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WfJliliEIiSNo. 419 ''''''(J''II'~t~~ X-523 9 January 1987

Gun Control Kills Blacks! Mobilize Labor and Minorities to Stop Racist Attacks I

WV Photo WV Photo Spartacist League" and NY Labor Spartacist League StJltement October 1985: SL protests South Black League protest Koch's rac­ Africa's executionof anti-apartheid ist killer cops,.september 1986. fighter Benjamin Malaise. DECEMBER 26-Last weekend the savagely beat three black men, killing youths. And only a half-hour after and stepfather and coworker Cedric Sandi­ racist punks that roam the Howard 23-year-old construction worker Mi­ one block away from the earlier assault ford, who told Newsday (22 December): Beach section of Queens went on a chael Griffith, driving him into the path in Howard Beach, two carloads of bat- "It was like a lynch mob. Like some­ bloody rampage. A gang of a dozen of an oncoming car. Three hours earlier "wielding thugs beat up a white fireman thing that would happen in the days of punks, screaming racist epithets and in neighboring Ozone Park another after trying to run him over. Assaulted slavery." wielding baseball bats and sticks, racist gang attacked two Hispanic along with Michael Griffith was his continued on page 8 • • nc In In

New York City is at the flash point. The other two were hounded past booked, a crowd outside the Ozone Michael Griffith, a young black con­ nativity scenes and trapped at the fence Park/Howard Beach stationhouse struction worker, was murdered by a along the Shore Parkway where they cheered. The next weekend, as black racist lynch mob; now his two surviving were clubbed with bats and a tree limb. preachers and politicians called a march companions are getting a lynching by Cedric Sandiford, 36, survived by to the pizza parlor, hundreds of white the courts, the media and the racist feigning·unconsciousness. But 23-year­ racists turned out to taunt the marchers. politicians, while the murderers go free. old Griffith was chased onto the It was entrenched Northern-style segre­ Howard Beach, a white ethnic enclave in parkway where he was struck by an gation that fueled this murderous Queens, has become synonymous with onrushing car and killed. rampage. When the protesters chanted, the racist terror inflicted on minorities The working people of this city must "Howard Beach, have you heard, this is in Reagan's America. For years, Mayor share the grief and anger ofthe family of not Johannesburg," the mob responded Koch and his killer cops have whipped Michael Griffith at this wanton racist "Bullshit!" .. up the bigots with their wanton, mur­ killing. Representatives of the Sparta­ After first comparing the Howard derous attacks on minorities. And now cist League and Partisan Defense Beach murder to a racial lynching, now the machinery of state-D.A., judge, Committee attended the funeral services Koch is leading the lynch mob. So when mayor, governor-is proving once in solidarity. Griffith's stepfather and coworker San­ again that there is no justice for black After the pumped-up punks killed diford denounced the official handling people in this racist system. Griffith they cruised the neighborhood of the case and refused to testify for the Just after midnight December 20 in boasting of their crime. When the cops "prosecution," Koch obscenely called Howard Beach, a racist pack set upon finally got" around to picking up the this refusal "another type of hit and run MICHAEL GRIFFITH the three black men who had walked lynch mob, the murderers "showed no operation." According to Newsday (31 1963 - 1986 into the 98 percent white neighborhood remorse," even admitting they were out December 1986), on the MacNeil­ after their car broke down. They were to kill. Koch and the media insist that Lehrer Newshour, "Koch said the UPI brutally beaten leaving a pizza parlor. "the community" is not to blame. But as refusal by Sandiford to cooperate was Timothy Grimes managed to escape.. three of the killers were led off to be perhaps worse than the attack itself"! people.t'-A similar call was raised at the The victims are now being pilloried, December 29 New York port meeting along with their lawyers. Koch's black of the National Maritime Union by police commissioner Benjamin Ward a member of the Militant-Solidarity denounced Sandiford's attorney Alton Caucus. Maddox, claiming he was looking for a Legal Lynching fat fee in a future civil suit. The Spartacist League responded to The legal persecution of the black the atrocity in Howard Beach with a victims began as soon as the racist mob leaflet (see above) demanding: "Mobi­ was finished with its deadly work. At a lize Laborand Minorities to Stop Racist January 3 press conference in Harlem, Attacks!" Ourcall, reprinted (with some Cedric Sandiford described what hap­ excisions) in the Black American (I Jan­ pened when the cops arrived. "When Mob of racist uary), urged the formation o("integrat­ thugs in Howard they took me off the highway, they were Beach. ed armed workers defense guards, telling me about a crime committed in drawn from responsible union men and Queens. I was trying to tell them about women" to patrol the streets where the beating the mob was giving us and Griffith was attacked and killed. NYC the death of Michael Griffith but no one transit militants of the Committee for a seemed to care anything about it. AH Fighting TWU issued a leaflet noting, they were concerned with was some "If Michael Griffith had a gun at least he robbery. After taking me to where might be alive today. But he might also .Michael was killed, they took off my be in jail. The anti-gun laws are killing coat 'and searched me.... At that time black people." The CFTWU called for nobody offered any medical attention to "a caravan of flatbed trucks filled with me. I was bleeding in my head, my eyes integrated union defense squads, to and my legs and back were swollen and SEE PAGE SIX patrol Howard Beach to ensure that this severely beaten. I stood out there for neighborhood is . safe for all working continued on page 7 a new man,''' Poindexter said.... 'Of Nevertheless, I helped them, as I felt it to course, Cuba's a long way from that, be my duty to help those in need if it was Parti§au Defeu§e you know.' "Poindexter said society may appear to in my capacity to do so." have moved on to a new agenda since It is the duty of the workers move­ £o...... ittee the I960s, but underlying problems ment to fight for Ed Poindexter's im­ remain. mediate freedom. It is criminal for this '''It's not just a racist society,' he said. class-war prisoner to spend another day 'It's a class society. Where you find a racial problem, you'll also find some­ behind bars. Free Ed Poindexter Now! thing just as serious on a level that has nothing to do with race. Class against * * * class. Capitalist interest versus the Free Black Militant .. people'." MOVE member Ramona Africa told us last week she has been denied parole When the PDC asked Ed if there was for her "unwillingness to comply with Ed Poindexter! a holiday gift he would like, he told us he special condition of parole that you not had depleted his funds to buy an associate with the MOVE organization Ed Poindexter was framed up and "[After four years in prison including electronic keyboard for a friend's 10­ in any way...." The Board told Ramona year-old daughter. We sent Ed $50 to sentenced to life imprisonment in 1971, some time in the hole] 'I tried to stop her case will not be reviewed again until being so bitter.' help pay for this generous gift. following an explosion which killed "What followed for Poindexter was an October 1987. Protest this outrage! an Omaha, Nebraska cop. As former Prison walls have not stopped Ed Send telegrams to: Herman Tartler, intense analysis and exploration of the Poindexter's activities on behalf of oth- leaders of the National Committee to world's religious and psychological Board Secretary, Pennsylvania Board Combat Fascism, a successor organiza­ disciplines and a survey of knowledge in of Probation and Parole, 3103 N. Front tion of the Black Panther Party, Ed and a range of subjects .... Street, Harrisburg, PA 17110. '''I no longer subscribe personally to David Rice were targets of the racist any particular religion, but recognize COINTELPRO conspiracy to destroy the beauty in all of them as well as the * * * the Panthers and their supporters. Since commonalities they all share,' he The PDC holiday fund appeal has June, both Poindexter and Rice have said.... "He spent six years in the service where, raised over $400, receiving contribu­ been among the class-war prisoners he said, he encountered racism despite tions from three continents. This has to whom the PDC sends monthly an initial desire to make the Army a enabled us to send additional monies to stipends. career. He left the Army and returned to class-war prisoners and holiday gifts to Ed was able to transfer to a prison in Omaha, where he became an active their family and friends. Minnesota to further his education, and leader in the struggle for civil rights." is working 01). a master's degree in man­ Poindexter was convicted on the * * * agement of instructional systems, while testimony of 15-year-old Duane Peak, The PDe has published the third also writing movie scripts. He recently who admitted placing the bomb and issue of our newsletter, sent us a profile of himself which calling police to the scene. Class-Struggle Defense Notes, featuring updates on appeared in the Lincoln, Nebraska Star­ "'I'm in here for trying to do something class-war prisoners. We urge WV read­ Journal. Now 41 years old, Ed has spent for society,' Poindexter said. He said he doesn't blame others, but doesn't ers to continue to support and build the more than 15 years in prison and meets I absolve them either. 'I got involved in a Committee to Free Rice/Poindexter PDe. Become a sustaining contributor. the Nebraska Board of Parole require­ Ed Poindexter situation that I should not have got Send your donation and receive a ments for their recommending commu­ involved in,' he said. 'It was my ers. As he stated in the early years of subscription to Class-Struggle Defense tation of sentence. But as he told associations ... rather than anything . imprisonment, "There have been many Notes. For a single copy send $.75 to: reporter John Barrette in the newspaper that I did do or conspired to do.' '''... Regardless what the jury decided, times during my stay here at this camp Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box interview, "I don't see it as an easy the trial records reveal that I'm inno­ that I have helped others whose philos­ 99, Canal Street Station, New York, undertaking to get out. It's hard for me cent,' he said. 'And, even if I were guilty, ophy of life was different than mine. NY 10013.• to imagine them keeping me beyond 20 1 have already served the sentence'.... years, but I could be in beyond that." "Poindexter said a statement that echoes in his mind was made by Fidel The article had this to say about Castro after Castro seized power in Poindexter: Cuba. It was that revolution isn't just to "Poindexter said it took time to reach a fashion a new society. 'He said, "not crossroads in prison.... only to create a new society but to create Free Mordechai Vanunu! Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli interviewed by the British newspa­ technician whose revelation of the per. On November 9 Jerusalem Marx and Trotsky on Zionist state's nuclear arsenal made confirmed that he was under deten­ headlines around the world, is in tion in Israel but refused to say how the Pen and the Sword Israel facing a possible death sen­ he had been captured. Appearing in The common evolved adage holds that tence on charges of aiding an enemy public briefly after a court hearing on "The pen is mightier than the sword." But in wartime, "aggravated espionage" December 21, Vanunu dramatically in contrasting the revolutionary tradition and disclosing state secrets. All court flashed before photographers a of Oliver Cromwell to the parliamentary proceedings are being held in strict message written on his hand, reveal­ cretinism that saturates British reformism. secrecy as the case of "Attorney ing that he was hijacked September Trotsky noted: General vs. X." If Vanunu is sen­ 30 in Rome after taking a British Nevertheless, it was Cromwell who tenced to death, it wo'uldbe the first Airways flight from London. While paved the way for the parliamentary and legal execution in Israel -since Eich­ TROTSKY democratic methods of the two succeeding LENIN mann! The Partisan Defense Com­ centuries. In revenge for Cromwell's' execution of Charles. I, Charles II had mittee has called for an urgent Cromwell's body suspended on, a gibbet. But no Restoration could reestablish the international campaign of protest pre-Cromwellian society. The work of Cromwell could not be liquidated by the and publicity around this case. A predatory legislation of the Restoration. For the pen can never eradicate that which PDC telegram to the Israeli embassy has been written by the sword. This reversal of the popular proverb is much more in Washington demands that Morde­ correct, particularly when we speak of the axe of revolution. chai Vanunu be freed and that the charges against him be dropped. -Leon Trotsky, Where Is Britain Going? (1925) Employed for ten years as a tech­ The dialectical relationship between the common adageandthe converse statedby nician in Israel's Dimona nuclear Trotsky was succinctly put by .Marx: power plant, Vanunu disclosed to Rupert Murdoch's London The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons, material Sunday AP Times (5 October 1986) that the Mordechai Vanunu exposes Mos­ force must be overthrown bymaterial force; but theory also becomes a material force sad kidnapping. as soon as it has gripped the masses. Dimona facility is actually aplutoni­ um factory which has enabled. Israel the Israelis (along with their Amer­ - Karl Marx, Introduction to "Contribution to the Critique to become the world's sixth largest ican financiers) routinely flout the of HegeFs Philosophy of Law" (1844) nuclear power. Before Vanunu's sovereignty of other countries, the revelations, it was widely believed virtual certainty that the Mossad that Israel had a nuclear arsenal of (Israeli CIA) violated British and/or perhaps 15 to 20 warheads. His Italian sovereignty in seizing Vanunu disclosure of an Israeli nuclear force has caused diplomatic embarrass­ of 100 to 200 bombs created a ~ ment for the Israeli government at a W'RNERS VIINfJlJlIRIJ sensation internationally. .As we time when it is, among other things, Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League of the U.S. noted in WVNo. 416 (21 November trying strenuously to woo the 1986): DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon Vatican. "A dozen or so A-bombs could nuke EDITOR: Jan Norden every Arab capital and make Hitler's A nuclear. arsenal of the size PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner Holocaust look like child's play.... described by Vanunu means that - EDITORIAL BOARD: Bonnie Brodie. Jon Brule. George Foster. Liz Gordon. Is this a joint operation with Wash­ Israel has a bigger target than the Jan Norden. James Robertson, Reuben Samuels. Joseph Seymour. Marjorie Stamberg. ington in preparation for nuking the Noah Wilner (Closing editor) likes of Syria in mind. Israel is Soviets? .. . Or are the Israelis suspected of providing nuclear weap­ Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly. except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December, preparing to go solo? The Zionist by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street. New York, NY 10007.Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861 madmen could very easily-and ons technology to racist South (Business), Address all correspondence to' Box 1377. GPO, New York, NY 10116, Domestic SUbscriptions: $5,00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York. NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, perhaps deliberately-trip over the Africa. (Pretoria is presently expand­ Box 1377, GPO. New York. NY 10116, trip wire for World War III." ing its military facilities on Marion Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not !'ecessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Vanunu disappeared from London Island, permitting it to test nuclear on September 30, shortly after being continued on page 10 No. 419 9 January 1987

