FRE NATIONAL Refugees. for all seasons BY BOB HIPPLER moned to round them up. Yet the U.S. has a treaty with Mexico guaranteeing elcome to the latest produc­ free border crossings! tion of Jimmy Carter's trav­ eling propaganda show­ Flip-flop diplomacy W"America: Humanitarian Sometimes Carter's dual strategy iiiiiiiiiiiii. Haven for Freedom Fight­ becomes startlingly visible, particu­ ing Refugees!" larly when a major upheaval occurs There's only one problem. How do 1elsewhere and U.S. policy flip-flops. you tell which refugees are the freedom Before Somoza fell in Nicaragua, fighters? Carter was rounding up anti-Somoza Simple. They're the ones the media refugees for deportation. Now that dubs "political refugees," the ones who revolutionary forces are in power, the fulsomely praise "free enterprise" and U.S. welcomes pro-Somoza reaction- "democracy." #,,:i' aries with open arms. ( ,.... ", .<1 ..•", A similar turnabout took place after *'t"~>" ~;'\. The shape-up system Michelle Bogre(Sygma the socialist Salvadore Allende was The White House is coldly manipu­ Haitian refugees in Miami demonstrate against U.S. support of dictator murdered in a CIA caper in Chile. lating the plight of political and eco­ Duvalier. Suddenly, Chilean refugees fleeing the nomic refugees for its own political monstrous new military dictatorship gain, and is using a blatantly dual This sector either fled immediately or mortality is over 20%. A vicious secret were turned away. strategy. "lost faith" as the revolution deepened police, the Tonton-Macoute, murders In the 1950s and '60s, the U.S. On the one hand, refugees fleeing and threatened their privileges. and rapes at government whim. accepted refugees from Soviet-bloc from workers states are embraced as U.S. policy has actually multiplied Over 30,000 Haitian refugees now Hungary and Czechoslovakia-but not political heroes and proudly displayed the refugee flow from both countries, live inthe Miami area, 80% of them from Guatemala after its progressive as brave escapees from godless com­ as well as from Laos and Cambodia. under threat of deportation. The Immi­ government was overthrown by a U.S.­ munism who prefer life in the capitalist The government has refused to lift gration and Naturalization Service has backed coup. paradise to building non-exploitative, its murderous, 20-yeareconomic block­ regularly deported the refugees-600 U.S. policy displays an historical collectively-owned societies in their ade of Cuba. Cuba cannot buy medical have been returned to Haiti. consistency going right back to the own countries. Rarely is it mentioned supplies from the U.S., which also In a May 14 statement answering 1917 Russian Revolution, when hun­ that these refugees are generally non­ boycotts Cuban sugar, tobacco, and widespread criticism of the disparate dreds of thousands of White Russians workers. any product in the world that contains treatment of Cubans and Haitians, were granted political exile status. On the other hand, the government Cuban nickel. As a result, many Carter promised the Haitians" equal But when just as many Jews tried acts brutally toward truly desperate Cubans take to the sea to escape eco­ treatment," but not "political refugee" desperately to escape Hitler in the refugees from the lands of its own nomic hardship. status. Even this minimal promise was 1930s, U.S. immigration doors were repressive, poverty-stricken, capitalist Vietnam also suffers economic dis­ false: most Cubans are being pro­ slammed shut. allies. This embarrassing wave of des­ crimination by the U.S. And if the cessed through tent cities or military The shores of the U.S. must be open titute humanity is repelled by any continual economic war weren't bases, but all Haitians go through to all poor and oppressed immigrants, means necessary, including mass de­ enough, U.S. capitalism engineered federal penitentiaries. regardless of the political situation in portations and murder. naked military invasions of both Cuba their home countries and irrespective and Vietnam in the 1960s. Cuba Mexicans go home! of their ethnic origins. Otherwise, refu- Creating refugees: a scenario defeated the U.S. at the Bay of Pigs, Millions of Mexicans are similarly gees become the pawns in an interna­ The refugee strategy has yet an­ but Vietnam was decimated. The denied legal status and routinely sub­ tional con game, and are pitted against other, deeper purpose. It obscures the poverty of both countries is caused jected to factory and neighborhood the poor and the ethnic minorities in U.S. role in creating refugee problems directly by American imperialism. raids, and deportation. In parts of this country who are deprived of ser­ in under-developed countries. Texas, children of undocumented vices given fully to politically OK new­ The Vietnamese boat people and the Haitians unwelcome workers are not allowed to attend the comers. That carnival must not be recent Cuban emigres are glaring The Duvalier regime in Haiti is a public schools. permitted to continue. 