workers vanguard no 822 - 19 march 2004

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 822 - 19 March 2004

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No. 822

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The article printed below is adaptedfrom a Spartacist forum given.by Workers Vanguard managing editor RosemaryPalenque in Boston on February 21.It is now almost a year since the U.S.imperialists began their invasion of Iraqa war that was opposed b:y working people around the world who rallied in t h ~ i r millions against this brutal, one-sidedslaughter. While the U.S. war to unseatSaddam Hussein's regime was over relatively quickly, the war against the peoples

of Iraq takes the form of a bloody colonialoccupation today. But not all has gone asplanned for the U.S. imperialist rulers-~ ~ f e l c ~ g ~ : ~ ~ ~ ~ I t ~ i ~ m ~ ' ~ m ~ i K ,",forces killed during the occupation thanduring the war. There are no exact figuresfor how many Iraqis have perished at thehands of the U.S. imperialists, given thatthe U.S. considers Iraqi lives too worthless to count, but there is no doubt that thenumber outstrips U.S. losses by orders ofmagnitude.We in the Spartacist League call for allU.S. troops out of Iraq and the Near Eastnow! We take a side with the peoples ofIraq against the imperialist occupiers. In astatement issued by the Spartacist LeaguePolitical Bureau as the war began lastspring, we stated: "I t is'in the class interest of the international proletariat toclearly take a side in defense of Iraq without giving any political support to thebloody Saddam Hussein regime." Whatwe declared then remains true today:"Every victory for the U.S. imperialistscan only encourage further military adventures. In tum, every humiliation, everysetback, every defeat they suffer willserve to assist the struggles of workingpeople and the oppressed around theglobe" (WV No. 800, 28 March 2003).This was in sharp contrast to the organizers of the antiwar protests, who refusedto stand for the defense of Iraq in thelead-up to the war. This is because theirstrategy was (and still is) to build amovement based on the broadest possible "unity," that is, a movement thatreached out to primarily DemocraticParty politicians who did not oppose theaims of the war, but the methods bywhich it was carried out.Many participants in the antiwar coalitions and protests were rightly frustratedat their inability to put any dent in theU.S. war drive against Iraq, and there

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well as Clinton's. Hussein was supportedby the U.S. imperialists when they knewhe was massacring tens of thousands ofKurds and killing and imprisoning thousands of leftists, trade unionists and religious opponents.

ReutersU.S. occupation forces terrorize the' people of Iraq: Military policemanassaults man during protest in Karbala, July 2003.

Two U.S.-led wars and over a decadeof UN sanctions, which killed over oneand a half million people, have devastatedIraq's economy and infrastructure. Todaymost people in post-war Iraq have noelectricity, potable water, basic medicalcare or jobs-unemployment is estimatedat 70 percent. I f life weren't already terrifying enough under such conditions, inoccupied Iraq the rules of engagement arethat U.S. troops can "use overwhelmingforce on any entity considered hostile,even if it does not represent an immediatethreat and is near civilians." This wasthe rationale given by Lieutenant-GeneralSanchez, commander of allied forces inIraq, last September for why U.S. soldiersof the 82nd Airborne Division who killedeight Iraqi police officers in one incident,and shot a sleeping family of six inanother, would not face penalties. Thereare over 10,000 detained by the occupation forces in Iraq today. As a lawyer withthe Human Rights Organization of Iraqtold the New York Times (7 March): "Iraqhas turned into one big Guantanamo." .

have been debates subsequently on howto more effectively oppose the occupation. However, what is currently on offerfrom the liberal organizers of coalitionssuch as United for Peace and Justice andInternational ANSWER is a continuationof the politics of the antiwar movement.This could be best encapsulated by themain slogan of the protests against theRepublican National Convention later thisyear: "The World Says No to Bush!" Justas the war couldn't be stopped throughmass displays of moral outrage and indignation, the horrors of U.S. imperialismtrampling the globe won't be stopped byvoting Bush out of office.It is a welcome development that theBush administration is in some real trouble over the exposures of its fabricatedpretexts for the Iraq war and occupation,as more and more working people arerealizing that it is they and their childrenwho are being made to pay for an imperialist adventure sold to them on a mountainof lies. The war was touted as a war forthe liberation of Iraq, and indeed theworld, from the regime of Saddam Hussein. This nationalist butcher was ai>Iong-

time client and main ally of the U.S. inthe Near East until he fell out of favor bymaking a grab for Kuwait in 1990. At thatpoint he became an all-purpose bogeyman for both Bush administrations as

Following the criminal Madrid bombings of March 11, the shock and revulsionfelt by millions in Spain turned to furyagainst the right-wing Aznar governmentas it became clear that the bombings werecontinued on page 8: ; : : ~ ~ .

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Drop All Charges"Against the ThessalonikiProtesters Now!, In June last year, the Greek stateorchestrated an attack against demonstrators protesting the meeting of the European Union leaders who had gathered inThessaloniki to scheme to intensify. theoppression, repression and exploitationof the working masses.

More than 100 people were arrested, 27 ofwhom were held in custody. In somecases, felony charges were brought whileothers were charged with lesser offenses.Out of the blue, some of the offenses werechanged into felony charges, and sevenprotesters were remanded to custody, facing false charges of rioting, possession ofhe Greek bourgeoisie showed its trueface-sending its cops to tear-gas the demonstration and to attack demonstrators,beating them and carrying out arrests.

explosives and resis ting authorities. Onceagain, the mask and pretenses of the bourgeois state have slipped.

TROTSKY

The Capitalist StateCannot Be Reformed

Particularly as the fall presidential election.app roaches, the illusion is continually beingreinforced that the Ame rican capitalist statecan-through reform or the election of "prolabor" ca'ndidates-be made to representthe interests of working people and theoppressed. In a 1920 appeal to the American syndicalist organization, the IndustrialWorkers of the World, Gregory Zinoviev,Chairman of the Executive Committee of he LENINCommunist International founded by Lenin,underlined that the working class needs its own state.

The war and its aftermath have revealed with startling clearness the real function of thecapitalist state, with its legislatures, courts of justice, police, armies, and bureaucrats.The state is used to defend and strengthen the power of the capitalists and to oppressthe workers. This is particularly true in the United States, whose. ConstitQ.tion wasframed by the great merchants, speculators, and landowners with the deliberate purpose of protecting their class interests against the majority of the people.At the present time the government of the United States is openly acting as theweapon of the capitalists against the workers ...Any worker can see this fact with his own eyes. All the people vote for governors,mayors, judges, and sheriffs; but in time of strike the governor calls in the militia toprotect the scabs, the mayor orders the police to beat up and arrest the pickets, thejudge imprisons the workers for "rioting," "disturbing the peace," and the sheriff hiresthugs as deputies to break the strike.Capitalist society all together presents a solid front against the worker. The priesttells the worker to be contented, the press curses him as a "Bolshevik," the policemanarrests him, the court sentences him to jail, the sheriff seizes his furniture for debt, andthe poorhouse takes his wife and children.In order to destroy capitalism, the workers must first wrest the state power out ofthe hands of the capitalist class. They must not only seize this power, but abolish the oldcapitalist apparatus entirely.For the experience of revolutions has shown that the workers cannot take hold ofthe state machine and use it for their own purposes-as the Yellow Socialist [i.e.,social-patriotic] politicians propose to do. The capitalist state is built to serve capital-ism, and that is all it can do, no matter who is running it. .And in place of the capitalist state the workers must build their own workers' state,the dictatorship of the proletariat.

-Gregory Zinoviev, "Appeal to the IWW," The Communist International in Lenin sTime:-Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! Proceedings andDocuments of he Second Congress, 1920, Vol. 2 (Pathfinder Press, 1991)

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! ~ ~ ! ! l ! Y ! . . ' l l ! f ! ! ! . ~ l l . ! . IRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Alison Spencer

EDITOR: Alan WildeEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Mich ael DavissonPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Jeff ThomasEDITORIAL BOARD: Rosemary Palenque (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Jon Brule,Karen Cole, Paul Cone, George Foster, Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers,James Robertson, Joseph Seymour The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the SpartacistPublishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-,862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861(Busine.ss). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected] subscriptions: $1(1.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116.Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpointThe closing date for news in this issue is 16 March.

No. 822 19 March 2004

Those arrested were Suleiman Dakdouk, a Syrian immigrant trade unionist,Carlos Martinez, a member of the Spanish trade-union federation, the CNT-AIT,Fernando Perez, Simon Chapman, SpirosTsitsas and Michalis Traikapys andDimitris Fliouris, who as minors weretaken to Avlonas young offenders prison.The Greek bourgeois state again usedfabricated evidence. As was shown bythe cameras of Thessaloniki state TV station ET3, the cops who arrested SimonChapman replaced his bag with another,containing Molotov cocktails.We condemn this frame-up. This is anact of state terrorism which targets theworkers movement and all those whodare to oppose capitalist exploitation.An injury to one is an injury to all!

