RevolutionSeptember 2007 No. 4 25¢ Bush, Democrats: Mass Murder, Inc. CUNY and the Imperialist War By Fred Bergen and Charlie Morán These days, it’s easy to find people who Immigrants, Minorities Under the Gun say that they’re against the war in Iraq, but opposition to the war and actually ending it are two different things. To end the criminal Oscar Durant/El Diario-La Prensa slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan, you have to understand what this war really is, and how to fight it. What is the conflict about? Be- neath all the rhetoric about terrorism and de- mocracy, the “war on terror” is an imperialist war, a war to oppress and enslave the people of Iraq and Afghanistan for profit and to nail down U.S. world domination. The ruling class of the United States wants to force Iraq to sell its oil to Exxon and buy its power plants from Bechtel. But above all, it seeks to strengthen the United States’ position against other world powers by locking them out of the strategic Persian Gulf region. Imperialist war is class war waged by the capitalists, the parasites who live off profit, against the oppressed peoples that they must enslave to get it, and against the workers and oppressed “at home.” Imperial- ist war cannot be opposed apart from the capitalist state and the social order that gives rise to it. It cannot be ended without over- turning the capitalist system itself. CUNY students and staff are highly sen- sitive to the war stealing the all-too-slim chances of education from working-class and minority youth. Reformist antiwar groups want to line up this outrage behind one or another Democratic politician with calls to “bring our troops home” and to re- Imperialist war brings racism, repression “at home.” Front page of El Diario-La Prensa (10 April) featured photo of factor government budgets to provide Internationalist Clubs at NYU protest against Minuteman vigilantes (see p. 3). “money for education, not for war.” When mobilize the workers internationally in sharp fense” Department for a se- leftists appeal to patriotic sentiments (“so- class struggle – including strikes against the ries of projects. Since killing Internationalist photo cial-patriotism”), they reinforce the ideology war – to defeat the imperialist occupation is big business, the private that the ruling class uses to subjugate the forces who have laid waste to Afghanistan sector has gotten in on the oppressed. and Iraq! act: CUNY-CAT notes it has And imperialist war has always been Military Recruiters and “partnered with” Lockheed accompanied by racism, anti-immigrant at- Research Out! Martin and Northrop tacks, and assaults on the rights and living Grumman, some of the most standards of working people “at home.” Al- The government uses campuses not only notorious arms manufactur- though troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan as a source of soldiers but – literally – as labs ers around. are drawn largely from the working class, for the horrors of war. Back in 2004, the CUNY Meanwhile, military re- they are not “our” troops. They have been Internationalist Clubs blew the whistle on a cruiters stalk the halls of signed up and shipped out to fight for our “Homeland Security” program at BMCC with CUNY, while high-school enemy, the ruling class whose armed thugs links to Central American death squads and and college students’ names bomb wedding parties in Afghanistan and the Guantánamo torture camp (“Abu Ghraib and addresses are fed to gun down Sean Bell in Queens with 50 shots 101 at BMCC? ‘Fatherland Security’ Hits these vultures. Many work- on his wedding day. As Internationalist CUNY,” Revolution No. 2, October 2004). This ing-class and minority stu- Group (IG) contingents have chanted in an- sparked student and faculty protests that dents realize this is a rich tiwar marches: “Washington, Wall Street – stopped the sinister program. man’s war: “I’m not really The enemy’s at home!” But this was far from the only link to the into going overseas with Imperialism is not a matter of confused imperialist war machine. On the guns and fighting other “priorities.” War is built into the system, no cunyphotonics.com website, the administra- people’s wars,” said matter which of the twin capitalist parties – tion boasts that the Center for Advanced Adeyefa Finch of the Bronx Democrats or Republicans – is in power in Technology in Photonics Applications to the New York Times (22 Washington. Even the tiny Greens only want (CUNY-CAT), located at City College, re- August), explaining why he to avoid a U.S. defeat in the losing imperial- ceived $600,000 from the Navy for “Under- ignores the recruiters who ist war in Iraq. The IG and Internationalist water Target Detection,” $6 million from swarm around inner-city August 18 protest pauses at 181st St. building Clubs at City University, in contrast, call to NASA (including for “imaging targets”), high schools. housing CUNY office and armed forces recruiters. break with all the capitalist parties and to w!ith millions more pouring in from the “De- continued on page 2 to increasingly desperate recruiters.” So im- CUNY and War... migrant youth are supposed to choose be- continued from page 1 tween racist persecution by the migra (im- photo Internationalist So the military tries to deafen us with migration) Gestapo or maybe getting a green hype. A recent report detailed students’ com- card by helping the U.S. military be cops of plaints of recruiters harassing them in school the world. One of the political points here is hallways, setting up camp in school gymna- the very real link between fighting against siums, rolling up to inner-city high schools the imperialist war and fighting for full citi- in tricked-out SUV’s, music blaring “like drug zenship rights for all immigrants. dealers” (“The Re-Militarized Zone,” pub- The Internationalist Clubs fight to drive lished in the usually reactionary New York military recruiters off campus – not one per- Press, 27 June). “Recruiting is a $4 billion son, not one penny for the war machine. At industry,” the article reveals, “working furi- Bronx Community College our comrades or- ously to find willing bodies to fill empty ganized protests that made recruiters for the boots on the ground.” The military “spent Army, Marines, and Air Force flee the cam- an average of $16,199 for each of its 73,373 pus, as students and campus workers re- individual recruits” in 2005, “nearly $5,000 sponded to leaflets that said “We Won’t Kill more than what the city spent on education or Torture for the Ruling Class – Drive Mili- per student in 2004.” tary Recruiters Out of BCC!” Speakers told Despite its frenzied efforts, the Penta- how they had lost co-workers and family in gon is failing to recruit enough bodies for the Iraq war, and compared military recruiters its killing machine. Some soldiers already to the slave-catchers who were paid to do the sent to Iraq will go to any lengths to avoid masters’ dirty work (see “Bronx Community Internationalist Clubs joined TWU strikers on picket lines and leafletted CUNY going back, like twenty-year-old Jonathan College Students Drive Out Military Recruit- campuses to build student support for December 2005 transit strike. Aponte from the Bronx, who paid a hit-man ers,” Revolution No. 3, November 2005). The CUNY Internationalist Clubs were Hunter, heated opposition broke out on the $500 to shoot him in the leg. “I have night- CUNY Tops Take Aim born from this struggle, which forced the faculty senate (normally a pretty staid institu- mares all the time. I hear people screaming, with New Guns... administration to back away from its plan. tion). If the powers that be try to ram this gunshots, explosions, and I can smell burn- But the bureaucrats at CUNY central through, they should be stopped by an out- ing flesh in my dreams,” he told the Daily The City University of New York keeps on 80th Street have a conditioned reflex: jump pouring of protest. However, the CUNY ad- News (July 14). showing what we mean when we say imperi- to use any new tragedy as a pretext for re- ministration (headed by Chancellor Matthew Six CUNY students who fell into the re- alist war abroad means racist repression “at pression. A tiny article in the New York Post Goldstein, who sits on the board of the J.P. cruiters’ trap have died in Iraq to date. Par- home.” In a recent article on young Mexican (7 May) reported: “Two days after the Vir- Morgan investment bank) will keep making ents, teachers, and fellow students are furi- immigrants, The New York Times (16 July) ginia Tech. massacre, the City University of trouble until it’s abolished and replaced by ous. The mother of Hai Ming Hsia, a BMCC wrote: “In 2002, immigrants successfully New York bought two dozen Glock 9mm pis- student-teacher-worker committees to demo- student who was the fifth from CUNY to die pushed for the City University system to tols to beef up security at five of its cam- cratically run the schools, tossing out the in Iraq, said: “Bush doesn’t care. It’s as if he preserve in-state tuition rates for students puses.” The guns went to the Lehman, bourgeoisie’s armed enforcers (cops) as well. killed my son himself.” Nigerian immigrant here illegally.” The real story is that there Brooklyn, Hostos, La Guardia and Graduate Segun F. Akintade, a City Tech student killed was a months-long struggle, launched by ...and New “Academic Standards” Center campuses. This adds to the bizarre in Iraq, “didn’t agree at all with the decision the Internationalist Group, against the anti- stockpile of weapons piled up by CUNY Chancellor Goldstein has just announced to go to war”; his friends said, “the only immigrant war purge that the administra- cops, with “100,000 rounds of ammunition – that CUNY will raise admissions requirements reason he signed up was so he could afford tion unleashed in response to 9/11. As we including at least 4000 rounds of nine-milli- and “standards.” One of the most controver- college” (CUNY Professional Staff Congress wrote in November 2001: meter hollow point bullets” purchased in the sial measures is that beginning next fall, fresh- Clarion, September 2006 and January 2005). “The ordering of a ‘war purge’ of un- late ’90s (Village Voice, 5 May 1999). As we men will be required to have math SAT scores With recruiters desperate to fill quotas documented immigrant students by the “20 to 30 points higher than the current scores City University of New York (CUNY) is know, CUNY “security” has an itchy finger and body bags, the government is launch- needed for admission to the university’s five part and parcel of [the] wave of wartime even with pepper spray, which they used in ing new schemes. They are even exploiting top-tier colleges, Baruch, Brooklyn, City, repression. A right-wing state senator 2003 at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College a proposed reform measure publicized as a Hunter and Queens and 11 senior colleges,” declares that ‘illegal aliens’ are a threat against parents at a graduation ceremony! way for undocumented immigrant students to ‘national security’ and the CUNY ad- CUNY’s arsenal is part of its obsession notes a 31 July news story on the web site of to pursue higher education: the DREAM ministration dutifully decides to drive with stopping campus protest, which led to Diverse: Issues in Higher Education maga- (Development, Relief and Education for Alien out thousands of students by the con- the vicious, years-long effort to railroad zine, which quotes faculty members who op- Minors) Act. As reported in “Immigration venient device of raising their tuition to Hostos Communisty College student leader pose this drive for “elitization.” and Military Enlistment: Pentagon’s Push astronomical levels that few can pay.... Miguel Malo to jail for the “crime” of hold- CUNY’s new rules “may make it harder for the DREAM Act Heats Up” (Draft The racist logic is clear: minority poor ing up a sign to protest cuts and fee hikes in for Black and Hispanic students to gain ad- NOtices, July-September 2007), a “hidden and working people are a ‘security risk’; bilingual and ESL programs at the South Brox mittance,” Diverse points out. Math educa- provision in the DREAM Act ...would tie those that can afford to pay thousands campus. This attempt was defeated by the tion is abysmal at many inner-city schools, permanent legal residency to military ser- of dollars of tuition get their ‘clearance’ vigorous defense campaign we spearheaded which are starved of resources and crammed vice,” providing “a bonanza of warm bodies to study.” (see “Miguel Malo Is Innocent!” in Revolu- with metal detectors and cops who act like tion No. 3, November 2005). prison guards and go wild confiscating cell- Now the Virginia Tech massacre is be- phones. The magazine further notes that ing used an excuse to revive attempts by while black enrollment rose in the college the Hunter College administration to end system as a whole, it stayed static or fell at Revolutionary Hunter’s status as one of the few remaining the “top-tier” CUNY schools. During the Reconstruction Club open campuses by installing turnstiles in 2005-2006 academic year, black enrollment and CUNY the entrances to each building, where a fell from 24 percent to 14 percent at Baruch, Internationalist photo Internationalist Internationalist “peace” officer would check for a valid while at Hunter it fell from 20 percent to 15 Clubs sparked CUNY ID. Of course, this makes no sense if percent. CUNY is staging a racist purge. protests that ran taken at face value: the student who went These measures are exclusionary by na- military recruiters nuts and shot people in Virginia was, duh, ture; that is their whole point. The out of Bronx on campus already. administration’s outcry is the usual claim that Community College Again, the secret is repression. At students are to blame if they are badly pre- every week for Baruch, where intrusive turnstiles are pared. So by “raising standards” students will more than a month. manned by aggressive cops, psychology become more prepared? As if! No, this is just Left: 17 March 2005 professor Bill Crain was arrested in June 2004 the latest obstacle to the education of stu- demonstration. and charged with “criminal trespass” and dents from working-class, poor and minority (of course!) resisting arrest when he tried to families. It is part of a worldwide crusade go through the turnstile after showing his against public education that has reached City College ID. Imagine the threat that turn- from the U.S. to Europe to Latin America stiles would pose to students, faculty and (where it sparked the heroic strike at Mexico’s campus workers at Hunter. Everyone knows National University referred to in the article the escalators and elevators pile up danger- on the back page by our Mexican comrades). ously every time classes change – imagine Today, many CUNY students are sur- Revolution having to go through turnstiles to get out of prised to learn that the university used to be Newspaper of CUNY students from the Revolutionary Hunter West during a fire or other disaster! free. Not only that, but in 1969 a sit-in and Reconstruction Club and Internationalist Clubs, for the A couple of years ago the campus cops tried protest movement by black and Puerto Rican program of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, published in accord with the to seal off the main exit from the Thomas students won open admissions after power- Internationalist Group, U.S. section of the League for the Fourth International Hunter building, causing dangerous havoc ful city labor unions backed this demand. As Revolution is published by Mundial Publications, P.O. Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY until students banged through so many soon as the CUNY student body became ma- 10008, U.S.A. Telephone: (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 E-mail: [email protected] times they had to nix the noxious scheme. jority non-white, the racist rulers launched a No. 4 C-701 September 2007 The last time the proposal was pushed at counteroffensive, which introduced tuition