2 WORKERS VANGUARD Letter

with soldiers of the enemy, appealing to their class solidarity and urging them to oppose their own rulers. In Nazi­ Terrorism ,and Imperialism occupied France, for example, the Sta­ linists often assassinated individual Ger­ Athens in the atrocity, noted that the bombing for British troops out of Ireland, man soldiers, many of whom were 20.9.'86 was "oh-so-convenient for the Ameri­ refused to actively defend IRA militants the sons of Communist or social­ Letter to "Workers Vanguard" cans" and observed that the disco, against British state repression, and democratic parents. This terrorism On Terrorism patronized by American black GIs and refused to distinguish between sym­ - could only strengthen the hold of "Workers Vanguard" in an article Turkish immigrant workers, was a very bols of British imperialism-like Lord Nazism on the young conscripts of the "Who Bombed the Berlin Disco" asked unlikely target for Qaddafi in any case. Mountbatten, blown to smithereens German army. The French Trotskyists the question did Libya truly take part in In the wake of Reagan's first attack on aboard his yacht in 1979-and people sought to organize underground cells an "act of terrorism" or was it a among German "workers in uniform," fabrication made by the USA so it could putting forth the perspective of destroy­ be used as a pretext for the invasion of ing Hitler's Third Reich from within Libya. To anyone who does not take through proletarian revolution. Reagan's word for granted, it is clear as Moreover, Brother Lucas' argument daylight that they who bombed the on Irish terrorism and permanent "war" Berlin disco also bombed Libya. is transparent sophistry. He observes What appears peculiar is that numer- • Mother holds that wars sometimes involve civilian ous so-called "terrorist attacks" all over photo of son, casualties, as if the pub patrons are like the world have occurred (Italian Akile GI Kenneth Ford, some old wino who falls asleep too near Laure cruiser, Vienna, Rome, Athens kiHed in criminal an air force base and gets killed in a airports, countless TWA flights, recent bombing of Berlin's bombing raid. What does the death of Paris explosions etc.) and hardly no-one La Belle disco. an unfortunate as the by-product of a has pointed their finger at the CIA, the Reagan blamed Qaddafi; WV said military act have to dowith a cold­ world's greatest terrorist? Why? Every­ "Reagan's story blooded atrocity like a pub bombing one from ·the right to the so-called stinks." whose sole purpose is the death of revolutionary left has condemned ter­ civilian victims'? By Lucas' logic, any­ rorism. 18 almost every European thing that is done to the members of the country Parliaments have voted in Protestant community by an Irish "anti-terrorist" laws where anyone la­ Libya last March, we sent ajournalistic who just happened to be in the wrong Catholic can be defined as a justifiable belled a "terrorist" by the capitalist state team to Tripoli to underline our anti­ pub at the wrong time. political act on behalf of the oppressed. will be dealt with severely. imperialist solidarity against the barbar­ Brother Lucas, however, defends pre­ We reject this view absolutely. In the late 50's and 60's we had the ic American attack. cisely the Irish nationalists' indefensible Proletarian morality is not an ab­ "communist threat," in the late 70's and . More recently, in response to the acts of terrorism. As Leninists, we stract moral question, either. The 80's we have the "terrorist threat" to Paris bombings which have been ex­ understand that the chauvinism of the practice of indiscriminate terrorism Western capitalism. The aim of these ploited to whip up anti-immigrant oppressed must be distinguished from drives a wedge between "the boys" and attacks is to ally everyone behind the sentiment, we again asked, who bene­ the chauvinism of the oppressor, butwe the people, eroding their base of support capitalist state machine in its struggle fiis? We listed as suspects the French know also that in all nationalism lurks and sympathy. Even where it does not against "terrorism." secret service, fascist groups, the CIA the appetite for genocide ofthe"enemy" drive the people into the arms of "law "Senseless and criminal acts of indis­ and the Israeli Mossad. And we wrote people. There is absolutely no common and order" and other reactionary forces, criminate terror" is what you called the that the bombings "can only strengthen ground between Marxists and national­ it makes "politics" into a dirty word, attack in Pakistan and Tuskey, Like French ties to Israel and the U.S. in ist terrorists who believe that all those of thereby impeding the development of most people "Workers Vanguard" the name of 'anti-terrorism,' the code the "wrong" nationality, race or religion mass struggles and completing the circle believes that they who organised them word for the anti-Soviet war drive in simply deserve to die, and that those of demoralization that allows the are not the CIA but so-called "terror­ the Mediterranean" ("Criminal Terror who fraternize with them do too. In the "heroic" terrorists to portray themselves ists" of a Libyan or Arab descent. In any Bombings in Paris," WVNo. 412, 26 as the only game in town. Moreover, event, your position is reminiscent of September 1986). indefensible terrorism corrodes and Healy's who in Britain whenever the However, the CIA is not the only corrupts the "militant" forces them­ IRA did bomb unarmed civilians always terrorist organization on the face of the selves, and history from Ireland to Sri condemned them in the most chauvinis­ planet. Brother Lucas partly denies and Lanka shows that it's only a short step to tic manner as "Trotskyism is against partly defends indiscriminate terrorism fratricidal turf warfare where "the boys" individual terror"(!) forgetting one main against civilian populations carried out are killing each other. thing that the Irish are at war (and have in the name of "wars of liberation." We should also inform Brother Lucas been for hundreds of years) with British It is a fact that petty-bourgeois na­ that there is indeed terrorism inside imperialism. During a war of liberation tionalists claiming to speak for the op­ Reagan's America, from the bombings casualties will exist. Or do we distin­ pressed have been known to engage in of abortion clinics by "right-to-life" guish the "superior" British casualties indiscriminate mass terror. To deny it is bigots to the gas-grenade attack by the from the Irish ones? just silly. We consider such acts to be fascistic Jewish Defense League on a Have the readers of Workers Van­ crimes against the people. For example: performance by a Soviet dance com­ guard ever asked the question why in George Habash's Popular Front for the pany. Puerto Rican nationalists took Reagan's America no "terrorists" exist, Liberation, of Palestine publicly took "credit" for the bombing of the Fraun­ when they exist in every other Euro­ "credit" for the 1972 massacre at Israel's ces Tavern in New York. The KKK and pean country. Why is Reagan attacking Lod airport, killing innocent Israeli Nazis, with the collusion of the state, the population with anti-homosexual civilians and others, including 13 Puerto shot down five anti-fascist activists in laws, anti-pornographic and anti-drug' Rican Baptist pilgrims. Known Pales­ Greensboro, North Carolina in 1979. _ laws. Isn't this the American version of . tinian militants associated with the Ara­ Last year a Jewish radio talk-show host the European anti-terrorist laws. fat wing of the PlO carried out the in Denver was murdered by neo-Nazis. stupid and criminal hijacking of the McCracken/Pensacola News-Journal American capitalism in its death Terrorism USA: Pensacola, Florida And the firebombing of the black agony is trying to return to the past Achille Lauro cruise ship last year, abortion clinic bombing, Christmas MOVE commune in Philadelphia; in epoch of direct colonial rule (Grenada, killing an elderly American Jew. Leba­ 1984. which eleven people were killed, five of Libya, Nicaragua are examples) using as nese Shi'ites seized an American TWA them young children, is a signature of a pretext manufactured by the CIA airliner in June 1985 and wantonly Irish nationalists' 1974bombings of two the Reagan years. When Brother Lucas pubs in Birmingham, 21 people were terrorist attacks. The Berlin disco raid is murdered a U.S. Navy diver. Such says that terrorists don't exist in killed, including two Irish Catholic the clearest example of all. actions are not only crimes from the America, we can only suggest that he standpoint of elementary socialist mo­ brothers and two West Indian blacks. has been reading too much U.S. Fraternally, rality but also play into the hands ofthe Of such actions, Brother Lucas imperialist propaganda.• J: Lucas most rabid, bloodthirsty chauvinists, writes: including those with state power, like ..... the Irish are at war (and have been for hundreds of years) with British WV replies: Brother Lucas, who seems Reagan and Zionist war criminal Ariel imperialism. During a war of liberation to have considerable familiarity with Sharon. casualties will exist. Or do we distin­ Spartacist League our press, attempts to ascribe to us We take indignant exception to being guish the 'superior' British casualties Public Offices positions which are the polar opposite compared by Brother Lucas to Gerry from the Irish ones'!" of those we hold. U.S. imperialism isthe Healy and his gang of-political whores, No, we distinguish the British ruling -MARXIST L1TERATURE­ world's biggest terrorist, as we have said who as is well known will support class and its armed forces from. the Bay Area and substantiated time and time again. anything if the price is right, as for working people of Britain! Brother Fri.: 5:00-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 3:00-6:00 p.m. 1634 Telegrllph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) We have insisted that the manufactured example when they supported. anti­ Lucas here seems to accept the ideologi­ Oakland. C~lifornia Phone: (415) 839-0851 hysteria over "international terrorism" Communist state terror in Iraq by cal premise of a Winston Churchill or is designed to whip up public support in justifying a mass execution of members Margaret Thatcher which identifies Chicago Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11:00a.m.-2:00 p.rn. the U.S. and West Europe for the war of the Iraqi CP, which has historically British imperialism with the entire Brit- 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor drive against the Soviet Union and for had a. base among the militant oil ish people. . Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 domestic repression against the left and workers. Yes, Healy does capitulate to What a despairing perspective, to New York City minorities. Lucas suggests that WV British chauvinism against the Irish,but redefine a "war" as something that can Tues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. blamed the Libyans for the Berlin disco not because he condemns the IRA for its go on for hundreds of years! In fact, 41 Warren St. (one block below Chambers St. near Church St.) bombing. In fact, our article in WVNo: policy of individual terrorism, whether even when there is a war and imperialist New York, N.Y. Phone: 1212) 267-1025 402 (25 April 1986) presented substan­ carried out in Northern Ireland. or military forces are involved, revolu­ tial evidence implicating fascist groups England. Healy has refused to: agitate tionists seek where feasible to fraternize 9 JANUARY 1987 3 TWU: ·Fight for the Right to Strike!

