The Workers' Advocate

WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! 25¢

Volume 13, Number 4

VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA

May 25, 1983

[Front page:

Down With Reagan's War on Nicaragua!;

Fight the nuclear warmongers! Reagan's 'Star Wars' Fantasy Is Propaganda for a 'Winnable Nuclear War';

Reaganomics, the 'Atari Democrats' and the Fight Against Unemployment;

Reaganite 'Economic Miracle' collapses in Chile--Chilean Workers Rise Up Against the Fascist Pinochet]

IN THIS ISSUE

Down With Reagan's War on Nicaragua!

Fight the nuclear warmongers!

Reagan's 'Star Wars' Fantasy Is Propaganda for a 'Winnable Nuclear War'

Reaganomics, the 'Atari Democrats' and the Fight Against Unemployment

Reaganite 'Economic Miracle' collapses in Chile

Chilean Workers Rise Up Against the Fascist Pinochet

'Unemployed Workers' Song'

The fight against racism in Chicago

Tokenism or the mass struggle

On the trial of the murderers of William Atkinson in Boston:

Court Gives Racist Killers an Easy Ride

Buffalo, N.Y.:

Students protest Reaganite budget of Democratic Governor Cuomo

Brooklyn:

A Protest Against Racist Police Murder

Miami:

Black youth battle the racist police

Ford Assembly Plant in Chicago:

Auto workers reject 'lifetime job security' fraud

GM workers resist the bitter fruits of concessions

Lynn, Mass:

GE workers fight wage cuts and speedup

Nurses on strike at Buffalo General

Trenton, Michigan:

Steel Workers Wildcat at McLouth Steel

1,500 Seattle metal trades workers strike against concessions

'Workers, Organize'

A militant demonstration by Seattle strikers

Seattle:

Meatpackers strike against pay cuts

Condemn Reagan's Attacks on Grenada!

Concerning the character of the government in Grenada

The Democratic Party "opposition" tramples on the Salvadoran people

CIA invaders and Congressional hypocrisy

Boston:

4,000 March Against Reagan's Aggression in Central America

Denounce Jeane Kirkpatrick-- Mouthpiece of Aggression!

Powerful protests rock the fascist generals

Argentine people demand accounting for the 'disappeared'

Trinidad and Tobago:

Texaco oil workers fight big layoffs

Jamaica:

18,000 teachers stage walkout

Across Latin America

Movement builds against capitalist austerity and IMF dictate

General strike paralyzes Peru

Two-day general strike shuts down Ecuador

Strike movement develops in Mexico

Unemployed Workers Rebel in Brazil

Nurses strike in Barbados

80,000 demonstrate in Melbourne

Some experience from the anti-war movement in Australia

Sasebo, Japan:

Thousands protest U.S. nuclear warship

Another round of protests targets U.S./NATO missiles in Western Europe

May Day Around the World

MAY DAY - 1983

Down With Reagan's War on Nicaragua!

The Reagan administration is waging war against Nicaragua! Because the Sandinista government does not conform to the standards set by Reaganite reaction, Reagan has unleashed 7,000 well-armed men to overthrow it and to trample on the Nicaraguan people. This is not just a war of words; it is naked aggression with guns and troops.

Earlier this month, in the second major penetration since March, 1,500 CIA-trained and armed mercenaries crossed into Nicaragua from Honduras. Backed up by the Honduran army and transported in its U.S.-supplied helicopters, these counter-revolutionary bands staged raids all along the border zones from the Pacific to the Caribbean coast. The invaders have been greeted by the bullets of Nicaragua's popular militias. According to reports the mercenaries have been driven back in the sharpest clashes so far in this CIA-sponsored war.

Meanwhile a second front has been opened up on Nicaragua's southern frontier with Costa Rica. There Eden Pastora, the notorious renegade from the Nicaraguan liberation struggle, along with a number of other counter-revolutionary leaders are also directing bandit raids into Nicaragua.

Other tried and tested weapons in the U.S. imperialist arsenal of subversion and "destabilization" are being unleashed against Nicaragua as well. The U.S. puppet army of the Honduran generals is being armed to the hilt and is stepping up its menacing provocations against Nicaragua. And with the aim of stirring up the internal counter-revolution the Reagan government is applying even more pressure against the already hard pressed Nicaraguan economy. Last month it cut Nicaragua's quota of sugar exports to the U.S. by 90%, shutting down Nicaragua's main sugar market.

Naked Aggression

There is nothing secret about the CIA's invasion of Nicaragua. From Ronald Reagan on down, the glories of this naked and criminal aggression are being publicly boasted and toasted. "Leaks" about the CIA "covert operations" have been deliberately made available to the capitalist media; and Newsweek and others have been carrying lurid details of its mechanics.

Honduras has been turned into a nest of U.S.-ClA aggression against Nicaragua. Over 50 CIA operatives have set up shop in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. Their mission is to direct the invasion of the counter-revolutionary bands; to decipher the intelligence gathered from the AWAC's and other U.S. spy planes hovering over Nicaragua and the U.S. warships lying off her coast; and to coordinate the network of hundreds of agents engaged in the work of sabotage and the channeling of CIA assistance to the counter-revolutionary elements within Nicaragua.

The Honduran army is the guard dog of the operation. For the CIA mercenaries it provides protection and logistical and transport support. It also serves as their transmission belt of unlimited U.S. military supplies. As the Hondurans describe it, they leave the warehouse doors open to the Nicaraguan bands, then ask the Pentagon for resupplies. Moreover, the Pentagon has built up the Honduran army itself as a striking force against Nicaragua. It will receive $78.3 million in U.S. military aid in 1983 alone.

The kingpin of the operation is John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa. With years of service in Viet Nam under his belt, Negroponte is a diplomat with special expertise in counter-insurgency and subversion. Negroponte works hand in hand with the Honduran commander-in-chief, General Gustavo Aldofo Alvarez. Alvarez is a fanatical anti-communist who wields the real power in his country and who takes a direct hand in the operations of the CIA mercenary bands. Meanwhile Negroponte gets his orders directly from the U.S. military Southern Command Center in Panama.

Reagan's "Freedom Fighters"

The Reaganites, with their arrogant cynicism, try to paint this highly sophisticated and well-funded CIA operation against Nicaragua as some kind of grass roots revolt. In his April 27 address to the special joint session of Congress, Reagan pledged support for the so-called "freedom fighters" that allegedly express "the anger of its own people" against the Sandinista government.

In fact a look at Reagan's so-called "freedom fighters" is the best mirror of what the Reagan government is up to in Nicaragua.

After three years of grooming by the CIA, the anti-Sandinista bands now boast of 7,000 well-armed men perched along Nicaragua's northern frontier. The CIA has trained and paid them to do what they are best at; at this stage their immediate mission is to terrorize the population by means of murder, kidnapping, rape and destruction. Their sworn final objective is nothing less than the destruction of the Sandinista government and the massacre of the Nicaraguan people under a restored Somoza-type despotism.

Among these CIA bands there is a motley crew of paid killers recruited from terrorist groups of Cuban exiles and similar scum. But most are former members of the National Guard of the Somoza dictatorship. The hands of these Somozistas are stained with the blood of the 50,000 sons and daughters of the Nicaraguan people who gave their lives in the struggle for liberation from the U.S.-backed Somoza tyranny.

Because of the Nicaraguan people's universal hatred for the Somozistas, the CIA has been casting around for a "democratic" figurehead. So far Eden Pastora, also known as "Commandante Zero," has been their principal candidate for the job. Since Pastora is a renegade Sandinista leader and pretends to keep at arms length from the Somozistas on the northern border, the CIA hopes that Pastora's bands will get a more favorable reception from the population. But the Nicaraguan masses have militantly condemned this traitor and can see with their own eyes that he has joined the camp of the Somozistas and the CIA in a terror campaign against his own people. Indeed, Pastora's group has now signed an agreement with their Somozista colleagues in counter-revolution.

Thus when Reagan speaks of Nicaraguan "freedom fighters" he is referring to no one else but mercenaries of death, tyranny and the U.S. imperialist jackboot. In the double-speak of Reaganism "freedom" is but a code word for U.S.-sponsored reaction and fascism. No wonder that the Nicaraguan workers and peasants are shouldering their rifles and taking careful aim to make sure that Reagan's "freedom fighters" receive the welcome that they deserve. No wonder that the watchword of the Nicaraguan people has become "No Pasaran!," expressing their determination that the CIA mercenaries "Shall Not Pass!"

U.S. Imperialism Has Not Changed Its Stripes

Justice, in any real meaning of the word, brands the CIA invasion of Nicaragua as a brutal and senseless crime. However in passing judgment on the men of the U.S. ruling class who are the perpetrators of this crime their past record must also be taken into account.

In the first half of this century these same criminals dispatched the U.S. marines to invade and occupy Nicaragua, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and other countries of Latin America.

In 1954 they had Eisenhower unleash the CIA to topple the reformist Arbenz government in Guatemala.

In 1961 they had J. F. Kennedy direct a band of CIA mercenaries to invade Cuba, resulting in the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs.

In 1965 they had Johnson dispatch 40,000 U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic to put down a popular insurrection.

In 1973 they had Nixon order the CIA coup d'etat against the reformist Allende government in Chile unleashing the terrible fascism of the Pinochet dictatorship.

And from 1979 to the present r they have had first Carter and now Reagan unleash the CIA operation against Nicaragua.

In Africa and Asia and the other regions of the world the record is the same. And the world's people will never forgive them for the genocidal war of aggression that they waged against Indochina.

And who is responsible for this unbroken record of invasions, coup d'etats, massacres and brutality? Both Democrat and Republican administrations alike bear the blame. And behind them responsibility lies with the U.S. imperialists whom they represent.

The Bank of America, ITT, Anaconda, United Brands and the other imperialist multinationals grow fat off the robbery of Nicaraguan cotton and coffee, Guatemalan bananas and Chilean copper. They make fortunes off of the toilers' desperate poverty and low wages in these countries. Meanwhile the U.S. imperialist government, the Pentagon and the CIA act as the enforcers of this exploitation and robbery.

It has been shown time and again that in their drive for super-profits the imperialists will stop at nothing. They are guided only by the law of the jungle. They operate on the principle that might makes right. They consider that no act is too immoral, too barbaric or too extreme when their profits are at stake. The record shows the U.S. imperialists who hold power in this country are pathological killers gone mad. And, as the record also shows, they are not about to be reformed by a little hypocritical scolding in the miserable talk shop known as the U.S. Congress.

But their crimes will not go unpunished. With each new outrage the imperialists sow the seeds of their own destruction at the hands of their victims. Nicaragua is proof.

It was half a century ago the U.S. marines invaded Nicaragua and rigged up the Somoza dynasty to make Nicaragua safe and profitable for the U.S. companies. But the people did not forget. Under the banner of Sandino, the martyred hero of the Nicaraguan resistance to the U.S. invaders, they rose up in arms and smashed the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship.

Today the CIA invasion is compounding the undying hatred of every working man and woman in Nicaragua for U.S. imperialism and stiffening their will to resist ten-fold. This is why, despite all of the tens of millions of U.S. dollars and all of the sophisticated U.S. arsenal behind them, the CIA invaders have gotten nowhere in the face of the aroused Nicaraguan people.

U.S. Imperialism, Hands Off Nicaragua!

The overthrow of the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship was a giant step forward for the Nicaraguan toilers. However, the Sandinista government that came to power in this revolutionary struggle is weakly formed; and it is ideologically unclear, being influenced by various bourgeois, social- democratic and revisionist trends. Contrary to the ravings of the Reaganites, it is not a Marxist-Leninist government, which is unfortunate because the revolution would be that much stronger if it were. Nevertheless the gains won by the workers and peasants in the revolution, the breath of freedom that they have achieved, is of enormous value for carrying forward their revolutionary struggle.

U.S. imperialism wants to snuff out this freedom. Nicaragua is giving Reagan nightmares about falling dominoes as the will to live free of the U.S.-backed oligarchs and fascists is setting Central America ablaze with popular revolt.

The American workers and oppressed must not let Reagan have his way. The Nicaraguan people must have the freedom to decide their own fate; they must have the right to self-determination without the bullying, threats and dictate of U.S. imperialism.