2 Revolution and keeps jacking it up all the time. New fees and charges cropped up all over. Then Hundreds Protest NYU Republicans’ remediation programs were killed. TAP (Tu- ition Assistance Program) got chopped back. It keeps going on, not because the Racist “Illegal Immigrant” Hunt bosses are broke but because they want to push more and more of us out of school. FEBRUARY 23 – Yesterday the College alist Group carried signs calling for “Full Ideologically, they hate public education. Republicans at New York University Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants,” They figure their system needs a lot less of (NYU) staged a blatant racist provocation “Mobilize NYC Labor to Defend Immi- it, especially since the fall of the Soviet bloc – a “game” of “catch the illegal immi- grant Workers” and “Sweep Racist Vigi- (as a result of decades of capitalist pres- grant.” This grotesque stunt unleashed lantes Off the Streets!” A number of dem- sure, abetted by the Stalinist bureaucracies an outpouring of anger among NYU stu- onstrators joined us in chanting “Racist that misused the name of socialism). They dents and many others. More than 400 vigilantes out of New York” and “Racists calculate that flipping burgers doesn’t re- protesters turned out and kept up a steady out!” We distributed leaflets highlighting quire a degree, and the less are in school the din for three hours, chanting, picketing the struggle for unionization by immi- more will go to fight their wars. Besides, edu- and drowning out the handful of racist grant workers in Brooklyn. The need to cation can also be dangerous: it can lead to vigilantes. Protesters’ signs included bring the power of the working class to questions. The slave-owners made it a capi- “Racism is Not a Game,” “No One is Ille- bear is key. The fact that such racist scum tal crime for slaves to learn to read and write. gal” “Legalize, Don’t Criminalize Immi- are raising their heads today is a reflec- In NYC, billionaire mayor Bloomberg grants” and “Un Mundo Sin Fronteras/A tion of the defeat last year of the drawn- and his school chancellor Klein set a quota World Without Borders.” Demonstrators out strike of graduate students at NYU of 15,000 eight-year-olds to be flunked out chanted “What do we want? —immigrant by the vicious union-busting of univer- by a special test for getting into the fourth rights, When do we want them? Now!” sity president John Sexton. A solid vic- grade (see “Forced Flunk-Outs and the As- The racists clearly sought to draw media tory by campus unions acting together sault on Public Education,” The Internation- attention, which they did. But what was would put Sexton’s auxiliaries on the run. alist, May-June 2004, and the pamphlet vividly shown was the overwhelming re- The sinister “game” by these right- “Game’s Over”: Front page of New Marxism and the Battle Over Education pudiation of their chauvinist filth. wing xenophobes is not some kind of York’s El Diario (23 February) shows [September 2003]). Now the U.S. Supreme The NYU event was only the latest chap- “Animal House” antics of a bunch of lu- IG signs calling for full citizenship Court has essentially reversed the famous ter in a nationwide campaign by campus right- natic fringe morons. These are Ivy League rights for all immigrants and for labor 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education that laid wingers. It started at North Texas University, careerists like those in the mid-1980s who to defend immigrant workers. the legal basis for integrating education! Re- in the spring of 2005 where the Young Con- destroyed a shantytown at Dartmouth segregation of the schools shows again that servatives chased members wearing orange that was protesting university complicity nationalist Group, we’ve been working to bring even the limited gains of the civil rights T-shirts with the words “illegal immigrant” with apartheid slavery in South Africa. out students from several CUNY campuses movement are not secure under capitalism. around campus. In April of last year, the Col- Some graduated to become operatives in today along with workers from key unions The fight against racism is bound up with lege Republicans at Penn State tried the same the Republican Party “dirty tricks” depart- and immigrant organizations in the city. the fight against capitalist exploitation, ploy but were stymied by 150 students and ment, like Reaganite Lee Atwater who or- Let’s be clear: the “Minutemen” are not which in the U.S. was founded on slavery, faculty protesters. Last fall, the ultra-rightist chestrated campaigns to intimidate black some kind of debating society. They are vio- segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror. Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) at Michi- and Latino voters at the polls. Others went lent racist vigilantes who work hand in hand No Doubt About It: gan State U. and College Republicans at the on to run imperialist war from the corri- with the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations and University of Michigan announced plans for dors of the Pentagon, design police-state other fascists. At Columbia University last We Need a Revolution a similar manhunt. While cynically pretend- repression by the “Justice” Department October one of these racist thugs kicked a Our fight for open admissions, no tuition, ing this is just “fun and games,” they’re clearly and plan the destruction of social welfare student protestor in the head with a steel- with a living stipend so students can actually imitating the Minuteman Project vigilantes programs at the Heritage Foundation. But toed boot. study, is part of the struggle for a society based who for the last two years have been target- they don’t have to be Republicans: the The Internationalists joined many oth- on human needs, not profit: a socialist soci- ing immigrants along the Mexican border, Democrats have supported every one of ers to protest the Minuteman provocation ety. The unending attack on education is a where a number have been shot and killed. these vicious attacks, while Democratic at Columbia, where protestors stood up to very good example of the fact that to get the This is deadly serious. As a homemade president Bill Clinton pushed through the this racist violence and succeeded in shut- most basic things we need, and even to de- sign at the NYU protest declared, “Thou- 1996 immigration “control” act. ting down the Minuteman provocation. We fend the little that working people and op- sands Have Died on Our Borders. This Is The current crop of junior G-men may must all defend the Columbia protestors pressed minorities have been able to win in Not a Game.” Some of the “official” printed yearn to be commandants in the Abu against administration reprisals. the past, we need a revolution. slogans appealed to conservative senti- Ghraib and Guantánamo torture camps of We say: “Minute-Klan” get the hell out To defend our right to education, what’s ments like “Immigrant Values are Family Val- U.S. imperialism. Whatever their sick am- of New York! That means they should be posed is a struggle for power. This means ues,” and at one point some demonstrators bitions, now is the time to stop them in driven out whenever they try to stage one looking to the only class capable of defeat- chanted for a “debate” with the wannabe their tracks. of their provocations to whip up lynch-type ing these attacks once and for all. The multi- vigilantes who were going to put on stick- terror against immigrants. And that goes for ethnic, multnational working class of New ers saying “INS,” the acronym for the hated On April 9, a month and a half after junior “Minute-Klan” types like those who York City gave a taste of that power in the migra immigration cops, now known as ICE holding their grotesque “immigrant hunt,” staged the vile “Find the Illegal Alien” stunt transit workers’ strike that came close to (for Immigration Control and Enforcement the College Republicans at NYU sponsored here at NYU in February. shutting the city down in December 2005. Division of the Homeland Security Depart- a talk by a leader of the xenophobic “Min- Like the working class of New York, While the media screamed bloody murder, ment). But many in the crowd understood uteman” vigilantes. For report of the pro- CUNY students are largely immigrants. We working people saluted the courage of strik- that there is nothing to discuss with these test against this racist provocation, see The must unite with the power of the working ers who defied the slave-labor Taylor Law. proponents of racist terror. Last September Internationalist No. 26 (July 2007). We print class to drive out the Minutemen, because We brought CUNY students out to the picket when hundreds came out at Columbia Uni- below the speech at the protest rally given this is a question of power. The Minutemen lines and helped distribute daily Internation- versity to denounce a speech by Minute- by our comrade which was greeted enthu- are part of the attack on immigrants that has alist strike bulletins. men führer Jim Gilchrist, he hightailed it off siastically by the crowd. brought large-scale raids by the ICE immi- Today, the Iraq war is going so badly the stage while his minions punched anti- My name is Erica Torres and I am a stu- gration cops – “la migra” – all around the that Washington is having problems with racist protesters. dent at City College and a member of the In- country. its own puppets in the colonial “govern- At the NYU protest, the Internation- ternationalist Club. Together with the Inter- We need to mobilize a stronger power ment.” The Democrats keep the war going to defeat these attacks, which are coming at the same time as they try to cash in on Internationalist photo from the very top, from both the Republi- antiwar sentiment to fool workers, minori- cans and the Democrats. That means join- ties and youth once again. In this effort, they ing with the power of the working class, in- receive assistance from the various “popu- cluding huge numbers of immigrants, who lar-front” (class-collaborationist) coalitions keep this city and this country running. We set up by groups that falsely advertise them- have to unite with workers around the world selves as Marxist, like the Workers World like the teachers of Oaxaca, Mexico, who Party, International Socialist Organization, continue to face bloody repression. Revolutionary Communist Party and others My family comes from Puerto Rico, (see the article in this issue on “World Can’t which was the biggest colony in the world Wait” and similar groups). until it was surpassed by Iraq. We say: DE- Our differences with these groups be- FEAT U.S. imperialism. The racist attacks gin with the fact that we stand for the defeat on immigrants are closely connected to the of the imperialists and their war, and link the imperialist war in Iraq that we can and must struggle against every form of oppression defeat. The fight against racism and colo- to a real program for socialist revolution nialism can only succeed if it is a revolution- by the international working class. This is ary fight. We need a revolutionary workers the program for mobilizing the power of the party for a socialist revolution. working class, from the streets and subways La lucha obrera no tiene fronteras. THE of NYC to the barricades of Oaxaca, Mexico. Internationalist Group joined hundreds of NYU students and others protesting WORKERS’ STRUGGLE HAS NO BORDERS! Join us!  racist “illegal immigrant hunt” last February. Minuteman racists out of New York!! 

