. There were protests with workers revolution! in every state – over 780 in total. The June 30 marches were preceded Immigrants Kidnapped and Immigrant children held in cages at the Nogales Placement Center in by weeks of public outrage, with numerous Tortured Nogales, Arizona, June 2014. Many of best-known images showing migrant demonstrations held in U.S. cities and out- The Trump administration “justified” children in cages are from Obama’s 2014 immigration crackdown. side immigrant detention facilities along the separating families at the border as the le- ter in Manvel, Texas, psychotropic medica- reunite the families. Another 719 parents U.S.-Mexico border, as well as condemna- gal consequence of a 1997 court agreement tion, intended to treat seizures, bipolar dis- were served with deportation orders, forcing tions from Democratic politicians and even known as the Flores settlement. This estab- order, schizophrenia and other conditions, them to choose between being deported with some Republicans. So on June 20, Trump lished that the Immigration and Naturaliza- was being forcibly administered to children their children or leaving them alone in the issued an executive order “to maintain fam- tion Service (INS), I.C.E.’s predecessor, had detained there (Texas Tribune, 20 June). In U.S. And while 120 parents “waived” their ily unity” for families newly arrested at the to release children from immigration custo- addition, an investigation by ProPublica right to reunification, many were coerced border. How? By locking up entire families dy “without unnecessary delay” to a parent, (27 July) reviewed police reports concern- into doing so, or simply did not understand on military bases. Then on June 26, a fed- guardian, adult relative or an entity willing ing more than 70 of the approximately 100 what they were doing, reported the Texas eral court barred the administration from to take legal custody. This mandate evolved shelters under the purview of HHS, reveal- Tribune (26 July). Thousands of immigrant detaining or deporting parents without their into a 20-day limit on federal detention of ing many allegations of sexual abuse of im- kids are still in HHS custody, while many children, and ordered it to reunite separated immigrant families. The agreement also re- migrant youth interned there in recent years. children who are U.S. citizens have had their kids under five years old with their parents by quired that minors be held in the “least re- Here too, it’s a bipartisan story of capi- immigrant parents ripped out of their lives by July 12 and older children by July 26 – about strictive setting appropriate to the minor’s talist cruelty that didn’t start with Trump. I.C.E. under Trump’s stepped-up “internal” 2,500 children in total. However, the actual age and special needs.” The Office of Refu- Under Obama, there was “a pattern of in- immigration enforcement.1 number of separated children is much high- gee Resettlement of the Health and Human All the while the potential resumption er – nearly 4,000 since October 2016 (Re- Services Department (HHS), which “cares” timidation, harassment, physical abuse, of family separations looms ominously. The uters, 15 June), not including those arrested for “unaccompanied alien children,” includ- refusal of medical services, and improper administration has been trying to modify in March and the beginning of April 2018. ing those affected by Trump’s child separa- deportation” of children in Customs and the Flores settlement to allow for the in- And the total number of immigrant children tion policy, is required to adhere to the terms Border Protection custody, as found by an definite detention of immigrant families. On in government custody is well over 10,000 of the Flores settlement. Yet the average investigation on conditions in CBP facilities July 9, its request to lift the 20-day Flores (Washington Post, 29 May). stay for immigrant children in HHS deten- from 2009 to 2014 carried out by the Ameri- limit on family detention was denied by a Given massive indignation against the tion facilities is 56 days (San Diego Union- can Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the federal court, but the judge ruled that the jackbooted gangs in uniform terrorizing im- Tribune, 14 August), more than double the University of Chicago Law School (“Ne- government can, in some cases, make par- migrants, the slogan “Abolish I.C.E.” was limit, while some languish in HHS custody glect and Abuse of Unaccompanied Immi- ents choose between indefinite detention taken up by an increasing number of Demo- for months or years (Vox, 21 June). grant Children by U.S. Customs and Border with their children, or releasing the chil- crats seeking to round up votes in the com- The treatment immigrant children have Protection,” May 2018). Even the Depart- dren back to HHS, which would eventually ing November mid-term elections – and to received in some of these detention facili- ment of Homeland Security’s own Inspector place them with another adult. While a “le- obscure their own party’s role in repressing ties amounts to torture. Court documents General’s office reported in December 2017 gal” basis now exists for the administration immigrants. (See “Smash I.C.E. Gestapo from an October 2017 lawsuit revealed that that immigrants detained in I.C.E. facilities to begin separating families again, for the with Workers Revolution,” The Interna- children at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile suffered widespread abuse and were intimi- time being it prefers to detain families to- tionalist, 14 July.) It was Democrat Barack Center in Virginia were stripped naked, dated by guards into not filing complaints. gether indefinitely, arguing that the July 9 Obama who deported more immigrants than handcuffed, strapped to chairs, had bags put This brutality is not limited to those ruling “handicaps our ability to detain and any prior president (over 5 million, not in- over their heads, were beaten, put in soli- entering the U.S. between ports of entry, promptly remove unaccompanied alien [sic] cluding 3 million “voluntary departures,” tary confinement and called racial slurs by i.e., “illegally.” The ACLU lawsuit that re- children and family units,” thereby encour- which are not voluntary at all). To unchain guards there. At the Shiloh Treatment Cen- sulted in a court order to reunite separated families (Ms. L. v. U.S. Immigration and aging “catch and release.” (This vile, dehu- Customs Enforcement) was originally filed manizing term is what Border Patrol agents, “Chaos” and Hellish Bureaucracy on behalf of a refugee from the Democrat- Trump, et al. call the practice of releasing ic Republic of Congo, whose 7-year-old immigrant families into the U.S. while their The policy of separating migrant were then driven to La Guardia Airport daughter was stolen from her after they ar- cases go through immigration court.) parents and kids is viciously cruel – and for a flight departing after midnight. But rived at a port of entry near San Diego last The family separation policy may be the process of reuniting (some of) them when the children arrived at the airport, November, long before the “zero-tolerance out for now, but it has caused irreparable has been a bureaucratic hell. “Chaos the Cayuga personnel discovered that policy” was decreed. In another instance, harm to the children. Some kids younger Marks Effort to Reunite Separated Fami- only seven of them had been booked on CBP took a Honduran woman’s 18-month- than five years old no longer recognize their parents. Others are psychologically scarred, lies,” reported the New York Times (26 the flight.... old son away at the Brownsville, Texas port suffering from anxiety and other mental July), chronicling what some immigrant “The group was then directed to drive of entry in February. Numerous such cases health issues. One three-year-old boy “has children detained at Cayuga Center in to Westchester County Airport for a have been reported, showing that even “le- been pretending to handcuff and vaccinate Harlem were forced to go through to see gal” entry has been no guarantee against different pre-dawn flight. At that- air people around him,” while another pretends their parents. It was part of the trauma in- the separation of immigrant families. port, they learned that only two chil- to “[pat] down and [shackle] ‘migrants’ with flicted on them, within a pattern not of Since the June 26 federal court order, dren could travel. The remaining five plastic cuffs” (New York Times, 31 July). coincidental chaos but deliberate cruelty. how many children affected by the “zero- went back to Cayuga after being driv- This is the grim reality faced by many of the “Some 80 youngsters were on a list tolerance policy” have been reunited with en around in the middle of the night…. immigrant families reunited and released to be released from Cayuga Cen- their parents? The Washington Post has been “[T]he five children were told they into the U.S. with ankle bracelets as a form ters.… More than a dozen white vans keeping a running tally, stating that as of Au- could not fly because their parents had of “alternative detention” while they await had lined up outside the East Harlem gust 10, 1,992 children had been “reunited or criminal convictions, and so were not center in the evening …. But the list released.” (This number includes those who 1 eligible for reunification. But by 9 a.m. I.C.E. made 984 workplace arrests from Oc- turned out to be incorrect, Mr. Cuomo turned 18 while in custody, at which point tober 2017 to July 2018, more than five times on Thursday [July 26] … the govern- said, with many children on it not even they are handed over to I.C.E. and prosecuted the number of arrests made in the previous in Cayuga’s care. ment said it had made an error about as adults.) In late July, the Trump administra- fiscal year (October-September). See “ICE “Cayuga later received a new list with their parents, and that those five chil- tion admitted that 463 of the parents are no Steps Up Workplace Arrests of Undocument- only 14 names on it. Those children dren were cleared to fly.” longer in the country, following this up by ed Immigrants Under Trump,” Huffington saying the ACLU, not the government, should Post (25 July). 8 Revolution tion Tactic,” aclu.org, 16 December 2014). origin of some of the horrifying photos of The following year, even the Human children in cages, was opened in July 2014. Rights Council of the United Nations (itself Ina wrote that one of Obama’s new de- an imperialist den of thieves) called on the tention centers, at Dilley, Texas, was just 45 Obama administration to “halt the deten- miles from the prison camp where she and tion of immigrant families and children.” In her family were sent after their “release” fact, the court that denied Trump’s request from Tule Lake at the end of WWII. Opened to revise the Flores settlement had actually in late 2014, the vast Dilley concentration established the 20-day limit on family deten- camp was being billed as “the nation’s larg- tion in a ruling against Obama’s “no-release” est family detention center.” Ina pointed policy. Yet the Obama administration’s mas- out that Obama’s Homeland Security Sec- sive expansion of family detention centers retary Jeh Johnson used the Dilley center’s Eliot Elisofon/Time & Life Pictures Eliot Elisofon/Time went forward. A huge new center was built dedication ceremony to “announce that the in the middle of the New Mexico desert, two purpose of this facility was to deter fami- in Texas, etc. (See “The Shame of America’s lies from fleeing to the United States and to Family Detention Camps,” New York Times send a message that ‘if you come here, you Magazine, 4 February 2015.) should not expect to simply be released’.” In spring 2015, Ina visited “the euphemis- From Manzanar to McAllen – Japanese Americans being interned at Manzanar concentration camp in tically named Karnes County ‘Residential California, 1942, one of many such camps set up by Democrat FDR in WWII. The Democrats’ Real Record Center’,” another of Obama’s new family trial. And as I.C.E. continues to escalate its get immigrant youth to accept such a deal In a powerful recent essay, prominent lit- detention camps in Texas. The visit brought military-style raids, more families will be and throw their own parents, families and erary critic Michiko Kakutani wrote of how “distressing associations of my own experi- separated, and more children with undocu- friends under the bus. We say, Hell no! We her family was among the 120,000 Japanese ence as a child,” she wrote. mented parents will be left traumatized. On demand full citizenship rights for all im- Americans that Democratic icon Franklin “We too lived in a constant state of fear top of this, on November 2, Temporary Pro- migrants!” D. Roosevelt imprisoned during World War and anxiety, never knowing what our fate tective Status2 for Sudanese immigrants and Just as we warned, the Democrats’ Two, in concentration camps like Manzanar would be. We too were forced to share refugees is scheduled to expire, which may congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and and Tule Lake in California and the “Topaz our living space with strangers, line up result in yet more deportations. Chuck Schumer promptly announced a Relocation Center” in the Utah desert, where for meals, share public latrines, respond “deal” with Trump, supposedly allowing her family was held. 3 Kakutani drew chilling to roll call, and adjust to ever-changing Democrats: “Families Belong DACA recipients to stay in exchange for parallels to current events: rules and regulations with the eyes of the Together” – In Cages Democratic support for increased “border “They were described as vermin who guards constantly trained on us.” The Democrats have been posing as security” and immigration enforcement. were infesting America. They were – “I Know an American ‘Internment’ friends of immigrants as a ticket to electoral “We are not a bargaining chip,” immi- deemed a national security threat to the Camp When I See One,” www.aclu.org (27 May 2015) gains in the November midterm elections, grant activists chanted against Pelosi at an United States, rounded up and sent to in- In 2016, 22 detained asylum-seeking in which they hope to regain control of the 18 September 2017 event promoting the ternment camps…. [T]ens of thousands mothers, held for periods ranging from 272 House of Representatives. In this they are DREAM Act. Having handily played the of men, women and children were subject to 365 days at the “Berks County Residen- aided by the pseudo-socialists of the Demo- Dems and their so-called resistance, Trump to ‘removal’ because, as one government tial Facility” in Pennsylvania, began a hun- cratic Socialists of America (DSA), Interna- then spiked the announced deal. The status report put it, ‘an exact separation of the ‘sheep from the goats’ was unfeasible.’” ger strike demanding their release. They tional Socialist Organization (ISO), Socialist of DACA remains in limbo. (See box on – “I Know What Incarceration Does to sent Jeh Johnson an open letter, stating: Alternative (SAlt) and others who enthusias- page 11.) Families. It Happened to Mine,” New “We are already traumatized from our tically join with liberal Democrats by raising Then as outrage grew in the spring of York Times (13 July) countries of origin.