The heavy chains of U.S. imperialist slavery which weigh on the backs of the working people of Central America are chains on our backs as well. They are chains forged by the same U.S. multinationals, forged by the same U.S. government apparatus of repression and violence, and by the same capitalist-imperialist system of exploitation, which have saddled the American workers and downtrodden with unemployment, racism and Reaganite reaction. Our standpoint must be: Let us smash these chains that bind us!

The CIA invasion of Nicaragua has provoked burning indignation among the working and progressive people across the U.S. The class conscious workers and anti-imperialist activists must work to turn this indignation into action, to build the militant protests and demonstrations declaring: No to the CIA invasion of Nicaragua!

[Photo: On May 14th, 4,000 demonstrators in Boston denounced U.S. aggression against Nicaragua and the Salvadoran revolution. Photo shows part of the MLP contingent in the march.]

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Fight the nuclear warmongers!

Reagan's 'Star Wars' Fantasy Is Propaganda for a 'Winnable Nuclear War'

For the last two months the Reagan administration has been promoting the development of a new series of futuristic space weapons. According to Reagan, these weapons will make it possible to wage nuclear wars without civilian casualties. Why, weapons will simply kill weapons, leaving the people healthy and the countryside clean and sweet.

Reagan's absurd scenario proves that he is deadly serious in planning for a "winnable nuclear war." At one time, a Reagan administration official suggested that all it took to protect a person from the effects of a nuclear blast was a shovel to dig a hole in one's backyard. Now Reagan himself has gone on TV to sing the praises of nuclear war in the era of high technology.

Reagan's belief in a "winnable nuclear war" simply brings to light the bipartisan policy followed by the Pentagon. It shows that every worker and progressive person must take up the struggle against the nuclear-crazed imperialists in full earnest. There can not be the slightest hope that such diehard warmongers as Reagan and the Pentagon will see the light and become reasonable. Nor can there be the slightest trust in the Democratic Party fakers, who say they oppose Reagan but who approve one record-breaking military budget after another.

The fight against nuclear weapons must be based squarely on the fight against the imperialist system. Reagan's daydreams about winning a nuclear war are not a fluke, but an expression Of the drive of the American billionaires to dominate the entire world. To fight nuclear weapons, we must fight the imperialist exploiters and their two big political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.

All out for the struggle against imperialism and its preparations for a nuclear holocaust!

Reagan Dreams of "Star Wars"

"Star wars" is the pet name given by the bourgeois commentators to glamorize Reagan's new plans for an arms race in space. Actually, the Pentagon has been working on these weapons for years now. But Reagan chose to popularize these weapons in his TV speech of March 23 as a symbol of the allegedly bright prospects for militarism and as a proposed goal for the best talent of the entire country.

The main purpose of Reagan's speech was to demand yet another record-breaking military budget. The poor may starve, the public schools may deteriorate, but the Pentagon should grow fat. Reagan proposed an all-out drive to outarm U.S. imperialism's chief rival, the equally imperialist Soviet Union, and gain world military supremacy for the U.S. To this aim, Reagan proposed lavish expenditures on every weapon of mass slaughter he could think of, conventional or nuclear, modern or traditional. But he chose the "star wars" theme to symbolize his belief that American war technology was best and would win the arms race for the U.S.

The particular new high-technology weapons Reagan is proposing is an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, presumably to be installed in outer space. This system is based on developing laser and particle beam weapons. The laser weapon, for example, is presently being worked on along several different directions, including 1) the development of a powerful chemical laser itself; 2) designing a giant mirror capable of reflecting the laser beam with precision over thousands of miles; and 3) perfecting an aiming mechanism for the laser. As well, at Lawrence Livermore Labs in California they are working on a nuclear-pumped X-ray pulse laser weapon. It should be noted that these weapons are not just being considered for an ABM system in space, but for multiple other purposes, from destroying enemy satellites in space to being mounted on tanks and ships. Whether these weapons will ever amount to something is, however, yet to be seen.

Weapons for a "Winnable Nuclear War"

Reagan advertises these weapons as a means to destroy nuclear missiles while they are in flight. According to Reagan, these weapons will save mankind from the worry of nuclear war because they will be capable of preventing a single enemy missile from ever touching U.S. soil or that of our allies. By providing a 100% effective shield against nuclear missiles, they will render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." Why, the very next day Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger echoed this nonsense by talking of the goal of building an ABM system that would work "not just 50 percent or 60 percent of the time" but all the time." (New York Times, March 25, 1983, p. 6)

What cynical hogwash. If these weapons actually come off the drawing board and don't prove to be simply the product of the feverish imagination of the Reaganite warlovers, their role will not be "to save lives (rather) than to avenge them," as Reagan piously promises. On the contrary, they are designed to serve nuclear war.

In order to go to war, one must have not just spears, but also shields. In order to wage nuclear war, the militarists would like at least the delusion that they can destroy the enemy while remaining unscathed themselves. At the very least, they want to reassure the people that there is nothing to worry about in a nice, little, protracted nuclear war.

For decades the Pentagon has been trying to reassure the American people about how easy it is to cope with nuclear weapons. The Reagan administration has brought this nonsense into full public view. The purpose of these reassurances is to justify the official American policy of relying on nuclear war. Present-day American strategy is, in the event of a conventional conflict in Europe, that the U.S. will escalate the war to a nuclear confrontation.

Furthermore, it should be recalled that earlier this year the Defense Department document "Fiscal 1984-1988 Defense Guidance" was revealed that stressed plans to fight and win a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The "star wars" weapons proposed by Reagan are designed to serve this strategy in two ways: 1) to allow the U.S. to escape unharmed in such a war; and 2) to put economic pressure on the Soviet Union by escalating the arms race into new fields, since the document stresses that "major economic difficulties" face the Soviet Union and should be exploited by opening "new areas of major military competition" aimed at making Soviet arsenals obsolete.

Thus Reagan's proposals are designed to implement the strategy of preparing for a "winnable nuclear war." They are not designed to make all nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete," only the Soviet Union's weapons. In brief, Reagan is escalating the arms race in a mad drive to establish U.S. military supremacy.

Reagan's plans for a "winnable nuclear war" are a crime against the people of the entire world. His fantasies about how harmless such a war will be are not just the delusions of a senile old actor, but the battle plans laid down by the monopoly capitalist rulers of this country.

U.S. Imperialism Aims to Rule the World

But what is the aim for which the world is being threatened with the "winnable nuclear war"? It is that both U.S. imperialism and its chief imperialist rival, the Soviet Union, are seeking to establish world hegemony. Neither is satisfied with just a sphere of influence. Capitalists must seek to make the maximum profit and to strangle their competitors. Eat or be eaten, that is the law of capitalism. And so the capitalist U.S. and the revisionist Soviet Union strike out at each other. (The Soviet Union used to be a socialist country which stood for peace and the liberation of the toilers of all lands, but when Stalin died the revisionists took over, restored the evil capitalist system, and turned it into an aggressive imperialist superpower, just like the U.S.)

In his speech of March 23, Reagan pretended that the U.S. was far behind the Soviet Union and needed to catch up. What utter rot. This is just the tired-out old Pentagon screeches about how the U.S. is about to be overrun that they give every time they want to step up the arms race. The Pentagon has more than enough arms to defend the U.S. if that were its aim. It needs more and yet more arms because it seeks to vanquish the Soviet Union and replace a situation where the world is plundered by two superpowers by a situation where there is only one world policeman left. And it also needs more and more arms in order to suppress the valiant peoples rising in liberation struggles in El Salvador and elsewhere or fighting against U.S. mercenaries and CIA-financed reactionaries, as Nicaragua is doing.

But Reagan tried to drum up war hysteria by painting a picture of the U.S. as some sort of underdog. He did this by simply ignoring the U.S. arsenal and painting every Soviet weapon, real or imagined, in the most lurid light. For example, he stressed that the Soviet Union allegedly has more of this or that type of nuclear delivery system than the U.S. does. But, even according to official U.S. estimates, the U.S. has, overall, at least 20% more strategic nuclear warheads than the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union leads in one area, therefore, it must be far behind in some other area.

In fact, this numbers game with the nuclear warheads is irrelevant. The point is that the huge arsenals of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union are designed for war and aggression. In fact, both sides have been developing their own "star wars" programs for years in each's drive to gain an advantage over the other. Liberation will come not from one side overwhelming the other, but from struggle against both imperialisms. And since we live in the U.S., our job is to concentrate our attention on ''our own" imperialism, while supporting the struggle against all imperialisms.

The truth is that neither Reagan nor the Pentagon believe a single word about all this talk of how poor and powerless the U.S. is. On the contrary, the present military budgets are based on the exact opposite assumption -- that the U.S. is in a strong position and should make use of it to push for world supremacy. As we have pointed out above, the Pentagon even believes that by escalating the arms race it can put economic pressures, as well as military ones, on the Soviet Union.

Reagan's speech clearly set forth his idea of peace as that the U.S. calls the tunes and everyone else obeys. Reagan goes to the extent of suggesting that a bigger U.S. army would have prevented World Wars I and II. He pontificates that "There have been two world wars in my lifetime....had we been better prepared, peace might have been preserved." Reagan neglects to mention that the U.S. fought to win control of colonies, suppress liberation uprisings, and so forth. But instead of going into that, let us just point out that Reagan's clear idea is that a U.S. world policeman would bring peace to the world. Let the U.S. military grow bigger then anyone else's, and peace is secure.

Reagan's entire speech is permeated with this idea. He stresses that to have peace, the Pentagon must make "sure that any adversary Who thinks about attacking the United States or our allies or our vital interests concludes that the risks to him outweigh any potential gains." Here Reagan admits that his arms buildup is not simply designed to protect the U.S., but also "our allies" and "vital interests." These allies are fascist dictators around the world, like the late unlamented Somoza who was overthrown by the Nicaraguan people or the present fascist rulers of El Salvador. U.S. vital interests are supposed to stretch from one continent to the next, from the oil of the Middle East to the composition of the Chilean government and even to the question of whether an international airport is built in Grenada.

And how does the U.S. defend its allies and "vital interests." As Reagan says: "As we pursue our goal of defensive technologies, we recognize that our allies rely upon our strategic offensive power to deter attacks against them." (emphasis added) In short, all the talk about defensive weapons is eyewash. The real issue is to build up the "strategic offensive power."

Thus Reagan's speech is another sign that U.S. imperialism is going all out to prepare for new wars of aggression. The fact that Reagan spoke while CIA-financed mercenaries invaded Nicaragua underlines the seriousness of this question. The masses are faced with the fight against one imperialist intervention after another, and with the fight against nuclear weapons.

The Democratic Party "Opposition" Is No Opposition at All

The question is how to fight. The Democratic Party insists that it is the alternative. Vote Democratic, say the Democrats, and that will solve the problem. And if a Democratic Party Congressional majority doesn't solve the problem, then it is because we need a veto-proof two-thirds majority. And so on and so forth.

But the Democrats are no alternative. The fact is that preparations for a "winnable nuclear war" is the bipartisan policy of both the capitalist parties, Democrat and Republican. Only they have been assigned different roles by their capitalist masters. The job of the Republicans is to be the open party of reaction and nuclear war, while the job of the Democrats is to pursue the same policies under a veneer of peace, love, moderation, sweetness and light.

The truth is that the Democratic Party has worked for decades to build up the American nuclear war machine, from when war criminal Truman ordered two atomic bombs dropped on all-but-defeated Japan right down to the present. Even the latest war drive of U.S. imperialism was initiated by the Democrats. Carter's Presidential Directive 59 of July 1980 put forth the strategy for fighting a protracted nuclear war; Reagan is only following in his footsteps when he blabbers about the "winnable nuclear war." Carter began the recent series of record-breaking military budgets; ordered two atomic bombs dropped on all-but-defeated Japan right down to the present. Even the latest war drive of U.S. imperialism was initiated by the Democrats. Carter's Presidential Directive 59 of July 1980 put forth the strategy for fighting a protracted nuclear war; Reagan is only following in his footsteps when he blabbers about the "winnable nuclear war."