We demand the immediate release of theThessaloniki demonstrators.Once arrested, even though five ofthem had their police identity cards withthem, they were handcuffed and taken tothe cells of the security police of Thessaloniki for identification. There theywere beaten by police in the expert waythat leaves no marks that can be tracedby forensic doctors, while the anti-racistmaterial found on them was deemed"suspicious." At the same time they wereforbidden access to their defense counsels, who.. on -,.several occasions didn'tknow where they were being held. Thosearrested were beaten and tortured manytimes. Against the illegal arrests, theinhuman conditions of detention and the"sentence of punishment of the wholemovement" (as Suleimfln Dakdouk denounced it), they began a hunger strikewhich five of them continued for twomonths until their temporary release.After protests in Greece and abroadand after more than five months ofimprisonment, they were temporarily"freed" until a trial date is fixed wherenew charges may be brought. Their freedom is restricted; they are forbidden toleave the country or the area in whichthey are resident. In February of this year,Simon Chapman was released, whilecharges against the rest still stand andthe prosecution proceedings continue.According to the Greek Communist Party(KKE) daily Rizospastis (14 February),two more individuals, Timor Pundrusniakand Epaminondas Vasilias, have also beencharged with crimes. During his stay inthe hospital, Carlos Martinez was tortured with hands cuffed behind his back,naked, and every rime he tried to sleep hewas beaten on his hands and feet.The anarchist protesters who protestedthe symbols of capitalist exploitationin Thessaloniki have their heart in theright place. All our sympathy is with theself-sacrificing demonstrators, even if wedon't share their political outlook.On the pretext of the preparations forthe Olympic Games, the Greek state isheightening repression and oppression,imposing their capitalist "law and order"against the left, anarchists, immigrantsand the whole workers movement. At thesame time that Athens has been transformed into a giant building site, construction workers are in a strong positionin that they have the power to shut downall the sites. That could be the beginningof a mobilization. in defense of immigrants, who are a large component of theworkers in construction.Suleiman Dakdouk, an elected official

Greek cops attack protesters outsideEuropean Union meeting, June 2003.of the builders union of Rethimnos, animmigrant, persecuted for years by theGreek police for his trade-union activities, found himself after his arrest inimmediate danger of deportation to Syriawhere he was also persecuted for hispolitical activities. The new "prosecutionof illegal immigrants" police corps,which terrorizes immigrants, makes clearin an ever more violent way the realintentions of the bourgeois state. Thiswas former ruling party PASOK's law"against discrimination."The builders union must mobilize allconstruction workers for the defense ofSuleiman Dakdouk. We demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Wealso defend the seven trade unionists ofP.A.ME (a trade-union organization inwhich the KKE plays a leading role) whowere given suspended prison sentences inOctober 2003 following their occupationof the Labor Ministry during a protest inApril 2001.In the last year, more and more strikeshave been declared illegal and "excessive." Workers are threatened with layoffs and some are prosecuted. We stand~ o , I l , ~ ~ . ~ ~ i ~ ~ ...2 . L $ . ~ , J j ! l , d , ~ ~ ~ lKA Institution of Social:secur1tYdo'C-tors, the POE-OTA local council workers, the Olympic Airways workers whosestrikes were illegalized, as we stand onthe side of all strikers.

We revolutionary Trotskyists seek tomobilize the power of the multiethnicproletariat in class struggle, not simplyin protests against the capitalist system,but to uproot it. We fight for the forgingof Leninist vanguard parties as part of arevolutionary international, which is necessary to lead the working class to sweepaway the capitalist exploiters and theirstates and to build workers states and aworldwide egalitarian socialist society.An injury to one is an injury to all!

We demand the immediate droppingof all the charges against the demonstrators, trade unionists and strikers.Down with the anti-terror witchhunt!For a Leninist vanguard party!_

I S P A R T A C J S T ~

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Declaration of PrinCiples andSome Elements of ProgramInternational CommunistLeague (Fourth Internationalist)

$1 (20 pages)Make checks payable/mail to:Spartacist Publishing Co.Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116W O R K ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ p


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Al Shm:pton has been exposed as apawn for the Republicans, and now he isin hot water with the liberal and Democratic Party-loyal "left" whose crusade is"anyone but Bush" in the White House.According to the New York Times and theVillage Voice, Sharpton's campaign strategist and finimcier is one Roger Stone,a Republican Party specialist in "dirtytricks." On January 25 the New YorkTimes reported that Sharpton was working closely with Stone, described by theNew Republic in 1985 as "the State-ofthe-Art Washington Sleazeball"-or "aReagan Republican," as he described himself. Then muckraking reporter WayneBarrett followed up with" a devastatingexpose in the 4 February Village Voice,"Sleeping with the GOP," which stated:"Roger Stone, the longtime Republicandirty-tricks operative who led the mobthat shut down the Miami-Dade Countyrecount and helped make George W. Bushpresident in 2000, is financing, staffing,and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton."U.S. presidential elections are a cynical billion-dollar shell game, played everyfour years to give people the "choice" ofwhich capitalist party will p,reside over

APSharpton's campaign adviser, sleazyRepublican hatchet man Roger Stone,with wife." heir exploitation. It's a measure of theintensification of racial oppression in thiscountry that none of the main DemocraticParty contenders even pay lip service toblack rights. The electoral charade takesplace against the real landscape of unprecedented and astronomical imprisonment of black people nationwide, ofincreased segregation in housing and.schools, and a black male unemploymentrate nearing 50 percent in New York City.This bleak reality explains why somany black people support Al Sharpton-a self-promoting, cynical hustler,proven FBI fink and willing tool forRepublican dirty tricks .But he's the onlypretender to even talk about racism. Th.eBlack Commentator Web site noted, in"The Problem with Al Sharpton" (5 February): "We must ask why Al Sharptonemerged as a contender for nationalblack leadership via the presidential primaries. The answer is simple, and should

be deeply troubling: He was the only oneto step forward ... Whites of all politicalpersuasions denounced Sharpton as anopportunist and publicity seeker-as ifthey were telling black folks somethingwe didn't k n o ~ . But we desperately. needed publicity, and an opportunity tobe heard. Rev. Al seized the spotlightand shook things up, which was a lotbetter than nothing."The Black Commentator is wrong: AlSharpton is not "a lot better than nothing."To the degree Sharpton mentions the legit-. imate aspirations of the oppressed blackmasses it is to divert any effective struggle for these aspirations into the dead endof the Democratic Party. While not dropping out of his current campaign, Sharp!ton just announced his" endorsement ofJohn Kerry for president. We frequently.hear the argument that you can't criticizeSharpton because that would play into thehands of the racist ruling class. To thecontrary, we stand with Malcolm X whoscathingly denounced the role of blackfront men for the capitalist parties. As hesaid in "Prospects for Freedom in 1965,""I just read where they planned to make ablack cabinet member ... They're going totake one of their boys, black boys, and puthim in the cabinet, so he can walk aroundWashington with a cigar-fire on one endand fool on the other." ,To package himself as a "respectable"politician, Sharpton worked to keep 'I: lidon anger'over the cop killings of unarmedblack people, like high 'school s t u d ~ n t Timothy Stansbury Jr., gunned down onthe ,roof of his own building. Sharpton hasvirtually dropped all mention of victimsof racist police terror, and says little tonothing about the racist death penalty andA ' m H i c a " s ' ~ f o r e m & s t " ' p o ' i i i c a r p 1 i s 6 t l ~ r , MumiaAbu-Jamal. Former Black PantherDhoruba Bin Wahad said it well in 1990shortly after his release from 17 years "inprison on a COINTELPRO frame-up: " If'someone told me in 1969 that an informerwith processed hair could be consi"dered aleader in the African-American community, I would have told them they werecrazy. So when I stepped out and foundthings of that nature, I realized how desperate things have become in the blackcommunity."Liberals Hate Sharpton forthe, Wrong Reason

Al Sharpton, along with everybody tothe left of Attila the Hun, has regularlydenounced the 2000 Florida electoralfarce, which relied heavily on obstructingand invalidating black votes to get Bushinto the White House. It was Roger Stone,walkie-talkie in hand, who personallydirected mobs of right-wing MiamiCubans against the headquarters of thecanvassing board, helping force an end tothe recount. But, says Stone, "I like AlSharpton." So, apparently, do a lot ofslithery, sinister right-wingers. Sharptonsupposedly supports "civil unions" forgays. Yet among Stone's friends and associates who made $250 donations toSharpton's campaign to boost his contributions enough to get Federal matching

Los Angeles Public Library, Cahuenga Branch, 4591 Santa Monica Blvd.(One block east of Vermont/Santa Monica Red Line Station)For more information: (213) 380-8239 or e-mail: slsycla@cs,corh

LOS ANGELESq ~ ~ H H O V V

funds was one Paul Jensen, a top ~ u s h official who, according to Barrett's article, "has filed suits in 16 states seeking todefrock Presbyterian ministers who've'violated their vows' by ordaining gays."As for Stone himself, Florida was justanother day's work. His original mentor was vicious redbaiting attorney RoyCohn, Senator Joe McCarthy's attack dogduring the 1950s anti-Communist witchhunts and one of the prosecutors responsible for sending Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to the electric chair. Stone wasinvolved in 1972 in the CREEP (Nixon's"Committee to Re-Elect the President")sabotage plan againstthe George McGovern presidential campaign. Stone helpedOliver North with money for the Nicara-" guan contras, the CIA's operatives whosought to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government. He" also worked withLee Atwater (creator of the notoriouslyracisfWillie Horton ads against MichaelDukakis during the 1988 presidentialcamp-ai'gh),."' . ,', .