… While here, our essentially the same slogans in an effort to 2018 against Trump’s brutal policy of kid- Kakutani’s article recalled another children have told us they sometimes push this capitalist, imperialist party to the napping immigrant children, the Democrats moving essay, by Satsuki Ina, describing consider suicide, made desperate from left. And the Dems have been at it since Sep- sought yet again to strike a pro-immigrant how she was “born behind barbed wire” confinement. The teenagers say that be- tember 2017, after Trump rescinded Deferred pose, with a range of “NGOs” (foundation- after her parents were imprisoned at Tule ing here, life makes no sense. One of our Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a funded “non-governmental organizations”) Lake. Ina’s piece was written three years children said he wanted to break the win- program that enabled hundreds of thousands and front groups organizing the June 30 ago, to condemn the new immigrant family dow to jump out and end this nightmare. of immigrant youth to get temporary suspen- “Families Belong Together” demonstrations. detention centers that the Obama adminis- On many occasions, our children ask us sions of deportation to work and study in the Protestors expressed visceral anger at the tration was opening then. In fact, the Border if we have the courage to escape. They U.S. In our leaflet “Defend DACA and All Gestapo-style assault on migrant parents and Patrol’s “central processing center for un- grab the cords that hold their ID cards and Immigrants!” (7 September 2017, reprinted children. Yet the cynical way this was being tighten them around their necks, saying accompanied children” in McAllen, Texas, in Revolution No. 14, January 2018), the channeled into a “get out the vote” drive for they want to die if they don’t get out.” – Madres de Berks, “Mothers to Home- CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Revolu- the party of deporter-in-chief Obama, Pelosi, 3 Remember this when you hear “Democratic tionary Internationalist Youth wrote: Schumer and the rest was symbolized by im- (Party) socialists” harking back to FDR and land Security: We Won’t Eat Until We “As revolutionary opponents of both capi- ages that many demonstrators carried. Some calling for a “new New Deal,” “green New Are Released,” 12 August 2016 talist parties, we warn that the Democrats of the most famous photos of children in Deal” (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), etc. This is the real legacy of the Democratic may do a deal with Trump, who fakes cages that went viral in June 2018 were from concern over ‘Dreamers,’ [beneficiaries of 2014, under the Democratic administration DACA] to ‘save’ aspects of DACA at the of Obama. The May 2018 ACLU report on I.C.E. Targets Citizens Too expense of the millions of supposedly ‘less the abuse of immigrant children in detention Think the racist immigration cops I.C.E. twice, once in 2004 and then again talented and deserving’ immigrants. The centers from 2009 to 2014 details how kids only target immigrants? Think again. in 2009 when she spent a night in jail. “The deal being floated would include some wa- were “stomped on, punched, kicked, run over tered-down version of the federal DREAM “Since 2012, ICE has released from its cus- mother of five, who cleaned houses and of- with vehicles, tazed, and forced to maintain Act in exchange for ‘increased enforce- tody more than 1,480 people after investi- fices for a living, was strip-searched and stress positions by CBP officials,” under the ment’ (I.C.E. raids and further militarizing gating their citizenship claims,” reported her anxiety medications were confiscated.” Democratic administration of Obama. the border) and intensifying the E-Verify the Los Angeles Times (27 April), noting And Sergio Carrillo, a Mexican- program used to fire undocumented work- And what do the Democrats actu- that there are “hundreds of additional cases born U.S. citizen arrested in a Home ally mean when they say “Families Belong ers. That bill, which hasn’t made it through … in which people were forced to prove Depot parking lot in Rialto, California in Together”? They mean together in family Congress in 16 years, would provide legal they are Americans and sometimes spend 2016. “When his son rushed to the down- detention. It is hardly mentioned that im- status to some undocumented youth while months or even years in detention.” town booking facility with his father’s migrant families are now being locked up to- excluding most young workers, and would Davino Watson was one of these passport and citizenship certificate, ICE be used to enlist cannon fodder for the gether in family detention centers, set up by people, a Jamaican-born U.S. citizen officers refused to consider the docu- U.S. military. The Democrats would try to Obama in Texas and the New Mexico desert. The fact that they must be released within 20 who was arrested by I.C.E. in 2008 ments.” He was held for four days, and 2 Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was set days is a thorn in the administration’s side, and detained for three and a half years. recalled how other inmates said “in here, up to allow immigrants to stay in the U.S. which is why Trump yearns for indefinite “Even after ICE realized the error … you don’t have any rights.” when some disaster hit their country of ori- federal lawyers refused to free [him ]… Such incidents show yet again how gin. The Trump administration put an end detention. But so did Obama! In 2014, his seiz[ing] on a new U.S. reading of Ja- defending immigrants is inseparable from to TPS for immigrants and refugees from El administration was sued for implementing Salvador in January, and canceled TPS for a “no-release” policy for families seeking maican law to argue Watson should be defending the rights of us all. As the ruling Haitians in November 2017. See “Los An- asylum, openly targeting them for indefinite deported because his father was not his class tries to divide and pit workers “with geles: Salvadorans Mobilize Against Cancel- detention as an “aggressive deterrence strat- legal guardian when they left” Jamaica. papers” against the “undocumented,” lation of TPS,” The Internationalist No. 51 egy” to scare people out of trying to immi- Then there’s Ada Morales, a U.S. citi- Karl Marx’s watchword is more crucial (March-April 2018) and “LET HAITIANS grate (“ACLU Sues Obama Administration zen from Guatemala who was detained by than ever: Workers of all countries, unite! STAY!” The Internationalist (January 2018). for Detaining Asylum Seekers as Intimida- September 2018 9 Party, which two-faced liberal U.S. capitalism. This is a long politicians attempt to obfus- Internationalist photo and bloody history of ruthless cate. Amid the protests against exploitation and oppression go- Trump, the very same Jeh John- ing back to the immensely prof- son joined the chorus, claiming itable trade in African slaves, that the separation of families with its deadly Middle Passage, was “just something I couldn’t laying the basis for the system do,” not long after admitting of chattel slavery that gave birth that in the Obama administra- to U.S. capitalism. And among tion “we ... expanded family slavery’s cruelest horrors was detention, which was, I freely brutal separation of families, admit, controversial” (Washing- on a massive scale. Waves of ton Post, 25 June; MSNBC, impoverished Irish immigrants, 21 June). In fact the Obama together with Chinese “coolies” administration aggressively and black workers, built the rail- fought to keep children locked roads as an engine of industrial- up, supporting the “child-care” licensing of family prisons by ization. Then came the vicious the Texas Department of Family Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. and Protective Services, a move World War One and the which sought to sidestep the backlash against the Rus- Flores ban on detaining children Internationalist contingent at June 30 march in NYC against separation of immigrant families. sian Revolution brought raids in family jails (Alternet, 11 December 2016). and interested in socialism, in order to channel wrought havoc through interventions, inva- against immigrants and radicals Contrary to what the Democrats want us them back into U.S. imperialism’s Democratic sions and “free-trade” pillage. “Seven of throughout the U.S., and in 1924, a ban on to believe, the jailing of immigrant families Party. Growing rapidly in the wake of Sand- the ten largest immigrant groups (Filipinos, Asian immigration (except from the Philip- together in I.C.E. prisons is no “alternative” ers’ “political revolution” campaign (which Salvadorans, Vietnamese, Cubans, Domini- pines, then a U.S. colony) and drastic restric- to ripping families apart. It is another of the funneled votes to Hillary Clinton), it is now cans, Koreans, and Guatemalans) come tion on entry by Jews, Italians and others ruling class’s cruel means of terrorizing im- roping youth into seeking to “revitalize” the from countries the U.S. invaded or where from Eastern and Southern Europe. During migrants, deprived of rights by the capitalist Democrats through politicians like Ocasio- it had a large military presence,” notes the the Great Depression, 300,000 Mexican and class that keeps them vulnerable in order to Cortez and Cynthia Nixon, the former Sex and New York Review of Books (16 August), Mexican American workers were deported profit from their super-exploitation.4 Revolu- the City actor challenging Andrew Cuomo in adding that the actual number is “eight – if from the U.S., and in World War II FDR in- tionary Marxists call to tear down the con- the New York gubernatorial primaries. Tailing you go back far enough to count Mexico.” terned Japanese Americans and refused asy- centration camps where they are detaining after the DSA and the candidates it promotes In Latin America, the Central Intelligence lum to Jews trying to flee Hitler’s terror. The our immigrant brothers and sisters. We say, are several smaller social-democratic groups Agency is synonymous with coups and as- Bracero Program (1942-64) brought Mexi- set them free, let them stay! and demand let such as the International Socialist Organiza- sassinations, deposing elected governments can workers in to toil in the fields, while the the refugees in! We call for full citizenship tion, the International Marxist Tendency and in favor of strongman dictators willing to vile “Operation Wetback” brought mass de- rights for all immigrants. To win even this Socialist Alternative, best known for having carry out U.S. imperialism’s diktats. In El portation of up to a million in 1954. Domini- democratic demand, we need to fight for a city council member in Seattle, Kshama Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, CIA- cans fled repression under Rafael Trujillo, the workers revolution as in the Paris Commune Sawant (who just voted to confirm the city’s trained death squads and counterinsurgency mad dictator imposed by Washington, while new chief of police!). units murdered hundreds of thousands of of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Haitians and so many others were driven (See article on next page.) Massive news coverage of Ocasio-Cor- workers, peasants and students, ripping soci- from their countries of origin by repression, tez as a rising political star and “new face of ety to pieces and generating the widespread poverty and the ravages of neocolonial re- Smash I.C.E. Gestapo Through the Democratic party” has included her iden- violence people are fleeing today. As for the gimes... The list is endless. As we come Workers Revolution tification with the “Abolish I.C.E.” slogan. MS-13 gang that Trump constantly refers to down to relatively recent times, a massive As noted above, the “Abolish I.C.E” slo- But what does she say this does and does as a pretext for insulting and threatening im- gan has been taken up by various Democratic not mean? She says that if elected (which migrants, it started in Los Angeles and spread wave of repression against people from Mus- Party politicians, many of them associated she will be, as the district is overwhelmingly to El Salvador when some of its members lim-majority countries followed 9/11 as part with the party’s Bernie Sanders wing. Sand- Democratic), she will work to replace I.C.E. were deported. of George W. Bush’s terrorist “war on terror,” ers himself, a proponent of economic nation- with a “humane agency,” while insisting that To uphold its system of exploitation, and was revved up again with Trump’s despi- alism, was hesitant to embrace the slogan, “abolishing ICE doesn’t mean get rid of our the ruling class needs organized repressive cable racist “Muslim ban.” dodging the question in a CNN interview by immigration policy” and that “we need to forces – what Karl Marx’s comrade Friedrich And now this onslaught against the saying he wanted to “create policies that deal make sure that people are, in fact, document- Engels called the “special bodies of armed most vulnerable immigrants of all. We say, with immigration in a rational way.” But af- ed,” telling CNN that “we do need to make men” that are the core of the capitalist state. Enough! “Stop the Deportations – I.C.E. Out ter being criticized by anguished supporters, sure that our borders are secure.”5 It cannot otherwise secure its property from of New York,” “Set Them Free, Let Them Sanders backpedaled (sort of) and called to Not long after Ocasio-Cortez won the working class that makes up the majority Stay,” “Ni criminales, ni ilegales, somos ob- “abolish the cruel, dysfunctional immigra- the primary, the nature of the Democrats’ of the population. This repressive apparatus reros internacionales” (Neither criminals nor tion systems we have today and pass com- “Abolish I.C.E.” call was put to an early test. is key to maintaining immigrants’ position as illegals, we are international workers) chanted prehensive immigration reform,” stating: Democrats drafted a bill to supposedly ful- pariahs who can be super-exploited, a cheap the Internationalist contingent as we marched “That will mean restructuring the agencies fill the slogan – actually, the bill was called labor force to be brought into production across the Brooklyn Bridge with thousands that enforce our immigration laws, including the “Establishing a Humane Immigration and thrown out again according to the shift- of others denouncing the child separation ICE” (@SenSanders, 3 July 2018). Eventu- Enforcement Act.” But then the Republi- ing needs of the profit system. Immigration policy. In Los Angeles our comrades raised ally, over 100 state and local officials joined can leadership said it would put the bill up detention itself is a huge industry, with op- the call to win full citizenship rights for all the “Abolish I.C.E.” call in a joint statement. for a vote in the House, at which point the erators of family detention centers receiving immigrants as they marched with “Transport Many people who chant “Abolish I.C.E.” Democrats, including the bill’s own spon- up to $298 dollars each day per person de- Workers Against Deportations”; in Portland, 6 are seeking to express a sincere revulsion sors, said they would vote against it. It was tained. In 2017 Geo Group, one of the larg- Oregon they raised the call as they worked to against the racist immigration police, and a just a ploy to round up votes in the Novem- est for-profit prison firms in the U.S., which mobilize labor against fascist provocations; desire to do something to put an end to the ber elections. In reality, there can and will has contracts with I.C.E., the U.S. Marshals in New Hampshire they brought it to the fore daily atrocities committed against immigrants. be no “humane” immigration system under and Bureau of Prisons, reported $2.26 billion in their protest against bus companies’ col- But the illusion peddled by Democratic poli- capitalism. The Democrats tacked the word in revenues. Geo’s competitor CoreCivic laboration with the immigration cops. Every- ticians amounts to replacing I.C.E. with an- “humane” onto “immigration enforcement” (formerly the Corrections Corporation of where, we link the fight to defeat the war on other immigration police agency. Among since together with the Republicans they America) reported $1.8 billion in revenue immigrants to the defense of women’s, gay, the more prominent voices is Alexandria enforce the system of exploitation based on that same year (New York Times, 10 April). lesbian and transgender rights, and to the Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic activist who private property and nation-state boundar- Civics classes have long taught that joined the Democratic Socialists of America ies. These institutions, historically entwined the U.S. is a “land of opportunity” for im- struggle for black liberation, which is cen- (DSA) after it endorsed her in the primaries with the rise of capitalism – which became a migrants, a cultural “melting pot.” But the tral to socialist revolution in this country. For for New York’s 14th Congressional District, reactionary obstacle to human progress over treatment of immigrants in this country has revolutionary Marxists, immigrants are not where in June she beat ten-term incumbent a century ago – can only be overcome in an always reflected the material basis of racist helpless victims but a vital and vibrant part Joseph Crowley. The DSA is an organization international socialist society. of the multiracial working class whose power 6 Eileen Traux, We Built the Wall: How the U.S. that recruits young people revolted by Trump can, must and will be unleashed to smash not Today, many immigrants come from Keeps Out Asylum Seekers from Mexico, Cen- 4 only I.C.E. but this whole racist system and “Super-exploitation” refers to capitalists countries where U.S. imperialism has tral America and Beyond (Verso, 2018). A 2015 squeezing out more profit by paying extra- 5 See “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the Res- report by Human Rights Now put the daily cost build a socialist society, fit for human beings. low wages (in Marxist terms, below the nor- cue of the Democratic Party,” The Interna- of detaining a family of three at $1,029 per day Then cages for migrant children will be but mal value of labor power). tionalist (August 2018). (Los Angeles Times, 23 October 2015). a memory from a distant, barbarous past. n 10 Revolution Paris Commune and Russian Revolution – Historic Gains for Immigrants The Workers’ Struggle Has No Borders: Immigrants’ Rights and Revolution Since Donald Trump took office in thumb the whole history of the Com- 1870 to January January 2017, his administration has mune, page by page, and we will find in 1871, Paris was