Reagan is simply following in his footsteps when he orders these budgets to be inflated even further. And the Democrats in Congress go merrily along with first Carter and then Reagan and vote ever more astronomical funds for nuclear war.

The Democratic "opposition" to Reagan's warmongering is nothing but hot air. Oh yes, the Democrats are for a slightly different budget. But, for all that, they are for increasing the military budget. They insist that they share with Reagan the aim of producing a U.S. military second to none, and they counterpose to Reagan's spurts of military spending the concept of a smooth, "sustainable" increase in militarism that will result in an even more powerful machine of mass destruction than what Reagan proposes. They are for cuts in military spending only when they perceive that it is possible to get "more bang for the buck" and kill more people at a cheaper cost.

It may be debated which of the two plans, that of Reagan or that of the Democratic Party, will give rise to the stronger military. But there is no room for doubt that the Democrats aim at the same goal as the Republicans and differ only in minor details and especially in the hypocritical labels they pin to the same policies. To support the Democrats is to give up the struggle against nuclear weapons altogether in favor of playing with paper labels.

And to support the Democrats is to give up the struggle against the brutal, aggressive intervention of the U.S. around the world. Consider the recent CIA invasion of Nicaragua, for example. The Democrats jump up and down shouting that they disagree with Reagan, that they don't like covert CIA action, and so forth. But do they sympathize with Nicaragua and send them messages of support?

Of course not. When one reads the full statements of the Democrats, one finds that they express misgivings about the CIA invasion of Nicaragua only because it is ineffectual and counterproductive. They are willing, instead, to spend even more money than Reagan proposed, if it is given to Honduras. But, at the same time, the Senate Democrats are willing to wait and see for a few months, because if the CIA invasion does succeed, all their objections will vanish.

The same goes for their stand on El Salvador. They do not sympathize with the guerrillas and send messages of support. On the contrary, their plans are designed to be better and more productive ways to defeat the guerrillas than Reagan's.

To Fight Nuclear Weapons, Fight Imperialism

A real fight against Reagan's "star wars" schemes and war preparations must go to the root of the problem.

The plans for a "winnable nuclear war" and the constant invasions and interventions by the U.S. armed forces around the world are no chance miscalculation by Reagan, no unfortunate "excess." They are conscious actions designed to achieve very definite goals: the subjugation and plunder of El Salvador, Nicaragua, the Palestinian people, etc.; the dividing up of spheres of influence with the Soviet Union and, eventually, a showdown with the Soviet Union over world hegemony; the ensuring of the profits of the multinational corporations, just as the CIA helped ensure ITT's position in Chile; and so forth. Hence the struggle against war preparations must be a struggle against this entire system of exploitation and plunder.

Such a struggle must be based on mobilizing the working class, youth and progressive people. It is the capitalists who strive to obtain maximum profits through the domination of other lands and also, incidentally, through lucrative military contracts. It is the working people who have a burning interest in supporting their class brothers around the world in the struggle for emancipation. Hence any real fight against the nuclear schemes of the Reaganites must be a mass struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors, and not a tea party to enlighten the generals and millionaires about their higher interests.

Such a struggle must direct itself firmly against both the two big parties of militarism and war. The Democrats and Republicans are both parties of the imperialist bourgeoisie. But the Democrats have a special role to play in subverting the people's movements against reaction, militarism and Reaganism.

It is the job of the "left wing" of the Democratic Party to gain influence in the popular movement throught empty chatter and politicians' promises; and when the Democratic Party gains influence, it uses it to prevent the workers, youth and activists from saying or doing anything that might irritate the capitalists and militarists or put a spoke in the rabid plans of the Pentagon. Instead, the Democrats advise the people to constructive suggestions on how to improve the Pentagon and enlighten the billionaires. Hence the struggle against militarism must expose the imperialist politicians and organize the masses to be independent of the imperialist parties.

The struggle against nuclear weapons must, in short, be based on the struggle against imperialism. This will ensure that it strikes real blows against militarism and imperialism. This will ensure that it serves as a lever for the socialist revolution that is the only way to put a stop to U.S. imperialism and the Pentagon warmongers once and for all.

Down with Reagan's plans for a "winnable nuclear war"!

Down with the Democrats and Republicans, parties of nuclear weapons and imperialism!

Build the mass struggle of the oppressed!

To fight nuclear weapons, fight imperialism!

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Reaganomics, the 'Atari Democrats' and the Fight Against Unemployment

(Below we publish excerpts from one of the speeches delivered by a representative of the MLP at the May Day celebration held in Buffalo on April 30. It has been edited for publication. The full text will be published in the next issue.)

Comrades and friends,

The disaster of unemployment is stalking the country. Fifteen million are plagued with joblessness, millions more work only part time, and the threat of layoffs continues to tick like a time bomb over those still lucky enough to find work. As insurance runs out and the utilities are cut off, as homes are lost and starvation looms like a dark shadow, the anger of the hard-pressed workers is growing.

But for Ronald Reagan, that arrogant mouthpiece of the billionaires, the misery of the unemployed is not an indictment of this rotten and crumbling capitalist system. Oh no, he considers unemployment to be a symptom of the wanton laziness of the unwashed workers. Indeed, Reagan believes that the miseries of the unemployed must be increased because only then will the workers come to understand the wonders of capitalism, get to work, and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It is this "humanitarian" concern for the workers that has led Reagan to slash to the bone even those minimal social benefit programs, like unemployment insurance, food stamps, welfare, and so forth. Certainly the unemployed should get relief, Reagan reasons, but only if they pay for it. Medical insurance: why yes, the workers just have to buy it. Job training: why yes, just steal millions from the unemployment funds to pay the monopolies to instruct a few of the jobless. Jobs for the youth: by all means, just reduce the minimum wage. Such are Reagan's solutions for unemployment: rob the unemployed of any relief, crush them into the ground, and when they cry out, just rob them again in the name of providing them assistance.

But then Reagan really doesn't like to talk about unemployment anyway. He prefers to drink champagne and gossip about how well the stock market is doing. After all, Reagan preaches, recovery is underway. Why, if the forces of the "free market" are just let loose, if the recovery is just allowed to "take hold," if America will just "stay the course," Reagan assures us that unemployment will simply vanish on its own....

The Atari Democrats and the Unemployed

Reaganomics is a cynical capitalist lie. But the Democratic Party's "opposition" to Reaganomics, and their supposedly "new" theories for solving unemployment, are nothing more than the same capitalist hoax sweetened up with honeyed phrases of sympathy for the distressed.

It will be remembered that ever since Reagan was put in office, the Democrats have been whining about what they consider to be the awesome, magnetic, almost god-like power of Reaganomics. The old liberalism has lost its magic, they say. Instead they need something "new," something like Reaganomics-with-sugar-on-it. And for several years now they have been on a holy quest for such a "new" theory.

Well, word has it that the Democrats may have found their Holy Grail. This month a new book called The Next American Frontier is being published. It contains the rambling "insights" of Robert Reich, a Harvard professor of economics, who has become the guru of the disciples of high technology known as the "Atari Democrats." Indeed, most of the chief Democratic Party candidates for president are turning to Reich for their theories. Not only Hart and Glenn, but even that old-Humphreyite liberal, Mondale, has begun to embrace various aspects of Reich's "theory," and these presidential hopefuls have been making pilgrimages to Reich's office seeking "inspired" guidance for their electoral campaigns.

Despite all of the fanfare, Reich has done little more than to coin a new slogan. Against the callous calls of Reaganomics for ever greater "capital investment," Reich has raised the watchword of "human capital investment." Thus the Goliath of Reaganomics is felled with a single stone.

It must be pointed out that the propagandists for Reich's theories emphasize that his slogan is not simply the answer to Reagan's "supply side economics," but is also the alternative to the old liberal Democratic slogan of "full employment." Not that the liberal Democrats actually did provide "full employment." Far from it. But they did pretend to be concerned for the plight of the unemployed. Now Reich drops this and embraces his own form of "trickle-down" theory. It is enough to point out that Reich does not even consider the question of providing any immediate relief for the unemployed. Indeed he takes the Reagan "recovery" as a given and goes on to discuss the long-term "structural" problems of the American economy. It is with such high-minded academic disdain for the miseries of 15 million jobless that Reich elaborates his "new" concepts which are supposed to put America back to work.

In the March and April issues of Atlantic Monthly Reich explains the basic concepts to be found in his new book. Chief among his ideas is that the American monopolies must step up their competition against the foreign capitalist monopolies and to do so they must desert "mass standardized production" as in steel, auto, chemicals, textiles, and so forth and turn to the "more profitable" fields of "high technology" and "specialty products." Of course Reich is forced to admit that the capitalists cannot really do without basic industry, and so for these he demands intensive automation and a shift to the "highest-valued and most competitive segments of these industries" which Reich promises "are likely to expand as their world markets develop, absorbing more labor and generating new wealth."

In the final analysis, Reich is simply glorifying the brutal policies that the American capitalists are already following and dressing them up as the cure for unemployment. For Reich the monopolies are not savagely oppressing the workers in auto, steel, textiles and the other industries. Oh no, they are just "structurally" changing the economy. For Reich the threat of a "shift" out of "mass standardized production" is not the standard blackmail of the monopolies to force concessions out of their workers. Oh no, this is the road "generating new wealth" and with it new jobs. Reich's theory turns out to be nothing more than an expression of a basic law of capitalism, long ago explained by Marx, that for the capitalists to exist they must constantly revolutionize the technical means of production. But Reich glosses up the necessary investments of the capitalists as something special, as "high tech," as if this constant process of capitalism has ever led to anything other than the greater exploitation and suffering for the workers.

In fact, Reich admits that he is merely restating what the monopolies are already doing. "Many of these changes are already occurring in American industry," Reich emphasizes, "The problem is that they are not occurring quickly enough."

In short, Reich favors the policies of Reaganomics, but he wants them carried out more fully, in a much bigger hurry. The reindustrialization program of the capitalist class remains the same, whether it was Carter's or now Reagan's. But now it is to be dressed up as "high tech." In adopting Reich's theories, the only progress made by the Democrats is in further discovering rationales for the impoverishment of the workers.

Far from solving unemployment, Reich's theories aim at using the industrial reserve army of the unemployed as a battering ram to drive down the wages and working conditions of those who are employed and as a ready-made pool of labor, a mass of human material, to move into the new and more profitable endeavors of the capitalists. Reich explains: "the economic future of countries lies in technically advanced, skill-intensive industries... the transition requires a basic restructuring of business, labor and government. A reorganization of this magnitude is bound to be resisted, because it threatens vested economic interests and challenges established values.... Because America's blue-collar workers often lack the skills and training necessary for flexible-system production, they have clung to Job classifications, work rules and cost-of-living increases that brought them some security under standardized production."

Thus, Reich suggests that the issue is to abolish cost-of- living increases and open up the plants to speedup, job combinations, and so forth. But he complains that the workers are resisting this.

But Reich has found an answer to this problem: "human capital investment." What this boils down to is a promise that if the workers give up their "vested interests" they will receive job training that will supposedly open up new job opportunities.

In one of his few concrete proposals, Reich makes clear how this is to work. Instead of creating jobs or carrying out government-run jobs training programs, Reich suggests that the unemployed workers be given "vouchers" that they could cash in at companies for on-the-job training. The companies that accepted the voucher would have their training costs paid by the government for up to three years. As can be seen, this would not create new jobs, nor is it intended to. Rather, at best, it would spread the competition for jobs around to a slightly wider section of workers. Instead of giving relief to the workers, relief would be given to the capitalists who could get the government to pay the workers' wages under the pretext of job training. This proposal has been so pleasing to the capitalists that Reagan himself has already written it up and put it before Congress as a part of his "jobs" program.

Along with such job training, Reich stresses that the government must provide "long-term capital" through subsidized loans, targeted tax breaks and so forth combined with temporary tariffs and import quotas to help the modernized American industries get on their feet. With such sympathetic treatment of the monopolies, it is really hard to see why Reich's ideas are considered to be any different from Reaganomics.