Democratic Party liberals are incensed'a t Sharpton's association with and serviceto the Republican Party. We Marxistspoint out, however, that it is primarilyillusions ~ n the Democratic Party as asupposed "friend" of labor and minoritiesthat are the main bond shackling theoppressed to their oppressors in thiscountry. The right to vote was a cherishedgain of the black freedom struggles in thiscountry. Today Sharpton is flirting withthe very right-wing forces that wouldoverturn that right and every other hardfought gain by labor and the oppressed.Sharpton: A Bipartisan Hustler

Sharpton has a l w a y ~ been a cynicalhustler, no stranger to the Republican sideof the shady street of capitalist politicsand worse. In 1988 Sharpton, then knownmainly as a local New York City activistpreacher, was exposed in Newsday as aninformant for the FBI. He began finking for the FBI in 1983, after being caught ina "sting" operation Where he was videotaped during a cocaine deal with a narcposing as a South African businessman.Such dirty set-ups are typical of the political police of racist American capitalism.But Sharpton went along, admitting he letthe Feds install a tapped phone in hishome, that he carried a concealed micro-'phone (!nd even accompanied "wired"cops to meetings with people the Fedswere trying to entrap.And it wasn't just about drugs. As wepointed out in "The Case of Al Sharpton,FBI Fink" (WV No. 460, 9 September 1988): "[Sharpton] admitted that hefinked on two black Brooklyn politicians, Congressman Major Owens andstate assemblyman Al Vann, back in1986 :when the Reagan/Meese gang wasinvestigating 'vote tampering.' At thetime, Sharpton was working for Owens'campaign opponent, Roy Innis, notoriousas a recruiter for the South Africanbacked UNITA terrorists in Angola."Innis not only recruited black Americansin 1975-76 for UNITA's CIA-funded

'.ebels, but also for Uganda's bloody dictator, Idi Amin.All this happened in NYC just as MayorKocp. and the NYPD were setting up a"Black Desk" (an updated version of theold FBIINYPD "red squad"), planting informers in community meetings, trackingblack militants and taping black radio station WLIB. Before he cleaned up his act toseek the "respectability" of bourgeois politics, Sharpton made his mark leading vilecampaigns against Korean, Arab and Jewish shopkeepers. As we stated in our article: "Sharpton wasn't just wired-the manwas a walking provocation. In 1986, hetried to whip up a pogromist backlashagainst Arab shopkeepers in Harlem (forsupposedly selling drug paraphernalia).That same year he backed Reaganite Senator Alphonse D'Amato for re-election(while D' Amato was describing blacks living in housing projects as 'animals')."While the liberals scream about Sharpton's collusion with the Republicans, the

worst thihg about Sharpton, from our

Sharpton's defense of KKK's "right". to march in New York City in October 1999 made headlines in blackpress in Britain.viewpoint, isn't his cynical small-changepoliticking between two racist, antiworking-class parties. The worst thing,besides his sinister FBI collusion, is hisdecades-long work in trying to tampdown, divert and head off any attempts bymilitant blacks and working people tofight for their rights. When New YorkCity exploded in mass protests over thecop killing of African immigrant AmadouDiallo in 1999, Sharpton rushed to corralthese protests into electoral politics and aprogram for police "reform" to spruce upthe image of these killers in uniformincluding a pay 'raise for the police!Al Sharpton would rather see the racehate terrorists ofthe Ku Klux Klan rallyin NYC than a rally of blacks and labor,independent of the capitalist clllss, to stopthem. In i999, when we in the SpartacistLeague and Partisan Defense Committeebuilt a mass rally to stop the Klan fromriding in NYC on October 23, Al Sharpton actually filed an amicus brief in courton behalf of the Ku Klux Klan's right to

continued on page 7'8


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UFCW Strike' and ClassStruggle in AmericaWe print below the conclusion of aJanuary 31 Spartacist League forumgiven in Los Angeles by Steve Hendersonon the recently concluded strike of theUnited Food and Commercial Workers(UFCW) union in Southern C a l i f o r n ~ a ; Part One of this talk appeared in Workers Vanguard No. 821 (5 March). TheUFCW strikers waged a hard, determined class battle for five long monthsdespite a series of betrayals by their,trade-union tops. The workers returnedto work in early March under a new contract that gave the supermarket bosses

most of what they were gunning for,including the creation of a new two-tiersystem of wages and benefits" The re-sponsibility fo r this defeat lies squarelyat the feet of the l1:ade-union bureaucracy. Although Henderson spoke beforethe outcome of the UFCW strike hadbeen determined, he laid out the politicallessons of the strike and proposed a wayforward. Learning these lessons is crucial in order to prepare fo r and winfuture class battles, and particularly sofor the 50,000 UFCW workers in Northern California whose contracts expire inJuly and September.

PART TWO

which serves t h ~ capitalist class. It runsthe capitalist state-the bosses' repressiveapparatus made up at its core of the military, the cops, the courts and the prisons-all of which enforce capitalist rule.Unlike our reformist and liberal political opponents, ranging from the fakesocialists of the International Socialist. Organization (ISO) to liberal trade-unionbureaucrats, we Marxists are for the complete and unconditional independence ofthe trade unions in relation to the capitalist state. You can't successfully wageclass struggle if the capitalist governmentis controlling your union.

abroad and lifting up working peopleout of poverty at home. So I want tobriefly touch on what happened in the, 30s and ' 40s.New Deal: Labor's Coalitionwith Democrats, Dixiecrats

Roosevelt's paltry New Deal reformswere not enacted as return payment forthe new CIO unions' electoral support,but to head off an extended period ofincreasing political radicalization andhard class struggle that brought millionsof workers into organized labor. Themajor strikes of 1934 in Minneapolis,

How, if not through class struggle, dothe trade-union tops propose to get workers a supposedly "fair" wage? I'vealready mentioned the "corporate campaign" moral appeals to stockholders.But more fundamentally, they look to theAmerican government to police the capitalists and limit corporate "excess," andat the same time call for protectionistmeasures to make "their" national capitalists more competitive internationallyso they can get some of the "trickledown." In the eyes of the bureaucracy ofthe trade-union movement, the chie f tasklies in "freeing" the government from theclutches of the capi'talists and pulling itover to their side. And they try to do thisby demonstrating to the "democratic"state that they are "reasonable" laborstatesmen and by showing in word anddeed just how reliable and indispensablethey are in peacetime and especially intime of war.

WV Photo5,000-strong UFCW strike rally and march in Los Angeles; December 2003.

In reality, tbe government is not someneutral institution-it is the administrative organ and executive committee

The political expression of the reformists' reliance on the government is theirsupport to pro-Democratic Party "lesserevilism." They argue that Bush and theRepublicans represent "corporate greed"while the Democrats, while not perfect,can be pressured to represent workers, theoppressed and the poor. Much of the liberal mythology in America regarding thepossibility of a caring capitalist government and a labor-friendly, "progressive"Democratic Party is based on self-servinglies about Roosevelt's New Deal administration, which is the liberals' model ofsocial reform. AFL-CIO head Sweeney,for example, cites the New Deal asthe example of fighting the good war

Minnesota Historical Soci,etyUnionists battle strikebreaking cops and deputies during 1934 Trotskyist-ledMinneapolis Teamsters strike.4

Toledo and San Francisco were all ledby reds and paved the way for the latermass organizing drives of the 1930s. Roosevelt's labor laws were not a license toorganize. Art Preis, a Trotskyist participant in those struggles, wrote:"What followed the signing of theNRA[the New Deal's National IndustrialRecovery Act of 1933] was not the recognition of labor's rights but the mostferocious assault on American labor inits history ... Hundreds of workers werekilled, thousands wounded, tens of thousands arrested or otherwise victimizedfrom 1933 to 1938."- Ar t Preis, Labor's Giant Step(Pathfinder Press, 1972)

So how did this workers upsurge whichformed mass, integrated industrial unionsbecome chained to a capitalist party?Central responsibility lies with the American Communist 'Party (CP). Followingthe Stalinists' turn to "popular front"class collaboration in 1935, the Communist Party union militants who had helpedorganize the CIO in the 1930s used theirconsiderable political authority to channel thi'S grounds well of class struggle intothe dead end of the Democratic Party.Newly radicalized workers had to askthemselves: well, if even the reds are forRoosevelt, how bad can the Democratsbe? By 1935, the CP had broken fromits revolutionary origins and become areformist party, seeking to influence' a ,supposedly "progressive" wing of U.S.imperialism. This eventually led them tosupport the U.S. in World War II, including supporting the internment ofJapanes eAmericans in camps, the no-strike pledge;and dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was the Trotskyists who continued the fight to build a

revolutionary proletarian party in thiscountry, but the much larger CP had moresocial weight in the working class andtheir reformist politics by and large prevailed. So despite the great militancy ofthe CIO unions and the political openingfor the creation of a workers party, bourgeois ideology was in the end strengthened within the labor movement throughthe New Deal alliance with the Democratic Party. And what was the result?Support to Roosevelt meant a renunciation of not only class struggle but allsocial struggle against America's racistrulers. In America, where capitalism restson the racial oppression of black people,labor struggle and black struggle will'either. march forward together, or fallback separately. And support to the NewDeal was a betrayal of both. The NewDeal put labor in an unholy alliance withnot only its liberal class enemies in theNorth, but with Southern Dixiecrats, towhom Roosevelt gave free rein to wagenaked racist terror ?gainst blacks andunions. Roosevelt's vice president from1'933-40 was John Nance Garner, a hardline white-supremacist from Texas, an"open shop" state where the union move-ment scarcely existed. .