Rejection ofthe strike weapon by the alIies are the c1ass-collaborators of the dropping their grievance by taking away Line Supervisors are instructed, as misleaders of the Transport Workers Sonny Hall gang. their seniority shape-up. It is criminal policy, to violate contractual working Union (TWU) Local 100 has embold­ The main target of the TA's union­ for the Sonny Hall bunch to isolate such agreements and to suspend any workers ened the New York City Transit busting drive is the seniority structure. workers in the front lines of the fight for who object. The TA does not care if it Authority bosses and capitalist politi­ For the vast majority of transit workers, seniority rights, letting them take the wins or "loses" these discipline cases in cians. Transit workers face job cuts, management is unilaterally abolishing full brunt of the TA's attack. arbitration. Back pay is accepted by deadly unsafe working conditions and seniority rights as our only defense The defense of seniority is a union­ management as a small price to pay for union-busting assaults on the seniority against day-to-day discrimination and wide issue and requires a union-wide an atmosphere of fear and intimidation system. We reprint below a leaflet favoritism-a blatant violation of the fight, up to and including strike action, on the job. published by the class-struggle Commit­ contract. Unless the principle of seniori­ to win this and similar grievances. Railroad Safety Board and OSHA tee for a Fighting TWU. ty prevails, the bosses will slice this Sonny Hall, Organizer Tony Corona, [federal job safety agency] regulations, union to pieces. In this deeply racist and 207th Shop Chairman Arnold never adequate, are now gutted by the society, management violates seniority Cherry should have their names on these Reagan administration, giving the green Committee for a to whip up racial and ethnic hostility vital grievances and prepare the mem­ light to the TA to throw "safety first" Fighting TWU Leaflet: among the workers. A divided work­ bership for strike action. What we get out the window. On the job accidents force is a defeated workforce. instead is Hall's endorsement of that are up sharply. From January to At the present time there are a piece of union-busting legislation up in October of this year the burn unit of On December II, [TWU] Local 100 number of seniority grievances being Albany! . New York Hospital was virtually mo­ President Sonny Hall agreed to co­ held up in the arbitration quagmire. The Kiley, Hall, Cuomo scheme to nopolized by a stream of transit workers sponsor legislation that would slash Some of these, like the one from the slash 1,300jobs and cut and discontinue with serious 3rd rail burns. Injured 1,300 union jobs and further tighten the workers are afraid to report many no-strike noose. A binding arbitration accidents because it means an immedi­ panel will now dictate the conditions of ate drug test and possible suspension. labor exploitation in New York City Management's disregard for safety has transit. And what is the crumb that is deadly consequences. In January 1984 falling off the banquet table for Hall? A six workers in the Coney Island Shop seat on the MTA Board! There are no floor gang were rendered unconscious limits to betrayal for the ratfink bureau­ and hospitalized by fumes from SKI DO crats of the Sonny Hall gang. For years flooring compound; all these workers they have been telling us the way to fight . suffered intense headaches, nausea, the no-strike Taylor Law is to give to dizziness and chest pains. One of them, COPE and give a vote to "friends of CMA Jimmy Stark, 41 years old and labor" Democrats, like Cuomo who father of three, was never able to work saddled us with union-busters [Transit again. After nearly three years of Authority bosses] Kiley and Gunn, or increasingly intense headaches, nausea, like Reaganite [Senator] D'Amato. and agony Brother Jimmy Stark, Now we see the depth of the lies and poisoned by the Transit Authority, died hypocrisy. of brain seizure in November. The union bureaucrats' sabotage and For a Fighting TWUl sellout of the powerful 1980 transit WV Photo Abolish the Dues Checkoff! strike is still serving the interests of TWU bureaucrats sold out militant 1980 transit strike, throttle ranks with labor's enemies. Since then we have seen the bosses' laws. In a fighting union, system-wide the steady erosion of long-established elected Stewards would collect the dues working conditions and the rights of 207th St. Shop Test Lab, concern daily many bus routes is in addition to the and have the power to stop the work labor. Everything from safety to job job pick by seniority shape-up. Manage­ many jobs already lost to outside, low­ immediately when management violates security to seniority rights is under ment knows they will probably lose this wage contractors. Daily intimidation the contract. But any Steward system or attack by management. Their main grievance based on past practice so they and threats by management are making grievance procedure is meaningless weapons are the Taylor Law and are postponing arbitration while they life intolerable for transit workers. We unless the strike weapon can be wielded. compulsory arbitration; their main try to blackmail this small gang irito have heard from several .sources that continued on page 10

buster Reagan in 1980in the hopes that centralized economy producing for he would throw them some crumbs from people's use and needs-not profits. ~p-rop-riate This is what the Russian workers built the Ship-owners! his anti-Soviet war buildup. But as in the Soviet Union and why it is the Reagan has made clear,' the only ships greatest victory labor ever had. This is he's interested in building are those the only way to end racial and ethnic owned and operated by the'Navy. hostility within the labor movement to As opposed to\ the bureaucrats'' con- end racism and flag-waving protection­ ism. While the U.S. merchant marine is cessions to the bosses and chauvinist sinking, even [N MU president] Shan­ calls to throw foreign seamen off U.S.­ non Wall had to admit that'...The owned ships, the N,M U Militant­ Russians are out buying new merchant NMU SOS Solidarity Caucus (M-SC) appeals for a vessels from the West.. . .' and that the class-struggle fight internationally. The 'Soviet Modernization Program Aims United States Lines, the oldest and Seamen must demand: Nationalization to Replace 70% of Fleet by 1995' M-SC laid out the situation in their ~ (October NMU Pilot, p. 3).... once largest American shipping com­ of the merchant marine, without com­ newsletter, The Beacon (29 December): "J oint militant labor action iswhat built pany, has filed for bankruptcy, threat­ pensation for the shipowners, under full "But seamen can't fight this battle the labor movement, like the tie-up of ening the demise of the National union wages and union control of the alone. The only way out is to link up the S.S. California or the Flint auto sit- Maritime Union (NMU). U.S. Lines is hiring hall, including the right to strike! o only the last of many shipping compa­ As the Russian revolutionary leader (5 s: nies to collapse over a IS-year period. Leon Trotsky explained: Q. The shipowners have been on the "The socialist program of expropria­ ~ government gravy train, receiving mil­ tion, i.e., of political overthrow of the bourgeoisie and liquidation .of its lions in government subsidies over the economic domination, should in no years, while seamen have gotten a screw case during the present transitional job. Seamen aboard U.S. Lines vessels period hinder us from advancing, when in foreign ports spent Christmas under the occasion warrants, the demand for U,S. merchant virtual arrest, as their ships were seized the expropriation of several key marine goes branches of industry vital for national down the tubes. by creditors. When they finally got paid existence or of the most parasitic group U.S. Lines off, they found out there were no of the bourgeoisie." ships laid up vacation benefits-amounting to half -Leon Trotsky, The Death at Manhattan their pay, in many instances several Agony of Capitalism and, the Tasks ofthe Fourth' pier. thousand 'dollars. Union pension and International (1938) welfare plans are threatened. The merchant marine, like railroads, But the groveling NMU bureaucrats is essential to an industrial economy. have always subordinated the interests The Founding Fathers recognized its of seamen to company profits. Thus, with the rest of labor and take on the down strikes-a-not empty union merger importance: Thomas Jefferson sent union officials turned over a half million entire decrepit capitalist system-the proposals for bureaucratic maneuvers. cause of the economic crisis in the steel, Our officials' grovelling to the compa­ naval frigates to the Barbary Coast to dollars of NMU funds to the bosses in auto, textile as well as shipping and nies breeds anti-unionism within our defend merchant shipping against pi­ an ill-fated scheme to bring outa laid-up other industries. Such a link-up would own membership.'Opportunists as well rates demanding tribute. What is in­ U.S. Line passenger ship. And at the organize the entire working classand all as well-meaning, misguided members volved here is not a particular capitalist December union meeting in New York, the oppressed through a workers party are threatening to sue the union loser, like the Chrysler bankruptcy _the officials asserted 'that they would (big business controls the Democrats , again. The bosses' courts should never and Republicans) and could replace the be allowed into the labor movement! several years ago. No one makes money continue to "aid and abet" U.S. Lines. bosses' government with a workers Real union unity for labor strength is out of merchant ships. Even the largest The NMU tops, who used to back the government and replace the chaos of built through battle action against the Japanese shipping line has gone broke. anti-labor Democrats, went for union- a capitalist economy with a planned bosses!". 4 WORKERS VANGUARD Returning Sakharov

For over a decade Andrei Sakharov Boston in 1985, after an international and messages which Bonner delivered to has been Western imperialism's most hullabaloo oyer her need for advanced the American embassy in Moscowand prized and praised Soviet "dissident." medical treatment for cancer, the to the Western media. In the summer of And for good reason. He has repeatedly doctors asked her why she didn't stop 1983 he published an open letter in the called on the capitalist world to use smoking five packs of cigarettes a day. prestigious U.S. journal Foreign Affairs economic and political blackmail "She appears to smoke more than the advocating the development of the MX against the USSR. This man, who entire city of Pittsburgh," said one.) missile and the deployment of the Jasmin/Gamma-Liaison played a key role in developing the Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in West The Traitors Sakharov at Gorky Reagan's favorite Soviet "dissident" Soviet H-bomb, has repeatedly encour­ Europe. "Ifit is necessary to spend a few Andrei Sakharov comes out against aged NATO militarists to build up their When in December 1979 the Soviet billion dollars on MX missiles to alter Star Wars. nuclear arsenal. Far more respectable army intervened in Afghanistan to crush this situation," he wrote, "then perhaps openness. . .. I am glad we have these and influential than the crazed Slavic the CIA-backed counterrevolution of this is what the West must do." Thus, changes, but I think they should go chauvinist and tsarist Solzhenitsyn, mullahs, landlords, tribalists and ban­ Sakharov lined up with the Reaganite deeper." Gorbachev has appealed to Sakharov's has been the most strident dits, U.S. imperialism went ape. Jimmy warmongers against not only the Soviet Sakharov to resume "doing patriotic Russian voice in the Cold War against Carter slapped a grain embargo on Union but also against the bulk of work," and the liberal London Guardi­ the Soviet Union. In 1984, after he Russia, pulled the U.S. team out of the American liberals and West European publicly endorsed Reagan's drive for social democrats. Lars-Erik Nelson now an (24 December 1986) speculates: nuclear first-strike capability, we called admits that "Sakharov's letter was close "What Gorbachev seems to be banking for Sakharov and his accomplice and to treason." on is the hope that, in the dissidents of wife, Yelena Bonner, to be tried as Despite this the Kremlin rulers the Brezhnev era, Gorbachev may have traitors to the Soviet Union and the treated him with kid gloves. He and found a kind of loyal opposition." heritage of the October Revolution. Bonner lived at a level far above the In Stalin's day the only loyal opposi­ Gorbachev seems to have found average Soviet worker or collective tion was a corpse, and Sakharov would another way. The new Soviet leader did -farrner. There could be no question of simply have been shot the first time he an end run around the prominent pro­ allowing Sakharov to emigrate to the opened his mouth. But Stalinism, a imperialist dissident by lifting his West. As father of the Soviet H-bomb, system of bureaucratic rule based on internal exile at Gorky and pardoning Sakharov possesses intimate knowledge collectivized property, is not synony­ Bonner, earlier convicted of anti-Soviet of Soviet military defenses which has mous with the person of Joseph Stalin. He was a truly evil man, a paranoid psy­ activity. Gorbachev, who spoke with Mikhail not necessarily decayed over time. And Sakharov. personally by phone, may Gorbachev given his oft-stated political loyalties, he chopath who killed millions of people, actually have turned him with honor­ would certainly have blabbed every­ including Lenin's closest comrades-in­ that is, away from his patrons in thing he knew when face to face with the arms and the cream of Russia's commu­ Washington. Back in Moscow and CIA on "free world" soil. Concluding nists. It has taken over three decades for speaking on American TV, Sakharov, our article "Try the Traitors Sakharov!" the Soviet Union to get in Gorbachev a while reading a list of nine political (WV No. 356, 8 June 1984), we sug­ Stalinist not personally tainted by prisoners he wanted freed, declared, "I gested a "modest proposal": that Sa­ Stalin's bloody reign. have great respect for Mikhail Sergeye­ Moscow Olympics and openly threat­ kharov might be traded for the father of Nonetheless, the Kremlin bureaucra­ vich Gorbachev," and took a shot at ened military action against the Soviet the American H-bomb, Edward Teller. cy remains profoundly hostile to work­ Reagan's Star Wars plans: "I think that Union in the Persian Gulf. Sakharov Today Sakharov himself recognizes ers democracy and fearful of genuine a potential enemy with highly developed not only endorsed these policies but emigration to the West "is impossible proletarian justice. We strongly con­ technology can always find a means to called for even stronger Western actions because of my secret work" (New York demn the Stalinist practice of depriving overcome the space defenses, and it is on behalf of the Afghan contras, Islamic Times, 24 December 1986). dissidents, oppositionists and emigres of much easier and cheaper." fundamentalists who shoot school­ their Soviet citizenship. If they are teachers for teaching young girls how to deemed guilty of crimes, they should be "Has Sakharov sold out?" asked Sakharov and the read. For this Sakharov was hailed in so charged and given a fair, public trial. columnist Lars-Erik Nelson (Washing­ Soviet Bureaucracy ton Post, 2 January). No doubt the the West as a great champion of "human By resorting to administrative measures White House is feeling betrayed by their rights." For now, Sakharov seems willing to like denying opponents their citizen­ favorite Soviet dissident, though these That provocation finally caused the play the role of loyal opposition to ship, the bureaucracy shows its con­ days they have rather more pressing Kremlin tops to send Sakharov off to Gorbachev, whose reforms he wel­ tempt of Soviet legality and distrust of things to worry about. So now maybe internal exile in Gorky. This did not, comes. At his Moscow press conference the masses. Sakharov will tell Ms. Bonner to keep however, stop his anti-Soviet agitation. he stated: "1 think a great changefor the Fearing Trotsky's still considerable her mouth shut. (When she went to He kept up a barrage of articles, letters better is taking place in the area of continued on page 10