pursued a xenophobic offensive, using it one single lesson: a strong party lead- besieged by the the anti-immigrant machinery of repres- ership is needed” (“Lessons of the Paris Prussians, who by sion built up by his predecessor, Barack Commune,” 1921). then were waging “Deporter-in-Chief” Obama. At demon- Many of the Commune’s leading a war of plunder. strations against the barbaric practice of members were immigrants. Many were The siege caused separating immigrant families at the bor- also members of the International Work- widespread famine der, members of the CUNY International- ingmen’s Association (the First Interna- and anger among ist Clubs and Revolutionary Internation- tional) such as Leo Frankel, a Hungarian the working mass- alist Youth raised the slogans “La lucha Jewish socialist who had worked to orga- es of Paris over obrera no tiene fronteras” (The workers’ nize Hungarian and German workers. He the government’s struggle has no borders) and “Full citizen- was elected to be the Commune’s head of handling of the ship rights for all immigrants,” empha- the commission of labor and exchange, war. Since much sizing that for this democratic right to be and had fought bravely on the barricades of the French army achieved, the workers and oppressed must as a member of the National Guard. Immi- was either defeated take power in a socialist revolution. This grants were highly active in the organiza- or taken captive, past school year, the CUNY International- tion and mobilization of the Parisian work- the organization ist Clubs held two forums at Hunter Col- ing class, particularly women who not only defending Paris lege presenting historical and present-day worked as nurses and at the canteens but was the National aspects of how revolutionaries fight to fought against the Versailles troops.1 Guard, which was defend immigrant rights. Club activists Among them were women like Elisa- independent of the had worked together on research projects beth Dmitrieff, a Russian-born socialist army and com- that they presented on a number of top- and co-founder of the Russian section of posed mainly of ics, including historic gains made by im- the International. She was sent to Paris by working-class men migrants in workers revolutions, specifi- Karl Marx to report on events, and with who provided their cally in the Paris Commune of 1871 and several other women published the “Ap- own weapons. the Russian Revolution of 1917, and on peal to the Women Citizens of Paris,” On 18 March concrete actions that must be taken to de- rallying them to fight for the Commune. 1871, as the regu- fend immigrants today. Sections of these Dmitrieff became the general secretary of lar army with- highly informative presentations, edited the Union des Femmes (Women’s Union), drew from Paris, for publication, are printed below. which was an organization of working- which would have class women responsible for organizing handed it over to women to help defend the Commune. An- Bismarck, a newly Historically, revolutionary Marxists other of the women revolutionaries whose formed central have fought for internationalism, under- struggle inspires us was Anne Jaclard, also committee of del- standing that the working masses of ev- a Russian immigrant and member of the egates of the Na- “The Dead of the Paris Commune Have Risen Again ery country share a common enemy – the International. She helped organize the food tional Guard took Under the Red Banner of the Soviets.” 1920 poster by capitalist class. Karl Marx and Friedrich supply of Paris and was on a committee power and ordered Vladimir Kozlinsky, part of the avant-garde art movement Engels famously wrote that the work- overseeing the education of girls. elections. The Par- that flourished in the early years of the Soviet Union. ing class “has no country,” highlighting The Paris Commune happened, as is Commune was formally declared on 28 again its only just conquered supremacy, the international character of the prole- mentioned above, in the context of the March 1871, with members of the munici- this working class must ... do away with tariat and of production under capital- Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, waged pal councils being subject to recall at any all the old repressive machinery previ- ism. Capitalist appropriation of private by Louis Napoleon III of France against moment and paid no more than a worker’s ously used against it itself. profit is national, so profits made by the North German Confederation led by wages. “Of late, the Social-Democratic phi- U.S. companies go to their U.S. capital- the Kingdom of Prussia. One of the historic This was an example of workers de- listine has once more been filled with ist owners. But capitalist production is tasks of what Marxists refer to as “bour- mocracy. The municipal council granted wholesome terror at the words: Dicta- social (involving large numbers of work- geois-democratic revolutions” was the es- full citizenship rights to all Parisians, re- torship of the Proletariat. Well and good, ers) and increasingly international. For tablishment of a national economy, which gardless of national origin. It abolished gentlemen, do you want to know what example, in many industries, products meant establishing a unified nation-state. the standing army, allowed members of this dictatorship looks like? Look at the are assembled in one country from parts Before 1871, there was no nation-state the National Guard to elect their own of- Paris Commune. That was the Dictator- ship of the Proletariat.” manufactured in others. Being the first called Germany. (Fearing the masses, the ficers, and proclaimed the separation of – “On the 20th Anniversary of the Paris truly international class in human his- bourgeoisie had stabbed the 1848 demo- church and state. Popular education was Commune” (1891) tory, the proletariat or working class has cratic revolutions in the back.) Instead made secular and teachers received sal- But, lacking a revolutionary leadership the power to unite humanity on a global there was a collection of German-speaking ary increases, with equal pay for men and to carry the revolution through to the expro- basis. And when the working class has kingdoms and principalities of which Prus- women. Workers were encouraged to form priation of the bourgeoisie by a revolution- taken power in the past, it extended dem- sia was the most powerful. Under Prussian associations to take over and operate fac- ary workers state, and isolated in Paris at a ocratic rights to all workers, regardless chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the nascent tories and workshops abandoned by their time when capitalism was still on the up- of national origin. German bourgeoisie sought to unify the owners. swing in Europe, the Commune was defeat- This manifested itself in the first German-speaking statelets from above, This was one of the most important workers revolution in history, which took through war, into a single nation-state to events in the history of the workers move- ed. Its heroic example would inspire those place in 1871 and led to the establish- compete with France and Britain. ment. The Commune made no distinction who led the victorious Russian Revolution. ment of the short-lived Paris Commune. Under Louis Napoleon III, France among citizens based on nationality – only From the Lessons of Paris to This first instance of the proletariat tak- sought to snuff out German unification. class, representing the exploited and op- the Lessons of October ing power was the result of a power When he was captured by the Prussians, the pressed, not their exploiters and oppres- vacuum in a Paris abandoned by the French bourgeoisie established the Govern- sors. It called upon the workers of Paris, As World War One approached four bourgeoisie in the midst of the Franco- ment of National Defense. From December regardless of their country of origin, to decades later, the proletariat had become Prussian War. Unfortunately, the workers even more international. Russian Marxist 1 live and fight for the Commune. Drawing lacked a clear revolutionary leadership, The heroic role of women in the Commune V.I. Lenin developed a systematic explana- struck fear into the hearts of bourgeois reaction- a crucial revolutionary lesson from its ex- a working-class party to push the revo- tion that capitalism had entered its highest aries, and is the subject of several books, in- perience, Engels later wrote: lution forward; the Commune remained cluding Unruly Women of Paris: Images of the “From the outset the Commune was stage: imperialism, characterized by the isolated and was defeated. After the suc- Commune, by Gay Gullickson (Cornell, 1996), compelled to recognize that the working export of finance capital and the subjuga- cessful Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and Women in the Paris Commune, by Caroline class … could not manage with the old tion of foreign markets by force of arms. Leon Trotsky wrote that “we can thus Eichner (Indiana University, 2004) state machine; that in order not to lose Always violent and oppressive, capitalism September 2018 11 had nonetheless once been a force for eco- all the imperialist countries to practice nomic, technological and cultural develop- “revolutionary defeatism” against “their ment. Now, it had become a reactionary own” imperialist ruling classes. They agi- obstacle to human progress, keeping whole tated for turning the imperialist war into continents in subjugation while dividing civil war, calling on the working masses of and re-dividing the world between the im- Europe to wage war on their exploiters, not perialist powers. Lenin called this epoch of each other. imperialist decay an “era of wars and revo- The centuries-old tsarist monarchy lutions.” fell in March 1917 (February by the old In the course of developing his theory Russian calendar), ending a decrepit insti- of imperialism, he argued: tution that had anchored Russia to back- “Capitalism has given rise to a special wardness. It was replaced by a Provisional form of migration of nations … dragging Government that attempted to consolidate [immigrant workers] forcibly into its or- bourgeois rule, a coalition of class collabo- bit … and [bringing] them face to face ration formed by Menshevik Social Demo- with the powerful, united, international crats, populist “Socialist Revolutionaries” class of factory owners….There can be and a handful of liberals whose role was no doubt that dire poverty alone com- to embody the sanctity of private property. pels people to abandon their native lands, But the weakness of Russia’s bour- and that the capitalists exploit immigrant geoisie and its ties with the landlords and workers in the most shameless manner.” imperialist investors, together with the – “Capitalism and Workers’ Immigra- devastation caused by the war, made Rus- tion” (29 October 1913) sia the “weakest link” in the chain of world He understood that to inspire unity capitalism. Having assimilated the lessons Meeting of metal workers at the Putilov Works in Petrograd, 1920. Putilov and forge bonds among workers of differ- of the Paris Commune, Lenin and Trotsky was the hotbed of revolution in 1917, launching a mass strike in solidarity ent countries, the defense and support of called for “All power to the soviets,” the with women garment workers that led to the overthrow of the Tsar. immigrants was critical. When World War workers councils formed after tsarism’s One broke out in 1914, the working classes fall that became powerful institutions of on the working classes of the belligerent program of world revolution, Stalin pro- of different countries were set against each workers democracy as the masses elected countries to turn imperialist war into civil claimed the nationalist, anti-revolutionary other to be used as cannon fodder for the the Bolsheviks to the soviets’ leadership. war to overthrow all the capitalist classes, dogma of “socialism in one country,” pur- imperialists. While Social Democrats in Led by Lenin and Trotsky, on 7 Novem- and in 1919 founded the Communist In- suing the illusion of “peaceful coexistence” parliament voted for war credits in many ber 1917 (25 October by the old calendar), ternational (Comintern) on the program of with the imperialists and eventually liqui- European countries, Lenin’s Bolsheviks the working class of Russia, backed by world revolution. dating the Comintern altogether. To defend and their supporters put the program of the war-weary, land-hungry peasants, took Workers and oppressed people did the USSR and the gains of October, it was internationalism – Marx’s Workers of all power in a world-shaking socialist revo- rise up in many countries, but the task of crucial to reestablish soviet democracy and countries, unite! – into practice. lution. This established the world’s first building real revolutionary parties on the Lenin’s internationalist program through In those few places where revolution- workers state. Bolshevik model had only just begun. In workers “political revolution” against the aries could use the parliamentary tribune, Under the leadership of the Bolshe- Germany, Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg bureaucracy. this meant voting against funding the im- viks, the Russian Soviet Federative So- and other revolutionaries were murdered But as Trotsky had warned, Stalinism’s perialist war, as Karl Liebknecht – who cialist Republic (RSFSR),2 enshrined full at the behest of the Social Democrats who betrayals paved the way for capitalist coun- had won fame in the world socialist move- citizenship rights for all immigrants in its took over from the Kaiser at the war’s end. terrevolution. The counterrevolutionary de- ment as a revolutionary anti-militarist – did constitution: Meanwhile, Soviet Russia was besieged struction of the USSR in 1991-92 unleashed in Germany. Insisting that “The main en- “§ 20. In consequence of the solidarity and invaded by armed forces of 14 coun- a tide of nationalist bloodletting and attacks emy is at home!” Liebknecht was drafted of the workers of all nations, the Rus- tries that helped tsarist/bourgeois forces try on workers, women and oppressed peoples sian Socialist Federated Soviet Repub- and then imprisoned for his call “Down to strangle the infant workers republic. The in one country after another. The most vul- lic grants all political rights of Russian with the war! Down with the government!” Russian workers and peasants, organized nerable sectors of the working class – such Lenin’s Bolsheviks called for workers in citizens to foreigners who live in the territory of the Russian Republic and by Trotsky in the Red Army to defend as immigrants – have found themselves are engaged in work and who belong to the revolution, finally won the Civil War more and more in capitalism’s crosshairs. the working class. The Russian Socialist (1918-20), but at a terrible cost in lost lives The internationalist program that raised Federated Soviet Republic also recog- and horrific devastation. its red banner on the Paris barricades in nizes the right of local soviets to grant Many of the most experienced and po- 1871 and brought the proletariat to power citizenship to such foreigners without litically conscious members of the working in Russia in 1917 is what we fight for to- complicated formality. class had died protecting the revolution. Rus- day. With attacks on immigrants increasing “§ 21. The Russian Socialist Federated sia’s economic backwardness and poverty, in the United States and Europe, the lessons Soviet Republic offers shelter to all for- horrifically worsened by four years of WWI, of the Paris Commune and October Revo- eigners who seek refuge from political was accentuated by the devastation caused lution show that socialist revolution is the or religious persecution. by the Civil War, imperialist intervention and only hope for liberating immigrants and all “§ 22. The Russian Socialist Federated encirclement. This isolation and acute scar- the oppressed – this is our historic task. n Soviet Republic, recognizing the equal city laid the basis for rights of all citizens, irrespective of their the consolidation of a racial or national connections, proclaims conservative, bureau- all privileges on this ground, as well as Order Now! oppression of national minorities, to be cratic caste led by An 82-page pam- contrary to the fundamental laws of the Joseph Stalin. This phlet with writings Republic.” nationalist bureau- cracy usurped po- by Marx, Engels, – Constitution of the Russian Soviet Bebel, Zetkin, Lenin Federated Socialist Republic (1918), Ar- litical power in what and Trotsky. Also ticle II: “General Provisions of the Con- Trotsky called the includes a series stitution of the Russian Socialist Feder- “political counterrev- of articles originally ated Soviet Republic” olution” of 1923-24. published in Woman The Bolsheviks also moved to put Intent on maintaining and Revolution on Louise Michel, a leader of the into practice their international call to end and deepening their feminism