September 2007 3 Gay Rights and Socialist Revolution

by Aubeen Lopez and In the same year, the Soviet Commissar Abram Negrete of Health visited Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sex Research in Berlin, where he spoke about As the United States continues its im- the Bolshevik regime’s decriminalization of perialist occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, homosexuality. In 1926 the Soviets invited on the home front the rulers wage a war of Hirschfeld to Moscow and Leningrad. It is terror against the working class and basic also significant that the revolutionary democratic rights. One of the “hot button” government’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, issues for reactionary crusades is the as- Grigorii Chicherin, was openly gay and had sault against same-sex marriage. We don’t been closely associated with important ho- pretend that marriage is bliss – if anything, mosexual cultural figures like Sergei Diaghilev it’s more often the opposite. It is an institu- and the poet Mikhail Kuzmin. tion of capitalist society to shore up the Key figures of the Harlem Renaissance nuclear family. But revolutionary Marxists who were drawn to the liberating message oppose every type of discrimination, defend of the Russian Revolution, like Langston gays’ and lesbians’ right to get married like Hughes and Claude McKay, were also in- anyone else and oppose the hateful attempt volved in Harlem’s lively gay cultural scene, by governmental bigots to deny same-sex as discussed in works like A.B. Christa couples benefits married couples get, such Schwarz’s Gay Voices of the Harlem Renais- as shared health insurance, breaks on taxes sance (2003) and the films Looking for and social security inheritance benefits. Langston (1988) and Brother to Brother War-Mongers and Gay-Bashers (2004). Important campaigners for gay rights It’s no accident that the biggest war- came out of a number of Communist parties, Gay rights activists march in New York City on first anniversary of Stonewall mongers in the media also jump to whip up such as Harry Hay, founder of the first gay “riots” against brutal police attack. anti-gay hysteria, as in the media frenzy over rights group in the U.S., the Mattachine So- the so-called “Lesbian 7,” young black marriage initiatives across the country tions were being demonized and driven to ciety, later followed by the courageous les- women from Newark tried for felony assault and at the federal level, the reaction of the fringes of society, a movement champi- bian rights pioneers of the Daughters of and gang assault after a confrontation with the religious and political right to the oning their rights began to emerge. Emerg- Bilitis. Witch hunts against “commies” of- a man who accosted them in Greenwich Vil- Supreme Court’s striking down of sod- ing in late 19th-century Germany, where the ten combined with crusades against homo- lage. (Some had been friends of Sakia Gunn, omy laws, and religious backlash to the radical labor movement was growing, it de- sexuals (the “lavender scare”), whose sup- a Newark teen who was accosted at a bus high visibility of LGBT people in popu- manded the abolition of anti-homosexual posed moral weakness was deemed a threat stop and then murdered when she identified lar culture.” laws like Germany’s infamous Paragraph 175, to “national security.” herself as gay.) The press seized on the inci- The Nuclear Family and which criminalized sex between men and was While the Bolshevik Revolution was a dent to whip up homophobia, as the New Homosexual Oppression only abolished in 1994. Among its leaders beacon for freedom struggles around the York Post (April 12) ranted about the “At- were Karl Maria Kertbeny, who coined the world, Russia’s poverty and economic back- tack of the Killer Lesbians” and the “seeth- Attacks on homosexuals do not just term homosexual, and Magnus Hirschfeld, wardness, compounded by years of war, en- ing sapphic septet” of “bloodthirsty young stem from a few bad journalists, right-wing who later founded the first homosexual circlement and intervention by 14 capitalist lesbians,” while the Daily News (April 19) politicians or plain and simple ignorance. rights organization, the Scientific Humani- powers, led to the revolution’s degeneration. called them a “lesbian wolf pack.” They are rooted in the capitalist system! tarian Committee. Socialists such as the gay Joseph Stalin led the political take-over by a Hot to fan the flames of bigotry, Fox Their origins lie with the rise of class soci- British poet Edward Carpenter, German So- privileged, nationalist bureaucracy that News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor (June 21) ety, the development of capitalism and the cial Democratic Party leader August Bebel sought to bury Lenin’s program of interna- ran a piece on a supposed “Lesbian Gang consolidation of the nuclear (bourgeois) (who had been a close friend of Karl Marx) tional socialist revolution. Reanimating social Epidemic,” warning of a “national under- family. As explained by Friedrich Engels in and others were among the most vocal op- conservatism on a wide range of fronts, the ground network” of hundreds of such gangs his classic book Origin of the Family, Pri- ponents of bourgeois campaigns against Stalinist bureaucracy proclaimed the family a (“150 such crews in the Washington, D.C. vate Property and the State, the division of homosexuality. A cause célèbre was the no- “unit of socialism” and re-criminalized homo- area alone”!) dedicated to “terrorizing” society into classes was interwoven histori- torious 1895 trial and imprisonment of the sexuality as well as abortion. Stalinist parties people, “recruiting” kids and “indoctrinat- cally with the subjugation of women, the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. While serving around the world echoed bourgeois ho- ing” them with homosexuality. Sounding like central institution of which is the patriarchal a prison sentence that broke his health, Wilde mophobia – a vile tradition that some con- an old-time B-movie, it warned, “some of family. For the capitalists who became the – who also considered himself a socialist – tinue to this day. This is the polar opposite of these gangs carry pink pistols, they call ruling class of modern times, the family was wrote his famous poem “The Ballad of Read- Bolshevism’s commitment to mobilize the themselves the Pink Pistol Packers.” a tool ensuring that their private property ing Gaol,” portraying the violence and deg- power of the working class against every form The rabid rantings of O’Reilly soon was safeguarded and passed from one gen- radation imposed by the jails of “civilized” of oppression. eration to the next through the male lineage. went south as the cops’ own gang investi- British capitalism. Four decades after Lenin and Trotsky led The home became women’s “domestic gation units disowned the wild claims. the Russian workers to power, the Cuban sphere,” with wives charged with supply- Bolshevism vs. Stalinism O’Reilly mumbled on the air that he had Revolution inflicted a humiliating defeat on ing and rearing a male heir to inherit this It was the October 1917 Revolution in “overstated the extent of gay gangs in the Yankee imperialism in its own “backyard.” property. Working-class women were sub- Russia that opened a new historical chapter, Washington area,” but then hastened to call Millions around the world were inspired by jected to double oppression, supplying emboldening and lifting to their feet those the seven women from Newark a “pack of Cuba’s advances in health, education and cheap labor to factories as well as house- persecuted under capitalism. Led by the Bol- lesbians.” Once again, racist vocabulary and many other fields. Yet Stalinist homophobia work and child-rearing to bring up new gen- shevik Party of V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, homophobia spew from spin doctors noto- again reared its ugly head as a manifestation erations of wage slaves. the new Soviet state immediately abolished rious for beating the war drums over in- of the bureaucratic deformation of the Cuban the tsarist empire’s laws against homosexual- vented “WMD” in Iraq. Thus the enforcement of the family was workers state, as gays and lesbians faced ity. This went hand in hand with measures Ludicrous as these professional liars (and remains) crucial to the capitalist sys- purges, prejudice and campaigns of incarcera- towards women’s emancipation unequalled seem, their smears are no joke but an incite- tem as a whole. The capitalist, in order to tion. Interestingly, in recent years a campaign in any capitalist country, as the Bolsheviks ment to repression and lynch-mob terror. The make sure the heir being produced was his against homophobia has been carried out by sought to lay the material basis for overcom- same terrorist “war on terror” that escalates and not the mailman’s, enforced monogamy; Mariela Castro, director of the government’s ing the oppressive nuclear family. racist police violence like the NYPD murder of and women, with the institution of marriage, National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) Sean Bell encourages storm trooper incidents became the sole “property” of men. Ensur- While some anti-communist gay histo- and daughter of Raúl Castro. Among the like the July 2006 SWAT team raid on a gay ing the reproductive value of women in pro- rians have claimed otherwise, the Bolshe- center’s proposals is that Cuba become the gym in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where ducing heirs for the capitalists and workers viks’ “decriminalization of homosexuality first Caribbean country to recognize gay and cops “bullied, terrorized and humiliated” pa- for the factories required bans, prejudices was not an incidental by-product of broader lesbian couples’ civil and inheritance rights, trons, many of them elderly, forcing them to and superstitions against sexual activity legal reforms, but a conscious act of state and that its free medical system cover surgery lie handcuffed on the floor as the police ran outside of marriage and procreation. The policy,” as David F. Greenberg noted in his for transsexuals. “background checks” (ACLU report, July bourgeois family gave rise to what histori- book, The Construction of Homosexuality Stonewall and After 2006). Is it a stretch to link the war in Iraq and ans have called the institutionalization of [1988]. This is underlined by official Soviet government- and media-incited bigotry to heterosexuality, including categorizing ho- declarations of “the absolute noninterfer- The civil rights movement, the Cuban heightened violence against gays? Not if you mosexuality as a “unnatural.” Sodomy bans ence of the state and society into sexual Revolution and the Vietnam War paved the read the “Anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and were made into laws punishing a “type” of matters” except where there is “force or du- way for new social struggles in the 1960s. Transgender Violence” report (2007 edition) person who committed such acts. Many ress,” as stated by the head of the Moscow The year 1968 began with the Tet Offensive put out by the liberal National Coalition of writers over the past decades have dis- Institute of Social Hygiene. The latter also by the National Liberation Front (Vietcong), Anti-Violence Programs, which registered a cussed this process from the now-fashion- wrote in 1923 that “Homosexuality, sodomy followed by ten million French workers oc- sharp rise in such violence in 2003-05, noting able Michel Foucault to John Boswell’s es- and various other forms of sexual gratifica- cupying factories and raising the red flag, the “clear cultural and political factors that say “Revolutions, Universals and Sexual tion set forth in European legislation as of- mass student protests in Mexico and up- contributed” to this, including: Categories” in Martin Duberman et al., Hid- fences against public morality are treated heavals on U.S. college campuses. The loom- “the all out assault on lesbian and gay den From History [1989].) by Soviet legislation exactly as is so called ing defeat of Washington’s dirty colonial relationships through anti-same-sex As those who practiced same-sex rela- ‘natural’ intercourse.” war on Indochina brought, among other

4 Revolution things, the legalization of abortion (though bilizing the power of the working class, whose crime of criticizing the “age of consent” laws everywhere else, while saying “Down with not the elementary right to free abortion on emancipation cannot be accomplished except that arbitrarily criminalize consensual sex the bourgeois army – Not a person or a demand), which anti-woman reactionaries by uprooting all social oppression. between people of different age groups. penny for the imperialist war machine!”) have been trying to overturn ever since. New Left sectoralism opened new chan- Scandalously, the reactionary hysteria that Less known is Clinton’s signing of the De- This was the context for the events that nels for the Democratic Party’s time-honored screams “pedophile!” at such critics is ech- fense of Marriage Act of 1996, which bans erupted on in June 1969 after a police raid on “pork-barrel politics”: piecing off leaders of oed by some on the left (the small Socialist the federal government from recognizing the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Vil- different groups and “communities” to quell Alternative group is an especially egregious same-sex marriage and says no state has to lage. Used to harassing, abusing and shaking challenges to the status quo. The Demo- example). recognize such marriages even if officially down the patrons of gay and lesbian crats, party of the old slaveocracy, of Today, the bloody colonial occupation sanctioned by another state. This is pre- nightspots, the cops were taken aback when Hiroshima and Vietnam, which hunted reds of Iraq, the endless lies, frauds and attacks cisely the foundation for the latest crusades those at the Stonewall defended themselves. and gays cheek by jowl with Nixon and J. on basic rights perpetrated by Bush and his against gay marriage, with which Bush and The yellow press pumped out bigotry with Edgar Hoover (whose vicious homophobia Republican cronies led to the Democrats re- Bible-pounding bigots have emboldened headlines like “Homo Nest Raided, Queen didn’t stop him from cross-dressing on oc- gaining control of Congress, led by Nancy gay-bashers all over the country. Bees Are Stinging Mad” (Daily News, 6 July casion) – this party of oppression was now Pelosi of San Francisco, a bastion of gay Against all the parties, politicians and 1969). Today, respectability-seeking history remarketed as a gay-friendly “rainbow coa- and lesbian voters. Despite fatuous illusions apologists of this rotten system – Republi- texts often tone down the fact that Stonewall lition.” Upwardly mobile former activists peddled by pro-capitalist “progressives” and cans and Democrats, their electoral satel- was an all-out street battle lasting four days. sought to climb on the bandwagon, embrac- much of what passes for a left in the United lites and pressure groups like the Greens Hundreds of people, many of them young ing a self-defeating illusion while turning States, the Democrats have kept the war and Ralph Nader (the multi-millionaire who black and Puerto Rican gays, repeatedly drove their backs on a struggle for genuine change going, because they serve the same master denounces “illegal aliens”) – we fight to win the cops to retreat, using rocks, cobblestones, and leaving working-class and minority as Bush: the capitalist rulers for whom impe- students and youth to help build a revolu- bricks, bottles, even Molotov cocktails. gays and lesbians by the wayside. Some even rialism is not a “mistaken policy” but the tionary workers party. As “Solidarity For- Echoing the black power slogan (first sought to win over the party of Jerry Falwell essence of their outmoded social system. ever,” one of the most popular working-class launched by activists fed up with Martin by forming the Log Cabin Republicans. As Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and anthems from the radical IWW (“Wobblies”) Luther King-style pacifism), that of “gay As new anti-sex witch hunts descended other Democrats vie to be the next Mass- said: “We will bring to birth a new world power” was coined by activists shaped by during the Reagan years, and Bible-thump- Murderer-In-Chief of U.S. imperialism, don’t from the ashes of the old.” Those ashes must the New Left conception each sector of the ing crazies clogged the airwaves claiming forget what the last Democratic president and will include the oppression of gays and oppressed was responsible for fighting its AIDS was god’s retribution against gays, did. Bill Clinton appealed to homosexuals lesbians. Born of class society with its im- own oppression. In contrast, Marxists seek to mainstream gay and lesbian organizations by promising to overturn the ban on gays in prisoning nuclear family, stifling hypocriti- build a genuine revolutionary party that, as shed remnants of radical vocabulary in a the military, only to sign the vicious “don’t cal morality and constant “war of each Lenin put it in What Is To Be Done? (1902), drive for respectability. Symptomatic was ask, don’t tell” policy. (In part this was a against all,” that oppression is part of the acts as a “tribune of the people ... able to their ostracism of groups like the North ploy to cash in on some gay groups’ attempt barbaric system of modern slavery called react to every manifestation of tyranny and American Man/Boy Love Association to outdo the right in flag-waving. We Marx- capitalism. Join us in the fight for interna- oppression, no matter where it appears,” mo- (NAMBLA), condemned for the thought- ists oppose discrimination in the military, as tional socialist revolution! 