Park offers his own laughable theory husband's life, worth about $36,000, for all this, namely that Churl. had dis­ before Chun boarded Flight-On? for the covered a navigational error but con­ final fatal flight. cern for loss of face and fear of "severe Shortly afterward, a referendum at punishment" by KAL led him to Brown on impeaching President Rea­ KAL Pilots Knew continue flying through Soviet air­ gan came within a few votes of space-at risk of getting shot down! passing. In addition to Washington's Park has some more explaining to do: anti-Qaddafi disinformation campaign, Ronald Reagan has shot himself in brought by relatives of the victims he was the one who relayed Chun's the revelations over the captured Ameri­ the foot over the Iran/contra affair, but against the U.S. government, he sud­ obligatory (and false) position reports can mercenary Hasenfus and the the American media are doing their best denly resigned from KAL and refused to back to Anchorage when 007 flew ouj of World Court verdict against the U.S. to contain the damage. The word's still talk. But after having read an abridged direct radio range of Alaska ground for mining Nicaragua's harbors (all mum on the most sinister anddangerous translation of Hersh's book, Park ev­ control. Park had to know that Chun's continued on page 10 Reaganite covert operation: the Korean idently felt compelled to come for­ reports were not only alarmingly late Air Lines Flight 007 spy plane provoca­ ward to "remedy misunderstandings" but also inaccurate. In short, the tion, where 200-plus innocent passen­ (New York Times, 28 December 1986). evidence suggests Park was an accom­ gers were sacrificed in an insane pene­ Park dismisses Hersh's "accident" plice in the plan. It would not have been tration of Soviet airspace on the night of theory that Flight OOTs captain Chun the first military mission for the two 31 August-I September 1983. Seymour had incorrectly inserted a shortcut into men: Chun was junior officer under Hersh's recent book, "The Target Is De­ the plane's computer navigation system Park when they were in the South stroyed" (1986) was intended as the to save fuel as "a laughable conjecture." Korean air force. definitive whitewash on the subject! In answer to Hersh's supposition that Other evidence has surfaced indicat­ laying to rest all "conspiracy theories" Chun had left the cockpit for some five ing that the KAL pilots knew.. Back in (see our critique, "The Spectre of KAL hours to talk to passengers-and hence 1984,attorney Melvin Belli, who repre­ 007," WV No. 415, 7 November 1986). was not present in the cockpit to notice sented several relatives in the disaster, But outside the U.S., sane people numerous instrument warnings thatthe revealed that the widows of the pilot and everywhere see a White House connec­ plane was drastically off course-Park co-pilot of KAL 007 told him that their tion in the 007 affair. reports, according to the Times account, husbands were frequently paid to And now the closest thing to an eye­ a radio exchange with Captain Chun penetrate Soviet airspace. Another witness-indeed, most likely an ac­ "almost three hours into the flight.... lawyertold the Nation(17 August 1985) complice in the operation-has. shot about the time Flight 007 entered Soviet that Captain Chun's widow said her down Hersh. Y.M. park, captain of airspace over the Kamchatka Penin­ husband "had told her Flight 007 was an KAL Flight 015 Which took off ftom sula." So Chun was in the cockpit at especially dangerous mission." And Anchorage 14 minutes behind Flight the crucial moment. Park' also says speaking to a packed house at Brown 007, has broken a three-year silence to that'when he asked Chun why 007 University last November II, retired' give an interview in the December issue was falling behind schedule, "Captain State Department officer John Keppel 50¢ (24 pages) of the South Korean monthly Chosun. Chun's answer was short and hasty. He revealed a South Korean press report Just before Captain Park was scheduled seemed to be hiding something and in that Chun's wife had taken out a Order from: Spartacist Publishing Co. Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY Hl116 to testify two years ago in the court suit trepidation." supplementary insurance policy on her 9 JANUARY 1987 5 Racist Terror U. S. A.