vs. Marx- ism, early Bolshevik Paris Commune and member of the imperialist world war through work- privileges in what ers revolution. They published the secret was now a bureau- work among women, the National Guard who fought articles from The heroically to defend the Commune treaties of Russia, Britain and France and cratically degener- exposed the criminal designs of the impe- Internationalist and on the barricades. During her trial ated workers state, much more. by the bourgeois government of rialists to carve up the Near East and re- the Stalinists moved Versailles after the Commune’s divide subjugated and colonized nations to crush (and then US$5 including shipping defeat, she boldly declared: “If you amongst themselves while pretending the murder) the Left Op- war was for “democracy.” They called let me live, I shall never stop crying position formed by Order from/make checks payable to: for revenge and l shall avenge my 2 The RSFSR of 1917 was a predecessor and Trotsky and his co- Mundial Publications, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, brothers. I have finished. If you are constituent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Re- thinkers. New York 10008, U.S.A. not cowards, kill me!” publics established in 1922. Betraying the 12 Revolution CUNY-Wide Conference in Defense of Immigrants Held at Grad Center By CUNY Internationalist Clubs English transla- The following article was published in tion. The message, The Advocate (Spring 2018), the City Uni- from the Interna- Advocate (CUNY Grad Center) versity of New York Graduate Center student tionalist Commit- newspaper, and reprinted in Marxism & Ed- tee at the National ucation No. 5 (Summer 2018), the journal of University of Mex- Class Struggle Education Workers. ico (UNAM), con- nected the defense On March 3, 80 CUNY students, of immigrants on faculty and staff members came together both sides of the with immigrant rights activists and labor border to the fight organizers for a conference in defense of against capital- immigrants. Attendees participated in in- ist repression, as tensive discussion and organizing, and the in the case of the conference included a panel aimed at cre- 43 “disappeared” ating the framework for a university-wide students from the rapid response network against the threat Ayotzinapa rural of deportations. teachers’ college. The conference opened with reports (See box on page on two recent cases of repression against immigrants. The first exemplifies the 14.) urgency of the conference: the detain- The first con- ment of Aboubacar Dembele, a prospec- ference panel was tive Bronx Community College student entitled “DACA who was detained by Immigration and and TPS: Where Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) agents on Do We Go From February 8. Dembele’s attorney, Monica Here?” Among Dula of the Legal Aid Society, told the the speakers were conference that plainclothes I.C.E. po- Janet Calvo and A representative of the Hunter College Committee to Defend Immigrants and Muslims addressing lice told Dembele, who has been in the Matías González, the conference. U.S. since the age of three, they were de- respectively a pro- taining him because his DACA (Deferred fessor and student at CUNY Law. Their permitted collusion between the NYPD ing on Muslin students at several CUNY Action for Childhood Arrivals) renewal presentations provided detailed infor- and I.C.E.. campuses, as well as other topics. Speak- was rejected after the program was re- mation on the present legal situation of The next panel was “Opposing Islam- ers from the floor noted that when CUNY scinded by Trump. Conference partici- DACA as well as legal cases in a number ophobia and the ‘Muslim Ban’.” It featured student Saira Raifee was stranded by the pants made plans to attend Dembele’s of states related to DACA. Kaitlan Rus- Naz Ahmad, staff attorney from CUNY ban in February 2017, protests by students bond hearing as well as his court appear- sell of the Hunter College Committee to CLEAR, Debbie Almontaser of the Col- and unionists highlighted her case, helping ance on April 15. The second case was Defend Immigrants and Muslims spoke lege of Staten Island and Muslim Commu- facilitate her return; and also underlined that of Juan Esteban Barreto, who was on DACA as well as the revocation of nity Network, and Chaumtoli Huq of Bor- the significant presence of workers from recently detained by I.C.E. in collusion Temporary Protected Status for Haitians ough of Manhattan Community College a number of majority-Muslim countries in with the NYPD. and Salvadorans. She warned against any and Law@theMargins. Speakers traced several sectors of the NYC working class. Greetings from activists at Latin kind of reliance on the Democrats, who, the three versions of the Trump “Muslim The third panel was “Immigrant America’s largest public university were under Obama, deported a record number bans,” noting that these built on a history Workers’ Struggles: Lessons For and At read to the conference in Spanish and in of immigrants and under de Blasio have of anti-Muslim measures long predating CUNY.” It featured Mahoma López of the the current administration. Panelists also Laundry Workers Center, as well as three spoke on the revelations of NYPD’s spy- activists from Trabajadores Internaciona- DACA: Still in Limbo The fate of the Deferred Action for cess DACA renewals but is not required Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) to accept new filings while the case is be- has hung in the balance since Trump re- ing appealed. With the confirmation of scinded the program in September 2017. Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett It was supposed to be phased out com- Kavanaugh all but assured, DACA could pletely by March 2018, leaving DACA be ruled unconstitutional within the next recipients vulnerable to deportation and six months, after the case makes its way detainment. In January, the federal gov- through the appellate courts. ernment shut down for three days as As the Democrats head toward Sam Costanza for New York Daily News York Sam Costanza for New Republicans and Democrats wrangled the November midterm elections, they over a spending bill. Republicans wanted may once again try to use the issue of funding for Trump’s border wall while DACA to gather votes. It is crucial to Democrats called for a “path to citizen- draw the lessons of what they did last ship” for DACA recipients in exchange time around, when they used it as a for beefed-up “border security.” In the “bargaining chip,” announced a “deal” end, no DACA measures were passed with Trump, and when that fell through and the government reopened. cynically kicked their so-called fight to Meanwhile the Trump administra- the curb. (See main article.) While pro- tion has been fighting a legal battle chal- fessional misleaders while once again lenging the constitutionality of DACA, preach reliance on this racist capitalist using the cynical argument that the pro- party, we fight for mass worker/immi- Internationalist contingent at June 19 rally against family separations in Union gram oversteps executive authority. On gration action. As we headlined in Revo- Square, NYC. The Committee to Defend Immigrants and Muslims calls to free August 19, a U.S. District Judge ruled that lution No. 14 (January 29018): “Defend Papadame Diop, the husband of a CCNY student, and Aboubacar Dembele, a the administration must continue to pro- DACA and All Immigrants!” prospective Bronx Community College student, both detained by I.C.E. September 2018 13 SALUDOS DESDE LA UNAM A LA CONFERENCIA EN DEFENSA DE LOS INMIGRANTES

El siguiente saludo fue leído en la que se han envalentonado con el nuevo Lo que ustedes discutirán el día de dice que defenderá a los asediados inmi- conferencia celebrada en la Universidad gobierno. Pero las familias trabajadoras hoy es muy importante para los traba- grantes mexicanos en el norte, realiza re- de la Ciudad de Nueva York. siguen con particular urgencia las luchas jadores y los pobres en México. Es de vital dadas en contra de inmigrantes de otras 3 de marzo de 2018 para resistir los ataques. La conexión en- importancia discutir no sólo cómo resistir, nacionalidades. En las últimas semanas tre las familias trabajadoras en uno y otro sino también cómo derrotar la andanada el número de inmigrantes centroameri- Compañeros y compañeras, lado de la frontera es bien real. El futuro antiinmigrante producto de los políticos canos, caribeños e incluso africanos de- Desde la mayor universidad pública de los de un lado depende estrechamente burgueses norteamericanos de todo signo. tenidos y deportados por la migra mexi- de América Latina, la Universidad Na- cional Autónoma de México, enviamos del de los del otro. Como marxistas revolucionarios sabemos cana se ha multiplicado. Para muchos de saludos solidarios a la Conferencia de Muchos de los que migran de México que hay un poder social capaz de derrotar los que abandonan su país y se embarcan activistas de la City University of New a Estados Unidos provienen de familias el ataque patronal: se trata del poder de en el peligroso tránsito en La Bestia, York en defensa de los inmigrantes. campesinas e indígenas que en el marco la clase obrera, que es la que hace que el atravesando grandes extensiones a pie y Las luchas en defensa de los in- del TLCAN de rapiña imperialista contra sistema capitalista funcione y que puede, siempre bajo el peligro de ser capturados migrantes en Estados Unidos son tal México han perdido sus tierras o están por eso mismo, pararlo en seco. La clase por la migra y por bandas criminales, es vez el tema de las noticias internacio- imposibilitados para hacerlas producir. obrera norteamericana es un gigante mul- de vital importancia contar también en nales al que mayor seguimiento se da De este vasto sector empobrecido por las tirracial y multiétnico cuya movilización este país con derechos plenos de ciu- en México. Los noticieros de radio y políticas de los patrones mexicanos que es la clave para defender a los inmigrantes dadanía. La defensa de los inmigrantes televisión y los periódicos suelen cubrir ofrecen ante el altar del “libre comercio” y sus familias. ¡Todos los inmigrantes de- exige la movilización internacional –e con detalle los ataques antiinmigrantes: la miseria de los trabajadores mexicanos ben tener derechos plenos de ciudadanía! internacionalista– de los trabajadores de las espeluznantes redadas de la policía provienen nuestros compañeros estudi- México no es sólo un gran “expulsor” México y EE.UU. del ICE, las constantes provocaciones antes normalistas de Ayotzinapa, que en de migrantes, sino que es también un país Con esta convicción, les enviamos y amenazas lanzadas por el presidente septiembre de 2014 fueron atacados bru- de tránsito de migrantes que desde diver- saludos revolucionarios, esperando es- Donald Trump, sus funcionarios de talmente por la policía en Guerrero, y que sos lugares del mundo pretenden llegar a cuchar de ustedes de vuelta. gobierno y los racistas antiinmigrantes hasta el momento siguen “desaparecidos”. EE.UU. El gobierno mexicano, mientras Comité Internacionalista de la UNAM FROM THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MEXICO: GREETINGS TO THE CUNY-WIDE CONFERENCE IN DEFENSE OF IMMIGRANTS (Translation) The following greetings were read new administration. But it is with particular this day remain “disappeared.” that the Mexican government says it will at the conference held at the CUNY Grad urgency that working-class families follow The things that you will be discussing defend besieged Mexican immigrants in Center. the struggles to resist these attacks. The con- today are very important for the workers the North, it carries out raids against im- March 3, 2018 nection between working-class families on and poor people of Mexico. It is of vital migrants of other nationalities here. Over one side of the border and on the other is importance to discuss not only how to re- the past weeks, the number of Central Compañeros and compañeras: very real. The future of those on one side sist, but how to defeat the anti-immigrant American, Caribbean and even African From the largest public university closely depends on the future of those on the onslaught that is the product of the North immigrants detained and deported by the in Latin America, the National Autono- mous University of Mexico, we send other side. American bourgeois politicians of every Mexican “Migra” (immigration police) has greetings of solidarity to the conference Many of those who migrate from Mex- kind. As revolutionary Marxists, we know multiplied. For many of those who leave of City University of New York activists ico to the United States come from peas- that there is a social power that is able to de- their countries and set out on the dangerous in defense of immigrants. ant and indigenous families, who, within feat the attack by the employing class: that voyage on what is known as “La Bestia” Of all international news topics, NAFTA’s framework of imperialist pillage is the power of the working class, which (the Beast), going long distances by foot struggles in defense of immigrants in against Mexico, have lost their land or find makes everything in the capitalist system and always facing the risk of capture by the United States may be the one that re- that it is now impossible for their land to be run, and which can, for that reason, bring the Migra or criminal bands, it is of vital ceives the most attention here in Mexico. productive. This vast sector is impoverished it all to a halt. The United States working importance to have full citizenship rights Radio and TV news programs, as well as by the policies of the Mexican bosses, who class is a multiracial and multiethnic giant here in this country as well. The defense the daily papers, provide detailed cover- offer up the poverty of the Mexican workers whose mobilization is the key to defend- of immigrants demands the international age about the anti-immigrant attacks: the on the altar of so-called free trade. That is ing immigrants and their families. All im- – and internationalist – mobilization of the horrific raids by the ICE police, the con- the sector that our compañeros of the Ayo- migrants must have full citizenship rights! workers of Mexico and the United States. stant provocations and threats issued by tzinapa rural teachers college come from. Mexico is not only an enormous “expel- It is with this conviction that we President Donald Trump, by his govern- These are the Ayotzinapa students who were ler” of migrants; it is also a country of transit send you revolutionary greetings, hoping ment officials and by anti-immigrant rac- brutally attacked by the police in the state for migrants from different parts of the world to hear from you in return. ists who have been emboldened by the of Guerrero in September 2014, and who to seeking to reach the U.S. At the same time UNAM Internationalist Committee les Clasistas (Class Struggle International class that makes NYC run. Campbell stated that the tasks of such wide rapid response network. At the March Workers). The panelists spoke powerful- The final panel was called “Building a network include alerting students, faculty 3 Grad Center conference, it was noted that ly about their experiences in the restau- a CUNY-Wide Network.” Marjorie Stam- and staff of any I.C.E. presence on or near a letter sent by the CUNY Sanctuary Com- rant, garment, taxi and domestic-worker berg, public school teacher, United Federa- CUNY campuses, and systematically lay- mittee resulted in Kingsborough Communi- sectors, and their activity in organizing tion of Teachers delegate and member of ing the basis to “mobilize students, faculty ty College officially eliminating restrictions campaigns at the Hot and Crusty bakery, Class Struggle Education Workers, talked and workers” to actually block attempted it had applied to undocumented students B&H Photo, Liberato Restaurant, and about the determination of NYC teachers deportations, and “shut down CUNY receiving grants from the College Founda- in solidarity with Ayotzinapa. Particular to stand up against any threats by the immi- schools in response to a deportation or tion. This was cited as a small but relevant emphasis was given to connecting immi- gration police against their students or the detainment.” She emphasized that this is example of organizing at CUNY to fight all grant rights struggles to a working-class students’ family members. Maeve Camp- counterposed to illusions of collaboration kinds of anti-immigrant measures. strategy for uprooting women’s oppres- bell, a CUNY Internationalist Club activist with the administration, and some head- Organizers of the March 3 confer- sion, which, as one of the TIC speakers who chairs the Committee to Defend Im- way was made in building this network. ence expressed the hope that partici- stressed, “falls with triple force on im- migrants and Muslims at Hunter College, The conference was called by the pants will return to their campuses with migrant working women.” During the made the case for building a rapid response CUNY Sanctuary Committee, which has redoubled dedication to the ongoing discussion, conference participants em- network throughout CUNY, and cited re- been meeting since early 2017 at the Profes- work of organizing in defense of immi- phasized the need for CUNY activists to cent examples of direct action against de- sional Staff Congress union hall. Bringing grants and the rights of us all. To get in- “break with ivory-tower approaches” and portations from several parts of the U.S., together student and union activists from volved in these efforts, please write to: connect up with the living struggles of the as well as the “Transport Workers Against across the City University, these meetings Committeetodefendimmigrants@gmail. multinational, largely immigrant working Deportations” in Los Angeles. have worked towards building a university- com n

