SPARTACIST CANADA No. 112 Spring 1997 50 cents Police Attack Leftists, Protect Fascists Berlin: Militant Protest ::1:',;1::::1 '.Spikes Nazi Rally February 15: Anti-fascist protesters on train platform confront Nazis cowering in subway car behind police guard. Emholdened hy the German government's attacks on immi­ nent at the head of the determined anti-fascist mohilization grants and mass deportations of refugees, with unemployment was the red banner of the Spartakist Workers Party (SpAD, at its highest rate since Hitler came to power in 1933, the Nazi German section of the International Communist League), "Young National Democrats" announced they would stage a which proclaimed: "Stop the Nazis Through Workers United­ race-hate march for "Johs for Germans First" through Ber­ Front Action! Full Citizenship Rights for Immigrant Workers lin's Hellersdorf district on February 15. The fascists have and Their Families!" repeatedly targeted Hellersdorf to terrorize immigrants and As the united-front action which spiked the Nazi provoca­ have even murdered an Arab woman with impunity. But not tion came to a close, Spartakist speaker Renate Dahlhaus this time. Despite a massive show of police force to protect declared to the hundreds of anti-racist protesters: "Berlin is a the hrownshirt Nazi scum, some 2,000 anti-fascist fighters­ labor and left city, a Jewish city, a Turkish city, a Kurdish city. leftists, trade unionists, immigrants, Jewish students and oth­ It's our city and we aren't going to let the Nazis march herel" ers-boldly faced down a savage police attack and forcefully An SpAD press release issued that afternoon reported: drove the Nazi rats hack into their sewers. "Under massive protection of the state. the Nazis wanted The television news that evening showed what happened in to crawl out of their rat holes in order to recruit to their Berlin on Fehruary 15: there were no goose-stepping Nazis, program of firebombing, murder and genocide. But it didn't no immigrant hostels hurned to the ground. Instead, there happen here! The determined action of all the anti-fascist fighters on 15 February was a fitting memorial to the mar­ were scenes of cowering skinheads lying on the floor of a tyred Frank Bottcher, a 17-year-old leftist youth who was suhway car under heavy police protection, as would-be brutally stabbed to death just days ago by a Nazi gang in jiihrers escaped in police vans from a crowd of anti-fascists Magdeburg." who gave chase, shouting "Naz.is ralls!"-Nazis out! Promi- (colltinucd Oil {)(IKC 12) 2 Spartacist Canada It is with great sadness that we announce the death of always paid particular attention to youth work-recruit­ our comrade, Cesar Armendariz, at the age of 45. On ing and training future party cadres. And he was as December 28, a tragic car accident left Cesar with fatal effective in speaking with workers as he was with youth, head injuries; he died on December 30. fj·OJTI distributing Workers Vanguard to shipyard workers Cesar never took the easy path in life. Born in Dallas, in Norfolk, Virginia to bringing to the labor movement the Texas into a Hispanic family and raised in El Paso, he cause of victims of racist repression. In June 1995, Cesar fought his way through the was instrumental in mobiliz­ barriers of racial bigotry to ing trade unionists for a become a doctor. Cesar united-front protest in Wash­ brought a rare humanity and Cesar Armendariz ington against the impending empathy to a profession all execution of black death row too often marked by egotisti­ political prisoner Mumia cal career concerns. ~ Abu-Jamal. These arc the qualities that Cesar was deeply commit­ Cesar brought with him in ted to building a party that dedicating his life to a strug­ could lead a world socialist gle against the oppression revolution. In 1989-90, he and degradation hred by went to Berlin as part of the capitalism. He joined the International Communist Spartacist Lcague/U.S. in League's intervention aimed 1979. As a doctor, he worked at providing a proletarian closely with the SLiU .S.'s revolutionary leadership in medical commission, apply­ the unfolding political revo­ ing meticulous erfort to find­ lution in East Germany. Last ing the hest, most humane fall, while on vacation in treatment available for com­ Texas, he took time to dis­ rades and their loved ones. tribute our press in the Along with his medical re­ maquiladoras-an important sponsihilities, Cesar was a concentration of industrial multifaceted communist ac­ workers across the border in tivist and organizer, carrying Mexico. In all aspects of his out much of his political wide-ranging work in the work in the Washington, WOlkl'IS V;Hl\J(Jilld party, Cesar exhi1;Jited a keen D.C. area, where he lived for understanding of.the need for more than a decade. In the 1951-1996 Leninist collectivity, always course of organi/.ing for a ready to solicit the opinions successful labor/black mobi- of his comrades. Iization which stopped the Klan