The white lynch mob in Howard Virlee Berry and community activist Klan foments Beach, Queens which savagely beat Denise Gums, were stopped for traffic race war three black men, killing 23-year-old "infractions," yanked out of their cars in Chicago's .Marquette Park. construction worker .Michael Griffith, and brutally worked over by the cops. threw a spotlight on the wave of terror In September, two white Alameda against minorities across Reagan's County sheriff's deputies burned a America. When racist NYC mayor cross in the cell of a black inmate. That Koch compared this hideous murder to same month, black youths Karlos Hill a lynching in the Deep South, it was and Edwin Smith, Jr., were shot and official recognition of the fact they can killed by Berkeley and Oakland cops, no longer cover up-across America the respectively. lynchers and cross-burners are riding This reign of terror extends beyond Southwest News-Herald high. "It's openseason on blacks," said the inner city ghettos. Louisiana sheriff LeRoy Thomas, executive editor of the Harry Lee issued an apartheid-style Chicago Defender. White ethnic mobs order to automatically stop blacks in New York, racist riots on campuses, driving in "white" areas of Jefferson KKK scum stage at least 60 KKK marches last year in Parish outside New Orleans. On De­ provocation in North Carolina alone, trigger-happy cember 13 in Tampa, Florida, Mets Raleigh, North cops gunning down minorities in .the superstar pitcher Dwight Gooden was Carolina. streets-and they're all taking their cue driving his silver Mercedes homefrom a from the top. The rollback of busing, basketball game when he was pulled voting rights and all integration laws, over by the cops and beaten bloody with together with vicious cutbacks of serv­ fists, nightsticks and Mag-Lites. Good­ teenager in the hospital. This was Spartacist League initiated a Labor/ ices to the ghettos and the grotesque en, who was born and raised in Tampa, followed by a series of assaults on Black Mobilization to Stop the Klan government bombing of the Philly said the police "were laying for me," and Asians in the Boston area, culminating which won the support of scores of MOVE -commune-these are the Rea­ that one cop jammed a .38 revolver in­ in August in the Revere Beach beating unions and labor officials, bringing out gan administration's "message" to black to his neck. "H it his arm. Hurtit. End his of Cambodian Bun Vong, who went 5,000 predominantly black workers and America. career," yelled the cops while calling him into a coma and died ten days later. youth who slopped the Kluxers before The frenzy of racist reaction has been "nigger." "Dwight Gooden was beaten With their taunts of "Kill the gooks!" they started. While the Reagan adminis­ particularly ominous on the campuses. because he was driving an expensive and "Carnbo-Rambo," these white tration and Democratic Party mayor At the University of Massachusetts at car," wrote black columnist Tony ethnics are acting out the revenge Barry called out their cops to protect the Amherst, hundreds of stampeding Brown. And at Amherst, when they fantasies of their rulers who were lynchers' "right" to terrorize the 70 whites set upon a handful of blacks after brought in black Mets player Mookie humiliated by the heroic peasants and percent black city, other black Demo­ the Mets beat the Red Sox in the World Wilson and a white Red Sox player for a workers of Vietnam. crats and their reformist flunkies tried to Series. Next door at Smith College, one "unity" rally to cool out the tense "There is this steady drumbeat from divert black anger with cheese handouts of the elite "Seven Sisters" schools, campus, racist punks booed Wilson. this administration," says NAACP chief arid gabfests. But to no avail, as red and menacing slogans scrawled on campus It's not only blacks who are targeted. Benjamin Hooks, an ominous "national black power took the streets of Wash­ buildings say, "Niggers, spies and In June 1982, a 23-year-old Chinese mood" being whipped up against ington that day. chinks, quit complaining and get out." American, Vincent Chin, was beaten to blacks. What he's hearing is the beat of The key to smashing fascist terror is At the University of Texas, the "Aryan death with a baseball bat by a white auto war drums, as the administration whips revolutionary leadership, mobilizing the the country into war frenzy against the power of labor at the head of the Soviet "evil empire" and its "surrogates" oppressed. A class-struggle integrated from Nicaragua to Libya. Reagan's rape workers party must be forged in the of Grenada is their idea of "standing fight to unchain the black masses from tall," as white Gis with their M-16s the parties of the racist oppressors, stomped around the tiny black Caribbe­ whether Republican Reagan or Demo­ an island. But the Reagan years really crat Koch. And that requires a political began under Democrat Carter who un­ fight against the black overseers of dertook the post-Vietnam War buildup America's cities, like Wilson Goode who and campaigned in Cleveland in 1976 bombed Philly MOVE, as well as saying that neighborhoods had the right demagogues such as Louis ("Hitler was November 1982: to preserve "ethnic purity." It was under a great man") Farrakhan who with their SL-initiated Carter-and with the aid of the FBI, "black capitalist" schemes and anti­ Labor/Black Mobilization ATF, state and localvcops-c-that Semiticravings oppose integrated strug­ stopped the KKK KKK/Nazi terrorists gunned down gle while joining hands with the KKK. from marching in five leftists, labor organizers and civil Today black people around.the coun- Washington, D.C. rights workers in the 1979 Greensboro massacre. In 1980 and 1984 the Klan cam­ paigned for Reagan, and was rewarded by the media and politicians who sought to make these racist killers "respec­ table." Newsweek (29 September 1986) Collegiates" vow to rid the campus of plant foreman and his stepson, who "jokingly" quoted KKK Imperial Wiz­ "outspoken minorities," while graffitti mistook Chin for a Japanese and ard James Farrands about having "to do on the walls at Ohio State call on whites blamed him for auto layoffs. Fouryears the cross lightings and everything" to "Get Out Your 22s" against black later, the killers are still free: last himself, while the New York Times ran students. At a Charleston, South Caro­ September, a federal appeals court an obscene feature on the Connecticut ~,j .i... ~" lina military academy left over from the overturned the murder conviction of the Kluxer and the rising price of hooded OltJl;AI~et, days of slavery, white-robed cross­ foreman on a technicality. Faced with robes. And as the burning crosses lit a "" burners terrorized black cadet Kevin mass outrage from Asian Americans fiery swath of terror North and South, .f;';llU\l:f.~ ..tPi," Nesmith (see "KKK Terror at The across the country, the U·.S. announced racists burned down anti-apartheid oPhoto Citadel," WV No. 418, 19 December it would retry the case. This was shanties in Baltimore and firebombed Detroit, May 1983: Demonstrators protest murder of Chinese American 1986). protectionist murder: the auto bosses the homes of black and Hispanic Vincent Chin. Protectionist frenzy It's racist terror; U.S.A., in white and chauvinist union tops had whipped families who dared to move into Chica­ fuels anti-Asian terror. sheets and blue uniforms. In the Los up a poisonous atmosphere as the city go's Southwest Side. But the decent Angeles area, Huntington Park and was plastered with signs, "Send 'em back people of this country are revolted by try are bitterly lamenting the total Huntington Beach cops imitating New to Japan," and the UAW sponsored this racist filth. In the last year, the KKK absence of any leadership prepared to York City's 106Jh Precinct (which bash-ins of foreign cars. was driven out of Atlanta, Georgia and defend the ghetto masses against racist includes Howard Beach) have gone on a Trade war and imperialist war mean the college town of Radford, Virginia as attack. The nativist fascist killers will spree of torturing minority youth with racist terror at home. Soon after the hundreds mobilized to protect their not be moved or removed by pray-ins, 50,000-,,0It stun guns: four cases report­ movie Rambo opened in Boston in May communities against the fascist killers. pizza eat-ins, or pizza boycotts, or ap­ ed in the last month. In San Diego last 1985, a group of Southie whites at­ Even in Boston, where busing had peals to the racist Democratic Party of November, a black man arrested alleg­ tacked three Vietnamese. The macho been defeated by racist mobs in the American capitalism. Just as it took a edly for walking his dog without a flick quickly became the cult picture for streets (with the connivance of Demo­ second American revolution-the Civil license was paraded through the streets racist hoodlums, who repeatedly sat crats in Congress), the hooded race­ War-to do away with slavery, labor/ on a rope by a mounted cop. In through the 96 minutes of Sly Stallone haters were run out of town in October black mobilization must serve as a Oakland, the black community is out­ killing Russians and Vietnamese and 1982. The showdown came in Washing­ springboard to socialist revolution to raged over a new round of racist cop ­ yearned to be a "Rambo Man.". On ton, D.C. that November, when the smash the racist terrorists and achieve attacks. Last spring, in separate inci­ Memorial Day, a white gang with lead KKK vowed to parade in the nation's genuine emancipation for all the ex­ dents, two black women, phone worker pipes in East Boston put a Cambodian capital for the first time since 1925.The ploited and oppressed.• 6 WORKERS VANGUARD denouncing Koch for comparing the NYC murder to a Southern lynching: on the eve of a pre-presidential campaign swing through the South, Cuomo said, Lynching ..• "this is too sensitive an issue for that (continued from page 1) kind of rhetoric" (Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 4 January). three and one-half hours before they removed the body from the ground and Class War or Race War Cedric Sandiford after that I went back to the police (center), survivor station"-i.e., to the 106th Precinct, As a predominantly black protest of Howard Beach notorious for using stun.guns to torture moved into the Howard Beach area on racist attack, blacks. December 27, someone in the white with attorneys Of the eleven suspects brought in, crowds lining the sidewalks shouted, Alton Maddox "Here come the animals!" This gutter (right), C. Vernon only three were held, charged with Mason (left). second degree murder, manslaughter racism echoes that of Reaganite New and assault. Instead of going to a grand York Senator Alphonse-D'Amato who jury for an indictment, Queens district justified voting against a housing proj­ attorney Santucci gave away all his ect saying, "We didn't do too well with evidence to the press and the killers' the animal vote, did we?" (New York Times, 12October 1986). Koch's Demo­ Jamaica, a black family gave a white a Fighting TWU stated: "The Demo­ lawyers, while ignoring the confessions victim refuge in their home. Meanwhile, cratic Party and the liberal left are he has in hand. And on December 29, cratic predecessor Abe Beame referred to widespread looting in Brooklyn New York is degenerating into an 11.11­ exploiting the Goetz case in order to Criminal Court Judge Ernest Bianchi sided ugly meanness. On New Year's strengthen the anti-gun laws.... The threw out all charges except reckless during the 1977 blackout as the work of "animals." And it is Koch more than Eve, a woman was pushed from an racist right-wingers also used the Goetz endangerment. Outraged blacks in the upper-story hotel window, a French case for their own ends to inflame gallery stood up and shouted "Injus­ anyone in this city who has created the climate in which racist attacks are now tourist was stabbed to death and an off­ vigilantism." tice!" and "Disgrace!" Bianchi ordered duty cop was shot in the neck by teen the cops to push them out, screaming, daily occurrences. In the last election rowdies at Penn Station. For a Multiracial "Shut out all the loudmouths before I Koch got 85 percent of the vote in And as the city slides toward race war, Class-Struggle Workers Partyl hold them in contempt." Bianchi Howard Beach, but when the mayor visited a Roman Catholic church Hispanics have been taking it from both blamed the victims for his dropping the In the face of this horrendous lynch­ December 28 he was met with shouts of whites and blacks. The same night as the charges: "Mr. Sandiford is a Negro, a Griffith I~nching, racist thugs in Ozone ing in New York City and the seething black man who did not come to testify." "go home!" and "go to a synagogue!" As Malcolm X used to say, "The chickens Park attacked two Latino youths. A anger of the black population, the black They didn't need his testimony, either week later, light-skinned John Santiago leaders have shown their utter bank­ to get an indictment or to simply hold have come home to roost." Lily-white and heavily Italian How­ was assaulted with bats and sticksby ten ruptcy; "Establishment" pols like Floyd them for a grand jury. The cops know blacks shouting"Howard Beach!" in the Flake and Charles Rangel obediently who killed Michael Griffith because the ard Beach is surrounded by parkways, Jamaica Bay and JFK Airport serving East New York section of Brooklyn. trooped to City Hall to praise the killers bragged about it. Jon Lester, 17, When Santiago started speaking Span­ mayor's handling of events. The sudden­ told detectives that after seeing the black ish, one of the assailants reportedly said, ly respectable Rev. Herbert Daughtry I men in the New Park pizzeria, he rushed "Leave him alone, he's not white." held a private meeting with the mayor to a friend's birthday party and shouted, Another replied, "he looks white," and six weeks ago and is now calling on "Hey, there's some niggers 'in the pizza ) the beating continued. In the Belmont Koch to head up a task force on racial parlor! Let's go kill them!" A dozen or .: section of the Bronx there has been a bigotry! This call was echoed by none more whites in three cars raced back to I wave of assaults on Puerto Ricans by other than Jesse Jackson, who said that the restaurant. Sandiford says that cops Italian gangs. And there is the constant the city's Number One Bigot displayed in a patrol car from the I06th Precinct '. p All A police harassment: on December 27, "aggressive leadership to combat an sawthe mob gathering but drove off DKO ...... f OF RMED three Hispanic women were beaten and incident that would have become worse" without doing anything. With a green ~. 'HARGlr A jailed by transit cops in the Bronx when (New York Post, 31 December 1986). light from the cops, the killers went to they came to the aid of a friend who was And the Rev. Al Sharpton has gone work. Lester fought with another white ~o1AD~aruN£~ ~[NS~ robbed on the IRT and then seized by from vigilante attacks on Arab store­ over a baseball bat because he "wanted a the police while the muggers escaped. owners in Harlem (for selling "drug par­ piece of the action." He said he was "not r DEFEND . LOCAL JOe In New York City's black ghettos and aphernalia") to a pizza eat-in in Howard going to give up anybody. I am going to Hispanic barrios, Koch's venal and Beach. be a capo" in the Mafia. (Cosa Nostril. ~KpmR brutal police are universally hated. So And what is the program of the boss John Gotti is a Howard Beach GRI when outlaw Larry Davis, who plugged lawyers Maddox and C. Vernon Ma­ resident.) But today Lester isa free man. six cops and got away, was able to son? At a January 3 press conference The cops ignored Sandiford's charge negotiate his surrender last month after they talked grandly of a new movement that the car which killed Griffith was evading a massive police manhunt for 17 for black "empowerment." But in the among those in the original chase. days, dozens of tenants in the Bronx concrete all they had to offer was anti­ Dominick Blum, a cop in family court housing project leaned, out of the Italian demagogy (calling for a boycott and the driver of the car which killed windows chanting, "Lar-ry! Lar-ry!" He of pizza parlors) and reliance on the Griffith, claims he stopped after the WVPhoto became a folk hero, known on the racist Democrats (Mason ran for impact but saw nothing, and believing Mobilizations by militant TWUers streets as the "dude that elude." Claude Manhattan D.A. in the Democratic he had hit a tire or an animal.proceeded spearheaded successful defense of primary). While such stunts seem subway clerk James Grimes. Brown, author of Manchild in the to drive his girlfriend home. His car's Promised Land, the autobiographical merely absurd, ("How in God's name hood and left side were damaged and the account of growing up in Harlem, does a pizza pie jump up and run you windshield was shattered, and one of the as a virtual moat to keep out blacks. To explained: over?" one kid commented), ultimately gang members said he saw Griffith's ensure "safety," local householders pay "The white police department has been it leads to another Crown Heights, body thrown 20 feet in the air, More­ $220 a year to maintain a private intimidating the black community- where in 1978 Daughtry diverted angry over, Blum returned to the scene of security force. A local racist was frank: . think of Eleanor Bumpurs and Michael black protests against the police killing Stewart-and all of a sudden here Griffith's death later, accompanied by "If Whoopi Goldberg came into this of black businessman Arthur Miller into his father, another cop, in a different, neighborhood she'd be killed" (News­ comes Larry Davis the' avenging angel. It's like, 'We 'finally won one'." pogromist marches on a Hassidic undamaged car. He was not given a week, 5 January). When the NAACP, -i-New 'York Times, 2 January synagogue. As if to prove this point the breathalyzer test nor even questioned at clergymen, and liberal and reformist And meanwhile the courts and cops January 3 white-exclusionist Abyssini­ the scene. At the very least, Blum left the organizations held a "prayerful obser­ are using .gun control laws to keep an Baptist Church meeting was laced scene of an accident-yet he has not vance" in this bastion of white racism decent citizens helpless in the face of with anti-Semitic rhetoric, and heard been charged, with anything. December 27, -it was an experience of racist mob terror. As the Committee for continued on page 8 Sandiford's attorney Maddox com­ humiliation, degradation and terror. mented, "Given the outcome of the Hundreds of racists itching for blood Willie Turks case where you had a dead lined the streets screaming epithets and body and no murder conviction, it is drowning out the demonstrators. The clear that whenever white people mur­ march was "protected" by the cops of Spartacist ~Forum der a Black man this city is unprepared the 106th stun-gun Precinct. One black to prosecute a white mob on murder remarked: "What was really scary is that Racist Lynching in Howard Beach charges" (Daily Challenge, 22 Decem­ if these groups [of racist punks roaming ber 1986). So Queens D.A. Santucci,' Howard Beach] would have come, they Judge Bianchi, Mayor Koch, NY State could have closed all 1,500 folk in there For Labor/Black Defense special prosecutor Hynes and the entire and had a field day." ~ establishment media joined in a chorus In the face ofthis orgy of racism, the To Stop Racist Attacks! claiming Sandiford, Grimes and Mad­ city stands at the brink. Lacking any dox "must now bear a heavy share of leadership capable of mobilizing to Speakers: Marjorie Stamberg Spartacist League Central Committee responsibility for the reverberating crush the lynchers, clots of enraged Ed Kartsen 1985 Spartacist candidate for Mayor Spartacist League Central Committee tensions" (New York Times, 30 Decem­ black youth have responded by assault­ NY Labor Black League for Social Defense Richard Dundy ber 1986). Whatever Maddox and ing isolated whites. On December 23, 1985 Spartacist candidate for , Partisan Defense Committee, Mason's reasoning in keeping Sandi­ 'two dozen black teenagers shouting' Manhattan Borough President New York representative ford off the stand, their strategy is based "Howard Beach! Howard Beach!" Friday, January 23, 7:30 p.m. on pressuring the state or federal chased, punched and kicked Jeffrey P.S.41 Auditorium, 116 W. 11th St. (at 6th Ave.) government to take over the case. The McCarthy, a white youth, in Jamaica, For more information: (212) 267-1025 idea that they'll get a better shake from Queens. Unlike the lynching in Howard Reagan/Meese is grotesque. And Gov­ Beach, black passers-by came to ernor Cuomo has joined the Dixiecrats, McCarthy's rescue. In another case in

9 JANUARY 1987 7 OJ'" E Stop Racist i= >- ~ Attacks ... '0'" :J -' (continued from page 1) oOJ In Reagan's America and Koch's New York lynch-mob terror is on the rise, as even the New York Times was com­ pelled to editorialize. The Times praised July 1983: Koch's "rightful anger" and the "ap­ Angry black propriate urgency" of his racists in blue residents chase after the racist terror in Howard Beach. racist Koch out But it is racist pig Koch who inflames of cop brutality the white, ethnic middle-class backlash. hearings in As his egomaniacal biography brags, Harlem. "hizzoner" really gets off on closing down West Harlem's only hospital, Sydenham, and trying to break the 1980 transit strike. It was Koch's SWAT team he has driven this city to the brink of to a four-month "legal" lynching for racist scum try and take on thousands of cop Stephen Sullivan who blew away race war. From Trump Tower to Wall defending his life (and transit funds) integrated transit workers, hospital black grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs Street, the swindlers who rule NYC are from armed muggers. Gun control is workers and city workers patrolling with two shotgun blasts in her Bronx afraid the lynch-mob murder of Michael killing black people in this city, ensuring Cross Bay Boulevard on flatbed trucks. apartment because she was two months Griffith might push it over the edge. So that the racist thugs and the killers in Then the racist punks with their Musso­ behind in her rent, while his Uncle Tom they got the big-mouth bigot of Gracie blue are armed to the teeth while decent lini T-shirts will get a taste ofwhat their police commissioner Ward exonerated Mansion to denounce the "racial lynch­ working people'remain defenseless. If hero got. In 1982, following the murder Sullivan's brutal murder as "within ing" in Howard Beach. That's about as . Willie Turks and Michael Griffith had of Willie Turks, the Spartacist League departmental guidelines." sincere as Reagan denouncing the been armed, they would be alive today. supported the call of militants in the Koch and his ghoulish coroner Dr. diversion of Iran arms money to the No reliance on Koch's "injustice" TWU to provide such a defense against Gross covered up the racist murder of contras. Queens D.A. Santucci dredged system, which turns loose the racist racist terror in the streets of Gravesend. black artist and son of a retired transit up three likely suspectsfrom the sewers killers of Willie Turks, and tries to jail a But it was sabotaged by the TWU tops, worker Michael Stewart at the hands of of south Queens and slapped them with courageous black worker like James who seek to keep the integrated power the transit cops in Union Square. From second-degree murder charges. Grimes! of the labor movement in the chains of the cop murder of 81-year-old Dennis But working people in New York Across the country large cities are run their masters in the racist, strikebreak­ Groce in the vestibule of his own remember the similar lynch-mob mur­ by Democrats, frequently black, who ing Democratic Party. The absence of apartment building, to the systematic der of Willie Turks and the beating of are front men for Reagan reaction. In that labor power to smash racist terror stun-gun torture of black youth in the two fellow workers in 1982, only blocks NYC the black Democratic Party poli­ leaves blacks and other minorities 106th Precinct, Koch's racist killers in from their Coney Island shop in the ticians and preachers have rushed in to defenseless, and prey to the deadly blue have been given license to kill. Gravesend section of Brooklyn. The contain the flood of anger over Michael schemes of nationalist and anti-Semitic Blacks and other minorities, all most any of the killers of Brother Turks Griffith's murder. Led by Rev. Al demagogues like Farrakhan and Her­ decent people in this city, share the deep got was a slap on the wrist from Sharpton, they held a December 22 bert Daughtry. For integrated armed griefand bitterness of the Griffith'family Brooklyn D.A. Liz Holtzman. And "eat-in" at the pizzeria in Howard Beach workers defense guards, drawn from over the brutal racist murder of Michael every single one of those racist thugs are where the lynch-mob assault began. responsible union men and women! Griffith. We are fed up with racist back on the street, free to kill again. Yet Relying on the "protection" of stun-gun In 1985 at a forum in solidarity with terror, in and out of uniform. Koch is liberal Democrat Holtzman subjected .cops from the 106th Precinct and the the victims of the hideous racist massa­ Reagan reaction in New York City, and black token-booth clerk James Grimes sinister Guardian Angels, the black cre in Philadelphia of the MOVE or­ ministers and a handful of supporters at ganization, Ed Kartsen, SL candidate the pizzeria were subjected to threats for Manhattan Borough President, and humiliating taunts. Such dangerous called for the kind of integrated labor stunts, preaching reliance on Koch's power that must be mobilized against racist cops, will only embolden the racist the racist terror in Howard Beach: "We scum and leave blacks defenseless from stand ready at all times to mobilize our racist and fascist terror. Similarly, the strength in united actions against racist liberal left's call for the hoax of a terror. The mass power of organized "democratic civilian review board" to labor, black militants, once broken "control" the racists in blue is a from the Democratic Party in mass diversion meant to channel the outrage actions, will constitute the kind of in­ over Michael Griffith's murder into vincible force that will avenge the Phil­ empty schemes to "reform" Koch's Iy bombing. Legal lynchings must be cossacks. It will mean more black met with revolutionary class justice.... victims on the streets of New York. The United actions mobilizing the power of lawyer for the Griffith family has organized labor and minority organiza­ .already charged the Queens D.A. and tions must be brought to bear to smash the 106th Precinct with a cover-up of the racist terrorism.... We have to move full extent of the racist crime while the forward to a mass labor/minority party press has put the surviving victims on that can lead the working class to seize WV Photo trial. power in order to end racist terrorism Brooklyn Supreme Court, 20 July 1983-Militant transit workers demand What is needed now is a powerful once and for all." union action to defend blacks,. folloWing lynch-mob murder of union mobilization of labor and minorities on brother Willie Turks. the streets of Howard Beach. Let those - NY Spartacist League