Professors Under Attack – University of Colorado/Boulder Daily Camera Stop the Witch Hunt Against Ward Churchill

The war on Iraq has escalated to fever ist hit squad that viciously smears any and all the assassination of Presi- pitch the attempts by bigots and censors to opponents or critics of Israel’s oppression as dent Kennedy that it was a shut the mouths of professors and students “anti-Semitic” (which Massad most definitely case of “chickens coming who speak out against it or tell the truth is not). Now the world-famous DePaul Uni- home to roost.” Fox news, about the crimes of U.S. imperialism. Here at versity professor Norman Finkelstein, an out- campus Republicans and CUNY we have experienced repeated waves spoken critic of Israel whose parents survived rightist academics rushed in of these assaults on our basic rights (see the Warsaw Ghetto and Hitler’s concentra- to whip up hysteria, twisting “Witchhunters Target the ‘Unpatriotic Uni- tion camps, has been denied tenure in a bla- Churchill’s remarks to por- versity’,” Revolution No. 3, November 2005). tant case of political censorship. tray him as a supporter of in- The usual scenario is for the New York Post On July 26, the University of Colorado’s discriminate terror and de- and Sun to start baying for blood, at which Board of Regents voted to fire Professor manding his firing. The cam- point the administration, trustees, and some- Ward Churchill, an activist for Native Ameri- paign was spearheaded by times the mayor himself join the pack. can rights and former chair of the University the Association of College In a piece on witch hunts on campuses of Colorado’s Ethnic Studies Department Trustees and Alumni, a around the country, Columbia University Pro- (where the governor of Colorado helped group founded by hard-right fessor Joseph Massad wrote: “What is at force him out). Churchill’s case has ramifica- ideologue Lynne Cheney stake in this assault is not only academic free- tions across the academic world, as it in- (wife of the vice president) Ward Churchill dom, but scholarship per se” (CounterPunch, volved the firing of a tenured professor, bla- and right-wing Democrat Joe 3 June 2005), like his own scholarship on his tantly because of his political views. Many Lieberman. A typical publication of this from the war against Vietnam to present-day native Palestine and criticisms of Zionism, the educators are asking, “Who will be next?” group, modeled on the Cold War witch hunts torture of prisoners at Guantánamo. In a Feb- apartheid-like basis of the Israeli state. The witchhunt against Churchill was of Joseph McCarthy, is called Defending ruary 2005 speech at the University of Colo- Massad’s Jewish, Arab American and other whipped up over statements he made on the Civilization: How Our Universities Are rado, Churchill gave some examples of the his- students defended him against the attempt to 2001 World Trade Center attack, including Failing America. tory which led him to refer to lower Manhat- run him out orchestrated by a veritable Zion- his reference to Malcolm X’s remark upon Ward Churchill has been in the cross tan as the “technical core of empire,” from the hairs of the right-wing hit squad for a long spot where the early Dutch capitalists first time, their vendetta stoked by his well-known ripped off the Indians who supposedly “sold” books like Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Manhattan Island for a handful of glass beads Secret Wars Against the Black Panther to Wall Street’s depredations against the Party and the American Indian Movement, world’s peoples today. At the same time he The COINTELPO Papers, The Politics of denounced those who presented him as un- Imprisonment in the United States and A caring towards working people who died in Little Matter Of Genocide: Holocaust And the WTC attacks. Denial In The Americas, 1492 To The Many academic groups and individuals Present. As a supporter of the American In- have spoken out against the witch hunt, Joshua Lawton/Daily Camera dian Movement, he has told the world about among them are Margaret LeCompte, presi- the continued repression of Native Ameri- dent of the CU-Boulder chapter of the Ameri- cans at places like Pine Ridge Reservation can Association of University Professors, in South Dakota (a state whose name, like who denounced the supposed “independent its land, was stolen from indigenous people), investigation” which led to Churchill’s firing, where the average lifespan is one third less and the entire process of ripping up his ten- than in the rest of the country, the per capita ure, as “a sham.” Indian law specialist Eric income is $3,000, teenage suicide is rampant Cheyfitz of Cornell University denounced the and unemployment often reaches 90 percent. frame-up of Churchill, including the investi- Although he is an outspoken ideologi- gation report, saying “it should be rescinded Demonstrator at University of Colorado in Boulder protests right-wing cal opponent of Marxism, Churchill links the as a disgrace to scholarship.” Ward Churchill mobilization to silence Professor Ward Churchill. history of theft and murder against Native must get his job back with full rights, restitu- Americans to American imperialism’s crimes tion of back pay and seniority, now! September 2007 5 ' .

Democrats and Republicans, Parties of Imperialist War "World can't wait": R r~ r ugh range-Colored Clas es

by Erica Torres people to flood the streets wearing orange "The only way to stop the war: Bush and "making the invisible a visible material force." Cheney out the door," chanted a cluster of RCP media star Sunsara Taylor issues denun­ orange-clad participants in a recent Times ciations of the Democratic Party, but the whole Square antiwar rally. "2008 IS TOO LATE!" operation is geared to picking up disappointed blares a bright orange leaflet handed out at democrats. WCW was launched after the 2004 another. If you go to a demonstration, protest elections when many antiwar activists felt or march, chances are you'll run into some demoralized by Bush's new presidential term, people who will breathlessly tell you to "Wear and the impeachment drive was launched af­ Orange!" Is this some quirky ad campaign? ter the 2006 elections that gave the Demo­ Not exactly, but close: it's the latest gimmick crats the majority in Congress. of "The World Can't Wait," the latest "broad The purpose is to channel struggle coalition" formed by a very reformist, truly against the war in Iraq into a pacifist move­ un-communist group that calls itself the Revo­ ment where "everyone" can show their de­ lutionary Communist Party (RCP). * sire to end the war with a "unified" color Looking behind the slogans, we can see wardrobe. In practice what does this really the difference between reformism and revo­ do? General liberal sentiments are used as lutionary politics. If Bush is impeached, as the glue to hold together an alliance with World Can't Wait and others request (keep capitalist politicians. Illusions are spread, dreaming), and he and Cheney are "out the appealing to the warmongers' morality and door," who would come through that White begging them to end this war. With its ap­ House door? According to the U.S. Consti­ peal to unite "all the people who care about tution, next in line is the Speaker of the the future of humanity and the planet we Reformist illusions on the march: World Can't Wait pleads for imperialists' House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. live on," where is the class struggle that Congress to impeach Bush (Washington Heights antiwar protest, August 18). And why the references to 2008? The RCP, a Marx and Lenin insisted is the basis of any Maoist group coming out of the '60s, claims effective fight against war and oppression? spokesman named Willi Mtinzenberg special­ "The propertied classes never cede not to support the Democratic Party itself. And whom do these appeals to class col­ ized in organizing grand conferences and con­ power without a struggle ... Imperialist But the whole point of its campaign is to laboration really help? The capitalist rulers, gresses gathering "people of good will" to war can be stopped only by civil war .... pretend that Bush and the Republicans are because they help subordinate, blunt and tell each that war is bad. One of the most fa­ Whoever attempts to put all the pro­ the cause of war and to hook up with those dilute the real power that must be mobilized mous was the 1932AmsterdamAntiwarCon­ grams, all the parties, all the flags into who yearn for the return of "better days" against the war: that of the working class. gress starring left-liberal French writers one package in the name of pacifism, with Hillary, Obama or another Democrat as This is an expression of the policy of Romain Rolland and Henri Barbusse. It ap­ that is, of a superficial struggle against U.S. imperialism's Commander-in-Chief. forming "popular fronts," in which reformist pealed to "all people, all groups, regardless of war in words, performs the greatest ser­ vice for imperialism." But even the color orange reminds us left groups seek to subordinate the workers their political affiliations" to "join us in the As he explains in the same article, "The that the horrors of Guantanamo, the carnage movement and opponents of imperialist war International Congress" against war. principal force against war is the proletariat," against the Iraqi people and the trampling of to the ruling class through an alliance with The rhetoric is almost identical to what the working class. Today the Internationalist civil liberties "at home" have been brought one or another bourgeois sector. The World the RCP-promoted World Can't Wait and Not Group/League for the Fourth International is by the Democrats and Republicans. The Can't Wait's website boasts a bunch of In Our Name say today to rope people into fighting for workers strikes against the war Democratic Party voted for the war, the Pa­ Democratic politicians as supporters, among allying with class enemies like the Democrats and "hot-cargoing" (workers' refusal to ship triot Act and additional funding to keep the them U.S. Reps. John Conyers, Jesse L. Jack­ and retired torture-generals in an effort to con­ or handle) war materiel for the U.S. war and blood flowing in Iraq. And the last Democratic son Jr., Cynthia McKinney, Major Owens, fuse people into believing that there really is occupation. This is part of the struggle to de­ presidential hopeful, John Kerry, called for Bobby Rush and Maxine Waters, Senator no distinction between us (the working class) feat the U.S. imperialist war, which goes to­ 40,000 more troops to be sent to Iraq, telling (and would-be 2008 presidential candidate) and them (the ruling class). This is the real gether with all the oppression, poverty, police USA Today ( 19 April 2004) that "if it requires Mike Gravel, Al Sharpton, and even Brig. vision of those who want us to see the world brutality and racism that the multiethnic work­ more troops in order to create the stability Gen. (Ret) Janis Karpinski, the commander through rose- or orange-colored glasses that ing class faces at the hands of this system. that eliminates the chaos, that's what we have of the Abu Ghraib torture prison who "saw make our enemies appear to be friends so long to do." Make no mistake: the Democrats, like the light" after she was made a sacrificial as they say "Bush must go." CUNY students can play an important role in this struggle. As sons and daughters the Republicans, are no friends of the work­ lamb by the Pentagon tops! As the war goes on despite dozens and of the working class (and often workers our­ ing class, minorities or students who hate the Popular fronts are a hallmark of hundreds of peace appeals and marches, we selves) who are at the biggest urban public war: they only serve the class interests of their Stalinism, the politics of the conservative, need to learn from this history. As Trotsky university in the country, in the heart of the rich capitalist masters! nationalist bureaucracy that took over po­ wrote in his "Declaration to the Antiwar financial capital of imperialism, we have a lot Revolutionary Marxists know that im­ litical power in the former Soviet Union in Congress at Amsterdam" (July 1932): perialist war doesn't just come from some the mid- l 920s under the leadership of Jo­ "To condemn war is easy; to overcome it to contribute to a real struggle against war "bad apples" in government, but from the seph Stalin, as a result of the encirclement is difficult. The struggle against war is a and oppression, bringing the Trotskyist pro­ social system of capitalism. It must be de­ and isolation of the revolution. Stalinism is struggle against the classes which rule gram into student protests and antiwar events, feated, and the only way to defeat it once the opposite of the program of the Bolshe­ society and which hold in their hands helping spread the call for workers strikes and for all is by uprooting the capitalist - vik Party founded by V.I. Lenin. In his article both its productive forces and its destruc­ against the war, and above all winning new imperialist system through workers revolu­ "Lenin on Imperialism" (February 1939), tive weapons. It is not possible to pre­ forces to the cause of international socialist I tion. We support any genuine reform that Leon Trotsky, who together with Lenin led vent war by moral indignation, by meet­ revolution. Showing the difference between strengthens the working class in its the October 1917 Russian Revolution, ings, by resolutions, by newspaper ar­ reformist illusions and the revolutionary pro­ ticles, and by congresses .. .. struggle, but we oppose reformism, the pointed out that Lenin emphasized that "ab­ gram is a crucial part of that effort. • deadly illusion that war, racism and exploita­ stract propaganda for peace" is "one of the tion can be reformed away by changing a ways of fooling the working class." Under I few faces in government or pressuring the capitalism, "especially in its imperialist stage, government to "reverse its program," in the wars are inevitable" and can only be ended o~ 1{.otJ>· words of World Can't Wait. by "a number of revolutions," Lenin in­ -~~f~~ lm~~f!!:~~~~~.~n t s_ sisted. Lenin and Trotsky founded the Com­ The "World Can't Wait: Drive Out the Pamphlet tells the story of the ,,. -1,){ ~ ·~!\/"' ':;._ ~V~1· ;;:;. !.; ... . Bush Regime" coalition follows other RCP munist International (Cornintern) to spread struggle led by the Internationalist creations like "Not In Our Name," whose the workers revolution worldwide, but un­ Group to defeat racist attack on names and slogans are deliberately vague so der Stalin it promoted popular-front alliances immigrant students at the City anyone can claim they mean anything at any "for peace, against fascism" and so on, with University of New York amid the war given time. This latest campaign calls for "democratic" imperialist politicians. Stalin's hysteria following 9/11 . line was carried on by Mao Zedong, the RCP's icon, who even made an "alliance" 32 pages with Richard Nixon while the U.S. was car­ US$1 pet-bombing Vietnam. Order from/make checks payable to: Mundial What is really striking is how the RCP's Publications, Box 3321 , Church Street Station, present-day appeals and gimmicks come from New York, NY 10008, U.S. A. that recipe book. In the 1930s a Comintem