Reich does complain that the current across-the-board tax giveaways to the capitalists often lead to profit taking through corporate mergers and money manipulation instead of reindustrialization. Thus Reich proposes that the tax breaks be "targeted" to only those corporations that are willing to restructure. Such "targeting" is nothing more than the old refrain of the Carterites and bureaucrats of the AFL-CIO.

Along with this, Reich also complains that the monopolies and the government have to be brought together with the union bureaucrats for a new partnership against "foreign" competition. This too is but a restatement of the Carterite and union chieftains' appeals for tripartite reindustrialization boards.

Such "differences" with Reagan are but quibbles within an overall Reaganite program of subsidies for the capitalists, takeaways for the workers, and an empty promise that some day, when the "markets expand" etc., jobs and prosperity will trickle down to the workers. Reich's theories are nothing more nor less than a call for stepping up the government intervention to speed up achieving the aims of Reagan. The Democrats' new slogans of "high tech" and "human capital investment" are just the sugarcoating for the distasteful pill of Reaganomics.

The AFL-CIO "Jobs" Program

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Reaganite 'Economic Miracle' collapses in Chile

Chilean Workers Rise Up Against the Fascist Pinochet

A new wave of struggle is breaking out in Chile. This upsurge in protests and demonstrations is the biggest wave of struggle since the military coup of Pinochet nearly 10 years ago. The fascist regime of the gorillas had imposed a most brutal repression against the masses, but it was never able to crush the fighting spirit of the Chilean people. Thus, throughout the last decade, skirmishes and battles broke out constantly between the working people and the fascist tyrants. This spring, however, the Chilean workers and youth are taking their struggle into the streets on a widespread scale. All signs point to the development of a revolutionary crisis in Chile.

The most significant event to date in this new wave of struggle was the 24- hour nationwide social protest of May 12. This day of protest was the first nationwide demonstration against the government of Pinochet since he seized power in 1973. The protest was originally planned as a general strike called by a number of Chile's unions led by the country's largest union, the National Conference of Copper Workers. But when Pinochet sent tanks and troops to patrol some of the country's larger copper mines, obviously preparing to attack the strikers, organizers of the protest changed the form of the protest to scattered demonstrations throughout the country.

On the day of the action people throughout Chile protested by curtailing normal activities -- school, shopping, etc. -- and by demonstrating in the streets. Demonstrators marched in many sections of Santiago, as well as in other cities. Some areas of Santiago became loud centers of protest, as the masses honked car horns, banged pots and pans together, etc. Students demonstrating at the University of Chile were attacked by police with tear gas and clubs, and from there fighting spread to the city. One thousand five hundred protestors fought 300 police for control of downtown Santiago for hours, and fighting raged through the night of May 12 in some poor working class neighborhoods.

Throughout the day Pinochet's police attacked demonstrations with their customary brutality, in some instances blindly firing into areas where demonstrations were occurring, and killing two people. Six hundred demonstrators were arrested and 150 injured.

Then two days later, on May 14 soldiers and military police, in yet another outrage, began carrying out predawn raids on entire sections of Santiago. The army surrounded poor working class districts before dawn and then ordered all males over the age of 14 out of their homes. The men by the thousands were herded into soccer stadiums while their homes and identity papers were searched. Two hundred men were arrested as "anti-social elements" in this way on May 14. Such nazi-style methods are the hallmark of the Pinochet regime.

The May 12 nationwide protest was only the latest in a series of demonstrations this spring. In a demonstration three weeks ago in downtown Santiago, 600 workers and students fought a force of over 200 policemen after plainclothesmen attacked the demonstration. Rioting then spread to other parts of Santiago, and was only quelled after hours of fighting. Seventy-six people were arrested and 72 people were injured by the police.

Two thousand five hundred people demonstrated in downtown Santiago on March 26 in a demonstration called by leftist youth to protest the economic policies of Pinochet. As the youth marched through the downtown area, they were joined by hundreds of office workers. Demonstrators raised the slogans "Pinochet, Assassin" and "Work, Bread, Justice and Liberty." Attacked by the police with water cannons, the youths and workers threw up street barricades and fought the police with rocks throughout a 20- block area.

Besides Santiago, demonstrations have also occurred in Valparaiso and other cities. And other forms of protest have also been developing. For example, poor farmers are uniting to block state-held property auctions of farmers who are being foreclosed upon.

All forms of mass action are strictly illegal under the ferocious military regime of Pinochet. The defiance of the fascist dictates of the government by the masses shows once again that the people refuse to be intimidated by the terror. They are continuously finding ways and means to fight back. The actions breaking out across Chile today herald the impending doom of the fascist regime.

The "Chicago Boys" Advise Pinochet, and the Result Is Depression

A major factor propelling the Chilean toilers into motion at this time is the depressed state of the Chilean economy. Last year Chile's gross national product fell 14%, the biggest fall of GNP in Latin America. Real wages also fell 14%. Unemployment is 21% in Santiago and higher in the agricultural provinces. Inflation is 30% and climbing.

The depression in Chile is a big embarrassment for the Reaganites in the U.S., who for years promoted the "Chilean miracle" as a great example of the wonders of "free enterprise." It was Reaganomics in action. Indeed, Pinochet was closely advised in his policies by economists from the Chicago University monetarist school of Milton Friedman, a reactionary economist and Reagan advisor. Demagogues like William F. Buckley used to promote Chile as a model capitalist country in which inflation had supposedly been eliminated and prosperity had been achieved by all and sundry. Now the rising inflation and severe unemployment are giving the lie to these reactionaries and proving once again that capitalism means nothing but impoverishment for the working masses.

Under Pinochet, Chile was opened wide for ruthless exploitation by the imperialist monopolies and the Chilean capitalists, without even the mild restraints and social programs that are customary in many capitalist economies. State-owned companies were sold to private capitalists; price controls and government subsidies for mass consumer goods were ended; and foreign investors were encouraged to sink their claws into the land and labor of Chile. Pinochet's policies soon began to get into trouble. The worldwide economic crisis created further problems, bringing lower prices for Chile's copper exports. Pinochet ran up Chile's foreign debt to $18 billion, which is more per capita than Mexico's. Unable to pay the interest on this debt, Pinochet appealed to the International Monetary Fund for a bailout this spring. Along with a loan, the IMF provided Pinochet with a new austerity plan to impoverish the masses even further. This plan includes a hike in personal taxes and devaluation of the peso.

The economic depression is having severe effects on the toiling masses in Chile. Once one of the most prosperous cities in Latin America, Santiago is now becoming a center for begging and temporary work at starvation wage levels. As a miserable sop to the masses, Pinochet has drafted 13% of the work force into an emergency public works program. Most of the workers in this program are women who are paid $27 per month plus $5.50 per month for each child under eight years of age. This monthly wage scale is barely enough to buy bread for two weeks.

Pinochet's Solution to the Depression: Intensified Repression

However, Pinochet's main response to the economic crisis has been to clamp down on dissent and disrupt attempts by the toiling masses to organize their struggle. Not only does Pinochet send troops against workers' demonstrations, as mentioned above, but the military ruthlessly attacks any sort of collective activity by the toilers. For example, in the cities communal soup kitchens have been set up, some by unemployed workers themselves and others by church and charitable groups. But the military is so rabid it has even shut down some of these. They are afraid that these may function as centers of discussion and organization among the masses. The government also recently expelled three foreign priests from the country for the crime of encouraging the poor to demand higher welfare payments. Reports of torture by the regime have sharply increased in the last year. And Pinochet is warning that anyone going on strike will "face the consequences."

Despite this repression, the toilers are organizing increasingly larger and bolder mass actions. This is putting the regime into crisis and causing squabbles among the rich capitalists, right-wing nationalists and military officers who have been Pinochet's main base of support. Pinochet has changed finance ministers four times in the past year but has not been able to solve any of the country's economic problems. Many Chilean capitalists, fearful of the rising class struggle, are hoping for some "moderate" alternative. And in March, five bourgeois opposition parties, which are officially illegal, issued a joint declaration demanding elections. These are not parties of the left which were the target of Pinochet's repression in 1973 but are rightist parties which originally supported the military coup but have since become disenchanted. These parties are scared of the mass struggle. They want to avoid a revolution and instead seek to give a civilian face to the ruthless dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Down With the Fascist Regime!

But for the working masses of Chile, the alternative offered by such parties is not the path of liberation from fascist tyranny. Only the path of revolutionary struggle offers hope for the toilers. The Chilean workers, peasants and youth must rise up and overthrow the Pinochet regime. The working class must prepare to put its own class stamp on the overthrow of the fascist tyranny and develop it into a socialist revolution against the bourgeoisie. It cannot be forgotten that it was the Chilean bourgeoisie which give birth to the Pinochet regime, although U.S. imperialism was the midwife.

After the CIA-organized coup successfully put Pinochet into power in 1973, the imperialists and domestic capitalists thought they had done away with class struggle in Chile. In consolidating his power, Pinochet murdered 30,000 people, and drove over a million into exile. In gratitude for his repression of the left and workers' organizations, Pinochet was given complete loyalty by the rich capitalists of Chile.

Despite Pinochet's fierce repression, however, strikes and skirmishes against the fascist regime continued through the mid-1970's. And now the punctured balloon of the "Chilean economic miracle" is providing new impetus to the class struggle. As the economic crisis deepens, the Pinochet regime, which was widely hailed by the imperialists a few years ago as a model of prosperity and stability, is today being exposed as a fumbling idiot about to lose its grip on the country. The stage is being set for a new revolutionary onslaught on the fascist regime by the workers and progressive masses of Chile.

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'Unemployed Workers' Song'

From the Boston Branch of the MLP

[Sheet music.]

Well, I worked many years in a factory,

Yeah, I worked many years in a factory.

Made millions for the greedy bourgeoisie, my friend,

And I ain't gonna be treated this-a-way!

Got fired and a robot took my place,

I got fired and a robot took my place;

And those with jobs are pushed at a killin 'pace, my friend,

And I ain't gonna be treated this-a-way!

Been lookin' for a job most every day,

I've been lookin' for a job most every day;

But everywhere they're tellin' me no way, my friend,

And I ain't gonna be treated this-a-way!

Reagan took my benefits away

Yeah, Reagan took my benefits away;

He said the rich they need more help today, my friend,

And I ain't gonna be treated this-a-way!

Well, the rich with all their wealth ain't satisfied,

No, the rich with all their wealth ain't satisfied;

They always want to take more from our hides, my friend,

And we ain't gonna be treated this-a-way!

Well, the unemployed and the employed must unite,

Yeah, the unemployed and the employed must unite!

We've got to organize our common fight, my friend,

And we ain't gonna be treated this-a-way!

Mass struggle is the way we've got to fight,

Yeah, mass struggle is the way we've got to fight!

'Cause millions in the street it is our might, my friend,

And we ain't gonna be treated this-a-way!

The only way to end this misery,

Yeah, the only way to end this misery,

We've got to overthrow the bourgeoisie, my friend,

And we ain't gonna be treated this-a-way!

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The fight against racism in Chicago

Tokenism or the mass struggle

The filthy racist campaign that was whipped up in the recent Chicago mayoral elections is being continued today.

During the election campaign the Republican candidate, Bernard Epton, became the figurehead for a Reaganite program of racist terror and segregationism, of handouts to the monopolies and cutbacks for the working masses. Not only the Reaganite Republicans, but also the bosses of Chicago's Democratic Party machine rallied to the banner of Epton and actively campaigned for him as the "great white hope'' for the city.

But Epton lost. And now the local heads of the Democratic Party machine have again turned to race baiting in an effort to maintain their lucrative posts in the City Council and their positions of power over the working and oppressed masses. Under the "machine'' rule, Chicago has long been a city of rampant segregationism, fascist gang terror and brutal murders by the police. The current race baiting by the "machine" bosses is a signal to step up the discrimination and terror against the working masses and to take part with the racist offensive of the Reagan government.

This vile racism must be opposed! A real fight against Reaganism must be unleashed!

But Harold Washington, the newly elected Democratic Party mayor, does not stand for such a fight. Whether it is his calls for tax breaks for the rich, or his austerity cutbacks against the workers, or his appeals to beef up the racist police department, Washington's program differs little from that of Epton or the Democratic Party machine. His disagreement with them centers almost exclusively on putting a few more black politicians into office. And, on this issue too, Washington has declared that he is more than willing to compromise.