ary fight for equality and social integra­ or two thousand union defense squads fascist gangs were formed and fascism tion against capitalism. on the streets, on flatbed trucks, going arose in Europe and crushed the labor NYC through Howard Beach and other movement. Do not permit them to take What is urgently needed is to forge a areas, because you've got to command root here.... Flying squadrons of union Lynching ... fighting unity of the oppressed minori­ respect. And that's the only way: makea militants should stand ready to protect ties, who are the majority of the New show of force. And the unions can be in the rights of their Negro fellow workers (continuedfrom page 7) the forefront of that." menaced by the mobs. The various lo­ York City population, with the social cal unions should maintain order and power of the organized labor move­ In this deeply racist country black greetings from Hitler-lover and KKK clear their respective territories of anti­ ment, particularly the heavily black and emancipation has always been the meas­ ally Louis Farrakhan, the man who Negro, antilabor gangs." Latin municipal unions. Speaking at a ure of general social progress, and racist -s-Militant, 3 July 1943 wanted Malcolm X dead. protest meeting in Brooklyn on Decem­ terror is the cutting edge of social Discussing the December 27 preach­ The Trotskyists of the Spartacist ber 30, Gene Herson, a class-struggle reaction. Every civil right and social ers-and-politicians march in Howard League continue the struggle for labor/ oppositionist in the National Maritime gain we cherish has been won through Beach on WLIB radio, talk show host black defense today. While murderous Union, pointed out: hard, often bloody, integrated struggle, Gary Byrd noted the similarity to the mobs and Koch's killer cops wreak rac­ "They're talking about swapping police from the abolitionists in the Union kind of racism Martin Luther King precincts because of the Crack crack­ Army in the Civil War and Reconstruc­ ist terror in the streets, and black encountered in Chicago and the show's down. What are they going to do, swap tion to the industrial union movement Democratic demagogues feed into this guest remarked, "Yes, Cicero, Illinois, the [Howard Beach/Ozone Park] stun­ during the Great Depression. During orgy of racism with their ethnic appeals, that area is pretty rough and that's what gun precinct with the Union Square we stand for united struggle against the precinct, the cops who killed Michael World War II, as hundreds ofthousands it reminded me of." It was precisely in Stewart? Or with the SWAT team that of blacks flooded into the industrial capitalist oppressor: For class war, not the lily-white Chicago suburb of Cicero, killed Eleanor. Bumpurs? .. The mur­ North, there were racist riots in Detroit race war! Counterposed to the dead in 1966,thatthe civil rights movement derers of Willie Turks are' free on the where white thugs and police murdered ends of liberal iniegrationism and black street. The murderers of Griffith are free was killed, and the white backlash won 26 blacks. The then-revolutionary So­ separatism, the road to social progress is its first major victory. King and the pro­ on the street. The courts are part and the road of revolutionary integration­ parcel of the racist, capitalist system. cialist Workers Party proclaimed: Democratic Party civil rights movement -That's no answer and I don't want. to "The hoodlums and hooligans who ate ism, of the liberation of'oppressed had wOQ victories over Jim Crow hear aboutappeals to the mayor or the today assailing the Negroes are training minorities in an egalitarian socialist discrimination in the South in alliance governor or other politicians. The only themselves for other acts of violence. society, Forging a multiracial vanguard with sections of the state. But in the answer is the integrated, powerful force Tomorrow or the day after they can be workers party is tile key to building a of the unions in this country. And in unleashed by the Fords, Wilsons, and North they rim aground on the econom­ NewYork, the TWU in particular is a Chryslers as storm troops and strike­ societywhere Jim Crow segregation and ic bedrock of racism in America because heavily black union which is a corner­ breakers against the unions themselves. the lynch rope are but bitter memories they lacked a program for a revolution- stone of city labor. What we need is one Workers, take warning! This is how of a barbaric past. • 8 WORKERS VANGUARD Stop Execution of Indonesian Communists!

SYDNEY, Australia, December 17­ have risen in struggle, at times to the Today some 25 people took part in a point of posing the question of power. militant picket at Garuda Indonesian And now, two decades after 1965,a new Airways, the Indonesian national air­ generation has come on the scene, line, to protest against the threatened thirsting for vengeance. Moreover, execution of leader-s of the Communist executing Communists also serves to Party of Indonesia (PKI) planned by the placate rising Islamic fundamentalist blood-drenched Suharto dictatorship. opposition. The protest was called at short notice by This demonstration was especially the Spartacist League of Australia and significant for revolutionaries in racist New Zealand, section of the internation­ white Australia, where the ALP has al Spartacist tend-ency, in response to historically poisoned the working class reports that seven political prisoners with anti-Asian chauvinism, and the held in Cipinang prison, Jakarta, were nationalist "left" seems to itch for to be executed by the end of the month "democratic" Australian imperialism to and possibly before Christmas. rescue East Timor and West Papua Chanting "Stop the executions of from their Indonesian invaders. The Indonesian Communists!" and "Free ruling class is stirring the pot of anti­ Indonesian Communists! Free all class­ Indonesian chauvinism because they war prisoners!" the spirited picket at­ fear that the crisis in the Philippines has tracted much attention from passers­ destabilised the region and the regime by, including several Indonesians. Call­ that follows Suharto in Indonesia may ingfor urgent action by the Australian Australasian partacist not be so reliable an anti-Communist and international labour movement to Emergency picket called by the Spartacist League of Australia and New buffer. One SL placard, "Waterfront save PKI prisoners from the military Zealand demands freedom for condemned Indonesian Communists. Unions: Remember the Black Armada! firing squads, 'demonstrators chanted, • Ruslan Wijayasastra, 69, former Labor Party] bureaucracy breathed a For Labour Action to Stop the Execu­ "Union action must be the weapon, deputy chairman of SOBSI, the All­ sigh of relief. For years previously they tions!" recalled the better traditions of against Suharto's bloody repression!" A Indonesia Federation of Trade Unions, had offered their services to a U.S. the Australian working class-the large­ protest telegram from the Partisan imperialist drive to quell the combative scale black bans [hot-cargoing] of which numbered 3 million members in Indonesian proletariat via CIA/ASIS Defense Committee of the U.S. was read 1965. [Australian Security Intelligence Serv­ Dutch shipping by dockers and seamen out. • Sukatno, 56, secretary-general of ice] provocations. The aftermath of the in solidarity with the Indonesian inde­ The seven in imminent danger are the PKI youth organisation Pemuda 1965 massacre enabled them to disen­ pendence struggle from 1945 to 1949. among between 16 and 33 political gage from the Vietnam debacle and The road to revolution in this white Rakyat (People's Youth). embark on a streamlined imperialist • Asep Suryaman, 61, and Iskander push into Asia. Indonesia today is a key imperialist outpost lies in struggle Subekti, 64, PKI Central Committee anti-Communist bulwark for imperial­ against racist Laborism, for revolu­ members. The other three are non­ ist anti-Soviet war preparations in this tionary class solidarity with the workers Communist military personnel charged region. It forms a central part of the reactionary ASEAN (Association of' : with 'involvement in the abortive "Sep­ Southeast Asian Nations) alliance di­