6 Revolution tudents, teachers and community activ­ schools come the metal detectors, the stop- hile cops and courts do the black Jena High students and charge them Sists rallied outside the 33rct police precinct ' ,and-search operations, the arrests of students W dirty work "Up North," down with attempted second-degree murder! The in Brooklyn on July 9 (see photo above) to and teachers who take a stand in defense of South in Louisiana black high-school students supposed "murder weapon" was the tennis <;tt mand ipat all charges be dropped against their students. "War in Iraq = Racist Repres­ in the mainly white town of Jena have been shoes worn by what the prosecutor called "the the. "Bushwick 32." These black and Latino sion 'At Home'" was the sign a United Fed­ targeted by a frame-up that echoes the infa­ gang of white boys." The first target of this high-school and college students - some just eration of Teachers (UFT) member and Inter­ mous Scottsboro case of the 1930s and the legal lynching was 16-year-old Mychal Bell; 13 years old-were arrested while peaceably nationalist Group supporter carried at the July whole KKK-infested history of the region. the other five are still awaiting trial. walking to the L train to attend the wake of a 9 rally. An Internationalist leaflet distributed At Jena High there is a place for white Parents, friends and supporters of the friend murdered in street violence. With guns at the rally demanded "Cops Out of the students to sit during recess, under what is victims of this racist attack rallied as the trial drawn, cops handcuffed them and took them to Schools! Stop Racist Profiling!" called "the white tree." After black students opened, June 25 (see photo). An all-white jury the precinct house, where they were charged Among those attending the rally were sat there (after asking a school administrator's was brought together, a series of white (and with ''unlawful assembly." Some were jailed for students from Bushwick Community High permission!) on a day in September 2006, three no black) witnesses were called, an incompe­ a day and a half, even denied food or water. School, where last year students and teach­ nooses were strung from the tree. Although tent and indifferent public defender called no As usual when they want to cover up ers protested the NY Regents Social Studies the principal found three white students re­ witnesses at all, and on June 28 Bell was de­ their racist profiling and brutality (remember exam which told students to "state two ways sponsible for this threat of lynching, the clared guilty of conspiracy and aggravated Sean Bell!), the cops' story keeps changing, British imperialism would benefit Africans"! school superintendent said they had just com­ second-degree battery. The only conspiracy as they try one lie after another ("suspected Democratic City Councilman Charles Barron mitted a youthful "prank." When black stu­ here is that of the white racist "justice" sys­ gang activity," "rampaging" and so forth). was one of the main speakers at the rally, which dents responded with a sit-in under the tree, tem, backed up by most of the national press Columnist Bob Herbert wrote in the New also received "support" from a black police the district attorney showed up with a passel which have tried to keep this outrage from York Times (26 May): officers' group. Several speakers appealed to of cops, clamped a lockdown on the school public view. Mychal Bell is facing sentencing "Some of the youngsters were carrying black and Latino cops to "do the right thing" and threatened: "I can take your lives away which could bring up to 22 years in jail. notes from school saying that they were and support the students. But as NYC stu­ with a stroke of my pen." One year before the Jena case started, allowed to be absent to attend the wake. dents experience all the time, the police (black, This is exactly what he is now trying to the Katrina catastrophe showed that racism There is no evidence that I've been able white, Hispanic or Asian) "protect and serve" do. After the noose incident, racist attacks on in Louisiana is not a local issue or isolated to find - other than uncorroborated this system of racist oppression and inequal­ Jena's black population escalated; at the high survival of the past. It is the expression of statements by the police - that the teen­ ity. As for the Democrats, they keep the war school, a black student who went to a "white" the nation-wide capitalist system in which agers were misbehaving in any way." on Iraq running abroad while chaining work­ party was beaten. On December 4, allegedly the lives of black people, immigrants, the A study by the New York Civil Liberties ers, minorities and youth to capitalism here. one of the most vocal and threatening cam­ poor and working-class are sacrificed to the Union, Criminalizing the Classroom (March And as long as capitalism continues, so will pus racists got the worst of it in a campus god of profit. We urge readers and support­ 2007) connects police brutality on the streets its offspring, racism and police brutality. We confrontation. He was taken to the hospital ers of Revolution to publicize the case and with repression in the schools. Along with need a revolution, a socialist revolution, to but then showed up at a social event. The the call to Free Mychal Bell - Drop all corporatization and privatization of public put a stop to it. • response of the DA and cops was to arrest six charges against the Jena 6! •

CUNY Faculty Union Calls for @ r 0 c: c_ 0 :J CD Freedom Now for Mumia Abu-Jamal (/) The resolution reprinted below, calling action. Outrageously, it sought to replace woman summed up the sentiment of many for labor action to win freedom for Murnia the demand for Murnia's freedom with the when she called on the delegates to "have Abu-Jamal, was unanimously passed by the call for "a new and fair trial" - that is, an the courage" to "do the right thing" by call­ Hunter College chapter and Hostos Com­ appeal for confidence in what it called the ing forthrightly for Jamal's freedom. In a vic­ munity College chapter executive board of "appropriate legal authorities." tory for Murnia's partisans, the outcome was I the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the This set off a heated debate, beginning a 2/3 vote in favor of striking out the calls union of teaching personnel at the City Uni­ with the PSC activist (a supporter of the for a "new and fair trial" and replacing them Mumia Abu-Jamal versity of New York. Jamal is the former Black Internationalist Group) who had introduced with the original demand, "Freedom now for nocent man should not pass another day in Panther and renowned radical journalist who the original motion in April. Nelson Murnia Abu-Jamal." It is more essential than prison for his radical views; and has sat on Pennsylvania's death row for the Mandela sat in a South African jail for a ever to translate this into labor action as WHEREAS, as far away as Brazil, the past 25 years, for a murder he did not com­ quarter century, he noted, but no one called outlined in the original motion below. Rio de Janeiro state teachers union held a mit. Mumia is an innocent man framed up by for a "new trial" by the apartheid courts - RESOLUTION ON work stoppage for Murnia's freedom in 1999, the racist capitalist injustice system. the call was to "Free Mandela," period. (An­ at the same time as the SF longshore work­ The Hunter and Hostos chapters intro­ other PSC member and IG supporter, who MUMIAABU-JAMAL ers' stoppage for Murnia, and the Oakland duced the motion at the PSC's April 19 Del­ sat through Murnia's 1995 appeal hearing WHEREAS, the case of Murnia Abu­ teachers' union has held actions for this cru­ egate Assembly, for approval by the union and sought to report on how the courts Jamal is a focus and symbol of the fight against cial cause as well; and as a whole. However, the social-democratic trampled on Jamal's rights, was repeatedly racism and state repression, which is keenl y WHEREAS, an injury to one is an in- leadership had the motion tabled to the PSC denied the floor.) Several delegates spoke felt by large numhers of our coworkers, stu­ jury to all; . executive committee to be "redrafted," while passionately against "the idea that a black dents and others in light of events like the THEREFDREBEITRESOLVED, that the vowing it would not be watered down. radical journalist can get justice out of the Sean Bell case; and Professional Staff Congress calls for free­ A political battle erupted at the follow­ court system" and referred to the WHEREAS, his appeal is before the fed­ dom now for Mumia Abu-Jamal; and ing Delegate Assembly, on May 31, when government's murderous COINTELPRO eral circuit court, and this could be the last BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, thatthe the PSC leadership brought in a new text (Counterintelligence Program) against judicial decision in the case; and PSC shalJ take up the fight for coordinated which sought to gut the original motion, re­ Mumia and other former Black Panthers. WHEREAS, dozens of unions and la­ labor action to free Murnia Abu-Jamal (in­ moving the reference to the NYPD murder Proponents of the "redrafted" motion bor councils around the country have come cluding strikes and work stoppages) with of Sean Bell as well as the call for union fought a losing battle. One chapter chair- out for Jamal's freedom, insisting that an in- unions around the city.