The New Deal alliance resulted in thecrippling of subsequent struggles. In one' ' ' e r O c i 1 l r a a n q y t e ~ ' t h e ~ e t O in "194trRnnounced a major campaign to organizethe South, called "Operation Dixie." Thetask of organizing the South would haverun helld-on into "Jim Crow" segregationand the racist,oppression of black workers. The necessary fight for integratedunions would have arpused a viciousbacklash from Dixiecrats and their fascistauxiliaries in the Ku Klux Klan, in theprocess blowing apart the New Dealcoalition. And amid the witchhuntingatmosphere of the anti-Soviet Cold War,the CIO leaders feared the spectre ofblack workers joining with Communistlabor organizers and scuttled "OperationDixie" after only two years.

Following WWII, American capitalismwas the only major imperialist powerwith its industrial infrastructure leftintact, and thus emerged as the unchallenged military and economic power ofthe capitalist world. The largest strikewave in American history broke out in1946 by workers seething at the wartimeausterity for workers and wartime profiteering for the capitalists. In response,the American bourgeoisie, facing no capitalist competitors internationally androlling in profits, could afford for sometime to placate workers with regularwage increases and the promise of anAmerican Drell!ll. Simultaneously, thegovernment orchestrated the postwarwitchhunts which purged the reds fromthe unions and installed the Cold Waranti-communist sellouts whose politicalheirs still run the unions today. The antilabor laws which ban effective strike tactics, like the Taft-Hartley Act, were 'alsopassed at this time. The Cold War laborleaders ritually denounced these as slavelabor acts, but of course they alwayscomplied with them. .During the 1950s and early '60s thetreacherous nature of the trade unions'pro-capitalist leadership was partly maskedby the fact that American capitalism wasstill strong enough to raise living standards for a majority of the workingclass while maintaining a high level ofW O R K ~ f i s vANtiUAIlD


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+profits. American blacks, of course, neversaw the short-lived American Dreamfor them it was more the American nightmare. The courageous civil rights movement of the late '50s and early '60sfinally defeated Jim Crow segregation inthe South and eliminated formal legalinequality, but its liberal program couldnot overcome the racist oppression ofblacks which is the bedrock of Americancapitalism North and South-the de factodiscrimination in jobs, education, housing, health care, and the racist cop andKlan terror that enforces it. The tradeunion bureaucracy was largely indifferentto the civil rights struggles in the Southand actively hostile to the later black militancy which swept Northern cities, especially when it found expression amongDetroit auto workers, in the UAW. Thebureaucracy's racist defense of the capitalist status quo further divided and weakened the American labor movement.By the late 1960s-with its profitsdeclining because of an aging industrialinfrastructure, increased internationalcompetition and the inflationary effectsof the VietnamWar-the American bourgeoisie no longer promised prosperityfor anyone. The next decade broughtstagnating wages followed by a majorintensification of the rate of exploitation.Smashing the air traffic controllers union(PATCO) was the signal union-bustingevent of the 1980s Reagan years. ThelAM machinists union, whose membersserviced the airplanes, was uniquely situated to shut down the airports and defeatReagan's frontal assault on the labormovement. But the head of the lAM,William Winpisinger, refused to pull themechanics out.It's no accident that, like John Swee-ney today, Winpisinger was a prominent leader of the Democratic Socialistsof America (DSA), which is composedof pro-capitalist "socialists" operatingwithin the Democratic Party. While such"labor statesmen" complained about Reagan's domestic policy, they fully shared

the South. Though today's union topsoften speak at MLK Day assemblies andinvoke racial equality, labor officialdomstill disdains the hard class struggle it willtake to organize integrated unions in theSouth, where "right to work" laws arebacked up by racist Klan terror.But it's not just in the South. When fascist skinheads attacked black and Latinogrocery strikers last November, the unionneeded to organize picket defense guards,drawing in all of Southern Californialabor and the minorities and immigrantswho bear the brunt of fascist terror. Butthe UFCW leadership did nothing. In theface of similar fascist provocations overthe years in major cities, the SL and Partisan Defense Committee have initiatedmass labor/black mobilizations-drawing on the social power of trade unionsto stop the KKK and Nazis. This is whata fighting labo r movement led by a classstruggle workers party would do, champioriing the cause 'Qf all the oppressed,combatting every manifestation of antiblack racism and demanding full citizenship rights for all immigrants.Organizing Wal-Mart will require theactive defense of immigrant rights. 'fwoweeks into the UFCW grocery strike,"Homeland Security" federal agentsraided 60 Wal-Mart stores and roundedup more than 250 undocumented immigrant workers. We said: Free the roundedup Wal-Mart workers! No deportations!But the UFCW leadership, which says itwants to organize Wal-Mart, has donenothing to mobilize the unions on theirbehalf. By rising to, the defense of these

his aims to foment capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union. But the anti' S o ~ t e t ' w a r ttt1ve'was 'm::eesMilfitv-.:,..!I'>-"bined with a war on labor and blacks

Adama PressWith outbreak of Cold War, bosses' press pushed anti-red scare. Right:Fighting breaks out at National Maritime Union meeting, 1950, where right-wingbureaucrats called cops against leftists as part of drive to purge Communists.the exploitation of immigrant labor andthe suppression of workers rights. INSseems to show up more often during anorganizing campaign or a strike situation"(UFCW Web site, "Where We Stand"). Itdoesn't just seem that way, it is that way.But the UFCW bureaucrats can't evensay straight out that the INS is racist andanti-labor, because that would implicateevery governmental enforcement agencythat they rely on. And it would certainlyexpose the Sweeney bureaucracy's criminal policy of "organizing" the cops,prison guards and security guards whoare paid to repress working people, immigrants and minorities.Unfortunately, instead of union organ-

workers state where capitalism was overthrown as a result of the 1949 Revolutionand whose core economy is still basedon nationalized property. Just as workersdefend their unions-despite selloutleadership-against the bosses, workersmust defend China agflinst imperialistbacked counterrevolution despite theChinese bureaucracy's accommodationto capitalism.The American trade-unionbureaucracy's hostility to China is basedon visceral anti-Communism, with theadded convenience of scapegoating a"foreign enemy" for the loss of American manufacturing jobs instead of fighting capitalism at home.

at home. And the anti-communist unionleaders routinely caved in the face oframpant union-busting. For ~ h e last several decades, the trade-union bureaucrats,continually acquiescing to what is "possible" and "practical" under capitalism,presided over the steady decline of organized labor and the increasing immiseration of workers and the oppressed.

Bob MorrisCOpS in riot gear arrest protesters outside Vons headquarters in suburbanLos Angeles, January 21.

Most of the articles I've read onChina's sweatshops are about foreignowned factories in the SEZs. These private factories are deliberately conflatedor confused with state-owned enterprises,with the assertion -that China has gonecapitalist or is heading to capitalism. But,in fact, China's fate has not yet beendecided. The Chinese working class mustsweep away the Stalinist bureaucracy,which has gravely weakened the systemof nationalized property internally whileconciliating imperialism at the international level. We stand for a proletarianpolitical revolution-to defend aridextend the gains of the workers state, i.e.,the planned economy and collectivizedproperty, while also placing politicalpower .directly in the hands of workersand peasants councils. This could inspireproletarian socialist revolution in the capitalist countries throughout Asia, including the industrial powerhouse of Japan.

For a Multiracial RevolutionaryWorkers Party!I spoke of the labor movement's failureto organize the South back in 1946. Well,now the South is coming North after theunions. The grocery giants have all citednon-union Wal-Mart's low wages andbenefits as the excuse to gut the UFCW.This is partly a negotiating ploy, sincethe "big box" stores are only projectedto get 1 percent of the Southern California market share in retail food. But, thefanatically anti-union corporations likethe Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, now theworld's largest retailer, are driving downwages and living standards everywhere.Labor needs to organize Wal-Martworkers, starting in those areas already unionized and extending the organizing drive to

immigrant workers, the UFCW would bemobilizing in defense of all Wal-Martworkers, undercutting the company 's rabidly anti-union maneuvers and facilitatingorganizing efforts.In 2000, the AFL-CIO finally droppedits opposition to a limited amnesty forimmigrants, but it still demands government action to stop the flow of "illegals"and pushes protectionist poison, such asopposition to Mexican truckers, whichultimately targets foreign workers andimmigrants. The UFCW, which has a relatively large immigrant membership concentrated in the food processing industry. (much of which is located in the South),says it wants to organize all workersregardless of origin. But the union ludicrously wants the government's stamp ofapproval and complains: "Too often, itappears to workers that INS [Immigrationand Naturalization Service] is a partner,intentionally or not, with employers in

Immigrantsrounded up alongU.S./Mexicoborder. U.S. labormovement, with itsvital immigrantc o m p o n e ~ , musttake up fight fo rimmigrant rights.

izing, the bureaucracy's Wal-Mart campaign is based on poisonous appealsto protectionism. The labor misleadersblame cheap foreign labor and demandU.S. imperialist-enforced "labor standards" as a mechanism to invoke tariffs.In the case of Wal-Mart, the bureaucracy's tirades are directed mainly againstmainland China. Wal-Mart is one of thelargest buyers of China's growing exportgoods, which are largely produced inthe Special Economic Zones (SEZs} byfirms usually owned at least in part byoutside capitalists. The AFL-CIO misleaders' anti-Communist China-bashing'consciously serves the American bourgeoisie's counterrevolutionary crusade tofully open up China to capitalist exploitation and tum it into one giant sweatshop.China is a bureaucratically deformed