tember 30 Movement" coup of middle­ rectly targeting the Vietnamese workers / ranking officers led by Lieutenant state as part of the war drive worldwide poe Appeals for Colonel Untung, the pretext for Suhar­ against the gains of the Russian Revolu­ tion. Suharto wants to place the to's takeover. In addition, over 200 threatened Indonesian Communists on International Protests political prisoners from 1965,including the altar of imperialism's anti-Soviet many women, remain in prison. war frenzy. It is a war drive that the On December 13, the Partisan A key demand of the Spartacist Australian bourgeoisie is four-square Defense Committee issued an ur­ demonstration was "Avenge the 1965 behind. They are the self-styled imperi­ alist cops for the U.S,. in this region." gent appeal, sent to more than 600 massacre-for workers revolution!" In individuals, newspapers, civil rights the orgy of mass slaughter unleashed by Placards at the demonstration read, and civil liberties organizations, the military in the last months of 1965, "Smash ASEAN, U.S.-Australian calling for international protests at least half a million and probably Alliance! Defend USSR/Vietnam!", against the executions of Indone­ many more members and supporters of "Down with Hawke, Suharto's Anti­ sian Communists. The PDC sent the PKI and its unions, peasant, Communist Ally, Reagan's Lackey!" the following telegram to: Indone­ women's, youth, student and cultural and "Stop Australian Military Aid to sia Embassy, 2020 Massachusetts organisations, as well as the Chinese Indonesia!" Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036, New York Times According to Amnesty International, Hundreds of thousands were massa­ minority, died. The annihilation of the and urges others to do the same: largest Communist party outside the there have been as many official cred in 1965anti-Communist blood­ executions in Indonesia in thelast three Hands of Indonesian governmer.1 bath in Indonesia. USSR and China, in this strategically dripping with workers' blood for central country of Southeast Asia, was a years as in the entire preceding 38! After prisoners' remaining under death sen­ a long lapse of 13 years, the junta more than 20 years. Stop execu­ historic defeat for the international tions of PKI leaders Wijayasastra, tences imposed in the wake of the proletariat and stabilised imperialist resumed executions of Communists horrendous anti-Communist bloodbath sentenced to death in 1985with those of Sukatno, Suryaman and Subekti. domination of the region. Spartacist Demand immediate release of all in which Suharto came to power in spokesman Andrew Giannakis told the SOBSI general secretary Mohammad 1965, and who have spent most of two Munir and three others, followed by a workers and PKI members impris­ picket: oned after government slaughter of decades in prison. They include four "The bourgeoisie of this country along further nine executions in September/ PKI leaders: with its servants in the ALP[Australian October 1986. They are linked to a new one-half million in 1965. campaign of anti-Communist hysteria, including mass sackings [firings] of former PKI members, supporters and and peasants of Asia, a perspective SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY even their relatives and children. For expressed by the Spartacist slogan, "For National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 . example, 1,638 oil workers were sacked a workers republic of Australia, part of and blacklisted by companies including socialist Asia!" Atlanta Detroit Norfolk the U.S. giant Caltex for membership in The 1965 bloodbath can only be Box 4012 Box 32717 Box 1972, Main PO a pre-1965 PKI-Ied union. Another 900 avenged by forging a revolutionary Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48232 Norfolk, VA 23501 "ex-PKI" railwaymen are to be dis­ Trotskyist leadership that has drawn the Boston Los Angeles Oakland missed, according to TAPOL Bulletin lessons of that defeat and the bankrupt­ Box 840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 32552 (July 1986). cy of the PKI's strategy, which the Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 Why has the butcher Suharto now Chinese Maoists backed to the hilt. As (617) 492-3928 (213) 384-9716 (415) 839-0851 opted to resume killing members of a Giannakis explained: party drowned in-blood 20 years ago? "It was the PKl's alliance with the Chicago Madison San Francisco Part of the reason must be to terrorise nationalist bourgeois Sukarno that Box 6441, Main PO c/o SYl, Box 2074 Box 5712 anew the Indonesian masses. With the disarmed the proletariat before the Chicago, IL60680 Madison, WI 53701 San Francisco, CA94101 economy in crisis and oil prices falling, butcher generals and the reactionary (312) 663-0715 (608) 257-8625 (415) 863-6963 Muslim marauders. The Stalinist strate­ revolutionary turmoil next door in the gy of class collaborationism/popular Cleveland New York Washington, D.C. Philippines where another 20-year anti­ front has 'its history drenched in Box 91037 Box 444, canal St. Sta. Box 75073 Communist tyrant has just fallen, and workers' blood from China and Spain Cleveland, OH 44101 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 the aging Suharto preparing his succes­ to Indonesia and 'chile. Only the (216) 621-5138 (212) 267-1025 (202) 636-3537 proletariat can lead the oppressed sion, the Jakarta generals sit nervously masses of the imperialist-dominated atop a social volcano. And they invaria­ countries to working-class revolution. bly combine anti-Communism with The historic example of the 1917 Toronto Russian Revolution remains to this day TROTSKYIST LEAGUE Box 7198, Station A chauvinist hysteria against the country's significant Chinese minority. Three . the inspiration to the oppressed and OF CANADA Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 exploited of the world. The Indonesian (416) 593-4138 times in this century the combative masses today need their' Bolshevik Indonesian worker and peasant masses party.". 9 JANUARY 1987 9 newsletter of the Partisan Defense Sakharov... Committee states: "Citizenship is an inalienable birthright (continued from page 5) of the bourgeois revolution. A person New York may choose to deny his or her citizen­ memorial service popularity and authority among the ship, then decide to take it up again. Itis advanced workers, in 1929 Stalin had the choice of the individual-not the for KAL 007 secretly and forcibly deported the man state. But as the. case of Margaret victims, 31 August who, along with Lenin, led the Bolshe­ Randall shows, the U.S. government 1986. Families of vik Revolution. A few years later he wields the denial of citizenship like an victims say U.S. axe, hoping to intimidate all citizens. government stripped Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Even the Soviet Union, which certainly silence "is Sedova, of their Soviet citizenship-a needs to defend itself against a gaggle of beginning to then unprecedented act. And in 1940 U.S. imperialist-inspired 'dissidents,' resemble Stalin had Trotsky assassinated. Fol­ today denies citizenship as a political a deliberate reflex. This is contrary to the historic lowing Khrushchev's 1956secret speech traditions of the Bolshevik Revolution cover-up." denouncing some of Stalin's crimes, the which proclaimed the right of citizen­ Trotskyist movement supported Natalia ship for all workers living in Russian territory." ment cover-up in the KAL 007 affair. Eastern Europe'.... The Lenczowski -s-Class-Struggle Defense Notes proposals were appended, at [National No.3, December 1986 They had good reason to be worried. The U.S.' KAL provocation almost Security Adviser] Clark's direction, to Sakharov has represented those ele­ the formal NSC options paper on the triggered the Reaganites' apocalyptic crisis." ments in the Soviet petty-bourgeois elite wet dreams. In his minimal attempt to who became capitulators to Western -"The Target Is Destroyed" appear evenhanded, Seymour Hersh Only hve months earlier, the U.S. Navy imperialism. Now it appears that Gor­ revealed some of the dangerous goings­ bachev has rather elegantly levered had conducted the largest maneuvers on in the U.S. government and armed Sakharov away from his previous role since World War II in the North Pacific, forces in the first day or so after the during which aircraft carrier Midway as the pre-eminent Soviet participant in event. "Some senior Air Force and Navy the Western Cold War propaganda suddenly went into radio /electronic si­ ~ officers in the Pacific ...'got emotional,' lence heading toward Soviet territory in •... machine. But as long as the Soviet as one officer recalled, and began the Kurillslands, and six U.S. Navyjets Union remains confronted by hostile formulating actions for retaliation capitalist powers more economically violated Soviet borders, overflying the against the Soviet Union, actions 'that island of Zeleny. $.'·"1'./ advanced than itself, the Stalinist could have started World War Ill'." One bureaucracy and its intellectual periph­ KAL 007 was the culmination of a AP officer said an Air Force general asked 1977: Sakharov waves tetter from string of U.S. anti-Soviet military prov­ ery will spawn more Sakharovs. The him to send a falsified intelligence report U.S. president Jimmy Carter. only road to ending the terrible danger ocations. Since then Washington's to the Pentagon to justify U.S. provoca­ dangerous policy of nuclear brinkman­ of nuclear holocaust is to return to the tions. Six F-15 interceptors and an Sedova's call to restore her Soviet program of Lenin and Trotsky. Not ship has continued unabated. If Reagan AWACS electronics surveillance air­ citizenship. Insofar as the Soviet Union appeasement of imperialism, but inter­ didn't pull the trigger after his KAL 007 has modified Stalin's legacy by permit­ craft were ordered to "orbit adjacent to war provocation, it was because he felt national proletarian revolution to sweep Soviet territory near Sakhalin," and ting some emigrants to return, including away the bloodsuckers on Wall Street he wasn't ready. If he doesn't invade from the U.S., and regain their Soviet instructed to "take advantage of the Nicaragua today, it's because the pow­ and in the Common Market, and the situation"-Le., to provoke an incident. citizenship, the homeland of the Octo­ NATO militarists who serve them.• ers that be in Washington worry that ber Revolution has reaped a propagan­ Back in Washington, National Secu­ they don't have the popular support for da bonanza while inflicting a stinging rity Council officer John Lenczowski it. These people sent a civilian airliner to indictment on the "Free World." had gathered a group of conservatives its doom in order to "tickle" Soviet air In the U.S. today we are fighting the KAL 007••• from around the government to plan defenses, risking World War III. Today government's efforts to deny citizenship (continued from page 5) "military steps": the Dr. Strangeloves in the White House '''We wanted action-military action,' to Margaret Randall, an, American mentioned in the referendum), another one member of the group recalled. 'We have been wounded by the lrangate/ writer of leftist sympathies who livedfor factor which reportedly influenced discussed everything from attacking Contragate flap, but wounded beasts some years in Latin America,The latest students was the evidence of a govern- Cuba to rolling back the Soviets in are also dangerous.•

arsenal high on the Soviet target list. lization of transit workers. A political the Star Wars program which IS In­ Vanunu ••. This is a horrible confirmation of fight against the pro-capitalist labor tended to destroy the gains of the (continued from page 2) Trotsky's warning that the Zionist sellouts is central to the forging of a Russian workers revolution. He intends project of creating a "Jewish state"­ class-struggle leadership in the workers to pay for it through destroying social weapons in the Indian Antarctic Basin.) necessarily a garrison state founded on movement. services in this country. An even more sinister danger is Israel's the brutal oppression of another nation, What can be done now: It is insane to think that New York role as the key anti-Soviet ally of U.S. the Palestinians-could only result in a I) Corner your union officials; de­ City can function without an efficient, imperialism in the Near East. Israel has deathtrap for Jews. mand that the entire union take clean, safe transit system. From chemi­ already announced it isjoining the U.S. Mordechai Vanunu's courageous rev­ whatever action is necessary, up to cal corrosion due to salt usage in the in developing "Star Wars" technology elations must serve as a warning to and including strike action to winter to massive service cuts, it is the with its aim of an anti-Soviet first strike. working and oppressed people through­ defend seniority rights. TA and the Koch administration that And those 200 nukes could be intended out the world, and not least in Israel, of 2) Cancel your COPE checkoff, if are responsible for the decay of the mass as a sucker punch from the 'South, to the urgent necessity to disarm the you have not already; this is buy­ transit system. provoke Moscow into an action that Zionist nuclear terrorists and their ing bullets for our own execution. Instead of seniority violations, mass would draw American "retaliation.' I American backers through socialist Labor must break from the Dem­ victimizations and injury or death The Zionist rulers, who have their-own revolution. Free Mordechai Vanunu! ocrats! We need our own workers through industrial accidents, transit ambitions with a bunker mentality to Drop the charges!. party to fight for a workers govern- workers united with workers through­ boot, may be preparing' to .plunge ment! . out this city must demand that New humanity into a thermonuclear holo­ 3) Call Of write THE COMMITTEE York be rebuilt for the working people. caust on their own timetable. FOR A FIGHTING TWU to set New York City labormust launch a French prime minister Chirac recent­ TWU ••• up a meeting to discuss the class­ (continued from p'!ge 4) socialist fight to rebuild the transit ly stated that the Mossad was likely struggle program needed to defend system and all public services! behind the London bomb plot against In Sonny Hall andCo.'s union, an the interests of the working class their own El Al airliner, to create a individual Steward or gang of workers, and all the oppressed. TAKE BACK THE GIVE BACKS! pretext for war with Syria, Moscow's no matter how militant and determined, Reagan, Koch and their TA flunkies NO CONTRACT-NO WORK! principal military client in the Near can be isolated by management, left to are destroying public transportation. UNITED WE CAN WIN! East. Nixon/Kissinger almost launched twist in the wind by the labor traitors, The TA scapegoats transit workers to UNITED WE ARE INVINCIBLE! nuclear war against the Soviet Union and eventually victimized' and driven cover for its own incompetence and COM MITTEE FOR over the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Today out of the job or hammered into downright sabotage of the transit A FIGHTING TWU Israel's arsenal is a nuclear trigger for submission. system. Reagan is pouring billions into 15 December 1986 World War III, in which the entire Even in the worst of conditions, it is country would be annihilated within necessary to struggle and possible to minutes. For the actions of the Zionist win. The James Grimes victory was won warmongers have placed Israel's nuclear through the independent political mobi-

Spartacist ~ HONOR BOLSHEVIK LEADERS' LENIN, LIEBKNECHT, LUXEMBURG As part of our struggle to continue the traditions of V.1. Lenin, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, outstanding revolutionary Marxists, the Spartacist League will hold a memorial meeting in Oakland. California. No greater tribute can be paid these historic ' leaders of the proletarian fight for socialism than to commemorate their deaths by propagating the ideas they lived and died for. and to organize the working masses for the mighty battles against capitalism. Forward to the international proletarian revolution! Sunday, January 18,4:00 p.m. Hyatt Regency Oakland, Calvin Sil'!lmons Ballroom No.4, 1001 Broadway 25$ (16 pages) 75$ (32 pages) 75$ (32 pages) Oakland Q LN San Francisco For more information: (415)839-0851 AK A D For more information: (415)863-6963 Make checks payable/mall to: Sparlaclst Publishing CO., Box 1377 GPO, toIY,NY10116