The black, latino and white workers cannot rely on Washington in the fight against Reaganite reaction. Rather, they must build up their own class movement, a movement independent of and in struggle against the capitalist class and their Republican and Democratic Parties.

The Washington Program: No Obstacle to Reaganite Reaction

Washington has declared time and again that he is a stern adversary of Reaganism, a candidate of reform, a champion of the interests of the oppressed nationalities and workers. But a quick look at his actual policies gives the lie to these exaggerated claims.

During the election campaign, the Chicago Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party not only condemned the Reaganite campaign of Epton, but it also showed that Washington represented no real alternative. It exposed the fact that, to the extent Washington descended from the lofty mountain of empty rhetoric to concrete proposals, his policy actually resembled Reaganomics.

For example, Washington promised "full employment." But his concrete proposals all revolved around the need to "create a climate for business to come in." He advocated measures such as eliminating the corporate head tax, saving the capitalist monopolies some $18 million a year; increasing the state income tax and utility bills of the working masses; and going on an "austerity city budget" cutting jobs, wages and services. For all the fine talk of "full employment" this is just another version of Reagan's trickle down" economics, where impoverishing the working masses to help out the rich corporations is supposed to somehow, some day, provide jobs for the unemployed.

Similarly, Washington pledged to reform the racist police department. But is he going to get rid of the killer cops? No, he proposes to hire an additional 1,000 policemen, expand the Chicago Transit Authority force and increase patrols.

Is Washington going to stop their racist attacks? Well, that would be hard to imagine since he has failed to raise a peep against any of the innumerable and well-publicized police rampages through black and latino communities over the last several years.

Is he even going to criticize them? No, not even that. Throughout his campaign Washington preferred to repeat over and over how they are an "excellent police department." The one change Washington has been willing to make is to get rid of the notorious racist chief Brzeczek. But this came only after Brzeczek went on television to campaign for ex-mayor Byrne. And even then Washington made sure to praise the "many fine officers" including O'Grady, Brzeczek's right-hand man. Such is the nature of Washington's promised reforms.

Since taking office, Washington has been in a rush to put his policies into practice. In his inaugural speech Washington announced the beginning of an austerity program including an immediate freeze on city hiring and a freeze on the wages of city workers. Only a day later, he stressed that "city programs are going to have to be ended and the fat removed until they are sinew and bone." He has begun a campaign for an increase in state income taxes. And he is now "reassessing" his promise to not raise local taxes. Nowhere is Washington even suggesting that the burden of taxation should be shifted onto the rich. No, this is a program of impoverishing the workers.

Only a few days after taking office Washington also went to work on the police department. O'Grady became the acting police chief and Washington attended the formal farewell celebration for Brzeczek. Never missing an opportunity, Washington seized the moment to again praise the racist police department for having "Grown into one of the best and finest police departments in the entire world."

Before a week was out, Washington even began backsliding on his promises to do away with the patronage system. He introduced a lawsuit appealing a court order that bars the city from hiring employees on a political crony basis. Washington demanded that he be allowed to hire 1,200 people who pledge loyalty to him. It seems that Washington may be against patronage only when it applies to others besides himself.

No matter how you put them together, Washington's policies simply do not add up to a fight against Reagan- ism. Rather they are what has become the typical program of the Democratic Party: honeyed phrases to sweeten up the bitter impoverishment and oppression of the working masses. Washington has become mayor, but it's politics as usual at city hall.

A Fight for Tokenism and the Spoils of Office

It should not be thought from all of this that Washington has no differences with Reaganism or the local machine of the Democratic Party. He has one. Washington has steadfastly campaigned for putting a few more black politicians into the offices of the city government. And this campaign has led to the current bruhaha in the City Council.

As soon as Washington came into office he began moves to replace some of the old Democratic Party machine bosses who head up the powerful committees of the City Council with some of his black allies. But Vrdolyak, the head of the Chicago Democratic Party machine, over-trumped him. Rallying 29 "machine" votes on the 50-man council, Vrdolyak removed the few black committee chairmen that there were, relegated them to the most insignificant of the committees, and put his own white allies in the more powerful posts.

This fight over the spoils of office is being portrayed as a stirring struggle against racism.

It is true that the encrusted Chicago Democratic Party machine is racist to the core. It is true that it has for years presided over the most notorious segregation in housing and education, over widespread job discrimination and over brutal police terror. It is so racist that it desires the absolute minimum number of blacks in responsible government positions.

But Washington will not fight the "machine" racism which affects the broadest sections of the working masses. He fights only for tokenism, for a few black faces in high places.

In this Washington has the backing of the national Democratic Party. It threw some $70,000 into his election campaign and sent its superstars like Kennedy, Mondale and Glenn trooping to Chicago to stump for Washington. The national Democratic Party leadership understands that value of tokenism.

Tokenism is a favorite weapon of the capitalists to deceive the masses, to claim that progress is being made, to pretend that the oppressed black people are at last finding their place in the sun. Over the last decade tokenism has been made the policy in city after city, in Hatcher's Gary, in Coleman Young's Detroit and elsewhere. But nowhere has it ever led to relief for the long-suffering black workers.

The fight against racism requires, not the tokenism of Washington, but the serious mass struggle of the working class.

For a Real Fight Against Reaganism

The racist onslaught in Chicago must be fought. The racist bosses should be condemned at every turn and a stern mass struggle organized against discrimination and racist terror.

But such a struggle cannot be waged with the likes of Harold Washington.

Washington promised a fight. But he has already cancelled out of speaking at an anti-war rally; he has called a halt to any marches against the racist "machine" bosses; and he has busied himself with "negotiations" for a "compromise" on the City Council.

Washington promised reforms. But he himself is now presiding over the austerity attacks on the workers.

Washington promised to stand independent. But he is proving that he is just another Democratic Party politician who pledges you the sun, moon and stars on election day, but delivers cold oppression once in office.

Yesterday many voted for Washington. Today many are becoming disillusioned with him. This is a good sign A serious fight against the Reaganite program of racism, starvation and war preparations can only be organized il the workers break with the silver tongued liars of the Democratic Party and build up their own independent movement. The black, latino and white workers must push forward their mass actions, forge solid organizations and heighten their class consciousness. Uniting in their own independent movement the working class is an invincible force, a force that can smash the Reaganite offensive and put an end to all racist oppression and capitalist misery.

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On the trial of the murderers of William Atkinson in Boston:

Court Gives Racist Killers an Easy Ride

(The following article is taken from the April 17, 1983 issue of the Boston Worker, newspaper of the Boston

Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA.)

On Friday, April 8, Francis Devin and William Joyce, two members of a racist gang in Savin Hill, were sentenced to 6 to 12 and 7 to 15 years Respectively on "involuntary manslaughter" convictions. This is in connection with the brutal murder of William Atkinson, a black worker, on March 13, 1982. They will be eligible for parole in four years or less. The capitalist politicians and news media are proclaiming that justice has been done, that the government is cracking down on racist gangs, and so on. But the whole history of this case shows that these pious statements by the officials are the utmost hypocrisy. It is these same officials who have been organizing and protecting the racist gangs in Boston for years. In fact, the government has gone to great lengths to cover up this murder and to minimize the charges' against the racist thugs who killed William Atkinson.

Attempts to Cover Up the Racist Murder

In spite of eyewitness accounts, for nearly a week after the murder, the police claimed that they didn't know whether the murder was racially motivated or not, nor who had done it. Due to the outrage of both the black and the white masses, the police were forced to arrest the racists. But they treated them with kid gloves, coaching them through questioning, and only charging them with a minor crime of assault. When the mass protest continued to grow, District Attorney Flanagan invented the theory that a train killed William Atkinson, and then only reluctantly added the charge of "involuntary manslaughter."

In order to push its theory that "the train did it," the government and the capitalist media have completely suppressed the statements and testimony of the train driver, who staunchly maintains that his train definitely did not hit William Atkinson. And in order to fit the "train did it" theory, the MBTA [Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority] management has altered its dispatcher's records of the train arrivals and departures. It demoted the starter at Harvard Station who recorded the actual time the train left the station: a time which indicates that the train had already gone by at the time William Atkinson was killed. The MBTA management has tried hard to make the train driver go along with the "train did it" story. They have demoted him to a fare collector, and have reduced his pay twice (while admitting that they don't have a shred of concrete evidence). They even made this man, who is black, work as a collector at the Savin Hill Station, where he was subject to threats and abuse by gang members and their friends. As well, they gave out the phone number of his booth so that racists could call and threaten him at work.

Then in May, 1982, the MBTA authorities offered to reinstate the driver -- as a train guard. But when he staunchly refused to budge from his original story, and demanded full reinstatement as a motorman, the MBTA withdrew its offer. They have kept him as a collector ever since.

All of this is known to the court, the police, and the news media. Such are the lengths to which these gentlemen, who claim to be carrying out justice, have gone to suppress the truth.

The Government Organizes and Protects Racist Gangs

This cover-up for the racists is nothing new. For years, this gang has carried out terrorist attacks on blacks and anti-racist whites with the full protection of the police and other authorities. A few years ago, this gang stoned the house of a Guatemalan family night after night until the family was forced to move. Each night the family called the police, but the police would wait around the corner for as long as six hours before responding. The racists were never punished for this nor any other of the many stonings they carried out against blacks and anti-racist whites. In April 1981, William Joyce and other members of this gang brutally assaulted two black men on the subway, as well as two white men who came to their aid. Joyce was let off with a two-year suspended sentence. He participated in the murder of William Atkinson while he was still on probation for the 1981 attack. And yet when this fact came out at a pretrial hearing, instead of sending him to jail for violating probation, the judge, at the recommendation of the district attorney, lifted the previous charges and sentence.

Ever since the fascist anti-busing movement was organized out of City Hall in 1974, the government has been systematically organizing and fostering racist gangs in various neighborhoods. These gangs are not "just kids," the way the capitalist news media claims. Their leaders are hardcore thugs with close ties to the police, politicians, and government bureaucrats. These gangs have been organized as an extralegal arm of the government -- as a tool to do a lot of its dirty work of terrorizing the black people and forcing them to live in segregated ghettos. They are also a weapon for dividing the working class along racial lines in the face of the offensive of the rich.

New Segregationist Plots

Today the government may pretend to be cracking down on the racist gangs which it has spawned. But this is only because they know that the anger of the black people against racist persecution has reached the boiling point, as they saw in Miami. The government also knows that the racist gangs have become extremely hated by all the masses, black and white. And so in order to divert the anger of the masses away from itself, the government is forced to slap the racists on the wrists. But even while the officials are pretending to get tough with the racists, they are hatching up new segregationist plots against the black people and the rest of the working class.

It is very interesting that the "getting tough with the racists" talk comes just at the time when the federal court and the Boston School Committee are introducing a plan to completely resegregate the Boston schools. According to this so-called "freedom of choice" plan, students will no longer be assigned to schools, but instead, their parents will choose which schools to send them to. But this is just a setup for racist gangs to terrorize black students coming into predominantly white neighborhoods into "freely choosing" to return to the segregated ghetto schools. This of course is the plan of the government. Birt in the hope that people will not see through this plan, the authorities are putting on a false front of finally cracking down on the racist gangs.

This is the scheming racist mentality of the authorities who are able to smile and proclaim that they are cracking down on the racists, while at the very same time they are using all kinds of dirty tricks to protect them.

With Reagan as their chief racist, the rich are going all out to completely segregate the black people from the rest of the working class, and to deny them even the most elementary rights. The monopoly capitalists want to split and weaken the working class in the face of their offensive of starvation and war. They are using the racist gangs and more and more unleashing police terror in an effort to impose fascist slavery on the entire working class.

The continuing protection of the murderers of William Atkinson by the government shows for the millionth time that the capitalist government in the U.S. will never bring justice or equality for the black people. The path promoted by the liberal Democrats and the black community misleaders of relying on the courts or on the good will of the government has once again proved bankrupt. The only answer to the racist offensive of the rich is for the working masses to take things into their own hands, just like when the Klan was run out of town in October. Demonstrations, revolutionary mass action, and building the independent movement of the working class: this is the path that we must take!