$1 (48 pages)

A few of the more honest newspaperaccounts tacitly concede that in fact coll e c t i v i ~ e d property benefits China's workers and peasants. Here's a few quotes froma foreign correspondent for the Washing-ton Post, comparing workers in the privatefactories to those in state enterprises:'They are more likely to work for privatecompanies, often backed by foreign investment, with no socialist tradition ofcradle-to-grave benefits."And:"In private factories where migrantsoften work, managers are primarily concerned about profit. By contrast, despitenew market pressures, managers of statefactories in China often resemble political leaders, responsible for the overallwelfare of their workers."-Washington Post, 13 May 2002

continued on page 6

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One month before the United Foodand Commercial Workers (UFCW)supermarket strike in Southern California ended, the Spartacus Youth Clubsundertook a fund-raising campaign toYoung Sparlacus

provide the workers some material aidand help them stay out on strike. Weraised $1,837.71, motivating support forthe UFCW worker!> at campus meetings,classes, newspaper sales and student rallies across the nation. Our campaign callwas "Students: Take a Side! Support,UFCW Strike! Donate Now!" The campaign was a way to broaden support tothe striking workers and to "Mobiliie

UFCW ..(continued from ppge 5)

"Market reforms have undermined thesocialist health care system that oncecovered 90 percent of China's population. In its place has emerged a jungle ofa medical system ill which many workersare receiving inferior care, at highercosts, with little or no insurance."- Washington Post, 4 August 2002What the pro-capitalist union bureaucrats and their reformist apologists can'tstand is that a collectivized economywith centralized planning-in which production is for human need; not for

profit-is the real solution for theworld's working people. Such an economy must be established on an international scale, particularly tapping the vastproductive resources of the UnitedStates, Western Europe and Japan. TinyCuba, despite a decades-old U.S. embargo, has been able to provide decenthealth care to its population, resulting inan infant mortality rate on a par with thatof the U.S. and Canada. In America, with

students behind the social power of themultiracial working class!" as our SYCTen-Point Program states. In California,the SYC also brought youth out to helpwalk the picket lines.The campaign was no charity drivebut rather an elementary act of solidarity with the workers. At a time when thecapitalist ruling class in this country isengaged in an all-out offensive againstthe working people and the oppressed athome and across the globe, the workersof the UFCW were waging a strugglethat sought to hit them back whereit hurts-their wallet. Any victory forthe working people against the unionbusting of the bosses would mean ablow against U.S. imperialism.Under capitalism, most youth face afuture of no education and no jobs. The

its vast wealth and medical technology firmly in the grip of the capitalists,health care has become a crisis of epidemic proportions. As the rates of poverty and unemployment rise, the numberof those without health insurance hasgrown to some 40-45 million nationally.At the same time, Medicare .paymentsare being slas hed' and millions drivenoff the welfare rolls. Those not luckyenough to find job-based health insurance are one medical crisis away froma major family catastrophe. And withmedical insurance premiums rising at adouble-digit pace, this is the first thingemployers want to cut.

The irrationality of capitalism is suchthat the basic needl'lof tifeareireld hog'"tage to profit. Medical care is denied toimprove the capitalists' bottom line. Safeway/Vons CEO Steven Burd declared thatthe grocers' hardline'stance slashing medical benefits and labor costs "is an investment in our future" (Los Angeles Times,17 October 2003). Well, working peopleneed to fight for a future without capitalism. The only way that immigrants,

way forward is for youth to ally with theworking class. At a February 23 protest at San Francisco State Universityagainst education funding cutbacks andthe axing of a financial aid program forminority and poor students, an SYCspeaker talked about the campaign andobserved, "We must link our struggle tolabor, who have the social power to teardown this capitalist system and replaceit with a socialist society. Those wholabor must rule!"For many, the campaign was a breakfrom the electoral politics offered bysupposed "socialists" and the laborbureaucrats who recently sold out thestrike. We sparked debate at a StudentsUnited for Peace meeting at SuffolkUniversity in Boston when we condemned the Democratic Party during a

Spartacist supporter on UFCW picketline.blacks and all working people can beassured of free, quality medical care is torip the means of production out of thehands of the capitalist class and put it inthe hands of those whose labor builds thissociety.

Trotskyism vs. Anarchismin the Spanish Civil War

6

How the Liberals and Reformists Derailedthe Struggle for IntegrationFor Black LiberationThr.ough Soci'alist Revolution!

Saturday, A p r ~ 1 3 New York City 322 West 48th St.(Between 8th and 9th Avenues, take A, CorE to 42nd St./Port Authority stop, or CorE to 50th St. stop.)For more information, call (212) 267-1025 or e-mail [email protected]

presentation motivating the fund drive.The Democratic Party-the party ofslavery and then Jim Crow, the partyof Vietnam and the deadly sanctionsagainst Iraq, the party that wants nothingmore than to administer the occupation of Iraq and the "war on terror" athome-is a party of war and racism.

As an SYC spokesman said in a presentation about the UFCW campaign at aFebruary 21 forum in New York titled"On the Civil Rights Movement-AMarxist Analysis":"Fundamental change does not comethrough elections. Gains for workingpeople and the oppressed have onlycome through hard struggle. The working class needs a party that defendsits interests. The only way these interests can be realized is through a socialist revolution, led by a workers party,putting the working class in power overan egalitarian, planned economy, andputting therefore the capitalists out ofpower. Youth, students, blacks, immigrants, women should ally themselveswith this cause because a socialist revolution alone can lay the material basisfor the elimination of exploitation,oppression, racism and war."

That's why we need a revolutionaryworkers party. As Lenin explained inWhat Is To Be Done?: "The history of allcountries shows that the working class,exclusively by its own effort, is able todevelop only trade-union consciousness,"a form of bourgeois consciousness whichaccepts the framework of capitalism andlimits the struggles of the proletariat toquestions of wages and working conditions. The labor bureaucracy is also themedium for the transmission of the socialand political prejUdices of the more backward layers of the working class. Socialist consciousness can only be brought tothe working class from without, throughthe intervention of a Leninist party, a.. {w;ion. .af' intellectual" ami


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Mumia ...(continued from page 12)Jamal's death sentence while affirminghis conviction, condemning him to a lifeof prison hell. Jamal's attorneys appealedthat decision, seeking to overturn theconviction. The state appealed as well,seeking to uphold Jamal's death sentence. Jamal still sits on death row. Hisfederal appeal is on hold while the Pennsylvania state court decision is appealedto the U.S. Supreme Court.Lynch Law Justice

The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal isnothing but Texas lynch law justiceup North. Not only have the courts barredBeverly's confession, but they have rejected the evidence discovered only twoyears ago of the sworn account of courtstenographer Terri Maurer-Carter of aJames/Philadelphia InquirerMumia Abu-Jamal in 1969 as Minister of Information fo r Philadelphia BlackPanther Party.

conversation she overheard in the court- trict Attorney from 1 ~ 8 6 - 9 1 , at a timehouse where Mumia was tried. In that con- when his subordinate Jack McMahonversation, Judge Sabo declared in regard to made an infamous videotape instructingJamal's case, "I'm going to help 'em fry members of the D.A.'s office on how tothe n----r." Last October, the Pennsyl- dismiss blacks from juries-as was donevania Supreme Court refused to even con- in Mumia's case. Jamal's petition state'S,sider Maurer-Carter 's testimony on the "As District Attorney, he appeared in the ,grounds that Sabo's bias h ~ d a l r e ~ d y appellate briefs that argued for the up-been litigated and ruled upon m Mumla's holding of the conviction and Petitioner's1995 PCRA (Post-Conviction Relief Act) execution, and supervised the successfulappeal-before the same Judge Sabo, effort to uphold the conviction and deathwho exonerated himself of any racist ani- sentence." As a member of the Pennsyl-mosity and prejudice toward Mumia! vania Supreme Court, Castille joined inJamal's petition to the Supreme Court turning down Jamal' s appeal of Sabo'spoints out, "Where a judge in the trial of denial of his PCRA in 1997. Jamal'san African-American defendant expresses attorneys highlight, "For the same personin ugly racist terms his intention 'to help to function as both prosecutor and judge, em fry the n----r,' even the appearance of in it capital case violates the due processjustice is not satisfied. To the contrary, clause and mandates that the conviction.such a trial is a sham. In the context of a be reversed."case involving the d e a ~ h penalty, it is Another example of Sabo's bias citedessentially a lynching party." Jama l's by Jamal's attorneys was his refusal topapers need only cite a handful of Sabo's admit 600 pages of FBI files on Mumia.numerous actions evidencing his bias: he These files document over a decade ofdenied Jamal's motion to remove a white surveillance, harassment and frame-upjuror who had stated he could not be attempts by the FBI's .COINTELPROimpartial; he improperly removed a black terror operation-working in conjunctionjuror; he barred Mumia from representing with the Philadelphia police headed byhimself and took over questioning of racist demagogue Frank Rizzo-aimedp r 9 t W e , g . i . y . t ; . j . v r ~ , ; . h ~ ' P k T ~ P R ~ , ' l J , . " , a t " u t r d k t ; ~ ' . ' A B I i I Q h _ d ~ i ' t i I i . l i I I N i f f ...cross-examination of character WItness tants. A 24 October 1969 FBI report urg-Sonia Sanchez, a renowned p oet who ing that Jamal be placed under high-levelwas smeared as a "friend of cop killers." surveillance noted:The papers also cit e the improper cross- "In spite of the subject's age (15 years),examination of Jamal during the penalty Philadelphia feels that his continued par-phase of his trial. In this instance, Sabo ticipation in BPP activities in the Phil.a-h ' . . delphia Division, his position in the PhIl-encouraged t e prosecutor s mterrogatIon d 1 h' B h of the BPP and his past. I' b h' . h a e p la ranc ,regardmg J ama s past mem e r ~ IP.m t e inclination to appear and speak at publicBlack Panther Party-a gross vIOlatIOn of gatherings, the subject should be includedJamal's First Amendment rights of speech on the Security I n d ~ x [list o ~ t ~ ? s e and association. The prosecution argued deemed a threat to natIOnal secunty].that Jamal's BPP membership proved he When Mumia told MOVE's side of thewas planning to kill cops for the past 12 story following a bloody 1978 cop siegeyears. of their Powelton Village home, Rizzo