September 2007 7 Workers Strikes Against the War! Hot-Cargo War Materiel! Defeat US Imperialism With Workers' Revolution! Boston: How To End The War? Reformist Movement Leaders Have No Answer By Fred Bergen laborationist character of the People’s Front policy is strikingly revealed The Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coali- through the Stalinist attitude in these tion (STWC) is organizing a meeting for Fri- organizations. They rule out in advance day, May 18, headlined “Ending the War: Peace the Marxist analysis of war as neces- Movement Leaders Ask, ‘Which Way For- sarily resulting from the inner conflicts ward’?” The panelists, ranging from self-pro- of capitalism and therefore genuinely claimed socialists to representatives of opposed only by revolutionary class beltway lobbying groups and the Quakers, struggle against the capitalist order; are a representative sample of the “peace and, in contrast, maintain that all per- movement” nationwide. Although the move- sons, from whatever social class or ment is divided between a variety of coali- group, whether or not opposed to capi- tions, both nationally and locally, they all have talism, can ‘unite’ to stop war.” the same basic political makeup. You have one –James Burnham, The Peoples Front – or two socialist groups at the core posing as The New Betrayal (1937) “just us peace folks”; they all put forward a STWC “independent of the Demo- minimum “democratic” program aimed at at- crats”? Let’s see. According to the article tracting support from mainstream liberals; and on the Socialist Alternative web site quoted they all manage to drag one or another bour- above, a March 24 STWC protest, SAlt mem- geois politician onto the speakers platform bers chanted, “What the hell is Congress for their demonstrations to gain the desired for? Cut the funding, stop the war!” What veneer of “respectability.” What none of these the hell is Congress for? It’s a legislative coalitions have is a program to mobilize power body of the capitalist ruling class whose to stop the warmongers in their tracks: the job is to rubber-stamp imperialist wars, out- power of the working class. law strikes and the like, as any real Marxist Not that they ignore workers, of course. could tell you! By playing to democratic il- They all want to include “labor” as one more lusions, SAlt’s slogans subordinate antiwar constituency in their “broad” movements. protesters to the Democratic party. History Socialist Alternative (SAlt), which leads the has shown that if the imperialists are not Boston-area STWC, in an article calling to defeated by workers revolution, the end of “Build the Antiwar Movement” in its news- one bloody adventure only marks the be- paper Justice (April-May 2007) talks of the ginning of the next. Each imperialist slaugh- need to “broaden the antiwar opposition into ter is decried by protests that implore the the working class.” Yet what’s needed is not rulers to redirect the billions spent on sense- to get some “labor leaders” to sign on to tooth- less carnage to social needs (“books not less petitions begging the Democratic Con- bombs,” “jobs not war,” etc.), which invari- gress to withdraw troops from Iraq, or even to ably and inevitably fall on deaf ears because have union contingents in peace parades in you can’t stop war under capitalism. Washington or locally, but to organize work- If we don’t attack the root cause of im- ers action against the imperialist war on a perialist war, today’s youthful anti-war pro- class basis. An article on the SAlt web site testers will be shuffling from one anti-war claims that the Boston STWC, is “indepen- “movement” to the next until they are drafted dent of the Democrats and has a democratic- or exchange their sneakers for walkers. The making process.” Yet while national groups struggle against war is necessarily a class like United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), struggle, because it is the capitalist drive for Troops Out Now Coalition (TONC), ANSWER ever-expanding markets and resources, the and the rest may get the big-name Democrats competition between the great imperialist like Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich or Cynthia powers for domination over the oppressed McKinney. STWC gets Boston city council- and colonized peoples, and inter-imperialist ors like Felix Arroyo and Chuck Turner. The struggles for world hegemony that are be- basic politics are the same. hind the current wars in Iraq and Afghani- For decades a host of opportunist so- stan. That’s why we of the Internationalist cialists have organized such “coalitions” as Group and League for the Fourth Interna- Today’s fake-socialists pursue the op- rights, and women’s organizations also threw popular fronts, which chain the workers or- tional insist that it is necessary to fight im- posite policy: they build a class-collabora- their resources and authority into building a ganizations and sectors of the oppressed to perialist war with class war, and that we tionist antiwar movement dedicated to pres- new broad-based, antiwar, anti-corporate, would-be bourgeois “allies.” The term popu- must defeat imperialism and its endless wars suring “their own” imperialist government, working-class political party” (Justice, March- lar front was coined by the followers of Jo- through international socialist revolution. rather than propagandizing to the workers April 2007). In the first place, the present seph Stalin in the mid-1930s as the once- The only “anti-war movement” that to sweep away the rule of capital. The op- misleaders of all these organizations are bound revolutionary Communist parties turned into succeeded in stopping an imperialist war was portunists’ first and only consideration is hand-and-foot to capitalist politics. To call on vulgar reformists who do not seek to over- the Russian revolution of 1917, led by the not “what will it take to end the war,” but them to set up a new party is to spread illu- throw capitalist rule, only to “reform” the Bolshevik party of Lenin and Trotsky. For “what will be acceptable to our liberal and sions – anything they set up is just going to unreformable. As a spokesman for the Ameri- the Bolsheviks, ending the war was inextri- reformist allies in the ‘broad’ movement.” be a pressure group on the Democrats. More- can Trotskyists wrote in the 1930s: cably tied to proletarian revolution: getting These cynics end up reinforcing the bour- over, most antiwar, civil rights, women’s and “Most significant of all is the applica- to the root cause of imperialist war by turn- geoisie in its moment of greatest crisis: they immigrant rights organizations are themselves tion of the People’s Front policy to ‘anti- ing the imperialist war into a civil war of the are obstacles to socialist revolution. bourgeois organizations or coalitions. The war work.’ Through a multitude of paci- oppressed against their oppressors. With- In its pretense of being “independent of purpose of SAlt’s whole elaborate formula is fist organizations, and especially out the Bolsheviks’ uncompromising stance the Democrats,” what is Socialist Alternative’s to dance around and water down the straight- through the directly controlled Ameri- for the defeat of their “own” capitalist gov- “alternative”? In an article titled “Time to Break forward call for a revolutionary workers party. can League against War and Fascism, ernment and for the defense of the weaker with the Democratic Party – Build an Antiwar, And the real content of their article is a barely- the Stalinists aim at the creation of a nations oppressed by their government, they Anti-corporate Alternative!” (Justice, March- disguised plea for Ralph Nader to run for presi- ‘broad, classless, People’s Front of all could never have ended the imperialist April 2007) SAlt writes: “Imagine if the main dent again in 2008. those opposed to war.’ The class col- slaughter of World War I. leaders of the antiwar, immigrant rights, civil In 2000 and 2004, Socialist Alternative Break with the “Antiwar” Popular Front! Build a Revolutionary Workers’ Party!

8 Revolution endorsed Nader, pitching him as an “anti- Action Center (IAC) periodically hold anti- CIO industrial unions behind Franklin Delano supplies for the war. We say that the only way war,” “anti-corporate” candidate against the war demonstrations. In Boston, the WWP/ Roosevelt’s Democratic Party and ultimately to defeat imperialism and free the world from Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry. “Anti- IAC have joined with some priests and local the second imperialist world war. the threat of war is through socialist revolu- war”? Ralph Nader’s 2004 election platform bourgeois politicians in the Rosa Parks Hu- The tactic of the united front, as devel- tion. It is necessary to break with the Demo- called for the “development of an appropri- man Rights Day Coalition. Trading on the oped by Lenin and Trotsky’s Communist In- crats and all the bourgeois parties and politi- ate international peace-keeping force.” Like civil rights movement icon’s name, in the fall ternational, sought to bring mass working- cians, like the Greens and the Naders, and to NATO “peacekeeping” forces in Bosnia and of 2005 they organized an event to scold class organizations into struggle around com- oust the pro-capitalist union bureaucrats and Kosovo? What about Iraq? “We want to black and Latino youth to “stop the vio- mon, immediate goals, and to expose the other misleaders who lead the oppressed to have a responsible six-month withdrawal of lence.” WWP recently hailed the non-bind- treachery of the reformist leaders of the work- embrace their oppressors. There is no half- the US military and corporate occupation,” ing resolution passed by the Boston City ers’ organizations who opposed the struggle. way solution: the hard truth is that there is no Nader told NPR on 9 July 2004 in a debate Council on February 14 to “support our This requires that the revolutionary elements “alternative” to, no short-cut to get around with Democrat Howard Dean. These days, troops by bringing them home” as an “anti- retain their full political program and openly the struggle for a revolutionary workers’ party. that would put Nader to the right of some war” resolution. Yet this resolution states, criticize the reformists. “Antiwar coalitions” The mission of the Internationalist Group/ Congressional Democrats, roughly in the “Whereas, officials of the Boston Police like STWC (or UFPJ, TONC, ANSWER, etc.) League for the Fourth International is to build camp of the war hawk and former Marine Department have testified at City Council are something else entirely: the pseudo-so- the nucleus of this party.  general John Murtha. Some “antiwar” alter- hearings that a major difficulty in maintain- cialist organizations that do native! Nader is also an immigrant-basher, ing the number of officers on the streets at the donkey work agree with opposing calls for legalization of undocu- 1990 levels results from the cut backs in fed- the churches, non-profits mented workers “because you are giving a eral resources that were provided during that and various irrelevant paper green light to cross the border illegally”! period.” So WWP/IAC wants to “bring ‘our’ organizations on a lowest Order Now! Nader made this disgusting statement in an troops home” so they can trade in their rifles common denominator pro- interview with the fascistic Pat Buchanan in and fatigues for pistols and badges! gram in the framework of The classic the latter’s magazine, American Conserva- Any serious opponent of imperialist war bourgeois politics: “bring the pamphlet tive (21 June 2004). Nader’s support for the must ask what are they accomplishing by troops home,” for “no presenting the “anti-globalization movement” is based on building the STWC, the Rosa Parks Commit- (American) blood for (Iraqi) Leninist policy national-chauvinist protectionism, a plat- tee or any of the other “antiwar coalitions”? oil.” This program cannot of revolutionary form which “unites” him (and Socialist Al- In reality, they chain the oppressed to the “lib- stop this and future wars, defeatism in ternative) with the likes of Buchanan. eral” wing of the ruling class, the ones who because it accepts the basic imperialist It is from such “movements” that SAlt currently bemoan “Bush’s war” in Iraq but capitalist framework that gen- wars. intends to fashion its “broad” “anti-corpo- yesterday hailed Clinton’s wars on Yugosla- erates endless war. rate” “alternative” to the Democrats. To unite via. All they are doing, in short, is to give war The Internationalist the multinational working class in struggle a chance. Today the Democrats have become Group/League for the Fourth 48 pages against imperialist war, we need an interna- the main war party, because for all their belly- International, in contrast, tionalist, working-class revolutionary program. aching about “setting a date” to “begin” with- calls for workplace meetings, US$1.50 The Internationalist Group says: No to pro- drawal of U.S. troops from Iraq (but not Af- labor protests, walkouts, and tectionism, yes to proletarian internationalism! ghanistan), it is their votes in Congress that strikes against the war. We Full citizenship rights for all immigrants! fund the imperialist war machine. This what call on workers in the key Order from/make checks payable to: Mundial Publications, Socialist Alternative constantly seeks to the popular front does, just as in the 1930s shipping industries to refuse Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. fudge the class line, and nowhere is this more when it lined up the militant workers of the to move, that is, “hot-cargo” clear than over the question of the police. A week after the September 11 terrorist attacks, in a statement calling to “End the Cycle of Terrorism” (how “even-handed”!) SAlt wrote, Hands Off Víctor Toro! “If the police fail to protect immigrants, Ar- abs, or Muslims from violent attacks, defense committees should be formed….” If the cops fail to protect immigrants?! Hold on a minute. Stop the Deportations! The police are the armed fist of the capitalist On July 6, immigrant rights activist spent time in the 40th Precinct of state, and their job, before and after Septem- Víctor Toro was arrested by the U.S. Border the NYPD. After many years of photo Internationalist ber 11, has been to keep the “peace” of racist Patrol. Toro, who is widely known for his hard struggle, in 2003 La Peña was exploitation, which includes persecuting, im- work in the South Bronx, was detained with evicted by the police in tandem prisoning and even murdering blacks, immi- other undocumented immigrants during a with the landlords of the build- grants and workers. In response to the NYPD’s migra (immigration police) sweep of an ing where the center had stood assassination of Sean Bell on 26 November Amtrak train at Rochester, NY, and later trans- for a decade. 2006 , SAlt’s refrain (in a 17 December 2006 ferred to a detention center in Auburn. Fam- When La Peña del Bronx leaflet) was: “Establish independent, elected ily, friends and supporters were able to post was located near Hostos Com- labor-community bodies to investigate the $5,000 bond demanded by the feds, but munity College, Victor and charges of police abuse and review police he now faces deportation. U.S. government Nieves opened up the doors of activities with powers to meaningfully punish hands off compañero Toro! the community center for the In- misconduct.” The experience of “civilian re- ternationalist Group to hold the view boards” and “cop watch” programs is As a prominent leftist in Chile, Víctor memorial concert for our comrade that they are toothless devices to divert and Toro was targeted for death by the junta Fernando Lopez, an immigrant demobilize mass protests against racist police that seized power on 11 September 1973 in worker who died in a tragic train atrocities. the CIA-backed military coup of General accident (see The International- “Labor-community bodies” to “meaning- Augusto Pinochet. Named one of the “13 ist No. 7, April-May 1999). The fully punish” killer cops?!! Not without a revo- most wanted men” in the country, he was IG along with various CUNY stu- lution. As Karl Marx noted in drawing the les- arrested and for the next couple of years he dent activists and trade union- sons of the 1871 Paris Commune, “the work- was tortured over and over. He was exiled to ists also held an event for the ing class cannot simply lay hold of the ready- Europe and was warned never to come back. campaign against CUNY’s anti- made state machinery, and wield it for its own In 1978 the military junta declared him dead immigrant war drive (see main purposes” (The Civil War in France). This in one of the official Chilean newspapers, Victor Toro article in this issue). understanding is a key difference separating thus making him a stateless person. The U.S. imperialists are bent on silenc- revolutionary communists from social-demo- After trying his luck in different coun- to pursue these cases vigorously” ing those who courageously dare to speak cratic reformists like Socialist Alternative who tries of Europe, Cuba and Mexico, in 1984 he (Chicago Tribune, 19 August). in defense of the millions of undocumented think that it is possible to deal with racist cop crossed the U.S. border and established him- Elvira is now in Mexico. For Victor Toro, immigrant workers living in the country. Just terror by pressuring the institutions of the self in one of the poorest sectors of the South though, it will be a very different story if he is recently, Elvira Arellano, the undocumented capitalist state. These are just the sort of dan- Bronx, N.Y. In 1987, Victor along with his com- deported. As mentioned above, he is officially immigrant worker turned activist who gerous illusions that the German Social Demo- panion Nieves Ayress, both ex-political pris- dead in Chile and this presents a very real sought refuge inside a Chicago church for a crats had who thought that the police could oners, opened up the community center Vamos threat if he was to be sent back there. He could year, was arrested in Los Angeles on Au- “protect” workers against the threat of fas- a la Peña del Bronx. For more than two de- face arrest or worse at the hands of members gust 19, by the utterly racist LAPD. Later cism. When Hitler came to power and used cades these relentless community activists of Pinochet’s death squads, who still go free. that night the hated migra announced: fought for immigrants’ rights, held classes in The CUNY Internationalist Clubs demand that this repressive apparatus to jail and kill hun- “Officers in Los Angeles today arrested the prevention of HIV/AIDS, provided shel- all the charges against Victor Toro be dropped! dreds of thousands of socialists and commu- criminal alien and immigration fugitive ter for women who faced domestic violence, nists and to murder millions of Jews in the Elvira Arellano…[she] is being pro- Asking the U.S. imperialists to grant him Nazi extermination camps, they all paid for the and allowed street artists and musicians to cessed for removal to Mexico based asylum is not enough, we demand full citi- reformists’ suicidal illusions. use the center for their activities. upon a deportation order originally is- zenship rights for all immigrants. As dem- Socialist Alternative and the Stop the Because of the different political activi- sued by a federal immigration judge in onstrators chanted recently in Los Angeles Wars Coalition are not the only peace group ties at the center Victor and his supporters 1997…Arresting and removing criminal (and IG supporters have chanted for years): active in the Boston area. The Workers were constantly harassed by the police and aliens is one of ICE’s top enforcement Arriba, abajo, ¡la migra p’al carajo! (Immi- World Party (WWP) and its International on various occasions he was arrested and priorities and the agency will continue gration police, go to hell). 