14 Revolution PL, from Stalin to Obama: “Revolutionary” Reformism By Maeve elected, Challenge Since Trump’s election, groups like the (10 December Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) 2008) ran a front- have capitalized on widespread revulsion page headline ac- at the Republican president’s racism, xeno- curately blaring: phobia and sexism, attracting thousands of “RULERS TO youth looking for an alternative to main- OBAMA: SELL stream capitalist politics. But this “alterna- WAR EXPAND tive” has – as we warned – been shown yet WAR RECRUIT again to mean harnessing these youth to FOR WAR.” Yet the Democratic Party.1 what did Challenge Some youth rightly repelled by the readers find when abject reformism of the DSA and groups they turned to page tailing them, like the International Social- 4 of the very same ist Organization (ISO), Socialist Alterna- issue? In a story tive (SAlt) and others, find it refreshing to on the strike by encounter a group that talks about revolu- Stella D’Oro bak- tion and is not afraid to utter the dreaded ery workers in the “c-word:” communism. The Progressive Bronx, it praised Labor Party (PLP, generally known as PL) the way a PLer put seems to fit that bill, claiming to build “a forward a support revolutionary movement for communism.” resolution in his In an article about the June 30 “Families Service Employ- Belong Together” marches against Trump’s ees International child-snatching operation at the border, in Union local. After its newspaper Challenge (13 July), PL ac- noting, “The SEIU curately wrote that “the main message of the leadership had march was to vote Democratic” and claimed spent the previous that PL “reject[s] the Democratic Party’s hour and a half ex- Trotskyist press denounced Stalin’s murderous purge of Bolshevik Central Committee of 1917 plan to co-opt working-class anger.” tolling the virtues that led the October Revolution. Yet an acid test for genuine revolutionar- of the Obama elec- ies is the unity of words and deeds. Does PL’s toral campaign,” Challenge rhapsodized: it’s just standard-issue opportunism. Against this, the co-leader with Lenin of the political activity actually match its revolu- Russian Revolution and founder of the Red “The PLP delegate introducing the Stella For Revisionists, tionary-sounding rhetoric? The short answer D’Oro resolution had been in Pennsyl- Army, Leon Trotsky, formed the “Left Oppo- is: no. PL’s politics operate at two levels: 1) vania with the Obama campaign work- History Is an Enemy sition.” Defending the gains of October and claiming to be more communist than anyone ing to build ties with co-workers and But you wouldn’t learn about any of the Soviet workers state, the Left Opposition ever (what did Marx or Lenin know?), while other union delegates and to expose the this from PL today, which buries such in- fought to uphold Lenin’s program of interna- 2) “uniting” endlessly with pro-capitalist deadend of building capitalism to fight convenient truths in the tradition of “The tional socialist revolution. Against this, Sta- union bureaucrats and tailing existing (bour- racism. He prefaced the resolution by Stalin School of Falsification.” Progressive lin’s anti-revolutionary, revisionist doctrine geois) consciousness. The first level serves to stating that what struck him most during Labor originated in 1962 as a left split from of “socialism in country” meant sacrificing justify and prettify the second one, where the his time with the Obama campaign was the Soviet-line Communist Party USA. revolutions abroad on the altar of “unity” real day-to-day action occurs. when he saw a white working-class fam- Under the impact of the Cuban Revolu- with “democratic” imperialists like arch Bol- We see this at the City University of ily in Chester, PA pulling up in a station tion and the deepening divide between Mao shevik-hater Winston Churchill and Demo- New York, where PL supporters have been wagon to a black family’s home to spend Zedong’s China and Nikita Khrushchev’s cratic imperialist icon Franklin D. Roosevelt. an organic part of the “New Caucus” that the day together.” USSR, it sought a more militant and radical Thus Trotsky and his supporters posed has run the faculty-staff union, the Profes- This was supposed to be a heart-warm- path. Long story short, soon enough this led a fundamental challenge to the Stalinist bu- sional Staff Congress (PSC), since 2000. ing anecdote of “unity” on the campaign it to collide with the limits of Stalinist ide- reaucracy, whose privileges derived from its Like the rest of the U.S. labor bureaucra- trail, justifying the “tactic” of “uniting with” ology and get branded by Mao loyalists as role as a parasitic caste that usurped politi- cy, the “progressives” of the New Caucus the “masses” being recruited for imperialist “Trotskyites in disguise.” Insisting that no, cal power from the working class, and that regularly turn out the vote for the Demo- war via Obama’s “Hope and Change” road- it was more Stalinist than Stalin, PL kept lived off the collectivized economy that was cratic Party, chaining labor to this party of show. And it’s all supposed to wind up fine re-revising its own “revolutionary” brand a key gain of the revolution. Intransigently U.S. imperialism. Meanwhile it is the New with the feel-good punch line, “He [the PLP of Stalinist reformism, which has led to defending the Soviet workers state and the Caucus that sells out adjuncts and others in delegate] remarked: ‘Change comes from the contortions (or political split personal- gains of October, the Left Opposition, and CUNY’s “contingent majority” with each the workers, not from the top.’” There’s ity) described above. As of last count, it has the Fourth International Trotsky founded as contract it negotiates. nothing remotely communist about all this, gone through four fundamental revisions of a result of the titanic struggles of the 1930s, A striking example of how the two faces its programmatic mani- called for workers political revolution in the of PL’s idiosyncratic form of Stalinism are festo, now called “Road Soviet Union to overthrow the Stalinist bu- shown was its response to the 2008 presiden- to Revolution IV.” reaucracy, reinstate workers democracy and tial campaign of Barack Obama. Echoing the Air-brushing out fight to spread the revolution, which could rhetoric of Stalin’s “Third Period” circa 1933, the past is a Stalinist not survive in isolation. (This prediction it claimed the mainstream Democrat Obama tradition going back to was proven true in 1991, when the USSR represented “fascism.” Yet Obama’s presi- Joseph Stalin himself, fell to counterrevolution after decades of dential run was highly popular among youth leader of the conserva- bureaucratic degeneration.) and workers PL wanted to court, so PL called tive, nationalist, bureau- So why did Stalin need lies, cover-ups to “actively participate in [his] campaign” cratic caste that usurped and fabrications on such a massive scale, (Challenge, 26 March 2008). This (unlike political power in the linking his name so indelibly with the vil- the “fascism” claim) was not just rhetoric: PL Soviet Union after the est techniques of falsification? These be- boasted of its members going out to round up Civil War of 1918-20.2 came Stalin’s stock-in-trade as weapons of the political counterrevolution he headed votes for the capitalist politician Obama, who 2 A book that shows this would go on to become U.S. imperialism’s vividly is David King’s in the privileged bureaucracy’s attempt to war commander and deporter-in-chief. The Commissar Vanish- blot out the program, methods – and people For example, right after Obama was es: The Falsification of – who led the Bolshevik Revolution. This 1 See “Democratic (Party) Socialism Gets Mil- Photographs and Art in culminated in the infamous Moscow Tri- lennial Makeover,” on page 5 and “Alexandria PL campaigned for Obama in 2008, despite noting Stalin’s Russia (Canon- Photography and Film Exhibit,” Revolution Ocasio-Cortez to the Rescue of the Democrat- (see above) that capitalist rulers used him to put a gate, 1997). Also see No. 12 (March 2016). For genuine communists, ic Party,” The Internationalist (August 2018). new face on imperialist war. “Visiting the Early Soviet historical truth is a weapon in the class struggle! September 2018 15 Bolsheviks, eventually becoming Stalin’s at- ciety could be created through the triumph morally, and intellectually, still stamped with torney general.) of abstract ideas of justice and freedom, the birthmarks of the old society from whose “TROTSKY THE REAL ENEMY,” thereby taking liberal idealism to a radical womb it comes.” Marx continued: declared the New York Times (23 August conclusion. No, wrote Marx and Engels in “In a higher phase of communist society, 1936) during the Moscow Trials, noting their pioneering work The German Ideology after the enslaving subordination of the that the murderous frame-ups were “a (1845-46), “‘Liberation’ is an historical and individual to the division of labor, and clean sweep of the men who sat closest not a mental act, and it is brought about by with it also the antithesis between men- in Lenin’s counsels. In their place remain historical conditions,” above all the “devel- tal and physical labor, has vanished, after intensely practical, realistic, iron-willed opment of industry” and productive forces. labor has become not only a livelihood executives who never let a theory inter- This makes it possible, for the first time, to but life’s prime want, after the productive forces have increased with the all-round fere with a condition.” Like so many oth- eliminate material scarcity (the basis for so- development of the individual, and all the ers who had beat the drums against the cial classes). This means using technology springs of co-operative wealth flow more “Bolshevik menace” since 1917 – such as to radically reduce the amount of human la- abundantly – only then can the narrow bor time needed for production, and to pro- imperialist mass murderer Churchill, who horizon of bourgeois law be left behind infamously called to “strangle the Bolshe- vide abundance for everyone, everywhere. in its entirety and society inscribe on its vik baby in its cradle” during the Russian Without this “development of productive New York Times (23 August 1936) at banners: From each according to his abil- Civil War – the Times praised the “practi- forces” on a “world-historical, instead of height of the Moscow Trials. ity, to each according to his needs!” cal, realistic” standpoint of Stalin and his merely local” basis, they stressed, “scarcity Not for nothing did Lenin highlight als of 1936-38, part of the massive purges followers. Why? Because they understood would just become general, the need-driv- this famous passage in State and Revo- against the revolutionary generation of Oc- this was counterposed to the “theory” and en struggle over necessities would recom- lution, as part of his work of unearthing tober. As noted in the Internationalist pam- program of world socialist revolution, on mence, and all the old crap would inevitably Marx’s real ideas from the pile of rubbish phlet What Is Trotskyism? (2012, reprint- the basis of which Lenin and Trotsky had return” (Marx and Engels’ emphasis). heaped up to obscure them by the social- ing the 1973 exposé “The Stalinist School led the Soviet workers to power. These ideas were further developed in democratic “revisionists” of the day. of Falsification Revisited”), Stalin framed Why does PL scrape the crusted filth classics of Marxism ranging from Marx’s up and wiped out “virtually the entire of Moscow Trials slanders from the trash Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) What It Comes Down to in Bolshevik Central Committee of 1917,” cans of Stalinism and endlessly recycle to Engels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scien- Real Life including all the remaining members of these completely discredited lies? Because tific (1880) to Lenin’s State and Revolution Today, PL’s more-communist-than- Lenin’s Political Bureau except himself. He it cannot politically answer the actual (1917) and “Economics and Politics in the Marx posturing is more than a little tired, “purge[d] the entire leadership of the army” program of genuine Bolshevism, which Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” as it plods endlessly along behind “pro- (over 30,000 officers), decapitating the Red Trotsky and his comrades died to defend. (1919). If they want to be communists, radi- gressive” union bureaucrats, church min- Army founded by Trotsky just as World cal youth drawn to PL have the duty to read isters and one reformist “movement” after War Two was looming, posing a deadly Liberal Idealism in these works for themselves. There they will another. It still uses r-r-revolutionary rheto- threat to the USSR. And today Stalin’s Communist Costume find that what the founders of communism ric as a cover for this reality. remaining apologists (like lunatic-fringe In a political dead end for decades, PL’s wrote is what Trotsky defended, against the PL’s year-in, year-out modus operandi falsifier Grover Furr, whose ravings are claim to fame is the “discovery” that Marx, nationalist revisionism of Stalin’s “social- – endless “left-center coalitions” with pro- peddled by PL) have the chutzpah to claim Engels and Lenin were dead wrong about ism in one country” dogma at the cost of his Democratic bureaucrats – has real conse- that Trotsky was the counterrevolutionary?! socialism, and that this has been the basic life, in indispensable works like The Revo- quences in the real world. (See accompa- Rebooting the Moscow Trials problem besetting the communist move- lution Betrayed (1936). nying box.) This spring, PL published a throwback ment ever since. Thus PL says that it is and Marx and Engels held that proletarian Most of those drawn to PL over the to the Moscow Trials, a string of stale slan- has always been both possible and neces- revolution would establish a workers state years have sincerely wanted to fight for com- ders titled “Trotsky: Staunch Anticommu- sary to jump straight over the “socialist” or (dictatorship of the proletariat), unchaining munism, and many have shown themselves nist” (Challenge, 6 April). As usual, this re- “lower phase” of building a communist so- production from capitalist property relations capable of courage and dedication. But the peated and recycled the standard old Stalinist ciety (as the founders of Marxism described and using proletarian democracy to plan the contradiction with its daily reformist prac- litany of lies, distortions, and truly nauseat- it) – and straight into full communism. All economy in the interest of human needs. As tice is a breeding ground for demoralization. ing justifications for the anti-revolutionary that needs to occur, says PL, is for everyone emphasized in Engels’ “Principles of Com- The anti-Marxist “straight-to-communism slaughter of Bolsheviks through which Stalin to understand this idea – and join PL. munism” (1847), this could not take place theory” is a consoling daydream for some, sought to gain the “friendship” of imperialist This is not Marxism but liberal ideal- “in one country alone.” The dictatorship of cynical window-dressing for others. None leaders. Glorying in the extermination of the ism – according to which ideas are the basis the proletariat would be a period of transition can find a real road to communism without heroic generation that had ripped one sixth of of material reality (so convince good people overcoming the “old crap” accumulated on coming to terms with the truth about Stalin- the world from capitalism’s talons, bourgeois of good ideas and you’re set) – in “commu- the basis of scarcity since the dawn of class ism, and investigating the genuine Bolshe- leaders fawned and cooed over Stalin’s anti- nist” costume. But Marx and Engels called society, and laying the material basis for a vik tradition that Trotsky defended. This is Bolshevik killing spree. their historical materialist program for classless and stateless socialist society. This upheld today by the Internationalist Group/ For a sense