The second ground cited by Mumia's fingered a "new breed" of ournalists suchpetition is the refusal of Pennsylvania as Jamal, who he t h ~ e a t e n e d would oneSupreme Court justice Ronald Castille to day "be held responsIble and accountablerecuse himself from participating in that for what you do." Three years later, on acourt's deliberations and last year's deci- dark Philadelphia street at four in thesion denying post-conviction rel ief to morning, the cops finally got the chanceJamal. Castille was the Philadelphia Dis- they'd been waiting for.

Sharpton ...(continued from page 3)demonstrate. He joined with other NYCDemocrats in setting up a counter "demonstration for tolerance" (for the KKK!),which the reformist International Socialist Organization (ISO) and other liberalsendorsed (along with some NYC cops,with whom the ISO shared a platform).But thousands of New York City unionists, students and other leftists, such asProgressive Labor Party, came out tomake sure, as one labor militant said, that"This is not Klan country!" (see "Labor/Black Mobilization Rides KKK Out ofNYC," WVNo. 722, 29 October 1999).It's at best a cruel joke to imagine thatSharpton's loudmouthed stunts couldbring one of the partner parties of American capital toward anything resemblinga platform for black freedom. All thepseudo-militant rhetoric about forging an"independent black voting block" andhip-hop youth voter registration schemesobscures the hideous reality of black19 MARCH 2004

oppression in this country, where moreyoung black men are in prison than in college. Many black "convicted felons" areeffectively disenfranchised-they haveno right to vote, and no bourgeois election will change the systematic racialoppression which is rooted in the wholerotten system of American capitalism.The road to black freedom lies in thestruggle to shatter this racist capitalistsystem through proletarian revolution.The power to do that lies in the handsof the multiracial working class. But thatpower cannot be realized unless a fighting labor movement champions the causeof black liberation and breaks the chains,forged by the labor bureaucrats and blackfront men for the Democratic (and Republican) Party, like Jesse Jackson and AlSharpton, that bind working people andthe oppressed to the capitalist classenemy. The purpose of the Sp.trtm:istLeague/U.S. is to build a revolutionaryinternationalist party that will lead thestruggle for the class rule of the proletariat. Break with the Democrats! For amultiracial, class-struggle workers party!

First as police commissioner and thenas mayor, Rizzo ran the city for morethan a decade as a local police state. In1964, when the black ghetto in Philadelphia was one of the first in the U.S. toexplode, the p'olice set up the notoriousCivil Defense (CD) squad, which wprkedwith the FBI to infiltrate or spy on virtually every civil rights or political organization in the city. Lieutenant GeorgeFencl, who headed the CD unit, boastedthat "we have some 18,000 names" onfile. Fencl's "counter-intelligence" program served as a model for the FBI'sCOINTELPRO operations against thePanthers and other black activists.For those who scoff at the notion thatMumia's prosecution was a political vendetta and that t.he massive governmentsurveillance of Jamal was not "relevant"to the trial, consider this interruption inthe proceedings just as the prosecution'skey witness, prostitute Cynthia White,was about to testify:"THE COURT: Just a minute. Fencl ison the phone.

MR. McGILL: Off the record.(A discussion was held off the record.)THE COURT: Did you work it out?. , . h l ~ ~ M ~ q . I h ~ l . h t ; I e > , n 9 . pro1:Jlern" " .As coached by prosecutor McGill &Co., White went on to falsely testify toseeing Mumia shoot Faulkner. Nobody onthe scene remembered seeing White nearthe shooting. With a police record a milelong, and awaiting trial on three chargesat the time of Jamal's arrest, White wasparticularly susceptible to police coercion. Veronica Jones, another prostitutewho knew White, testified she wasoffered a deal similar to that given Whiteto falsely testify against Jamal: "Theywere trying to get me to say somethingthat the other girl said .. and they told uswe can work the area if we tell them."Sabo struck this testimony which went tothe heart of White's credibility and policemisconduct as "not relevant."No Justice inthe Capitalist Courts

From the moment a critically woundedJamal was handcuffed to a hospital bed22 years ago, court after court trampled.on Jamal's constitutional rights, including making Jamal's case an exception totheir own rules to keep him in theshadow of death. For example, the U.S.Supreme Court in 1990 refused to hearJamal's petition for review of the initialPennsylvania Supreme Court decision.The petition challenged the prosecution'suse of his past membership in the Panthers in securing the death sentence.About a year later, the same courtreversed the death sentence of DavidDawson on the grounds that the prosecution improperly used his political affiliation as a member of the racist WhiteAryan Brotherhood to prejudice the jury.The "justification" used by both thefederal and Pennsylvania state courts forslamming the door shut on Beverly'sconfession was that it wasn't submittedto the courts within the time limitationsfor newly discovered evidence set byrecent laws to cut off death row appeals-Democratic president Clinton's 1996Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and a 1995 Pennsylvania law.

Adopted at a time when it was wellknown Jamal would soon be filing forpost-conviction relief, the latter wasexplicitly intended to cut off Mumia'sappeal rights : Nearly 150 years after theinfamous Dred Scott' d e c i ~ i o n , a fighterfor black freedom like Jamal has norights which the, capitalist courts arebound to respect.The capitalist rulers want to see Mumiadead because they see in this eloquentjournalist, MOVE supporter and formerPanther spokesman the spectre of blackrevolution, defiant opposition to their system of racist oppression. They seek toexecute Jamal in order to send a chillingmessage to all those who challengevicious cop repression in the ghettos, whostand up for labor's rights on the picketlines, who protest imperialist mass murder from the Balkans to Iraq. Ja mal's casethrows a spotlight on the barbaric, racistdeath penalty, a fomi of institutionalizedstate terror directly descended in the U.S.from the system of black chattel slavery.The death penalty is the ultimate sanction employed by this repressive systemas it seeks to contain the explosive pressures generated by the '. grbwing gapbetween a handful of filthy rich and thoseon the bottom. The parties of capital,Democrats and Republicans, join in pushing racist "law and order" campaignsaimed at intensifying capitalist repression, including through the grotesquespeedup on death rows across the country. As Marxists, we are unequivocalopponents of the death penalty, regardlessof innocence or guilt; we do not accordthe state the right to determine who livesor who dies.We seek to mobilize working people,minorities and all opponents of racistcapitalist repression in protest actionscentered on the social power of the labormovement to demand Jamal's freedom.Our fight to free Jamal and abolish theracist death penalty is part of our perspective of winning workers to theunderstanding that the bourgeois state,with its cops and courts, is not some"neutral" agency which serves society asa whole, but .rather exists to defend theclass rule and profits of the capitalistsagainst those they exploit. Those whosubordinate the call to "Free Mumia" toone for a "new trial" peddle dangerousillusions in the justice of the very courtswhich have repeatedly upheld the racistframe-up of this courageous fighter forthe oppressed.To put a final halt to the grisly workings of capitalism's machinery of death-b e they the guardians of death row orthe cops who operate as "judge, jury andexecutioner" in gunning down minorityyouth on the street:-requires sweepingaway this entire system based on exploitation and oppression. The social powerto do that lies in the hands of the multiracial working class, with its numbers,organization and discipline-and mostimportantly, its capacity to bring thewheels of the profit system to a grindinghalt. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal now! Abolish the racist death penalty!.