September 2007 9 Down with the Racist Witch Hunt at CCNY! Defend the Morales/Shakur Center!

The CUNY Internationalist Clubs stand trying to provoke conflicts with the City College Guillermo Morales/ with leftist and activist York Patrick Andrade/New Times Assata Shakur Center against the vicious groups on campus. In- witch hunt launched by the gutter press and deed, in a recent posting seconded by City University Chancellor Kadinsky states his wish Matthew Goldstein. In the dead of the night that vigilantes would on December 12, in an act of official vandal- “visit my campus to teach ism, CUNY officials took down the sign over these leftists a lesson in the Morales/Shakur Center. Blatantly vio- justice.” lating students’ rights, CCNY threatened The phony indigna- disciplinary action against students if they tion from the News and replace the sign. CUNY administration is Is it any coincidence that in the midst aimed at the student cen- of massive outrage over the NYPD murder ter formed in 1989 by ac- of Sean Bell, the racist Daily News tries to tivists who successfully whip up a frenzy over a student center that mobilized against a tuition has existed for 17 years and is named after hike and named the center the courageous black militant they lyingly after a Puerto Rican inde- call a “terrorist” and “cop-killer”? Of course pendence fighter and not! But this cynical ploy will not work. Assata Shakur (Joanne Like the millions of working-class, black, Chesimard), the former Latino and immigrant people who keep this Black Panther who is the city running, CUNY students will not be in- aunt and godmother of the timated or cowed into silence in the face of late Tupac Shakur. murderous cops, imperialist wars or crude Sister Assata was a attempts at censorship. We will not forget victim of the racist injus- CUNY authorities tore down sign for CCNY students’ Morales/Shakur Center after right-wing Sean Bell! Assata yes – Daily News/Admin- tice system after she was provocation and smear job in racist Daily News. istration witch-hunters, never! part of a group ambushed by state troopers most basic democratic rights and civil liber- Those who should be shut down are Playing second fiddle to the rabid rac- in New Jersey, the world capital of racial pro- ties under the USA PATRIOT Act and the the Administration and Board of Trustees, ists and warmongers of the News, the CUNY filing. Acquitted three times, she was even- so-called “war on terror.” who are a clear and present danger to the administration is fulfilling the role assigned tually railroaded to prison, but escaped and The terrorists are Bush and his co-con- most basic rights of students, faculty and to it by its ruling-class masters. City Univer- found refuge in Cuba, where she has con- spirators (Democrats and Republicans alike) campus workers and are proven enemies of sity is run by hard-line rightist ideologues tinued to speak out against U.S. imperialism who are waging an imperialist war of occupa- public higher education. They should be who want to gut public education. (Board of and its system of racial oppression. tion, torture and mass murder. The criminals replaced by student/teacher/worker control Trustees chairman Benno Schmidt, a notori- The Daily News smear calls Shakur a on campus are their military recruiters, who of the campuses, which would promptly re- ous union-buster at Yale, is also an educa- “terrorist,” but the real terrorists are the prey on working-class, poor and minority stu- store open admissions and free tuition, and tion profiteer as president of Edison Schools.) United States government and its cops who dents, as well as those who authorize and carry send the military recruiters packing. Once again they show the hollowness of murdered 38 Black Panthers. Some, like Fred out military research to help the armed forces Hands Off the Morales/Shakur Center! their pious claims to uphold “free speech Hampton, they shot in their beds, others they hunt down and kill those targeted by the U.S. Assata Yes, Daily News Dictatorship Never! and academic freedom.” assassinated at night on the streets or in rulers. As sons and daughters of the working Defeat U.S. Imperialism and Its Witch-Hunt- But this is far from the first time. In Fall broad daylight on the highways as they tried people who make this city run, we will not be ing Mouthpieces on Campus! 2001, Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid sewer press, to do with Assata. cowed, intimidated or censored into silence CUNY Internationalist Clubs the New York Post, launched a hue and cry The current censorship comes shortly by latter-day McCarthyites. 13 December 2006 against City College professors and students after the U.S. Congress voted 336-31 to who dared to hold a teach-in discussing U.S. condemn the French city of St. Denis for imperialism. As Bush and his Democratic yes- naming a street after radical journalist “La lucha obrera no tiene frontera” men used 9/11 to rev up their terrorist “war on Mumia Abu-Jamal, another former Black terror,” launching dirty colonial wars on Af- Panther, who has spent more than two de- (Workers Struggle Has No Borders) ghanistan and Iraq, Goldstein & Co. jumped cades on Pennsylvania’s death row after to attention like wooden marionettes. being framed up for the death of a Philadel- photo Internationalist Shortly after, when a racist Queens poli- phia police officer. tician targeted “undocumented” immigrant Celebrating “terrorists”? NYC’s Colum- students at CUNY, grotesquely claiming they bus Avenue is named after the man who ini- were a “security” threat, the Administration tiated the enslavement and subjugation of more than doubled tuition for these students the indigenous peoples of this hemisphere. in an “anti-immigrant war purge.” The CUNY The capital of this country is named after Internationalist Clubs grew out of the pro- the slave owner and Indian killer whose in- tests initiated by the Internationalist Group terest in independence was largely because which mobilized labor, immigrant and stu- the British refused to let him expand his slave dent groups, largely reversing this attack. plantations as fast as he wanted to. Kennedy Sinister right-wing anti-communist Airport is named after the president respon- fingerman David Horowitz also targeted City sible for the Vietnam War and the Bay of University students and professors in his Pigs, who threatened to nuke Cuba. We Internet smear sheet, FrontPage, labeling could go on, but you get the point. CUNY “The Unpatriotic University.” When City College authorities have engaged FrontPage, upstate right-wingers, cops and in a genuine vendetta against the Morales/ FBI “associates” complained about Susan Shakur Center, even hiding a surveillance Rosenberg, a one-time supporter of the camera in a smoke detector outside it in 1998. Weather Underground and adjunct at John When the campus newspaper The Messen- Jay College, the college president simply ger exposed this, the administration shut the “terminated” her. paper down. It’s nothing new. Back in the Later, CUNY officials tried to set up days of Joe McCarthy and before, CCNY “Abu Ghraib on the Hudson” with a Home- officials enthusiastically joined the perse- land Security certificate program at Borough cutors of “un-American” views. of Manhattan Community College, but had The witch-hunters in cap and gown feel to cancel it after exposure of the sinister pro- a deep kinship with gutter press scandal gram led to student and faculty protest (see sheets like the News and Post. They have CUNY Internationalist Clubs, Internationalist Group and others join August Revolution No. 3, November 2005). been the enforcers in the vicious drive to 13 action in Williamsburg, Brooklyn supporting immigrant workers’ The latest censorship and threatened silence professors at Columbia, CUNY and unionization drive organized by IWW Foodstuff Workers Industrial Union. purge was touched off by one Sergey elsewhere who have criticized the Iraq war, Internationalist Clubs, Internationalist Group and others join August 13 action Kadinsky, a right-wing fanatic who is well the Israeli government’s oppression of the in Williamsburg, Brooklyn supporting immigrant workers’ unionization drive known at City College for spending his time Palestinian people, and the ripping up of the organized by IWW Foodstuff Workers Industrial Union.