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Buffalo, N.Y.:

Students protest Reaganite budget of Democratic Governor Cuomo

[The Buffalo Anti-Imperialist Newsletter masthead.]

(The following article is taken from The Buffalo Anti-Imperialist Newsletter, organ of the Union of Anti- Imperialist Students in Buffalo, Issue No. 19, April 5, 1983.)

In January, Governor Cuomo announced a state budget proposal that must have made Reagan proud! This budget was a big attack on the people -- the workers, the poor, the students -- while its ax carefully spared the rich. Thus, Cuomo, the great hero of the Democratic Party, the man who was touted as a savior from Reaganism during his election campaign, has proved to be nothing but a Reaganite himself!

The original budget proposal called for the permanent layoff of 8,400 State workers and the elimination of 5,700 more positions through attrition and early retirement. These were to include over 3,000 layoffs in the State University system. The budget also would have meant substantial cuts in services, including in education. And it called for bleeding the people even further through increased taxes on the working masses, big tuition hikes for students and other means.

Following Cuomo's announcement of his budget, there was an immediate flurry of activity in a rush to implement the attacks, even before the budget became official. At UB for example, 77 layoffs were carried out and a massive hysteria was created about cuts in departments, further layoffs, etc. The university staff was terrorized with extreme job insecurity as University President Sample threatened layoffs one day, restored jobs the next and then turned around and talked layoffs again. In many other state institutions as well, workers were given pink slips even while the debate over the budget was still raging in Albany.

Cuomo's vicious Reaganite budget proposal has been met with mass opposition. When Cuomo visited Buffalo shortly after his announcement, there were numerous demonstrations and pickets organized, almost everywhere he went. And later, at both Buffalo State and UB, rallies were organized to denounce the layoffs, tuition hikes and other attacks.

Now a state budget has been finalized and in it some of the consequences of the original budget proposal have been softened. There can be no doubt that the mass opposition played a role in this. At UB for example, Sample has reinstated the 77 staff members who were laid off. Now, all of the official propaganda is trying to create a rosy picture that the worst is over and everyone should calm down and get back to business-as-usual. But the masses must not let down their guard. They must continue their opposition to the new state budget. The basic character and aims of this Reaganite budget have not changed at all. It still calls for layoffs numbering in the thousands, cuts in services and increases in taxes and fees of all kinds which the people will be forced to pay. In particular, the students still face the prospects of a $300 tuition hike, a step toward making college education a privilege reserved for the rich. The students should continue to fight this attack. They should organize mass actions to DENOUNCE CUOMO'S REAGANITE BUDGET!

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Brooklyn:

A Protest Against Racist Police Murder

[The West Indian Voice masthead.]

(The following article is reprinted from The West Indian Voice, newspaper of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group, May 1983 issue.)

On March 19, the residents of Fort Greene joined by people from other areas took to the streets of Fort Greene in a demonstration against yet another coldblooded racist murder of a black youth by the police in Brooklyn.

On the night of Tuesday March 15, Larry Dawes and Corey Gibson, two 19-year-old black youths, were riding their moped in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn when a police car started chasing them. Under the pretext that the youths had simply run a red light, the cops deliberately rammed their car into the moped, sending it crashing into a parked car. As if this was not outrageous enough, the officer driving deliberately kept on the gas -- hitting the youths again! Still thirsty for blood, the two cops emerged from their car and started stomping and kicking the youths who were already lying in the street, with one already dead or near death. According to Corey Gibson, the surviving youth, "when they pulled the car off of us they kicked Larry in the head three times. They kicked Larry three times in the head for nothing." In the end Larry Dawes lay dead and Corey Gibson was left with two fractured legs, a gash under his chin which later required five stitches, and other lacerations.

But that is not all! The police department has officially tagged the whole thing as a mere traffic accident!! And the official police news report has attempted to make the two cops involved look like crimefighting heroes -- so alert to the world of crime, that they knew instantly that the youths had to be riding a stolen, unregistered moped! But this has been proven to be nothing but a vicious lie, cooked up simply to slander the victims of this hideous crime and to cover up the responsibility of the police for this act of deliberate murder. In fact, numerous eyewitnesses came forward on the spot to state clearly that the incident was no mere "traffic accident" but a plain coldblooded murder, and to militantly denounce the police as racists and murderers.

Outraged by this hideous murder, people from the surrounding area organized a demonstration in front of the 78th police precinct on March 19 voicing their anger and disgust, demanding an end to the police terror and the wild police chases, and demanding "Justice for Larry Dawes." Continuing with this sentiment, over 300 people attended the murdered youth's funeral on March 21.

The murder of Larry Dawes is another striking example of the unrestrained racist and terroristic mentality in which the capitalists have groomed their police forces to unleash them on the masses. They are given a virtual blank check to act as judge, jury and executioner. Proof of this, is the warm protection and instantaneous cover-ups which the police department and city government provide their murderers. And this is because the increasing police terror goes hand in hand with the vicious discrimination, the hunger and the growing unemployment and cheese lines filled by the poor and the oppressed.

Therefore the working masses should place their hopes in nothing other than in developing the strength of their own struggle against police terror and the other attacks carried out by the capitalist oppressors.

[Photo: Fort Greene residents demonstrating against the racist police murder of Larry Dawes.]

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Miami:

Black youth battle the racist police

(The following article is excerpted from an article appearing in The West Indian Voice, newspaper of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group, May 1983.)

A tense and volatile situation exists in Miami. The racist city officialdom and their police forces are determined to crush the spirit of resistance of the black people. The black people are teeming with anger and outrage at the worsening conditions of unemployment, hunger and poverty; at the wanton police beatings and murders. Recently, fierce clashes again erupted between the black youth and the racist police forces.

An Arbitrary Assault on the Black Youth

On Sunday, March 13, under the pretext of simply curbing excessive noise, large numbers of police swarmed down on 500 black youths at a disco block party in Africana Square in the Liberty City section of Miami. Just making too much noise was sufficient to warrant an army of well-armed, club wielding police. In fact, it is clear that this was just an arbitrary pretext to literally beat the black youth into submission, to seek retribution in blood for the recent revolts by the working masses against police terror and to try out the latest "riot control" tactics which the police have polished up and refined since the last mass rebellion there. But the black people of Liberty City replied to these latest attacks by fighting the police, declaring once again that they have had enough!

Joined by other working people from the area, the youths replied by peppering the police with rocks and bottles. They threw up barricades made out of dumpsters and hurled their contents at the police. They then set the dumpsters ablaze to keep the police at a distance. Terrified by this response and seeking desperately to prevent the fighting from spreading and engulfing the entire Liberty City area, the police cordoned off a 40-block area. In the area which the police placed under siege, the militant youth battled the police fiercely for at least four hours, raided two business places and damaged at least two police cars while suffering 31 arrests and three injuries. The youths then staged a spirited and militant march down a four-lane thoroughfare, angrily denouncing the police terrorists.

This latest incident shows once again that despite all the talk about "rehabilitation" and empty promises about "justice" being made to prevail, the black people of Miami remain severely discriminated against and continue to live under a reign of racist police terror.

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Ford Assembly Plant in Chicago:

Auto workers reject 'lifetime job security' fraud

On March 19, the workers at Chicago's Torrence Avenue Assembly Plant overwhelmingly defeated the so- called "lifetime job security" program cooked up by the Ford Motor Company and the top leadership of the UAW. The workers realized that far from "job security" this program meant enormous job-eliminating concessions. Over 79% of the workers voting said "No!" to this vicious concessions scheme. This is an important setback for the concessions railroad of the auto monopolies and the UAW sellouts and another sign that the rank-and-file workers are rallying to the fight against concessions.

In 1982, when Ford and the UAW hacks were attempting to shove wage and benefit concessions down the workers' throats, the "lifetime job security" proposal became the centerpiece of the capitalists' argument on why the workers should accept concessions. Together Ford, the UAW heads and the news media cranked out one story after another claiming that the takeback contract was a "victory" for the workers because they had just "won" "lifetime job security." Doug Fraser, then the president of the UAW, went on national TV to hail the new mood of "cooperation" and harmony with Ford. He promised that the constant fear of layoffs would soon be a thing of the past because, starting with two plants, the program would eventually be spread to every auto plant in the country.

In the newspapers and TV there was all kinds of speculation about which plants would be "lucky" enough to be picked for the pilot "lifetime job security" program. In the end, the Torrence Avenue plant was one of the two plants chosen in the country. Then again the capitalist news media ran countless stories about how workers from other parts of the country were jealous that their plants had not been chosen for the program.

However, when the actual "lifetime job security" proposal was shown to the Torrence Avenue workers they became hopping mad. All in all the proposal contained 22 different concessions, while the promise of job security proved to be nothing but a damned lie. The sole aim of the program was to step up job combinations, job elimination and speedup. The rank-and-file workers loudly denounced it as a "fraud," "a cruel hoax" and "a plan to get local concessions."

Just take a look at three of the more outrageous provisions of the proposal:

* First, there would be layoffs from another round of job-eliminating productivity measures, and then only 80% of those workers still on the job would be provided "lifetime job security." But what is more, the "lifetime" security would only last 18 months, that is, until the contract expires in September, 1984.

* Major job elimination would take place in the plant through the combination of a whole slew of job classifier tions. For example, all maintenance welder jobs would be eliminated and all other maintenance workers would be forced to do welding.

* Ford and the UAW heads would ' set up a joint committee to "selectively screen" the records of the workers on layoff. This committee could then wipe out the recall rights of any worker that the committee decided "didn't meet the minimum attendance and work-related standards" regardless of the worker's seniority.

The workers' rejection of this "lifetime job security" fraud is a significant step in the fight against concessions. It has provided an exposure that the auto monopolies are not about to trade concessions for job security. Rather, they are solely concerned to maximize their profits by snatching concessions from the workers and then snatching more in the form of job elimination and overwork of those still employed. Further, this struggle has shown the disgusting depths of treachery of the leaders of the UAW, who tried to foist this concessions deal onto the rank and file. The fight against concessions must go ahead. But it can only do so through a vigorous fight against the sellout union chieftains.

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GM workers resist the bitter fruits of concessions

It has been a little over a year since the GM auto billionaires extracted $2.5 billion in wage and benefit concessions from the GM workers. Since then General Motors has been implementing its concessions program in plant after plant. The assembly lines are being sped up, robots and computers are being installed everywhere, thousands of jobs are being eliminated or combined, and the workers are being put on forced overtime week after week.

During this period of outrageous slave-driving, the GM tycoons have raked in billions in profits -- $962 million for '82 and a whopping $653 million for the first quarter of '83! But is GM Chairman Roger Smith satisfied with this? Not a chance! He wants more and more. Let's let Mr. Smith speak for himself: "I think we did pretty well. It's not where I want to be but compared to last year, it is better."

In the past year, the UAW hacks with Fraser at the head have enthusiastically supported the auto billionaires' drive for concessions. They've cheered on GM's demands for local concessions in plant after plant. But these local concessions plots have not fared well; many have gone down to defeat.

In GM plants across the country, the seeds of rebellion against concessions are beginning to sprout. From their own experience the workers are seeing that the UAW sellouts can't be trusted for a single minute. On the lines, workers are resisting the productivity drives; protests and picket lines have sprung up against layoffs and forced overtime. And workers are calling for local strikes against the bitter fruits of concessions.

Kansas City Assembly Plant

This spring more than 7,000 assembly plant workers at the Kansas City plant have been put on forced overtime, while 2,000 other plant workers remain on long-term layoff.

Responding to this outrage, hundreds of workers have vigorously denounced the GM productivity drive and set up picket lines outside the assembly plant on Saturdays when the forced overtime has been scheduled.

Delaware Assembly Plant

Here as in other plants across the country, GM has begun eliminating jobs through instituting "mass relief" (shutting down the assembly lines for breaks) instead of the standard "tag relief" (individual breaks while the line continues to run). This mass relief program has meant the immediate elimination of 450 relief men's jobs.