from rallying in down­ The loss of this remarkable man is a profound tragedy. town Philadelphia in 1988, Cesar was instrumental in We extend our heartfelt condolences to Cesar's family, bringing a busload of black Howard University students his companion M iehale and all those who were so dear to --dubbed the "Frederick Douglass Brigade" -to the him. Cesar Armendariz was a rare man who touched us demonstration. with his infinite compassion, his infectious humor, his In the spring of 1990, Cesar stepped forward to be­ tender manner and his determination. We will honor his come the organizer of the Washington, D.C. branch. He memory in the continuation of the struggle. Contents include: ISPARTACIST CANADA~ i. Courageous Fighter Newspaper of the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste ' Against Racist Terror Canadian section of the International Communist League Robert F. Williams, 1925·1996 _.--i""0urt~ ~t.Ell'r1atioll~!>!) __ ~_~ __. __ .. __. : • Full Citizenship Rights EDITORIAL BOARD: John Masters (Editor), Peter Stegner (Managing . for All Immigrants! Editor), Russell Stoker (Production Manager), Jane Clancy, ! Immigration and Arthur Llewellyn (Editor, Young Spartacus pages), Miriam Racist "Fortress Europe" McDonald, Oliver Stephens. CIRCULATION MANAGER: R. Nassir i • Farrakhan and the I BUSINESS MANAGER: M. McPherson : Sudan Slave Trade Published four times a year by Spartacist Canada Publishing i. Black Churches Torched Association, Box 6867, Station A, Toronto ON M5W 1X6. Across the South Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily Mobilize Labor/Black Power express the editorial viewpoint. Printed in a union shop by union labor. to Smash Racist Terror! ,L:======~!~LJ : Order from: SePA, Box 6867, Station A, Return postage guaranteed Publications Mail Reg. No. 8161 ISSN: 0229-5415 Toronto ON M5W 1X6 (48 pages) Spring 1997 Date of issue: March 1997 i $1.00 Spring 1997 3 Avenge Steven Biko Througil Workers Revolution! Neo-Apartheid Regime: Enemy of South African Masses JOHANNESBURG-Heaping contempt on the memory of "' those who fought apartheid terror. the South African govcrn­ ment's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has ac­ cepted an application for "amnesty" for the cops who tor­ tured and killed Steven Biko in 1977. At the time oj h is death at age 30, Steve Biko was the leader of the Black Consl'ious­ ness Movement (BCM) and the most prominent spokesman for a new generation of anti-apartheid militants. His murder was an outrage which shook the world, making him a symbol of all the many thousands martyred in the fight against the brutal apartheid system of racist segregation and repression. [t is no less an outrage today that Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) in government seeks to amnesty Steve Biko's murderers. Restricted to his cell for weeks, shackled and naked, Biko was beaten to the point of unconsciousness, then dumped in the baek of a Land R('ver for an eleven-hour drive to a prison hospital in Pretoria,' where he died of brain damage. His killers are a group of fonner security policemen who have now confessed to taking part in the murder of at least ten Eastern Cape anti-apartheid activists, many of whom were drugged, tortured and shot dead, then burned on wooden rs pyres, with their remains dumped into the Fish River to con­ February 6 protest in coloured township near Johan­ ceal the bloody crimes. The racist killers today approach the nesburg in which four were killed. TRC for amnesty in the full knowledge that dOlens of their all past unpaid charges. But the anli-government protest, fellow apartheid butchers are "confessing" and getting oil whose hasic demand was entirely justified, was marked by unscathed. general hostility to blacks among the coloureds involved. The apartheid regime rested heavily on a deliherate policy The government's violent response to the coloured revolt­ of naked terror to repress the nonwhite masses in the interests in marked contrast to the conciliatory attitude extended to of the eapitalist ruling class. When that form of rule hecame earlier tax-rate protests hy whites in yuppie suburbs like Jo­ untenable-at bottom, when the black unions emerged, join­ hannesburg's Sandton-was also intended as an unmistakable ing their social power to the township revolts and other anti­ messagc to the residents of black townships who might con­ apartheid struggles-the South African capitalists and their sider protesting over rates and social services. The latest imperialist godfathers turned to the ANC to preserve their events underscore yet again that the only road to justice and system based on the superexploitation of black workers. Ac­ equality for South Africa's masses lies in a proletarian revolu­ cordingly, the ANC regime installed in 1994 seeks "reconcili­ tion to swetp away nco-apartheid capitalism, replacing it with ation" with the racist torturers and those who profited from a hlaek-eentred workers government.