10 Revolution Then the heroic

struggle of the teachers El Internacionalista and workers of Oaxaca Principal Purged in broke out. In September and October of last year, we invited stu- Censorship Frenzy dents of the Benito Juárez Autonomous An outrageous campaign of cen- University of Oaxaca sorship, smears and “guilt” by asso- William C. Lopez (UABJO) to the CCH, ciation forced the resignation in Au- where we organized a gust of Debbie Almontaser, principal rally with hundreds of of the Khalil Gibran Academy, a new students, and collected middle school which the New York funds to aid them. Department of Education had an- When the teachers of nounced as the first to focus on Ara- the Section 22 of the bic language and culture. Mayor SNTE-CNTE (the Bloomberg himself announced the teachers’ union in resignation on his weekly radio show, Oaxaca) marched from after a months-long campaign against Oaxaca to Mexico City, Almontaser sparked, yet again, by the we went out to accom- New York Post. pany them on the last The pretext for driving leg of their journey, en- Almontaser out was that she is a tering the city together. leader of a Yemeni American immi- At the same time, the GI Supporters of the Internationalist Club at CCH-Sur as grant group that shares office space tried to put into practice they marched with Oaxaca teachers last October. with an organization called Arab our call for a nationwide strike, agitating for mobilization of students, workers, and teach- Women Active in Art and Media. So? the organization of paros (“stoppages” or ers to throw the porros out of the schools. It turns out this organization sells T- strikes), a number of which we were able to During the mobilizations of the month of shirts. Horrors! And? Well, it sells a spark on the campus. The first took place on October against the military invasion of shirt reading “Intifada NYC.” The October 26. Contrary to what the anarchists Oaxaca, militants of the GI, together with an- intifada (literally “shaking off”) is the tried to do, the GI emphasized that it was archist activists, organized a rescue opera- Palestinian rebellion that began in necessary for the workers to play a central tion against the porros. What happened was 1987 against the brutal Israeli occu- role in the work stoppages. So in an assem- that the students of Preparatory School No. 5 pation of the West Bank and Gaza. bly of the workers of STUNAM (university were getting ready to join a march, when they Millions of people around the world Debbie Almontaser workers’ union) on October 30 blockade, the noticed a band of porros menacingly await- were inspired by the heroism of Pal- comrades confronted the pro-PRD environ- ing them at the gates of the school. They made estinian youth targeted for savage reprisals UFT leadership, which for decades dis- ment that dominated the meeting. We ex- calls for help on their cell phones to various for throwing rocks at Israeli tanks. played an unbounded, fanatical zeal for U.S. plained that the principal obstacle to mobi- schools, alerting them to the situation. When For the witch-hunt crew, any solidarity foreign policy, from the Cold War and Viet- lizing the power of the workers was their the news reached CCH-Sur, we quickly de- with the besieged Palestinian people must be nam to the arming and backing of Israeli- subjugation to the bourgeoisie through a cided to take a city bus down to pick up the demonized, silenced and smeared as support style apartheid (Zionism). Woody Allen’s “popular front” with a bosses’ party, the PRD. students of Prepa 5... As the bus approached, to “terrorism.” (Meanwhile, speaking of T- movie Sleeper is about a man who wakes We also emphasized that what was nec- we gave precise directions to an entry to the shirts, we remember the case of the Dearborn from a coma to find that “a man called Albert essary was not a “collective absence” from campus that was not blocked by the porros, High student banned from wearing one that Shanker” – the UFT leader who mentored work, but an active strike of students, teach- where we quickly got them on board the bus. rightly called George Bush an “international Weingarten – had gotten hold of atom ers and campus workers, that should extend The operation was a complete success, and terrorist.”) So the shirt was presented as some bombs and started World War III. to the entire university and eventually to key later the students of both schools joined the kind of crime, Almontaser was declared guilty Internationalist activists remember sectors of the workers movement. At the march together, while the porros were left at of association with the group selling it, and Almontaser from the weekly protests to “Free evening meeting, this position gained wide the front gate wondering what had happened. the foam-flecked frenzy was on. the Detainees” that we participated in for support among the workers, who voted unani- On the basis of this activity together The United Federation of Teachers months at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Deten- mously to come out for the strike called for with reading and discussing works by Marx, should have denounced the censorship, tion Center after the racist round-ups of October 31. That night, internacionalistas Engels, Lenin and Trotsky in our weekly which is a direct threat to every student and Muslim, Arab and South Asian men in the stood guard with a workers’ picket, which in study circle, at the end of November 2006 teacher in the city. Disgracefully (but pre- wake of 11 September 2001. A leader of the the morning prevented the University police we formed the Internationalist Committee of dictably), UFT President Randi Weingarten Arab American Family Support Center, she from breaking the strike. That morning we sent CCH-Sur. While discussing, agitating in piled on, adding her voice to the gang spoke eloquently about the anguish and brigades to electricity company plants, while meetings, participating in street blockades, screaming for blood, saying “maybe deprivation suffered by the families of the one of our comrades led a group of 150 stu- making barricades, working for and joining [Almontaser] should not be a principal” be- detainees (none of whom were ever even dents who went to show their solidarity with in strikes, we have sought to carry out the cause she did not jump unconditionally to charged with involvement in the World Trade the encampment of the Oaxaca teachers out- revolutionary proletarian program of condemn the shirt, which Weingarten called Center attack). We condemn the purge of side the national Senate. Some of these stu- Trotskyism. We have learned that the key is “warmongering.” Warmongering more ac- Debbie Almontaser as a threat to the most dents later went with us to the Electrical Work- the fight for the independent mobilization of curately describes the political legacy of the basic rights of us all.  ers Union (SME) hall to explain the necessity the working class, and that this means of these workers going on strike to stop the struggle against the present leaderships, ominously growing threats of repression in both of the workers and student movements, Mexico... We members of the GI took part in and Oaxaca. who capitulate to or even promote one or defended the barricades against the police, Along with all this, there was a marked another form of class collaboration. We continued from page 12 while underscoring that street barricades increase in attacks by porro groups at UNAM stress the necessity of struggle at all times newspapers: the state police, under the com- would not be enough to halt the repression, and other parts of the public education sys- and in all places against every form of op- mand of Governor Lázaro Cárdenas Batel of that it would be necessary to mobilize the tem. The porros did not stand with their arms pression: against the anti-indigenous and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), power of the workers. “They are the ones who folded given the constant student mobiliza- anti-black racism which pervades capitalist used their assault rifles to shoot at the work- make everything move, and they can stop ev- tions of the past year. They constantly ha- Mexico, against the brutal machismo that ers. On the other side, the workers heroically erything by throwing the switch,” we said. rassed students who participated in protests, oppresses women and denies the most el- resisted, finally beating back the police at the On the barricades, we were talking about the and even murdered an activist at the CCH in emental democratic rights to homosexuals. cost of two strikers’ lives. communism of Lenin and Trotsky, the work- Naucalpan. These storm troopers, used by We understand that our place is in the A few days later, on May 4, similar ing class, etc. One comrade recalls: “Shortly the school authorities and many levels of gov- struggle of the working class, which is the scenes were repeated much closer to the after we began to block the avenue, a truckful ernment to control rebellious students, were a class with the most at stake in defending capital, in San Salvador Atenco. In the of 50 uniformed capital police pulled up. They legacy of the corporatist control methods of and extending public education. We learned evening there were reports in the school to dismounted and formed a wall between us the old PRI government. Despite the chang- – and continue to learn – from books, but the effect that police from the State of Mexico and the automobiles, who pulled back a bit; ing of the guard in the presidential palace, also in the struggles of the real world, trying – under orders from the governor, a member several GI supporters and others formed up while the “institutional” state-run “unions” to guide our action and the action of the of the Institutional Revolutionary Party behind tables that we had brought to prevent have decided to offer their services to the new workers with the lessons of decades of class (PRI), and at the call of the PRD mayor of the police from breaking the blockade. At one bosses of the National Action Party (PAN), struggle that are distilled in the program of Texcoco – had murdered a youth. The next point, a cop beat one of our youngest mem- today the porro gangs serve the politicians revolutionary Marxism. We send greetings day, hundreds of PFP agents stormed the bers on her legs.” That same day, los of the PRD (which controls the government to readers, friends and comrades new and town, arresting scores of inhabitants in a internacionalistas – as we’re known here – of the capital city) and the PRI equally. As we old with whom we go forward on the path of clear example of “collective punishment,” organized brigades to visit the electrical work- had in the past, the GI insisted on the massive Lenin and Trotsky!  and raping many of the women that they ers of a nearby plant to speak to them about took prisoner. On that same day, many CCH the need to mobilize, not just against the re- Visit the League for the Fourth International/ students decided to take to the streets near pression, but against the privatizations that Internationalist Group on the Internet the campus to protest this brutal repression. the government is imposing. http://www.internationalist.org

September 2007 11 Revolution September 2007 Mexico: Internationalists Fight for Worker-Student Action

By Camila, Julio, student actions. El Internacionalista Miranda and Samuel This was shown in the struggle against We helped to found the International- the “porros,” thugs ist Committee at the College of Sciences and backed by the ad- Humanities-South (CCH-Sur), one of the pre- ministration and the paratory secondary-school campuses of the government. After National Autonomous University of Mexico the Federal Preven- (UNAM), in order to dedicate our best ef- tive Police (PFP) forts to fighting for a socialist revolution in broke the student Mexico, and for the international extension strike of 1999-2000 of revolution. We know that this is the task that had held out for of the working class of the world, which stu- ten months at dents can join in accomplishing; we also UNAM, university know that the struggle to end exploitation authorities and the must at the same time put an end to every bourgeois govern- form of oppression. Key to advancing this ment were in a rage. struggle is the unity of thought and action, Even though they matching what is said to what is done. had sent hundreds Our committee was formed in solidarity of strikers to prison, with the Grupo Internacionalista (GI), Mexi- they were unable to can section of the League for the Fourth impose the tuition International. It is the fruit of an effort that fees that would have began a number of years ago. Starting in made it even harder 2004, the GI established contact with a group for working-class of left-wing students in the Emiliano Zapata students to get a uni- Collective (CEZ) of the CCH-Sur, a small col- versity education. lective born after the great UNAM strike of So once “normalcy” 1999-2000. This group, like many others, was had been reestab- Contingent of the Grupo Internacionalista and the Internationalist Club of CCH-Sur at march inspired by the Zapatista uprising that had lished, they began a protesting attack on government workers’ pensions, March 27. shaken Mexico since 1994. The group’s ac- campaign of perse- tivities were centered on talks about cution against student activists with summary sponse, the Grupo Internacionalista sought bureaucracy and that nothing could be Zapatismo and Guevarism (which supports judgments before the university tribunal, and to put into practice a policy quite different gained by appealing to them. We began to guerrilla warfare as practiced by Che with increasing frequency, violent thug provo- from the individual “anti-porro hunts” under- go to the workers’ assemblies, and gradu- Guevara), with a touch of Marxism, but fun- cations. taken by the anarchists, or petitions to the ally we gained a hearing. Meanwhile, the damentally it did not go beyond the limits of In the preparatory schools and some col- authorities for the porros’ expulsion. The GI anarchists identified those responsible for middle-class “student power” politics. Af- lege campuses, the “porro” gangs were re- began to appeal to workers’ assemblies to attacking their comrades, but every time they ter gaining a few sympathizers on campus, vived with heavy infusions of resources, un- come out against the porros, who represented unmasked one of the porros, they appealed the small campus office that had borne the der the constant protection of the university a serious threat not only to student activists, to the administration to formally charge them signboard was of the CEZ was converted authorities, the police chiefs and Mexico City but to the workers themselves. Little by little so that they could be suspended or expelled. into the GI office at the school. district governments. Beginning at Prepara- the GI gained the support of the workers, while We made it clear to the anarchists that A strong point of the GI’s work was its tory School 8, and later at CCH-Sur, our com- organizing mass meetings that united stu- instead of calling on the authorities to drive insistence on the necessity of joint worker- rades faced direct gangster attacks. In re- dents, teachers and workers to drive out the out the gangsters, this was the task of the porros together. students and workers themselves. We pro- At CCH-Sur, posed that every time one of these gangsters the porro gang was discovered, he should be tossed out and known as GES was humiliated by a mass action, and that all should a serious threat to take part in driving them out. This began to be every left group on put into practice. Hundreds of students El Internacionalista campus. The gangs showed up at some of those meetings. This of thugs organized practically drove the administration insane, by the state began and in some cases they physically blocked us threatening some from driving out the gangsters. We responded of the anarchists. that not only had the authorities not expelled Even when the an- these thugs, those who had filed complaints archists proposed against their attackers had begun to suffer “direct action,” threats from the porros. We gained the sym- these actions did pathy of many who were interested in real not go beyond in- results, and our authority grew, because at conclusive scuffles. this moment the workers had begun to make The Grupo Interna- their presence felt on our side. cionalista, on the SICARTSA, Atenco, Oaxaca other hand, pro- posed to intervene The origins of the Internationalist Com- in workers’ assem- mittee at CCH-Sur are directly linked to the blies to call on them workers’ struggles of the past year. Through- to form defense out the morning of 20 April 2006, the news guards of workers, began to arrive that a thousand-strong attack students and teach- squad of police had opened fire on workers at ers. The anarchists the SICARTSA steel plant in Michoacán state. argued that the Later, we saw the infernal scenes of repres- workers were in the sion on the TV news and in the next day’s Grupo Internacionalista banner at March 27 march says: “From Mexico to the U.S.: Defeat Yankee pocket of the union continued on page 11 Imperialism! For International Socialist Revolution!”