The Delaware Assembly Plant workers are demanding that the mass relief program be immediately stopped. Recently they overwhelmingly voted for a local strike on this and other issues.

California Van Nays Assembly Plant

In March workers staged a mass protest and picket demanding that GM rehire laid-off workers and reinstitute a second shift at the plant.

California GM Workers Protest Against Forced Transfers to Oklahoma City

This spring GM announced that laid-off workers with high seniority (10 or more years) from two closed California assembly plants -- Fremont (near Oakland) and Southgate (near Los Angeles) -- would be forced to move more than 1,500 miles across the country to Oklahoma City to fill 400 job openings there when second shift production is started up. Workers with 15, 20 and even 25 years seniority were told: Pick up your families, move to Oklahoma City, or you will lose all of your benefits, seniority, and recall rights!

At both plants, hundreds and hundreds of workers turned out at union meetings to denounce GM and the UAW top leadership who together cooked up this scheme.

Workers Denounce the GM/Toyota Fremont Deal

Early this spring, General Motors and Toyota Motor Co. announced a joint venture to produce a sub-compact car at the closed Fremont, California Assembly Plant. Right from the start, it was clear that GM and Toyota had insidious plans for the thousands of Fremont workers on permanent layoff. In a joint statement the heads of GM and Toyota announced that they had just formed a "new company" under "new ownership"; that they were "starting from scratch"; that they would not be bound by any previous UAW/GM contracts; that they were going to hire a "new work force" for the plant; and that the Fremont workers shouldn't expect to get their jobs back. Furthermore, GM Chairman Roger Smith proclaimed that, if there was going to be a UAW contract for the plant, then it would be "special" with newer and deeper concessions than those already imposed upon the GM workers.

Outside the plant, 700 workers militantly denounced the GM/Toyota scheme. The Fremont workers have vowed to wage a determined fight to regain their rightful jobs at the Fremont plant.

Since then the Fremont workers have called for support from other UAW workers across the country. In one plant after another, from Detroit to Delaware, from Kansas City to Los Angeles, support is growing, with the call going out: If the Fremont workers aren't rehired -- a national strike at GM!

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Lynn, Mass:

GE workers fight wage cuts and speedup

A three-day strike began April 22 at the General Electric complex in Lynn, Massachusetts. Workers from Building 66B in the turbine section of the complex walked off their jobs in protest against the wage-cutting productivity drive of the GE billionaires. While the top bureaucrats of the IUE are calling for "cooperation" with the capitalists, the rank-and-file workers are turning to strike action. This is a good sign. Only the mass action of the workers can defeat GE's plans and defend the wages and jobs of the workers.

GE is continuing a vicious productivity drive against the workers. Piecework prices are being cut; customary extra labor charges for working to unusual conditions or standards are being refused; piecework jobs are being eliminated and replaced with jobs at often lower rates; jobs are being combined; automation and speedup are being put in place. The GE moneybags claim that this is all for the good of the workers, but their real aim is all too clear4 They want to increase their profits through getting more work from fewer workers and at lower wages.

This brutal drive by the GE capitalists demands staunch mass resistance from the workers. But the top IUE bureaucrats are continuing their policy of "class peace," of siding with GE in this struggle. Even while the workers from 66B were striking to defend themselves, the pages of Local 201 Electrical Union News were filled with articles about "cooperation," "a new approach" and "non-traditional" ways to deal with the lack of work notices and the like. At the same time, the misleaders of the local union refused to even organize leafleting in support of the strikers, much less anything like picketing. They made every effort to keep the strike and even knowledge of the strike confined to one building, under the pretext that these issues are limited to only that building. It seems the "new approach" and "non-traditional ways" they have in mind means to throw out the tradition the working class has of uniting to defend their wages and jobs by fighting against the capitalists.

Clearly, to fight against GE's wage- cutting productivity drive the workers cannot rely on the union bureaucrats. Rather they must get organized on their own and build their job actions into a stubborn mass struggle against the GE slave drivers.

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Nurses on strike at Buffalo General

(The following article is excerpted from a leaflet issued by the Buffalo Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA on May 11, 1983.)

On May 1, the 800 nurses of Buffalo General Hospital/Deaconess went out on strike. Like all working people, these nurses are facing the devastation caused by the economic crisis and the Reaganite offensive of the rich. Simply put, their wages are meager, their working conditions nearly insufferable and their benefits are practically nil. Without struggle to improve these conditions things only promise to get worse. Therefore, the nurses have gone on strike, demanding higher wages and increased benefits.

The Buffalo General Hospital management has taken ruthless measures to break the strike, including arming their security guards, calling in the mounted police and hiring scabs.

The actions of the Buffalo General management to suppress the strike are right in line with the general Reaganite offensive of the bourgeoisie. Buffalo General/Deaconess is one of the major private hospitals in the area. It has turned one handsome profit after another for nearly every year for the last ten. Its Board of Directors is filled with the richest bankers and industrialists in the area. In fact, it is truly testimony to their brutal logic that Buffalo General has plenty of money to improve their profits picture through expansion and the construction of new buildings but not one penny for the striking nurses. Strikebreaking, mass firings, wage cuts, increased productivity, this is what Reaganite reaction means to the livelihood and working conditions of the working class. The mass firing of the air traffic controllers, concessions pacts in auto and steel, cuts in social services, this has been the ugly reality of the current offensive of the bourgeoisie. The Reaganite actions have given the green light to every two-bit capitalist Napoleon to attack the working class. It is just such elements that run Buffalo General and it is from this angle that they are attempting to suppress the striking nurses.

But the nurses at Buffalo General have not been cowed down. They have refused to back off from their just demands. And they have maintained their militant picket lines.

This fighting stand of the nurses has won them the support of workers throughout Buffalo. Numerous solidarity actions have taken place, including sympathy walkouts by construction workers at Buffalo General. Other workers from hospitals and factories across the city have joined the nurses on the picket line. Nurses from temporary agencies and nursing students throughout the area have vowed not to allow any scabbing from their ranks. And last Friday, nearly 1,000 workers staged a militant rally and march in support of the nurses.

The tremendous solidarity for the nurses' strike shows clearly that all the workers are eager for a fight against the capitalists. The fighting stand of the nurses and the solidarity actions of other workers have blown up the hospital management's arrogance. At least for the moment, it has shot to pieces their plans to break the nurses' strike by recruiting scabs.

Comrade workers: The arrogant offensive of the rich must be answered by the workers. The Buffalo General nurses have defied their bosses' threats and are pursuing their strike for higher wages and better benefits. They are picketing around the clock, and hive organized mass rallies and a mass march. Their stand has already won the respect and support of much of the working class. The working class should close its ranks on this question and deal a blow to the offensive of the rich by standing firm with the striking nurses.

Fight the Reaganite offensive of the rich!

Victory to the striking nurses!

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Trenton, Michigan:

Steel Workers Wildcat at McLouth Steel

On May 22nd, 200 steel workers at McLouth Steel in Trenton, Michigan staged a wildcat walkout against an order to perform unsafe work.

McLouth Steel is widely promoted in the steel industry as a model of speedup, wage cutting and job elimination through "concessions bargaining." In three rounds of concessions the workers have been saddled with enormous wage and benefit cuts. In the last round alone, when the mill was bought by Chicago industrialist Cyrus Tang, the cutbacks totaled $5 per hour per worker. As well, the United Steel Worker hacks gave away huge concessions in work rule changes, job combinations, reductions in crew size, and so on. Five thousand jobs have been eliminated and the remaining 2,000 workers suffer under a murderous productivity drive, overwork and ever more dangerous conditions.

On May 22, a foreman in the continuous caster section of the mill ordered a bottom roll change to be performed with only two millwrights instead of the normal three. When the workers protested against this dangerous procedure, the foreman arrogantly declared that there are no longer any safety rules at McLouth and the workers must obey or be fired.

Such reductions in crew size below safe levels have become a frequent occurrence at McLouth where some of the most brutal "concessions" in the steel industry have been imposed on the workers. But this time the company ran into a brick wall.

Outraged at the foreman's order the workers walked off the job, taking with them over 100 workers, about three- fourths of the Sunday evening shift. They set up a picket line and were joined by another 100 workers who were coming in for the midnight shift. Picket signs were drawn up on the spot declaring "No Safety! No Work!" The workers vigorously condemned their concessions contract which had led to such dangerous conditions in the mill. And they repeatedly denounced Harry Lester, the director of District 29 of the United Steel Workers union, who had shoved the concessions deals down the workers' throats.

Disorganized by the treachery of their sellout union "leadership" and decimated by the enormous layoffs, the McLouth workers have had a difficult time organizing their resistance. But this wildcat serves notice that the workers have had enough. The workers have suffered terribly from the capitalists' concessions drive. But they are regrouping to fight and they will wage a stern struggle against the steel billionaires and the sellout union bosses.

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1,500 Seattle metal trades workers strike against concessions

The anti-concessions strike of 1,500 metal trades workers is stirring the working class in Seattle. Workers from the shipyards, Boeing and other work places have been joining the metal trades picket lines and participating in their mass actions. These workers themselves face contract struggles against concessions later on this year. They are encouraged by the defiant spirit of the metal trades workers and are being drawn to see that they themselves must take to the streets in mass strikes if they are to defend their jobs and livelihood from the concessions onslaught of the capitalists.

The Seattle Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party has been active in the metal trades strike and in spreading the news of this struggle to the workers throughout the city.

On April 11, just after 300 metal trades workers launched their strike, the MLP produced a leaflet calling for the workers to "Spread the Strike to All the Shops!" The leaflet exposed the capitalist fraud of "concessions save jobs'' and blasted the treachery of the union bigwigs who were refusing to take a firm stand against concessions and were sabotaging the struggle.

Again on April 25, after the strike grew to 1,500 workers, the MLP put out a leaflet hailing the fighting workers, exposing the weak-kneed maneuvering of the sellout union bureaucrats, and calling on the rank and file to take independent action.

These leaflets were distributed widely on the picket lines, at union meetings, on the May 6 march and elsewhere. In every case they were met with enthusiasm. This and the other work of the MLP helped to galvanize the workers on the line of ''concessions won't save jobs,'' increased their vigilance against the union hacks, and helped to release their initiative in organizing mass action.

While the activity of the MLP has been enthusiastically greeted by the rank and file, the top union hacks have gone into a panic. Not only have they threatened supporters of the MLP, but they have tried to whip up an anticommunist hysteria, branding every initiative of the rank-and-file workers as "communist organized. " This frenzy of the sellout union bosses is only assisting the workers to see that the communists are indeed the staunchest fighters in the interests of the workers against the capitalists.

Below we reprint the April 25 leaflet of the Seattle Branch of the MLP and a report on the May 6 demonstration of the metal trades workers.

---

On Monday April 18th, 1,500 metal trades workers from 24 companies went out on strike. These workers join the 300 who had already struck Jorgensen Steel, Washington Iron Works and Northwest Bolt and Nut 10 days earlier. Together, these workers are fighting against the savage concessions drive of the metal trades capitalists.

The latest companies to be struck include Pacific Car and Foundry, Kenworth Truck, Isaacson Steel and others. They are repressented in the negotiations by Washington Metal Trades, Inc. It and the other three steel capitalists have made nearly identical demands on the workers. They want to force the workers to take wage cuts as high as 44%, as well as cuts in overtime pay, cuts in medical and dental benefits, the elimination of two paid holidays, the changing of eligibility rules to cheat many out of vacations, the weakening of seniority rules and many other takebacks. When the 1,500 workers of PC&F, Kenworth, and the others were presented with these outrageous demands on April 18, they voted overwhelmingly to spread the metal trades' strike to all the shops.

The capitalists are trying hard to break the strike. But the workers have shown their determination to fight back and win. At Jorgensen for example, large militant mass pickets of 100 workers were organized on April 11 and 12 when the company announced it was bringing in scabs. The workers heatedly confronted the strikebreakers and drove a number of them away. At other places, such as Isaacson Steel, workers have courageously blocked the path of steel-hauling trucks which the capitalists were attempting to run through the gates. And the workers contemptuously rejected the ultimatum of Jorgensen, Washington Iron and NW Bolt and Nut to return to work or be permanently replaced.