of this, look up the hit Hol- communist revolution “scientific socialism” would still, Marx explained in “Critique of Revolutionary Internationalist Youth, which lywood movie, Mission to Moscow (1943), for a reason. Before them came the “utopian the Gotha Programme,” only be the first or fights to put the communist program of based on a book by FDR’s former ambassa- socialists,” who thought an egalitarian so- lower phase of communism, “economically, Marx, Lenin and Trotsky into practice. n dor to the USSR glorifying the Moscow Tri- als. The U.S. Stalinists, then busy enforcing the “no-strike pledge” for Roosevelt, loved Chicago, NYC: Opportunism in Practice the film – in contrast to the documentaryTsar PL’s role in the CUNY union bureau- strategy,’ ‘develop a political strategy,’ and in 2013, CORE participated in drawing up to Lenin, which they picketed when it opened cracy is writ large in the Chicago Teach- similar meaningless phrases. They’re go- and backing a terrible education “reform” in New York in 1937 because it showed real ers Union (CTU). There, PL helped build ing up against [Education Secretary and bill in the Illinois Senate, which gutted the footage of the October Revolution and its the “Caucus of Rank and File Educators” ex-mayor] Arne Duncan’s hand-picked central leaders, Lenin and Trotsky. right to strike and attacked seniority, as well (CORE), headed by pro-Democratic bu- successor, in Barack Obama’s hometown. Students at CUNY and elsewhere can as other hard-won rights. reaucrats. In 2010, CORE won elections Is the CTU membership ready for the blast lean quite a bit by checking out how the New And In New York City, CORE’s sister to the CTU leadership. Challenge (7 July they are going to get accusing them of self- York Times, voice of imperialist liberalism, organization, the Movement of Rank-and- 2010) boasted that “PLP members have ishly sacrificing kids’ education and other raved and ranted against “Lenine and Trotz- hogwash straight from the White House?” File Educators (MORE): been active in the CORE caucus since its ky” during and after the 1917 revolution. One “grotesquely refused to support an beginning two years ago.” – “Obama, Democrats Spearhead Teach- of the favorite smears it found “fit to print” August 2014 march against the police At the time, the Class Struggle Edu- er-Bashing, Union-Busting Corporate as good coin, against the Bolshevik leaders, murder of Eric Garner on Staten Island. cation Workers (a class-struggle union Education ‘Reform’,” The Internation- was the tsarist calumny that they were “Ger- Instead, it scandalously called to ‘unite’ tendency in solidarity with the Interna- alist No. 31 (Summer 2010) man agents.” This was the real precedent for In contrast, the CSEW insisted that “only with ‘our brother and sister officers’! the grotesque claims that Stalin was making tionalist Group) wrote: (As in Chicago, the ISO, Socialist Al- “CORE … and similar groups in other class-struggle unionism that openly fights in the Moscow Trials. In fact the prosecutor ternative, Progressive Labor and other unions all have pretty much the same against capitalism can defeat the class war on in the trials was Andrei Vyshinsky, who as left groups are active in MORE.) In program. They basically oppose the workers and oppressed.” In 2012, CORE led a Menshevik official of the capitalist Provi- contrast CSEW marched with a contin- leadership’s sellouts and want to go back a strike of 30,000 teachers and school per- sional Government in 1917 had signed an gent, calling to ‘Mobilize Labor/Black/ to the trade-union reformism of the past. sonnel, a battle against corporate education order for Lenin’s arrest on charges of being a CORE’s election platform consisted of “reform” spearheaded by the Democrats. But Immigrant Protest Nationwide Against “German spy,” and then gone on to side with things like ‘get members on board with while the eight-day strike was huge, the sell- Racist Police Terror’.” the White (counterrevolutionary) armies in a common strategy,’ ‘mobilize the union out contract pushed by the union tops was a – “Chicago: ‘16 Shots, 400 Days’,” The the Civil War against Trotsky’s Red Army. against budget cuts,’ ‘develop a legal disaster, caving in on every key point. Then Internationalist (January 2016) (After the Reds won, Vyshinsky joined the 16 Revolution YDSA Con... continued from page 5 SAlt’s Sawant Backs Seattle’s Top Cop pseudo-socialists falsely label “sectarian.” In these works, the founders of the Marxist A “socialist” voting to support the tive Oppositionists, Past and Present,” The repression with the claim that since Best is movement unmasked reformism: the idea chief of police? Yes, it just happened in Se- Internationalist No. 52, May-June 2018.) African American, Sawant’s support was that the capitalist system, and the capitalist attle, Washington, when city council mem- Kshama Sawant is SAlt’s political su- “a vote of solidarity with my black and state that protects it, can be reformed away. ber Kshama Sawant of Socialist Alterna- perstar who gave a “socialist welcome to brown fellow community members” (Se- They emphasized that even to wrest actual tive (SAlt) “stunned” observers by voting Bernie Sanders” when he campaigned in attle City Council Insight, 13 August). reforms from the exploiters, the workers on August 13 to confirm the city’s new Seattle (promoting a revival of FDR’s New No, Sawant’s vote was a pledge of al- must rely on their own class power and un- chief of police. As capitalism’s guardians Deal on the anniversary of Social Security). legiance to the racist capitalist state. Since derstand that any reforms can be taken away in blue murder black and Latino people ev- Her alliances with local Democrats have ghettos and barrios across the country (as we vividly see today) unless and until the ery day, this shows how low fake-socialist caused unease among some SAlt members, erupted against racist police terror in the proletariat takes power into its own hands in groups are willing to go as they immerse but the group is determined to move further 1960s, the ruling class has allowed some a socialist revolution. themselves in bourgeois politics. and further into Democratic Party terrain. black faces in high places, insultingly hop- Anyone who really wants to fight for One of the opportunist organiza- As a badge of social-democrats’ aspiration ing this could piece off the black popula- socialism should familiarize themselves tions most avidly purveying “Sanders to administer the capitalist state, SAlt pre- tion that continues to face cop terror. This with these basic works. In Critique of the socialism,” SAlt has faced big problems tends that cops are “workers in uniform.” racist repression goes on today, regardless Gotha Programme (1875), Karl Marx ex- with the growth of the Democratic So- Sawant already praised the process of hiring of whether the person heading up the in- plained that talk of “fair distribution” was cialists of America. Hyping the Vermont the previous police chief, Kathleen O’Toole, stitution enforcing it is black, a woman, or no more than bourgeois ideology presented senator’s “political revolution” for Dem- back in 2014, saying it was “positive ... that both. Just look at Baltimore, where there in “socialist” guise. Friedrich Engels’ Ori- ocratic renewal was supposed to help it a woman will be at the head of what has was a black woman mayor and black po- gin of the Family, Private Property and the hit the big time, but it was the DSA that been and still is a male-dominated bastion,” lice chief, and almost half the cops on the State (1884) described the rise of the state, reaped the benefits, while SAlt has been and calling the new chief’s call for a “tiered force were black, when the police mur- reflecting the irreconcilability of counter- left in the dust. This has meant increas- approach for policing protests” a “welcome der of Freddie Gray shook the city and posed classes, as the “special bodies of ing upheaval, with chunks of the organi- change” (sawant.seattle.gov, 23 June 2014). the country. As members of the CUNY armed men” protecting the property and zation decamping to the DSA. Now Sawant has taken the next step. Internationalist Clubs and Revolutionary interests of the ruling propertied class. Of In contrast, some members repelled When O’Toole stepped down last year, she Internationalist Youth chanted in protests enormous importance was his discussion by SAlt’s “Bernie turn” have sought to un- was replaced on an interim basis by Carmen against the racist police murders of Fred- of how the rise of private property was inti- derstand the roots of its opportunism. This Best, a 26-year veteran of the Seattle PD, who die Gray, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Phi- mately linked to women’s subjugation, and led former leaders of its New Hampshire was then confirmed for the top cop job at the lando Castile and so many others: Only what this means today for a real program to branch to investigate the politics of the In- August 13 city council meeting. “Stunning revolution can bring justice! Part of achieve women’s emancipation.3 ternationalist Group, and fuse with the IG the crowd, Councilmember Kshama Sawant building the party to lead that revolution Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolu- in June. (See “Class Struggle Education voted ‘yes’ in support of Best,” reported KO- is relentless exposure of the opportunists tion (1900) ridiculed fantasies of “turning League Fuses with Internationalist Group” MOnews.com. Sawant justified her backing that sully the word “socialism” with their the sea of capitalist bitterness into a sea of and “An Open Letter to Socialist Alterna- of Best to become the chief of capitalist cop obeisance to the bourgeoisie. n socialist sweetness, by progressively pour- ing into it bottles of social reformist lemon- stead “break up, smash” the bourgeois state was crucial to defend the gains of the October In contrast to those who actually wanted ade.” No reforms can break down the wall and create its own, workers state. Revolution from capitalist counterrevolution. to talk politics, some did their best to merit between capitalism and socialism, Luxem- Reformism is a political program which The Trotskyists’ defense of the degenerated/ the “Bernie bro” sobriquet, or what might be burg emphasized; only the “hammer blow upholds the existing, bourgeois state and the deformed workers states is highlighted by the called frat-style social democracy. More than of revolution ... the conquest of political property relations that state exists to defend. fact that the collectivized economies, despite a few claimed “I can’t read” when offered lit- power by the proletariat,” can do that. One Hence the derisive DSA claims about the gross bureaucratic mismanagement, lifted erature (a testament to the importance of pub- of the most important Marxist books ever “historic failure” of collectivized economies. millions out of poverty, brought enormous lic education). Others retailed vile “ice-pick written is State and Revolution (1917) by It wasn’t collectivized production to fulfill hu- gains for women, and were the result of his- jokes,” a reference to the murder of Leon V.I. Lenin, in which the Bolshevik leader man needs rather than to produce capitalist toric defeats for imperialism. Trotsky in 1940 by Stalinist agent Ramón polemicized against the “democratic social- profits that failed. It was the Stalinist bureau- Outside the YDSA conference, RIY Mercader, who used an ice axe to kill the co- ists” of the day, who prettified capitalist “de- cratic caricature of socialism. In The Revolu- comrades set up our literature table, hoping leader of the Russian Revolution. Still others mocracy” while burying the scientific so- tion Betrayed (1936) and other works, Leon to speak to attendees about the class nature made the ridiculous claim that we (the IG and cialism (communism) of Marx and Engels. Trotsky explained that proletarian democracy of the state, the need for a revolutionary RIY) “don’t actually do anything,” which In particular, Lenin highlighted the lesson is essential for the correct functioning of a party, the history of the DSA and other im- might be evidence that in fact they don’t ac- that Marx drew from the Paris Commune, planned economy, and showed how scarcity portant issues. Some YDSA members were tually read anything or care much about the that “the working class cannot simply lay and capitalist encirclement led to the degen- genuinely interested in our politics, so we numerous struggles we’ve played a leading hold of the ready-made state machinery and eration of the Soviet workers state and the rise had some interesting discussions. role in, from Los Angeles to Portland to New wield it for its own purposes,” but must in- of the privileged, nationalist Stalinist bureau- One was with a young woman wearing York and New Hampshire, to mobilize labor 3 See the Internationalist pamphlet Marxism and cracy. Presciently, he insisted that proletarian a Mao Zedong t-shirt, though she said she to defend immigrants, stop fascist provoca- Women’s Liberation (May 2017), which can be political revolution, restoring the rule of work- didn’t know much about Mao or the politics tions, and how the RIY has brought youth ordered at www.internationalist.org/orderehere. ers soviets and revolutionary internationalism, of Maoism. This led to a long discussion about and students out to aid immigrant workers’ html. the “bloc of four classes,” Mao’s version of organizing drives. Perhaps such junior anti- Stalin’s policy promoting “popular fronts” of communists are just too busy licking those class collaboration subordinating the workers envelopes for Democrats and dreaming of DSA For Kamala Harris? and oppressed to supposedly “progressive” jobs (or at least internships) in some future DSA website sells “Kamala Harris representatives of their exploiters and oppres- White House. 2020” pins and legacy Kamala sors. One of the things we talked about was In contrast, a lot of youth actually are Harris for U.S. Senate t-shirts. what happened when Mao’s program was repelled by capitalist oppression, and want Democratic senator Harris is the applied by the Indonesian Communist Party to find a way to sweep it away. Some of former attorney general (i.e., top (PKI), which in the early 1960s was the larg- them mistakenly thought joining or orient- cop) of California. As such, she est Communist party outside the Soviet Union ing to the DSA/YDSA might be a way to failed to fully implement court and China. The PKI’s support to the “progres- help do that. Experience keeps showing that orders to reduce overcrowding in sive” nationalist Sukarno regime led directly this isn’t the case, as we Trotskyists have state prisons which the Supreme to its destruction, and the slaughter of a million always stated honestly (unlike groups that Court ruled constituted cruel of its supporters, in the 1965 coup led by Su- opportunistically flatter and tail the DSA). and unusual punishment. One harto, one of Sukarno’s own generals. Key to Some of the more thoughtful leftist-minded of the arguments her lawyers the Indonesian coup was support from the CIA youth are not convinced that what they want presented in court to justify not under Democratic president Lyndon Johnson, to do with their lives is help reinforce that releasing required number of who in 1965 also sent 42,000 troops to occupy pillar of capitalist oppression and imperial- prisoners early was that without the Dominican Republic while escalating the ist war, the Democratic Party, let alone that these inmates, who earn between genocidal U.S. war on Vietnam. These are the this means advancing “socialism.” For those 8¢ and 37¢ an hour, the prison consequences of class collaboration, we ex- comrades, it’s certainly time for some seri- system would lose an important plained. The DSA’s founders funneled votes ous reading, discussion and action in order labor pool. to LBJ’s Democrats then, and that’s what the to advance the cause of socialist revolution, DSA does today, we pointed out. not reformist betrayal. n September 2018 17 Why I Joined the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth We are in a period when significant The society that I saw did not offer any real shared between their borders after World gan of the popular front in Chile that was ul- numbers of young people are becoming in- freedom, only the illusion that one had it. War One. The tearing down of the wall timately defeated and saw Pinochet installed terested in socialism, but a lot of confusion When I first started to think about politi- that separated the miners from one an- as dictator. I saw other groups espousing persists about what that really means. The cal tendencies, I felt inclined towards femi- other, the militant action and organization feminism, anarchism and capitulation to the following excerpted and lightly edited letter nism because of my family experience. My they exhibited as well as the fraternization Democratic Party. I would hear that reforms of