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Iraq ...(continued from p age 1)not the work of the Basque-nationalistETA, as Aznar & Co. lyingly insisted.Reportedly, Islamic fundamentalistsclaimed responsibility for the attack asbloody retribution for Spain's participation in the Iraq war, which was opposedby 90 percent of the Spanish population.In a surprise upset, the social-democraticPSOE won the election, and the incomingPrime Minister Zapatero threatens to pullSpanish troops from Iraq if the UnitedNations does not go in. Meanwhile, Zapatero vows to' pursue the "war on terror"with a vengeance, targeting the Arabimmigrant population in Spain as well asthe Basques. Zapatero seeks to deflectmassive opposition to the Iraq war byswapping the blue helmets of the UN forthe stars and stripes of U.S. imperialism.In the U.S., many liberals like RalphNader and Democratic Party presidentialprimary candidates Dennis Kucinich andAl Sharpton advocate UN troops as apreferable alternative to the current occupation forces. Contrary to claims that the'UN weapons inspection teams helped tostave off the war, they actually set adefenseless Iraq up for slaughter. TheUN is nothing more than a den of imperialist thieves and their victims; it hasserved since its inception as a democraticfig leaf for imperialist slaughter, fromthe Korean War of the early 1950s thatkilled over three million people to thefirst Gulf War. We say: No to UN intervention! Down with the colonial occupation of Iraq!Imperialists Carve Upthe Near East

In an article titled "Hold Bush to HisLie" (Nation, 23 February) popular antiglobalization author Naomi Klein wrote,"All of Washington's reasons for going towar have evaporated; the only excuse leftis Bush's deep desire to bring democracyto the Iraqi people. Of course, this is asmuch a lie as the rest-but it's a lie wecan use. We can hamess Bush!s po1iticalweakness on Iraq to demand that thedemocracy lie become a reality, that Iraqbe truly sovereign." A stable bourgeoisdemocracy in Iraq is a pure fiction, asrevealed by the reactionary forces thathave emerged under the occupation, fromfundamentalists demanding a constitutionbased on Islamic law-against whichmany women in Iraq have protested-to

... neither does the InternationalSocialist O r g a n i ~ a t i o n , pandering. to"anybody but Bush" sentiment.monarchists and "democrats" who've longbeen on the CIA payroll.More fundamentally, Iraq is not a nationbut an entity carved out of the three majorpopulations in the area by the Britishimperialists following World War I. Theseinclude the Kurdish north, the Sunni Arabcenter and the majority Shi'ite south (andvarious others), with each region furtherriven by clan and tribal rivalries. Undercapitalism, "democracy" can only meanthe domination of the Shi'ite majorityover the Kurdish and Sunni Arab minorities. In such a society, the exercise of secular rule unner c';lpita!ism is only possibleunder something like Hussein's Ba'athistdictatorship, which the Bush administration aspires to replicate-democratic

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U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Under "war on terror," prisonersare held indefinitely without charges.rhetoric aside-cleansed of its Ba'athistelements and pliable to U.S. dictates. requires ArablHebrew workers revolutions to topple not only the Zionist rulers,but capitalist rule throughout the region.

Imperialism in thePost-Soviet WorldA conunon view among many antiwaractivists is that the Bush administration,

which has well-known links to U.S.oil companies, simply wanted to get itshands on Iraqi oil. It is the beginning ofwisdom to see that the U.S. imperialistshad an economic motivation for going towar, but reducing it to that ignores theintent of U.S. imperialism, which was notmerely to loot Iraq but to assert its uniqueright to do so against its main economicrivals, such as Germany and Japan.The war was an assertion of U.S. military superiority and of its control over

alism haven't changed since Russian revolutionary V. I. Lenin described them inhis 1916 work, Imperialism: the HighestStage of Capitalism, where he stated thatimperialism is "a struggle of the greatpowers for the economic and political division of the world." This struggle is basedon international competition for cheaplabor, raw materials and spheres of influence. The world economy is defined bythis competition between the larger, moreadvanced nation-states which seek to defend the economic interests of their respective capitalist classes. A capitalist has tobe able to defend his property rights withbodies of armed men-if you default onyour mortgage, it's not a bank officer whocomes around to throw you out, it's thepolice. The same operates on a largerscale and internationally-the imperialistmilitary exists to defend the economicinterests of the capitalists of an imperialist nation against their competitors.The U.S.'s unrivaled military dominance today is the result of the destruction of the Soviet Union through capitalist counterrevolution over a decade ago.In contrast to most liberals and organizations on the left, who joined the imperialist powers in hailing the destruction of theSoviet Union, we fought to mobilize theworking class against counterrevolutionand warned that the destruction of theworld's first and most powerful workersstate, albeit degenerated and betrayed bythe Stalinist bureaucracy, would be adefeat for working people around theworld. This was not least because weunderstood that the U.S. imperialists, thebiggest purveyors of death and destruction on the planet, would see no challengeto their appetites for global domination.They are now emboldened enough toannounce "pre-emptive" war as officialdoctrine. The rape of Iraq today is in fact

Every blow aimed at the U.S. colonialoccupiers, as well as their local army andpolice puppets, is in the interest not onlyof working people in Iraq, but in the NearEast and throughout the whole world. Weoppose any repression against those whotake up arms against the occupation. Atthe same time, the communalist attacksagainst Shi'ites and Kurds (and others)are entirely criminal from the standpointof the international proletariat and mustbe condemned. We do not lend one iotaof political support to the remnants of theBa'athist regime or the Islamic fundamentalist forces seeking to impose theirown reactionary agendas' on Iraqi women,workers, ethnic and religious minorities.Marxists seek to mobilize proletarianresistance against the occupation of Iraqusing proletarian means of struggle(strikes, hot-cargoing military goods, etc.)in the service of a revolutionary perspective against U.S. imperialism, not only inIraq but internationally.

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The Near East is a patchwork of nationalities and religious aug. ethp.\c , g ~ - 9 \ l P ~ n g s , with states whose boundaries were artificially drawn by the imperialists to suittheir colonial appetites, including controlof vital oil reserves. The struggle aga instimperialist domination and the oppressive'rule of the sheiks, kings, colonels, ayatollahs, nationalist and Zionist rulers cannot be resolved under capitalism. Therewill be no end to ethnic and nationaloppression, no emancipation of womenor an end to the exploitation of workingpeople in the Near East short of thoroughgoing socialist revolutions that openthe road to the establishment of a socialist federation of the Near East, as partof the struggle for international socialistrevolution.Among the opponents of the war andoccupation many see a huge gap betweenthe U.S. imperialists' rhetoric about freedom and democracy and what thesesame rulers do at home and around theworld to working people and the oppressed. A graphic example in the NearEast itself is U.S. imperialist support tothe Zionist rulers in their onslaughtagainst the Palestinian people-many ofthem now being walled in and walled offfrom any kind of livdihood while Zioniststorm roopers raze whole towns in theOccupied Territories. I f anyone in theNear East possesses weapons of massdestruction it is certainly Israel, courtesyof the imperialists.Whether or not to raise the call fordefense of the Palestinian people and foran end to the Israeli occupation has beena major topic of debate among the organizers of the March 20 protests against theoccupation of Iraq. This issue has beendivisive because the more right-wing elements in these coalitions fear alienatingDemocratic Party politicians, who arestaunchly pro-Zionist. We call for thedefense of the Palestinian people anddemand the withdrawal of all Israelitroops and settlers from the OccupiedTerritories. For both the Palestinian andHebrew-speaking peoples to equitablyexercise their right to self-determination

the Near East .oil spigot on which bothJapan and West Europe heavily rely. Theintent was to "shock and awe" the U.S.'simperialist rivals, who are militarily farweaker. In the absence of the destructionof imperialism through socialist revolutions, the economic conflicts between theimperialists can only lead to interimperialist wars, such as World Wars I and II, except this time fought by nuclear-armedpowers. While at this time no single imperialist power has the ability to prevail militarily in a war against the U.S., thingswill not remain the same forever. The possibility of allianees between a combination of imperialist powers, down the road,represents a threat to U.S. hegemony.There has been a lot of discussion,especially among anti-globalization activists, about a "new imperialism," which is.not surprising given that the Iraq war andoccupation empirically negate the ideology of "globalization"-the spoils aregoing to U.S. imperialism and no one elseexcept on their say-so. Yet the false theory of globalization posits that capitalismhas transcended the nation-state. Sorather than big corporations being dependent on a particular state power to defendand further their interests, you have socalled multinational and transnationalcorporations. Supposedly, the world economy is actually controlled by international institutions such as the IMF, WorldBank and World Trade Organization.The fundamental workings of imperi-

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one of the grim consequences of thedestruction of the Soviet degeneratedworkers state.Class Society and the State

Of all the lies working people are toldby the government, the media and theeducation system, the biggest one is thatthey share any interest in common withthe people who rule this country-andthat doesn't just mean the Bush administration. It means the people who own thefactories, mines, banks, industry-whatMarxists call the means of production. Italso means their representatives in thecapitalist Republican and Democraticparties whose job is to administer thestate so that nothing gets in the way of thecapitalists' right to make and amass profitoff the backs of working people here andaround the world. The capitalists havecops, courts, prisons and an army-i.e., astate which exists to defend the capitalistsand their property rights. The governmentof the United States is not "our" government, nor can it ever be so long as the system of capitalism remains in place.One of the most fundamental aspectsof capitalist society which is obscured byeveryone from George Bush to liberalsand especially anti-globalization ideologues is that this society is divided intotwo fundamental classes with irreconcilable interests. The interests of those whoown the means of production cannot bereconciled with those of the working

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The' article below is reprinted fromSpartacist Canada No. 140, Spring 2004,the newspaper of he Trotskyist League /Ligue Trotskyste, Canadian section ofthe International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist).The featured speaker at the March 20anti-occupation demonstration in Vancouver is Noam Chomsky, a self-styled"anarchist" whose writings and speechesare popular among radical youtl). While

Chomsky exposes some of the morebloody excesses of U.S. military andforeign policy, at bottom he is an ideologue for a more "just" and "democratic" imperialism:In the buildup to the 1991 U.S. attackon Iraq, Chomsky (like the NDP [socialdemocratic New Democratic Party])pushed as an "alternative" to war "thepeaceful means prescribed by international law: sanctions and diplomacy"

APMass Palestinian protest against Israeli wall sealing Palestinian ghettos,February 23. Chomsky defends Israel's "right" to b ~ i l d wall, as long as it'sinside "the internationally recognized border."