10 WORKERS VANGUARD / seruonty. The other, "provisional," stations, depots and especially signal France ... coordinating committee ignores the centers which control the signal lights. (continued from page 12) union leaderships and tries to go around There must be mass picket lines to them. Both leave the bureaucrats a free defend occupied installations against bureaucrats, but has not created a hand to break the strike as soon as they the cops, against scabs organized means to replace them. The movement are able to do so. around the CGC ["union" of managers is not a repeat of the student strike, as The tool the railwaymenneed to win and small businessmen] into committees many superficial commentators have the strike is a national strike committee, to defend the "right to work," and claimed, but the culmination of a series democratically elected and recallable at against the threat of fascist groups of hard defensive strikes over the past any time by general assemblies in which which are organizing active strike­ few years, waged along job category the strikers, with full knowledge, can breakers on the pretext of "defending lines, which have frequently by.passed make a majority decision on what the consumers." the unions. strategy to apply. The union leadership SNCF workers need the assistance of After 10 May 1981", when Fiterrnan would have to seek strikers' votes for other sectors of the working class. was given a back seat in the government their program, and. their policy of Militants of the Ligue Trotskyste de as minister of transport, the leadership defending the bourgeois order could be France {section of the international of the French Communist Party (PCF) exposed directly to the mobilized Spartacist tendency] who are CGT and the CGT-which had a stronghold workers. The union leadership could be union members in the postal system in the SNCF-systematically sought to consciously rejected in the heat of distributed a leaflet dated 28 December throttle any strikes against the "left" action, under the hammer blows of in various PIT centers calling for AP government. May 1984 was the high revolutionaries fighting for leadership solidarity with the rail workers and Anti-Soviet strikebreakers: French point: railroad workers fought back of the strike committees. That is the only preparing a strike of the PTT and the prime minister Jacques Chirac (left) Fran~ois against Fiterman when he introduced way the bureaucrats' stranglehold on all civil service. Workers everywhere and "Socialist" president Mltterrand. measures which attacked working con­ the workers can be broken. should instruct their unions to contact ditions. The CGT leadership sought to Krivine's LCR [French section of the SNCF strikers, their "coordinating organs of dual power in factories and stifle this supposedly "minority" move­ Ernest Mandel's fake-Trotskyist United committees" and their unions immedi­ businesses-embryos of dual power ment at all costs. Today, despite verbal Secretariat] presented its "perspective" ately. Mass delegations should be sent across France, where the government is opposition to "cohabitation," the Sta­ in a 21 December leaflet which called for to reinforce picket lines in the train as unstable as it is reactionary. The linist leadership of the CGT has again "popularizing," "extending" (but only stations. Traveling and stationary post­ necessary precondition is an alternative opposed the strike in the name of the to the SNCF) and. "organizing and al workers in the stations, for example, leadership which wins authority in the traditional anti-worker ploy-"the in­ controlling the action" of the strike­ should immediatelyjoin the strike. They labor movement by intransigent strug­ terests of the public." As for the CFDT, three proposals, each more vague than should refuse to load mail on trains or gle for a revolutionary program, the it denounced the strike from the start. the last, and no means to implement any other substitute means oftransport. Trotskyist program. Even before the SNCF strike, sailors To win, a general strike needs a were on strike, blocking most French leadership with an internationalist pro­ ports in a strike which has an economic gram. Remember the British miners impact like that of the SNCF strike. strike which shook the Thatcher gov­ Linking these two transport strikes is a ernment. That strike gave rise to natural. Go out on strike now, all many demonstrations of international government employees together against working-class solidarity, but there austerity. should have been an international At the same time, the trainmen should boycott by transport workers on im­ build a bridge to the immigrant workers, ports of scab coal. In France as well, a who represent a key sector of the indus- general transport strike should call for . try. There is a whole sector of railroad solidarity by Belgian, German, Italian workers without status-temporaries, and Spanish rail workers. This question contract workers and workers of sub­ is already posed acutely by the sailors contractors employed as laborers and strike against registering ships in the track cleaners. In April 1982 these Kerguelen Islands-actually a strike workers demonstrated under the slogan against French shippers' hiring cheap . "Railroad workers, same work, same labor. The real solution is to extend the status." Walkouts spread from Paris­ gains of French sailors to all ships which Northwhere there were 200 immigrant dock in French ports and raising wages ygma workers, mainly Moroccans, among the to the highest scale, which would require Striking Peugeot workers, July 1983. Predominantly North African auto 900 temporaries and contract workers. construction of a powerful international workers took the lead In fighting the austerity program of Mltterrand's The engineers, who are fighting new union federation. popular-front government. wage scales which eliminate promotion A general strike is a tangible perspec­ For years these social-democratic pie­ them. Nothing about picket lines or by seniority (in the future, all promo­ tive in the current situation. The cards have been propagandists for "self­ strike committees. The LCR tail on the tions will be by "merit"-i.e., according. reformist apparatuses, although weak­ managed" austerity. "left" CFDT bureaucrats has no pro­ to the bosses' whim!), could draw in ened, are desperately seeking to throw all temporaries andcontract workers­ gram but unity of the reformist union up obstacles to workers' mobilization Real Problems, False Solutions apparatuses. the best response to reactionary propa­ by channeling it into a new class­ ganda which describes rail workers collaborationist alliance, like that of the Lutte Ouvriere, for its part, is verbally At least for the moment, the discred­ and functionaries as greedy "well-off" Union of the Left-which the LTF, hostile to the bureaucrats, but its ited leaderships have lost all authority workers. Immediate full 'status for which didn't vote for Mitterrand in verbiage encourages anti-Communist and control over the SNCF strike. But temporaries! Down with restrictions 1981, fought against from the outset. backwardness. LO is not at all trying to the workers feel the need to go beyond against foreigners in the civil service! The task of a Trotskyist vanguard is to fight and' defeat them politically, it job category limitations, to centralize Full citizenship rights for immigrants! fight this treacherous policy of the merely tries to go around them. In fact, the struggle and to counter the maneu­ For massive reduction in the workweek Stalinist and social-democratic leader­ LO has no criticism of the bureaucrats vers and compromises of the bureau­ and massive wage increases! For mass ships, to break the workers from their except for theirabsence of "democracy" cratic leaderships. Right now the rail hiring! domination and build the revolutionary . and lack of combativity. LO is opposed workers have two "national coordi­ It's possible not only to block the partycapable ofleading them to victory. to real picket lines which would stop nating committees": one, centered on social rollback and anti-worker austeri­ Then the proletariat can finish once and production. In the Rouen area recently, Paris-North, emphatically restricts itself ty, but to reverse gears, beginning with for all with the double disaster of one of their leaders used Stalinophobic to the engineers; the other, at Paris­ the public and nationalized sector where inflation and unemployment by expro­ arguments to justify crossing a CGT Southwest, open to all categories, is anger is high. And if the working class priating the capitalist class, bringing picket line. LO's calls to extend the influenced by [pseudo-Trotskyist] Lutte goes on the offensive, strike committees down the bourgeois state and installing strike beyond the SNCF are at best Ouvriere. The "engineers" coordinating can become real .factory committees, a workers government-the dictator­ pious hopes, at worst cynicism. At a committee seeks only to pressure the organs of workers control, that is, ship of the proletariat. • union bureaucrats, leaving negotiations meeting ofthe provisional'coordinating to them, while refusing to go back to committee on December 26 a militant work if they come back with anything obviously associated with LO inter­ less than cancellation of the new vened vehemently against a postal schedules which abolish promotion by worker who was calling for extending the strike to the PTT [post, telephone and telegraph administration], saying ·Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League he should shut up and come back when there was a PTT strike. . 1986 o $5/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $2/4 issues of (includes Spartacist) International rates: Women and Revolution Workers Vanguard Victory to the Railway Strike! o New 0 Renewal $20/24 issues-Airms:il $5/24 issues-e-Seamall 0$2/10 introductory issues of Bound Volume On December 24 at the Chambery o $2/4 issues of Spartacist Workers Vanguard Volume 17: depot, Chirac sent 150 CRS [paramili­ (edlclon en espanol) (includes Spartacist) tary riot police] up against strikers who Name _---,-- _ WV Nos. 394-418 were occupying the stationand blocking 3 Jan.-19 Dec. 1986 five· TGV [high-speed] trains. Facing Address ~ 100, then 300 strikers, it took the cops ______Phone (__) __. Also Available: Vols. 1-16 three hours to push them back and free City State Zip -='= Make payable/mail to: up the tracks for the scab trains. That $20.00 Spartacist Publishing Co. - shows the strike can be won if strikers go per volume Box 1377 GPO New York, New York 10116 all out now. Railroad workers should block all traffic by occupying train 9 JANUARY 1987 11 WfJliNEliS 'liN(itJ/lli'

occon- I 0 eystone l.eloup/Col eclif Striking French rail CRS riot cops called workers block tracks. or ers tri es out against strikers. eral• rene elme•

PARIS, January 5-The reactionary lar demands, this strike wave constitutes put Chirac in power] happened." The Chirac government has opened up a EXCERPTED FROM LE BOLCHEVIK a political challenge to the government. strikes are a graphic response to this full-scale attack on the railway strike, NO. 69, JANUARY 1987 The strike movement has been gathering provocation. now in its 16th day. The last several days for some time. Ever since October 1981, The stakes have been clear ever since have seen repeated attacks by police and DECEMBER 28-At stake In the with "left" governments in power, there last summer. As we wrote in Le Bolche­ CRS riot police on picket lines at most French railroad strike is the govern­ have been a series of harsh battles in the vik (No. 66, September 1986): "The of France's major rail centers, including ment's entire anti-working-class austeri­ SNCF [French national railroad sys­ SNCF poses a new test, this time against Paris' Gare du Nord, a strike bastion. ty policy, from the civil service and tem]. But the immediate origins of the the so-called 'privileged' sectors which This is accompanied by a lying propa­ nationalized sector to French industry strike lie in Chirac's retreat on the retain certain job guarantees... it's a ganda campaign aimed at demoralizing as a whole. This strike must be won! The education front, a retreat due largely to question of breaking the resistance strikers, claiming that workers at dif­ trains must not move! Shut down the the fact that the working class was shown to date by the SNCF workers, ferent rail stations have voted to go back train - stations, lower the signals, all beginning to mobilize. It was obvious to whose immediate and generalized re­ to work. The strike still suffers from sponse forced the previous Mitterrand/ ~ the lack of an authoritative nation­ (]) Fabius government to retreat. A strike :; al leadership-a democratically-elected (]) in the SNCF... could be the catalyst for national strike committee. Nonethe­ a: a general strike against the government. less, the strikers remain determined and By stopping rail transport, the trainmen the basis exists for mass strike pickets can paralyze the entire economy and capable of shutting down all rail traffic. open a breach into which workers at The Communist Party and the CGT Renault, naval shipyards, steel, could unions, in an attempt t- refurbish their step ... seizing the bosses and their image, are calling for strike action government by the throat and posing throughout the public sector, starting the inevitable question: who is master of tomorrow. This could be thejumping­ Rail workers the house, the proletariat or bourgeoi­ off point for a general strike against the demonstrate sie?" Today, the rail workers have Mitterrand/Chirac government, esc-ap­ in front of St. indeed begun a test of strength with the ing the control of the reformist trade­ Lazare station government. And the strike raises.point­ union bureaucracy. ThiS strike is al­ in Paris. blank the question of the leadership of ready polarizing French society. While the movement. the reactionaries are creating phony In the railroads today, the refor­ movements of "irate passengers," many mist union leaderships of the [Stalinist­ students remember that the threat, of dominated] CGT, [social-democratic] working-class action forced the govern­ lights on red! Sailors are shutting down everyone at the time that this takeback CFDT and [right-wing anti-Communist] ment to withdraw its unpopular univer­ the ports, the Paris subway is going back government was only retreating to FO are widely discredited, clearly as a sity bill. As in the students' revolt, on strike. All transportation should be regroup and counterattack. This was result of their treacherous role in "Socialist" president Mitterrand is emit­ stopped! Postal workers and all other confirmed when Chirac decided to sabotaging and suppressing the fight­ ting vague hints of "solidarity" with the government employees should join in! impose at all costs his law on "flexibili­ back against the anti-working-class strike (with an eye to the presidential What's needed is a general strike against ty" [permitting mass layoffs]-a frontal attacks carried out by Mitterrand's elections of 1988). But if this strike the Mitterrand/Chirac government's attack on decades of workers' gains. His Union of the Left popular front for the sparks a working-class explosion, his anti-worker, anti-immigrant and anti­ minister Seguin said, "it is a question of last five years. The strike organization class-collaborationist schemes could be youth attacks. recognizing whether or not March 16 . shows a generalized distrust of the union shipwrecked. Over and above the strikers' particu- [the electoral victory of the right which continued on page 11

assembly which decided to put out some guys fixed the bell. Depots a leaflet and call for a strike on the phoned in from everywhere, all night, With the Strikers in Paris 18th. The leaflet was written by con­ all the next day. Based on that, we Monday, December 22. A worker anyone were hurt, the guy would have ductors. Some of their wives made went for a hard strike because the guys who participated in stopping a train been lynched. Finally, the train crept photocopies at work, several hundred were highly motivated,' it was a from leaving the station at the Gare back to the station." copies of which were distributed all movement which started from the du Nord told Le Bolchevik: "We occu­ Le Bolchevik asked how the move­ over France-Marseille, Lyon.... grassroots. . .. In three or four days pied the tracks, preventing trains from ment started. Denis, one of the most "At the bottom of the leaflet there it spread all over France, people going through. A train driven by a active strikers, said that there was was an SNCF phone number to called us for a day and a half; after foreman arrived, whistle going full general discontent among the train contact us from anywhere. When that they cut off the phone because blast. Ustopped tenfeet from workers conductors because they have lots of management saw that, they cut off the management realized that was the in .the middle of the tracks.... What - demands which are never taken into bell on the phone before the strike. essential focus ..•but it was already they're doing is very dangerous: if ever account. One day they held a general When we went on strike on the 18th, too late." .

9 JANUARY 1987