application to the Revolutionary Interna- grandmother, a divorcee with a child from that occurs after the rescue efforts demon- are needed, but never did any of the speakers tionalist Youth (RIY) from comrade Guada- her previous marriage, was thrown out of the strated internationalism to me. The most call for a socialist revolution. I heard that the lupe, who joined earlier this year, is a useful family home by her younger brothers and disappointing thing in the film was the people must cooperate with their democrati- examination of some of the things that draw took jobs in the city to support her subse- subsequent installation of a stronger fence cally elected officials, not that these elected youth looking for genuine revolutionary poli- quent children. My mother suffered abusive by officials of each country, which once officials serve the interests of capitalism, re- tics to the RIY. treatment from my biological father. These again separated the miners on the border gardless of political party. I was never really inclined to any po- and other examples made me view men of Germany and France. We also briefly At the Women’s March to the Polls, litical tendency before I attended college. negatively and I felt that feminism best rep- discussed decolonization, particularly the which was filled with petty-bourgeois resented what my thoughts were at that time. I always felt that politics were too convo- Algerian War. After getting interested in women, I recall a young woman laugh- Besides my family experience, some of luted and too difficult to follow. In the his- Latin American history, I started to learn ing at the word Marxism that was on the the English classes I took in college made me about the Comintern, the theory of perma- tory classes I had taken in high school we pamphlet I was holding up. Does she even believe in feminism. One of my hobbies is to nent revolution, the popular front in Chile, were taught what was necessary to pass the understand what Marxism is? Or does she read Victorian and Gothic literature, and for the Mexican Revolution and U.S. imperial- Regents exams. I was never really exposed even understand that marching to encour- the sake of better understanding the novels ism. I began to think more about politics to any literature related to Marx and Engels age other women to vote a Democrat into that I was reading I decided to take an English and world history. that accurately described communism. office will not liberate her, because that minor. The subject of women’s social status After graduating, I was passing by Being the daughter of immigrants but representative will only serve capitalism? was often brought up. We read A Vindication Hunter College when a member of the Inter- born as a citizen, my only concern [regard- These were the questions I had in my mind of the Rights of Women [by Mary Wollstone- nationalist Club handed me a flier for a forum ing immigration] was that neither of my that day. Many of these leftist groups only craft] and other literature that called for the on International Women’s Day. The presen- parents get involved in a situation with law serve identity politics, and completely fail emancipation of women from the burden of tation on women in the Russian Revolution enforcement, because there was always the to realize that the fight to end oppression the home and the right to an education. How- and the gains it afforded them, such as abor- must be carried out as a class struggle. possibility that one of them could be de- ever, our discussions rarely ever addressed tion, were things I had not been aware of. The The Revolutionary Internationalist ported. I was never actively aware of what the strife of the working class. discussion that followed showed me that the the legal policies were on immigration or In a Caribbean Diaspora literature club’s members were well informed because Youth (RIY) is important in raising revo- what other people had to go through as course, the professor encouraged us to read they actively studied this topic. From there lutionaries who will not falter in the time long as my parents were safe. It was only the Communist Manifesto, though we never on I attended the weekly study group, and of crisis. The importance of revolutionary after I got to college that I gained more ex- got around to discussing it. However, nov- I found myself agreeing with the politics of leadership continuously comes up in our posure to politics. els we did read, such as No Telephone to the Internationalist Group (IG), especially readings, on the Russian Revolution, on the In college I became disillusioned with Heaven by Michelle Cliff, often discussed the theory of permanent revolution and class labor movement, and at this moment when society. In the United States, one is taught colonialism, racial and class oppression and struggle. My understanding of materialism, other supposed leftist groups claim that it is that if they work hard that they will be re- the superstition of religion. We also saw communism and economics expanded. As not leadership, but the workers’ conscious- warded. One is fed these ideals of the Amer- documentaries on Jamaica and the impact someone whose major was biology, I appre- ness that has degraded. I see RIY as an or- ican Dream, of owning a house, a car and that the International Monetary Fund has ciate the fact that the IG approaches things ganization that will build the leadership that other material things that will enhance your on its economy, although we didn’t get too in a scientific way, and that its members read will become professional revolutionaries. happiness. If people cannot achieve this then involved with capitalism in our discussions. and analyze literature to better understand RIY is not an organization that simply wants they are supposedly indolent, unproduc- In a history class called “Death, Sex, and important historical events. to gain membership for the sake of having tive, and not hardworking enough. One is Memory in 20th-Century Western Europe,” At various protests I heard union and po- numbers like other leftist groups. The Revo- also raised with ideologies concerning race, the film Kameradschaft1 had an impact on litical leaders speak about “uniting the peo- lutionary Internationalist Youth is serious in gender and other categories used to justify me. In the film, German miners come to the ple” and encouraging them to vote for Demo- carrying out its duties, is serious in its politi- segmenting the working class into different aid of French miners trapped in a mine that is crats, who would supposedly listen to their cal program and is serious in fighting for a groups. In thinking of internationalism, it is 1 Kameradschaft (“comradeship”); 1931 woes and enact some reforms. At my first socialist revolution. I want to be part of an always framed in a business sense, not in the French-German production directed by Aus- May Day event I heard people chanting “El organization that actively works to carry out sense that “the workers have no country.” trian G.W. Pabst. pueblo unido jamás será vencido” – the slo- this political program. n

Well, I taught at the University of Puerto age who are going to be attracted by offers of CUNY Prof.... Rico for a year, because I had seen how the being a military officer or being in the CIA. Teach-In... continued from page 7 Micronesians [gained independence] and Just talking statistically, there are going to be continued from page 3 didn’t want that to happen again. So, they- was curious why Puerto Rico was having so students – we’ve got 250,000 undergraduates “Weaponizing” Campuses were training us to withstand torture to much trouble doing so. I thought I was going in the CUNY system – who are just not go- for Imperialism “protect America’s honor.” I was tortured to do longer-term research down there, but ing to understand what it is that they’re opt- The keynote speaker at the Baruch I realized that virtually everybody in Puerto there to protect America’s honor. Then I ing into. That’s all the CIA has to do – find teach-in was David Price, professor of Rico does research on Puerto Rico’s political find out that the CIA used that training to that small percentage of people. Anthropology at Saint Martin’s Universi- status and they didn’t need me down there. develop their own techniques for torture. I grew up in a climate – this is a part of ty in Washington State. Price has authored But I did work with people – with various in- So, I was a guinea pig for Abu Ghraib, for my book, the anthropological part – when I four books investigating how the CIA and dependence programs down there. I worked Guantánamo, for all those black sites. was a kid going to Catholic school. It was other intelligence and military agencies in Nicaragua as well, in the ‘80s. My wife I’ve been working for the past few years at the same time the “Davy Crockett” show have “weaponized” academic research, on a book that tries to explain why I went to went down to Nicaragua to study the literacy was on television. I was learning in Catholic 6 notably in the field of anthropology, from Vietnam, and what happened to me and what crusade after the revolution and I went with school about being a martyr and that if you her. the Cold War to the “war on terror.” His happened afterwards. The typical portrayal of die for your faith you go right to heaven. How do these experiences shape your presentation explored some of the his- somebody in combat is of an infantryman and Davy Crockett gets killed at the Alamo fight- understanding of what the CIA-Baruch tory of collaboration between academia the typical notion of PTSD is from a fire fight. ing for Americanism – except that he went deal means for students who are largely and the CIA, noting that from the end of But the fact is there are huge numbers of peo- down to kill brown-skinned people, and working-class, many of whom who have WWII until the early 1960s, the deepen- ple in the military doing stuff that’s causing stole their land from them, that’s what the immigrant parents from the parts of the ing symbiotic relationship between uni- PTSD and you don’t realize you have it until Alamo is about. But I was taught that he was world affected by U.S. imperialism? versities and intelligence agencies largely much later. I’m trying to show that a higher When CUNY students have to scramble this hero. So, I’m going to Vietnam, reliv- went unchallenged. During WWII, many rate of PTSD is going to evolve as time goes so much for their education and for what hap- ing Davy Crockett, and if I die I go right to professors had worked with the CIA’s pre- by from these [Iraq and Afghanistan] wars. pens afterwards, there is a significant percent- heaven. To me, it made complete sense when cursor organization, the Office of Strate- You spoke about Micronesia. I un- I was eighteen, nineteen years old fighting in gic Services, and many of these relation- derstand that you were also somewhat 6 This refers to the overthrow of Nicaraguan Vietnam. Now I look back at it with terrible ships continued after the war. involved with the Puerto Rican indepen- dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979 by the shame and I don’t want my students to have In the ’60s, with outrage against the dence movement. Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). to go through that. n CIA’s role in the U.S. war against Viet- 18 Revolution the Signature Schools Program could be a military, police and intelligence apparatus. nam, as well as exposure of its infiltration of Augusto Pinochet. Large numbers way to “move [CIA personnel] in a more But we do not base this on the illusion that and manipulation of the National Student of students were among the thousands progressive direction.” While this sought the university is or can be some kind of lib- Association, universities began to “dis- who were “marched into a stadium and to obscure the fact that the CIA is a “com- erated zone or oppression-free “safe space” tance” themselves from the spy agency, he executed.” She stressed that the CIA’s mand organization” carrying out the di- under capitalism. For the capitalist class that stated. (In fact, mass protests made things “mission is to advance the interests of rectives of U.S. imperialism, as detailed owns and operates this country in the ser- too hot for it to appear openly on one cam- U.S. imperialism around the world by in remarks by both Price and Fernan- vice of profit, a key function of universities pus after another.) After 9/11, Price noted, hook or by crook.” This has included dez, the ludicrous pitch was in line with is to train future functionaries and manag- efforts to cast the CIA in a positive light “abductions and assassinations,” training Democratic liberals’ grotesque depiction ers of the bourgeois state. Elite universities gained traction, and there was a push for and backing death squads “to suppress of today’s CIA as an “ally” of “progres- were traditionally the recruiting grounds for the CIA to establish closer ties to univer- popular movements through torture … sive resistance.” This speaks volumes to the CIA, which now sees a need to tap into sities. These links were key to preventing the deployment of terror against civilians the nature of imperialist liberalism, heir to a more “diverse” demographic for the same “intelligence deficits” according to the on a mass scale,” from “the Tontons Ma- the Kennedy brothers who unleashed CIA sinister purposes. In fighting against their “New York Times’ party line in the early coutes in Haiti” under the dictator Fran- terror against insurgent workers and peas- drive to turn our campuses into spy schools, 2000s,” he said. çois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, “the Contras ants from Cuba and Congo to Vietnam. Marxists point out that defeating and up- Price stated that universities have his- in Nicaragua” (funded by CIA drug-run- No Ivory Tower rooting the whole system of imperialist op- torically been “troubled” by these relation- ning operations depicted in the 2017 film pression requires a socialist revolution here During the discussion, a Hunter Col- ships with the CIA, given its “real history” American Made, starring Tom Cruise), and around the world. of torture, promoting coups and interfering to funding, training and supporting the lege student active in the Internationalist Club and the Committee to Defend Im- In distributing our leaflets at Baruch, in other countries’ elections. He also called mujahedeen in Afghanistan against the Internationalist activists found that many it “highly problematic” when “you find out Soviet Union and the left-wing national- migrants and Muslims said that “to simply ignore or omit all the CIA has done for the students were still unaware of the admin- your administration, without telling you, ist regime in Kabul it supported. “There istration’s pact with the CIA, and many are many reasons we should oppose the sake of a ‘good government job,’ as it’s has made an agreement” with the CIA. knew little about the history of the spy CIA,” concluded Fernandez, but given being labeled” by apologists for Baruch’s Concretely, he cited the extensive back- agency’s crimes. The April 24 teach-in was ground checks on academic applicants to that the university should be a place to deal with the CIA, “is a major betrayal to an important part of building awareness the CIA that “open doors into classroom explore the “frontier of knowledge,” an students.” She noted that “Baruch is next and opposition to the CIA incursion. More- discussion in very real and meaningful “affiliation with the CIA is a sure step in on the list of CUNY schools that the gov- over, the teach-in was followed in May by ways.” He recalled “Freedom of Infor- the direction of killing this project.” ernment is attempting to militarize” and the Baruch Faculty Senate overwhelm- mation Act documents where in the inter- Speaking from the floor, a faculty that “the Signature Schools Program only ingly approving a resolution for Baruch to views, [the CIA] specifically asks about member said that Baruch’s deal with the wants to use the ethnically diverse popu- end its participation in the CIA’s Signature people who were in their classes that may CIA would endanger their ability to do lation at CUNY to legitimize its role as a Schools Program. Still, despite these sig- have been Marxists.” ethnographic research abroad, and perhaps repressive apparatus, and once that capac- nificant steps expressing growing opposi- Following Price was Baruch History make it impossible, while emphasizing that ity for surveillance and repression is set tion, the arrogant Baruch administration, professor Johanna Fernandez, who has by far the biggest danger could be to popu- up at our schools it will doubtless be used against us” throughout the CUNY system. like the rest of the CUNY tops, don’t give carried out extensive research on state re- lations she and others conduct research Mobilizing to oppose this sinister CIA in- a damn what anyone thinks except for pression, suing the New York Police De- with. Another audience