(Z Magazine, February 1991). The"peaceful" UN sanctions killed 1.5 million Iraqis. For years, Chomsky had alsobeen prettifying as an "alternative" oneAhmed Chalabi, head of what claimswas Iraq's "democratic opposition."A wealthy bourgeois politician, Chalabi is a U.S. stooge, head of theAmerican-funded Iraqi National Congress and currently a prominent figurein the U.S:-run "Governing Council" inIraq who rode into Baghdad with U.S.troops last April. (For more detail, see"Down With Colonial Occupation ofIraq!" SC No. 137, Summer 2003.)For all his "exposes" of the U.S.rulers' crimes, Chomsky does not challenge the imperialist world order. Take,for example, his op-ed piece in the Feb- ruary 23 N6w York Times on Israel's"security wall," "A Wall as a Weapon."He rightly condemns the Zionists'attempt to "turn Palestinian communities into dungeons, next t9 whic;h thebantustans of South Africa look likesymbols of freedom, sovereignty andself-determination."But while protesting that the wall'sexisting pa th' grabs Palestinian territory, Chomsky opines: "Few would question Is(ael's right to protect its citizensfrom terrorist attacks like the one yesterday, even to build a security wall ifthat were an appropriate means." I f thewall were built inside "the internationally recognized border," he continues, it. "could then be as forbidding as the

class-the people whose labor creates Part of our task as revolutionar ies is to has always been integral to American cap-.the wealth in this society. The fact that unmask all the false ideas promoted by italism, and despite the abolition of slav-/"- the working class creates this wealth the capitalists and much of the current ery through the Civil War and despite thethrough its labor means that it has the leadership of the trade unions so that the civil rights movement, which won an endsocial power to shut d o w ' t ~ c t i m . ~ IIWet:iM. fRMtm- W61it6gtraw tan be " R J M U M t " ' " t t " ' C m ~ ~ g a t i O n , b l a c k s Workers actions against the war, espe-' unlocked and mobilized ia the interests of remain forcibly segregated at the bottomcially in the U.S., would have had a qual- all the exploited and oppressed. We seek of this society. A reflection of this is theiritatively greater impact than the millions' to organize workers on the basis of a disproportionate representation in the mil-of people marching in all the cities of class-struggle policy rather than the cur- itary-for many black youth t.he onlythe world. Why? Because if the people rent AFL-CIO politics of exercis ing pres- chance of going to school or getting a jobwho load the ships with armaments and sure on the capitali st politicians through is to enlist. This, along with the importantsupplies for the war were to go on strike, the ballot box and lobbying. No right or black component of the American work-and defend such a strike with mass picket reform in favor of the working people and ing class, means that black people and thelines, the ships wouldn't get loaded. There oppressed has ever been won through an fight for black liberation will be central towere several such actions by transporta- election or lobbying--,-it took class and ending racist American capitalism.tion workers in Scotland and Italy who social struggle to win these things, andrefused to drive trains loaded with sup- that is what is needed to defend themplies headed for Iraq during the war. when the capitalists inevitably try to takeThese were a model of what needed to them away.happen more broadly. That the gap between U.S. rhetoricOur class-struggle perspective was in about "liberating" Iraq and the reality atdirect counterposition to the politics of home is especially palpable for manythe antiwar coalitions, which were built in blacks and minorities in the U.S. was cap-essence to provide a platform for capital- tured by black author Walter Mosley inist politicians. The lie promoted by these an interview published in the New Yorkgroups was that if the demands of the Times Magazine last month, where heantiwar movement were kept to the low- noted that black people in the U.S.est common denominator that would draw weren 't surprised by the criminal Sep-in the greatest number of people, and the tember 11 attack on the World Trade Cen-rulers would have to take heed of the out ter. Because of their own experiencesrage of the masses. Obviously this didn' t with racial oppression at home, blackwork. Some activists might retort that if people more readily perceive the wide-our alternative of working-class struggle spread hatred of racist U.S. imperialismagainst the war was so great in contrast, around the world and this is one of thethen why didn 't it happen in the U.S.? Achilles' heels of U.S. imperialism.The capitalists understand what a huge The racial oppression of black peoplethreat the social power of the working .class is to them, and that's why they notonly have cops and anti-union legislationto break up strikes, but also the ideological means such as promoting patriotism,nationalism and racism to keep the workers from using that power. The bloody andmilitant history of the American labormovement is replete with examples ofworkers organizing, often under the leadership of reds, to take on the capitalistsand succeeding in turning their anti-unionlaws into worthless pieces of paper.However, especially since the reds werepurged from ,the unions during theMcCarthy-era Cold War witchhunts, theleadership of the union movement in theU.S. has been staunchly pro:capitalist andanti -communist.

, 19 MARCH 2604'

Break with the DemocraticParty of Racism and War!A whole range of bourgeois supportersof the Iraq war are now wailing that theywere cruelly misled by the Bush admin

istration-such is the case of the Democrats who in their majority voted in favoro{ the March 2003 resolution in supportof the war and who retailed the Bush. administration's lying pretext for it. In itsdefen se, the Bush administration is nowcorrectly pointing out that a lot of theintelligence on Iraq dates back to theDemocratic Clinton administration whichalso had a poliCy of "regime change" inIraq. To the extent that Democrats haveopposed the war, including growingnumbers in retrospect, it was based onaccepting the premise of the war as justified but quibbling over how the Bush

"C

Arab woman weeps infront of her Kirkukhome seized byKurds, April 2003. U.S.. colonial occupationexacerbates nationaland religiousconflicts, whichthreaten to erupt intoall-sided communalistslaughter.

authorities chose: patrolled by the armyon both sides, heavily mined, impenetrable. Such a wall would maximizesecurity, and there would be no international protest or violation of intemationallaw."While the "anarchist" professor kowtows to "i'nternational law," we Marxists know that the 1948-49 !\GreenLine" was drawn through the livingbody of the Palestinian people. Ourfight is for a socialist federation of theNear East, the only road for the liberation of all the peoples of the region.Chomsky's "alternative" is to call onU.S. imperialism to playa progressiverole: "Any real chance for a politicalsettlement-and for decent lives for thepeople of the region-depends on theUnited States." Radical youth bewareChomsky is doing his own bit to "manufacture consent," pushing the deadlyillusion that the imperialist system ofwar, racism and oppression can bereformed.

WV PhotoJesse Jackson addresses October2002 antiwar protest. Antiwar coalitions built platform for Democrats.. administration went about this.There were also those politicians, suchas those onthe platform at antiwar demonstrations, who understood that becausemany black, minority and working-classpeople stood in opposition to the war,some Democrats had better position themselves against the war to make sure allthese people didn' t lose faith in the Democratic Party. This is why many of thespokesmen at the antiwar demonstrationswere black Democrats such as Al Sharpton, Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee.We are opposed to any kind of vote orsupport to the Democrats, not because ofthis or that bad policy they might pursue,but because their purpose is to administercapitalism and defend the interests of thecapitalists, which necessarily means againstthe working class and the oppressed.That is no t to say that there aren't differences between the Democrats and theRepublicans. In essence these boil downto the Democrats being better at maskingimperialist plunder and capitalist exploitation with a facade of human rights anddemocracy, while the Republicans arejust in your face about i t-they don't feelthe need to hide their cronyism or throwa few more crumbs at the poor. The capitalists can make use of either of thesefaces for a capitalist government-it

continued on page 10';9


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Iraq ...(continued from page 9)doesn't fundamentally change the system.There is no better proof of theDemocrats' fundamental commitment todefending the interests of U.S. imperialism against working people at home andabroad than their wholehearted supportfor the so-called "war on terror." Thecriminal attack on the World Trade Center on September 11 was a huge gift to theAmerican rulers. Under the rubric of the"war on terror," civil liberties' have beenshredded, thousands of immigrants in theU.S. have been -detained ,and deported,and unknown numbers of foreign nationals as well as U.S. citizens have beendeclared "enemy combatants" with norights and spirited off to U.S. militaryprison camps.Such a person is U.S. citizen JosePadill


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Columbia...(continued from page 12)out to protest on March 9!At Columbia University, where theblack student population is fairly small,the CCCC attempted to heighten racialdivisions between students by promotingthe lie that Jews run this country andblack students are given a free ride. Thisracist stunt- was organized to coincidewith the Center for Career Education'sDiversity Recruiting Conference, a program to help minority students find jobs.The CCCC, those boys and girls forwhom the College RepUblicans are insufficiently right-wing, are infamous for targeting everyone from gay students to leftists to the late Professor Edward Said. Inrecent years, the CCCC has brough t slavery apologist and all-purpose Reaganitepig Dinesh D'Souza to campus, alongwith other racist, right-wing ideologues.The Spartacus Youth Club (SYC) has initiated protests at Columbia to exposeD'Souza, and also to keep ROTC and military recruiters off campus. A militant,mass, integrated protest on campus wouldmake the racist yahoos think twice aboutspewing their filth!The newly formed Columbia University Concerned Students of Color(CUCSC) has submitted a list of demandsto the administration. The student de-

tions and events on the basis of the needfor working-class struggle against thewar and in opposition to the DemocraticParty. Imperialist war is an inevitableoutgrowth of the capitalist system itself,therefore you cannot figlit to end it byjoining with represent