0 examples of the "discredit the reds" rightwing U.S. ally that receives U.S. Big growers are notorious for hiring game plan. arms and police training to bolster undocumented workers at submini­ Bob Hippler is a gay activist and In both cases, sweeping social revo­ repression and abject poverty. mum wages. At the end of the season, CRSP member long associated with lutions produced refugees from the Haiti has an unemployment rate of just before payday, the Immigration the Campaign for a Citizens Police dispossessed classes and their allies. 50%, illiteracy is over 90% and infant and Naturalization Service is sum- Review Board in Los Angeles. MiamL Orlando, Chattanoogg GheHo war in Dixieland BY JANET SUTHERLAND announced it would bring civil rights violation charges against some of the iots in Miami and Orlando, acquitted criminals-another case of Florida and in Chattanooga, too little, too late, and no answer to the Tennessee spread like wild­ crying need for jobs, shelter, food, R . fire in the most violent sum­ clothing, education, and dignity . iiiiiiiiiiiiiiimer of discontent since the The media also begged the issue. ghetto rebellions of the '60s. CBS-TV reportage on Miami clearly Miami erupted in May when an all­ detailed the complicity of state prose- . white jury acquitted four policemen cutors who permitted their three police who beat to death Black insurance man witnesses to discredit themselves Arthur McDuffie. The response from through contradictory testimony about the ghetto, Liberty City, was prompt, McDuffie's murder. This provided the with 400 people injured, 1250 arrested, jury with an excuse for acquitting the 16 dead, and damage to white business murderers. But the TV "analysis" fo­ estimated at $100 million. cused on the racism of cracker cops In July, the attempted wrongful ar­ and ignored the collusion of a political­ rest of a Black man in Miami provoked legal system which has long rested on another riot, fueled by the disappoint­ Police brutality in Miami's Liberty City area. racial persecution. ment of 600 unemployed youths with a job fair that offered only 200 skilled looted and burned, Blacks and whites Chinese refugees while social services Black revolt jobs. Police teargassed the protestors, were injured, and police ran amok. for Blacks are slashed. It is significant that white property, injuring innocent bystanders. Southern officials tried to cool not white people, is the chief target for Later that month, Chattanooga Racism U.S.A. things down by calling in Jesse Jackson Black fury. Blacks rebelled when another all-white Southern metropolises, which had of PUSH, Benjamin Hooks of the Blacks know that their conditions jury acquitted two Ku Klux Klan mem­ begun to offer Blacks some respite NAACP, and Andrew Young, formerly change only when businesses bum and bers and let the third off easy for the from rural poverty and the KKK, have of the Carter regime. But Blacks were ghetto rebellion disturbs the orderly shooting of four Black women. Police now reverted to type, joining Boston, not fooled. Their hopes for reform process of profit-taking. tactical squads sealed off neighbor­ Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles obliterated by ten years of sellout by In the absence of a mass movement, hoods from their residents. and dozens of Northern cities in heap­ Black politicians, the protesters an electoral alternative, and a radical Also in July, white cops in Orlando ing police abuse on top of Black un­ shouted insults at the Black mediators leadership, the Black militants have no brutalized a Black woman while arrest­ employment. And the already incendi­ and put the torch to more white busi­ outlet but destruction. It is the fire this ing her, and the ensuing outburst last­ ary situation is aggravated by the nesses in the ghetto. time-but political revolution is not far ed three days and nights. Stores were favoritism shown to Cuban and Indo- In August, the federal government behind. 0 FREEDOM SOCIALIST 0 SUMMER I FALL 1980 LE'rrERS Vol. 6, No.3 Summer/Fall 1.980 Black woman, could never be a woman eVen if he male. Even some of the female anti­ white rapist wanted to." The SWP belittled the bus-ers on the Board decry adminis­ Chicana conference 6 Dessie Woods, a Black, defended difficulties of a transsexual as mere tration sexism, and a group of fe­ herself and a friend from an armed Chicana feminists over­ seeking of a personal lifestyle. male administrators just won an ruled the officials to sup­ white rapist in June 1975. Her im­ The SWP also opposed the Octo­ affirmative action class action suit port a Native American prisonment for murder is being con­ ber 1979 March on Washington for against the Board. The union lead­ hotel boycott and a host of tested in the Fifth Federal Circuit Lesbian/Gay Rights, refuses to con­ ership also has a male majority, and interrelated political is­ Court of Appeals in New Orleans.