member focused cursion is part of the whole struggle against the ruling elite that appoints and employs partment when it claimed to have “lost” on the threats posed by CIA background U.S. imperialism. them. As our March leaflet stated, what’s surveillance files on the Young Lords Party checks and other measures, emphasiz- It’s not just CUNY that faces the drive needed is “massive protest and exposure and other radical groups in the 1960s and ing that these can expose students’ family for militarization – this is happening at col- to stop the CIA from making our univer- ’70s. Fernandez began by answering a members, especially those who may be leges across the country. Before Baruch, sity a base for the torture, terror and mass question about what happens to students undocumented, to intensive and dangerous Florida International University and the murder it carries out around the world. targeted by the CIA abroad. The ques- government scrutiny. University of New Mexico became “Sig- CIA OUT OF BARUCH AND OUT OF tion was posed by an Internationalist Club The large crowd of students and fac- nature Schools.” (There are some indica- CUNY, NOW!” n member who had helped make the post- ulty at the teach-in was overwhelmingly tions that the program ers we put up at the teach-in, graphically opposed to the CIA’s incursion into Ba- may not be renewed at League for the Fourth International showing key episodes of the imperialist ruch. Nonetheless, a handful of those UNM.) In February, the terror carried out by the CIA. speaking from the floor echoed the cyni- University of Illinois at LFI, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY “You might have heard about Chile cal marketing by the CIA and its Baruch Chicago signed on too. 10008, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] in 1973,” Fernandez said, when “the administration partners about supposedly An article in the Village promoting “diversity” through “job op- Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil CIA contributed to the coup” that over- Voice (30 May) quotes threw elected president Salvador Allende portunities” in imperialism’s Murder Inc. Daniel Golden, author of Brazil: write to Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251-740, and installed the military dictatorship One made the claim that going along with a recent book on intelli- Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil gence agencies’ “exploi- Rio de Janeiro: write to Caixa Postal 3982, CEP as “We came, we saw, he died.” Given tation” of universities, 20001-974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil Black Panther... this bloody history, which continues to Spy Schools (2017), stat- E-mail: [email protected] continued from page 20 the present day, the film’s portrayal of a ing that the CIA/Baruch Internationalistische Gruppe/Deutschland When Everett Ross is aiding CIA-backed coup as a blow for justice is a deal is “another sign of T’Challa’s bid for the throne, the audi- grotseque insult. the intimate relationship Germany: write to Postfach 80 97 21, 21007 Hamburg, ence is meant to be rooting for the CIA. It’s quite a disappointment coming between the CIA and Germany For anyone aware of the CIA’s role in Af- from the same director, Ryan Coogler, American academia.” E-mail: [email protected] rica, this is a particularly noxious part of who directed Fruitvale Station (2013), a Golden noted that openly Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia the film. The CIA has been helping over- powerfully moving film about the real-life “trumpeting this partner- throw governments in Africa and other murder of Oscar Grant by a transit cop in ship would have been Italy: write to Anna Chiaraluce, Casella Postale N. 6, parts of the world since its founding in Oakland, California. That movie, also star- unlikely or unthinkable 06070 Ellera Umbra (PG), Italy 1947. Among its most notorious crimes ring Michael B. Jordan, paints a vivid pic- back in the Sixties and E-mail: [email protected] on the African continent was its role in the ture of how the day-to-day racism faced by Seventies,” when “CIA Grupo Internacionalista/México overthrow and assassination of Congolese black people in the U.S. can so often mean recruiters were anathema independence leader Patrice Lumumba an instant death sentence. (See “Fruitvale on college campuses.” México: write to Apartado Postal 12-201, Admón. in 1961.1 Then there’s the CIA’s support Station and the Fight for Black Freedom” This has changed consid- Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, México D.F, México to apartheid regimes in South Africa and in Revolution No. 10, October 2013.) Ob- erably with intelligence E-mail: [email protected] Namibia, its efforts to destroy national viously, Black Panther is a work of fiction, agencies’ increased Tel. Mexico City: 55-3154-7361; Guadalajara: 33-1752- liberation movements fighting Portuguese but what audiences take away from these “popularity...following 6643; Oaxaca: 951-185-6815 colonialism in Mozambique and Angola, two films could not be more different. the 9/11 attacks,” and the Internationalist Group/U.S. on down to the conquest of Libya and We will leave it to the liberals, fan- “growing dependence of lynching of its leader Muammar Gad- tasizing nationalists and reformist fake- universities…on military Internationalist Group, Box 3321, Church Street dafi, which Hillary Clinton, then Obama’s socialists to chime in with “Wakanda for- and intelligence agencies Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. Secretary of State, gloatingly described ever.” To this we reply: Black liberation for research funding.” E-mail: [email protected] 1 For more on the CIA’s murderous history, through socialist revolution! The real Af- Marxists fight New York Tel. (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 see “CIA Out of CUNY Now!”, “CIA at Ba- rica will finally win its freedom, not un- against every measure Los Angeles Tel. (323) 984-8590 ruch: A Threat, Not an ‘Honor,’” and “Baruch der the scepter of kings or the mysticism aimed at further subor- New England Tel. (617) 213-5010 Faculty and Students Resist CIA Incursion” of meteoric metals, but the red banner of dinating the campuses Portland Tel. (503) 303-8278 printed in this issue of Revolution. world workers revolution.  to the imperialist rulers’ September 2018 19 Revolution September 2018 “Wakanda Forever”? Review of Black Panther By Sharpe is characterized rest of the world was on fire, Wakanda used Superhero movies have been box office by the reformist its technology to hide itself and prevent the mainstays for the last decade. Fantastic beat- “identity politics” dissemination of its all-powerful metal. ’em-ups pitting super-powered “good guys” widely imbued in The central antagonist of the film is against equally-endowed “bad guys,” the fate university students, Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), a of the world hanging in the balance. With a including many Black Panther/Marvel fiery U.S.-born Wakandan who teams up pinch of romance, a dollop of comic relief of those who see with Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis), the and a generous serving of bright lights and themselves as radi- South African arms dealer, to steal vibra- flashy colors, the formula is a proven win- cal. Instead of any nium from Wakanda. While Klaue is only ner. What’s not satisfying about watching a real fight against interested in selling it to the highest bidder, sympathetic protagonist overcome the odds the multiple forms Killmonger has greater ambitions. We learn to vanquish evil? The day-to-day oppression of oppression prop- that Killmonger’s father N’Jobu (Sterling of capitalist society can leave people feel- ping up this capi- K. Brown) was murdered by the previous ing powerless and exhausted – especially for talist society, this Black Panther, T’Chaka (his brother), for those who face the double and triple oppres- form of bourgeois plotting to arm the oppressed black popula- sion of racism, sexism and homophobia – ideology strikes tions of the world with vibranium weapons, and fantasy stories can be a welcome respite. a pose of “woke- having lived as a spy in Oakland, California Marvel Studios’ Black Panther (2018) ness” with “check- and witnessed the horrors of racism. N’Jobu does all of that. Based on the comic book your-privilege” wanted to unite them under the Wakandan with the same title, it’s a fun fantasy about liberalism. It’s banner and establish an empire on which a mythic, ultra-powerful African country more than safe for “the sun would never set.” Killmonger called Wakanda. The protagonist is Wakan- the ruling class, seeks to avenge his father and carry on this da’s monarch, King T’Challa, the Black which is why some campaign by overthrowing T’Challa. Panther (Chadwick Boseman). The Black of their more intel- Nothing to do with real Black Panthers. Film’s “King Killmoger eventually dispenses with Panther must protect Wakanda’s most pre- ligent ideologues T’Challa” allies with imperialist CIA to regain throne. Klaue and arrives in Wakanda to challenge cious natural resource from falling into the promote it. Worse T’Challa. In Wakanda, royal succession is hands of a racist South African arms dealer, still, in the film a CIA agent, Everett K. Ross terests at heart. But a king is a king, and decided by combat (no one person, one vote and then the power-mad cousin who seeks (Martin Freeman), is key to saving the day. T’Challa crushes challenges to his rule by here), and the sitting monarch must entertain to usurp T’Challa. Along the way, viewers (As Ross is on his way to becoming one of any means, even working with the CIA. Do any challenge from within the ruling family. are treated to images of a futuristic black the film’s heroes, the chief of a Wakandan the Wakandan masses, the people whose In the scene where the two first meet, Kill- society suffused with technological opti- “tribe” and his subjects bark at him like labor T’Challa and the nobility presumably monger boasts of having killed hundreds mism, whose chief scientist is a woman, animals, in a scene as racist in presentation live off, playany role in the film? No. of people in Iraq and Afghanistan as a CIA and of powerful black women beating the as it is flat-footed politically.) Evidently the Technologically, Wakanda is the most agent, refining his talent for murder over hell out of racists and male chauvinists. problem is not that he’s a CIA agent but that advanced country in the world, with cloth- many years while keeping his Wakandan Likewise, seeing the piggish arms dealer, he lacks the “lived experience” to chime in ing, vehicles and buildings made from in- origins a secret. He defeats T’Challa and who refers to Wakandans as “savages” and on Wakandan issues. As we will discuss be- destructible material, and medicine that can becomes the new Black Panther. Aided by repeatedly addresses the central antagonist low, many African peoples’ real experience easily heal fatal wounds. Such technological the Dora Milaje, Wakanda’s elite all-woman as “boy,” get his just deserts was quite sat- – a history everyone should study and learn optimism would be refreshing if it weren’t special forces required to guard whoever isfying. from – is that U.S. imperialism, with its CIA enmeshed in so much reactionary nonsense. occupies the throne, Killmonger secures his The film has been widely lauded as “Murder Incorporated,” is their most ruthless Turns out it’s all made possible by “vibra- position and begins mobilizing Wakanda’s a significant African American cultural and deadly enemy. nium,” an extra-terrestrial metal that fell to forces for world conquest. achievement. “‘Black Panther’ fully em- Yes, having a black director, stars and Earth as a meteor in the distant past, which the T’Challa manages to survive, and ral- braces its blackness – and that’s what cast, many of whom are women, make a Wakandans have hoarded and hid from the lies a small group of supporters around him makes it unforgettable,” headlined The highly-acclaimed blockbuster is socially rest of the world for centuries, doing nothing to overthrow Killmonger, enlisting the help Washington Post (12 February). The New significant in Hollywood’s own history, no to intervene against the trans-Atlantic slave of CIA agent Ross. The reclusive, tradition- Republic (13 February) hailed “The Liber- doubt. But precisely because Black Panther trade or any other historic atrocity. The real alist Jabari tribe back T’Challa, who had ating Visions of Black Panther” and Roll- is all about identity at the expense of histori- Black Panthers fought, and many died, for spared their chief M’Baku’s life in a previ- ing Stone (18 February) called it “the most cal truth, the film propagates a brand of poli- the right of black self-defense, as they were ous royal challenge. A final battle ensues, in radical superhero movie of all time.” The tics antithetical to social liberation. Identity targeted by the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO which T’Challa and his forces defeat Kill- film has even been compared to the Black politics claims to unite people in sectorally (Counterintelligence Program). Among those monger, foiling his plot in a successful coup Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP), defined groups across the class divide, a still in jail is former Philadelphia Panther d’état. Addressing the United Nations as founded in 1966 as a militant response to classic example being “Sisterhood is pow- Mumia Abu-Jamal, the courageous “voice of “the sovereign ruler of the nation of Wakan- racist police terror in Oakland, California. erful” – as if Hillary Clinton could be the the voiceless” who has been in prison for 36 da” in the movie’s final scene, T’Challa re- “The only stark difference here between “sister” of the Haitian women working in years on frame-up charges. Yet Black Pan- veals his country’s true nature and vows to T’Challa and the [BPP] is the fact that he is her sweatshops. Such illusions stand in the ther the film is a parable against resistance “no longer watch from the shadows.” fictional,” claimedThe Root (30 January). way of uprooting the actual racist and sexist to the racist status quo, depicting those who Black Panther wants to render Wakanda For a lot of viewers, including many oppression enforced by the ruling class. In would use vibranium to help the oppressed as an Afro-futurist paradise where people and black youth and plenty of others, there is real life, it means “unity” with Democratic as at best, misguided, and at worst, demented culture flourish, but there is no semblance of something very gratifying about this fantasy. Party politicians – the same politicians who mass murderers. democracy (even bourgeois democracy) in In a society where African Americans are are the bosses of the racist killer cops across Wakanda. The political regime is akin to the Black Liberation or a Fantasy constantly being put down, where the presi- the U.S. and who, under Obama, deported Kingdom of Eswatini (Swaziland), a tiny dent refers to black people he doesn’t like as over 8 million immigrants. Is it surprising, of Royal Despotism? southern African country that was a British “dogs,” “lowlifes,” and “low-IQ,” where the then, that a #WakandatheVote voter regis- In the introduction to the film, the fic- colony from 1906 to 1968, and is now ruled police gun down black people with impunity, tration drive, meant to shore up support for tional land of Wakanda is shown as being by an absolute monarch, Mswati III, and his a movie where super-powered Africans save the Democrats in the 2018 elections, accom- located around where South Sudan, Uganda mother Nftombi Tfwala (the country’s ritu- the day is an attractive consolation. Coupled panied the release of the film? and the Democratic Republic of the Congo al and spiritual figurehead). Mswati III is a with the fact that most of the cast and produc- Liberating? Radical? Not a chance. meet (and they speak Xhosa, one of the lan- real-life despot who has continually quashed tion crew are black, it’s not hard to see why The liberal press has been fawning over guages of South Africa – go figure). After struggles for elementary democratic rights Black Panther won the hearts of many. And Black Panther, which encourages not vibranium crashed into the African conti- since his ascension to the throne in 1986. while it’s important to understand why many radical revolt but identification with kings, nent, the “tribes” of Wakanda unified under Black Panther’s T’Challa is also an absolute viewers found the film exhilarating, this re- queens and nobility who rule by “divine a monarch, the first Black Panther. Besides monarch, who fundamentally rules by decree viewer loathed it, and here is why. right.” T’Challa is depicted as a benevo- that, history developed in Black Panther’s with a bit of input from a tribal council. Far from being revolutionary, the film lent king who has “his people’s” best in- world much as it did in ours. Yet while the continued on page 19