"Democracy" in Action

Already this strike has provided a glaring exposure of the police and the courts as the capitalists' bought-and- paid-for instruments of repression against the workers' struggle. When the mass pickets at Jorgensen threatened to succeed in blocking scabs, the King County police riot squad, all decked out in helmets and clubs, was sent in to force the gates open. (Incidentally, the King County government is headed by Randy Revelle, a member of the so-called "friends of labor'' -- the Democratic Party.) The workers fiercely denounced these rabid guard dogs of the rich, who were literally frothing at the mouth and obviously itching for a physical confrontation. And on April 12, the King County Superior Court issued an injunction against the Jorgensen workers prohibiting them from having more than six pickets in front of the gates. This provides a glimpse of the real character of the "democratic right to strike'' allowed by the government of the monopolies: "Strike, if you must, but the law gives the capitalists all rights to use strikebreakers, and no rights to the workers to resist them."

In the face of the outrageous attacks of the capitalists and the government on the metal trades workers' strike, the support for the struggle among the thousands of workers in the Seattle area continues to grow. A significant feature of many of the picket lines has been the participation of workers from other industries, such as the shipyards and Boeing. This enthusiasm for the mass struggle of the metal trades workers reflects the sentiment of all the workers locally for class-wide solidarity against the takeback offensive of the entire class of employers.

Once Again on the "Concessions Will Save Jobs" Fraud

The huge concessions demands of the metal trades capitalists have only one aim -- to impoverish the workers for the sake of the fat profits of the metal trades owners. But the rich owners, speaking in most pious tones, insist that they are really concerned solely for saving the workers' jobs. In a statement released to the Seattle Post Intelligencer on April 21, a spokesman for Metal Trades, Inc. complained that the current average wage of $12.92 made Seattle area shops "noncompetitive" compared to ones with wages at the national average of $8.85. He said that in past years the number of metal shop workers averaged 4-5,000, compared to the present level of 1,500 workers. "This fact," he said, "should convince the union's leadership that a substantial reduction in wage rates is necessary to create more jobs for their members."

But the truth of the matter is that concessions will not save a single job. It does not make a bit of difference whether a particular company is swimming in profits or temporarily suffering a loss. In either case, the money extracted from the workers in concessions is not used to provide more jobs, but to invest in more modern equipment and automation. This enables the capitalists to operate with an even smaller work force than before. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the auto and steel industries where thousands of workers have been permanently replaced by computerized robots and other machines, financed in part by the concessions stolen from the workers. Concessions do not save jobs, but do increase the profits of the capitalists. That is why they are showing more than a "casual interest" in them.

Caught red-handed in one lie, any capitalist worth his salt will create another one. "Well, so what if we want concessions to fatten our profits and use them to invest in more machines and reduce the work force? Without these profits we'd have to close down and then all jobs would be lost." Superficially, this seems to make some sense, until it is realized that time after time, failing companies have demanded and received wage concessions, then turned around and went bankrupt anyway, throwing the workers into the streets. Meanwhile the banks sell off the remaining assets and whistle a happy tune about the wage cuts that kept the interest payments rolling in.

But there is yet another lie that needs to be punctured. Who says the metal trades capitalists are losing money and having a hard time "staying competitive?" You guessed it -- the owners themselves. Listen to Ned Flohr, president of Flohr Metal Fabricators: "If anybody told you they were making a profit, I think they'd be lying to you." (Seattle PI, April 19, 1983) Well the very next day Mr. Flohr woke up with his foot in his mouth as the Seattle Times announced PACCAR's profits for the first quarter of 1983 as $5 million. And PACCAR is the biggest employer in the metal trades by far.

Thus, all the arguments that say concessions will benefit the workers are bankrupt capitalist propaganda and a lie from A to Z.

The Top Trade Union Officials Cannot Be Trusted in the Slightest

Against these attacks the workers have raised their own demands -- "No wage cuts! No takebacks!" But the union bureaucrats oppose this stand of the workers and support concessions. In our April 11 leaflet "Supprt the Metal Trades Strike! Spread the Strike to All the Shops!" we showed how they have done nothing to oppose the "concessions will save jobs" fraud.

Since the strike broke out, Joe Pilato, Boilermaker official and leader of the Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) has only confirmed their support for concessions again and again. On April 18 on King TV Pilato said that the JNC was engaged in "concessions bargaining." Doesn't this mean bargaining over the extent of the concessions to be imposed? In the Seattle PI on April 21 he called a $2 wage cut "pretty extreme." Doesn't this mean that Pilato considers a less extreme wage cut acceptable? Or take his statement in the Seattle Times on April 22 that "We had just wanted to hold the line (and freeze wages). We felt that was concession enough." With such a starting position, any give and take in the negotiations would result in agreeing to a wage cut.

All of this confirms the accuracy of a report we received from NW Bolt and Nut workers that Pilato offered to accept a $1.25 wage cut, which the company, however, refused. If Mr. Pilato should say we are being unfair to him, we ask: where has he made the clear and unequivocal statement of "no wage cuts, no takeaways," which is the demand of the workers? Nowhere.

What is the attitude of the union bureaucrats to the workers' militant resistance to the strikebreakers? The Machinists' Strike Bulletin #3 says: "Don't be fooled by the SCABS..." They write, "These SCABS can't do our jobs." "They were only hired to try to scare our members." In other words, don't fight the scabs; they are nothing to worry about. What was their attitude to the court injunction banning mass pickets at Jorgensen? An article in the April 21 PI states: "Pilato said that the unions did not oppose the injunction because they have been conducting orderly picketing anyway." Imagine that! The capitalist courts, backed by the riot squad, give all rights to the employer to send in scabs and no rights to the workers to resist -- and Pilato says hey, that's OK with me. (!)

Under tremendous pressure from the rank-and-file workers, the union officials consented to a strike. But the facts show that they are actually in favor of concessions and are dead-set against an effective, militant strike.

Independent Action and Organization!

To defeat the concession demands, the strike needs to be strengthened. The treachery of the union hacks makes it necessary for the workers to rely entirely on their own efforts and own organization. It is necessary to expose the "concessions will save jobs" fraud to unite all the workers. Expose every sellout maneuver of the union officials. Stepped up resistance to the strikebreakers, police and courts is required in order to shut the companies down tight. To achieve these objectives, workers need the truth. Spread the leaflets of the MLP everywhere. And the workers should meet together to plan these actions.

The metal trades workers are in the forefront of the fight against concessions locally which the shipyard, Boeing and many other workers will be facing in the coming months. They deserve the firm support of the entire working class.

No wage cuts, no takebacks!

Shut the plants down tight!

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'Workers, Organize'

From the Seattle Branch of the MLP

[Sheet music.]

The struggle is breaking out

All across the land.

Everywhere workers are seething

Against the Reagan plan.

CHORUS:

Workers, organize. Workers, organize.

Workers, organize. Workers, organize.

"If you want to save your job," they say,

''Give us more concessions.

A seductive tune to rob the class

In the midst of the Depression.

CHORUS:

Workers, organize. To hell with Reagan's lies.

Workers, organize. To hell with Reagan's lies.

Democratic liars and union hacks

All push the Reagan line.

The profits of the billionaires

Are all they have in mind.

CHORUS:

Workers, organize. Workers, organize.

Workers, organize. Workers, organize.

These traitors will say anything to

Save profits for industry.

They don t give a tinker's damn

For the workers' misery.

CHORUS:

Workers, organize. To hell with the sellout lies.

Workers, organize. To hell with the sellout lies.

Against the capitalist offensive!

Against the union bosses!

Rise up and fight to ensure

The rich take all the losses.

CHORUS:

Workers, organize. Workers, organize.

Workers, organize. Workers, organize.

We'll never be satisfied

Short of ending exploitation.

Our struggle today is aiming for

The socialist revolution.

CHORUS:

Workers, organize. Workers, organize.

Workers, organize. Workers, organize.

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A militant demonstration by Seattle strikers

[Photo: Striking metal trades workers marching through Seattle's industrial district, May 6.]

On May 6th, 400 striking metal trades workers staged a militant demonstration through the industrial district of Seattle. The march was called under the slogans of "No Cutbacks," "Support the Metal Trades Strike." And along the entire two-mile march the workers loudly chanted over and over again "No Concessions! Down With the Scabs!"

The march paraded by three of the shops being struck, saluting the picketers and denouncing scabs. Before the march arrived, the capitalists of Isaacson Steel sent home the handful of scabs they had hired in order to avoid a confrontation. The other companies kept their few scabs hidden for the same reason. At Jorgensen Steel, where two strikers had been arrested April 11 during a mass confrontation with the scabs and their King County police escorts, the demonstration stopped for an impromptu rally. Picket signs reading "Jorgensen -- Reagan" and "E. M. Jorgey Reagan's Hit Man" were raised high, and the chant "We Hate Scabs!" rose to a crescendo for about 20 minutes.

The demonstration was also called to protest against the King County Police Department which has been used to suppress mass picketing and to protect scabs.

Union Bosses Oppose the March

The march was initiated and organized by rank-and-file activists from the metal trades and shipyards. They put out their own leaflet demanding "No Cutbacks" and distributed it widely to the striking workers and also to the shipyard workers who are in many of the same unions as the metal trades workers and who are strong supporters of the strike.

The top union bosses initially "tolerated" the call for the march. But as May 6 drew near and as the workers became increasingly militant and galvanized around the fighting slogan of "No Concessions!," the union hacks went into a frenzy against the march. The union bureaucrats began hopping around like jackrabbits, trying to undermine the march at union meetings, on picket lines, at the shipyards and elsewhere. Joe Pilato, the head of the Joint Negotiating Committee, denounced the march as "organized by communists." Trying to besmirch the powerful call for "No Concessions!," he made lying claims that "the communists just want to use the strike for their own ends!"

But the rank-and-file activists refused to bow down to the hacks. They went ahead with their plans for the march and the masses of workers responded to their call.

Having failed to suppress the march, the union bureaucrats shifted, squelched their leaflets hot off the press "denouncing" the march as "communist organized," ate their own words, and trooped off to the rally site. There they tried to take over the march and prevent it from being a militant expression of the workers' fighting spirit. But all of their attempts to divert the workers from the fighting slogan of "No Concessions! Down With the Scabs!" were in vain. For example, when the union hacks noticed that the policemen's motorcycles were made by Kawasaki, they yelped "Buy American" a few times. But this resulted only in several workers rolling their eyes as if to say "What can you do with these guys?"

Despite the attempts of the top union bureaucrats to suppress the march and then to take it over, the demonstration was a roaring success. It played an important role in further uniting the workers against concessions, in organizing the rank and file for militant mass action, and in rallying them to dig in to carry their strike through to the end.

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Seattle:

Meatpackers strike against pay cuts

(The following article is excerpted from a leaflet issued by the Seattle Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA on April 11, 1983.)

The workers of Oberto Sausage Co. are standing firm as a rock since going out on strike on February 15. They are striking against the outrageous "take-back" demands of the capitalist owners. The Marxist-Leninist Party -- Seattle Branch hails the Oberto workers and calls upon all workers to support their struggle.

The strike is a fitting reply to the arrogant demands of Oberto, who wants a $1.25 pay cut and to take away the guaranteed work week of 36 hours. On tope of all of this, Oberto would reduce benefits to the minimum. Any workers who do not get 36 hours of work in a week would be denied medical benefits. Sick leave would be cut from 160 to 80 hours per year. (After all, Oberto must reason, if the workers can't afford medical treatment, why give them sick days?) In addition, two holidays would be taken away and supervisors and technicians would be allowed to do the work, of production workers. Both of these demands would mean that Oberto could eliminate a number of production workers' jobs.

From the beginning, the Oberto owners thought they could walk all over the 105 mostly women workers. First, they came moaning to the workers about "hard times." When the workers challenged this song-and- dance, the capitalist owners would not even back it up with facts. The Oberto owners then declared that they were going to implement their takeback demands on February 14, whether the workers liked it or not. The workers replied to this outrageous ultimatum by overwhelmingly voting to strike on the same day. Despite the attempts at strikebreaking by the Oberto owners, the workers have stood their ground. On the picket lines, the workers have carried out lively denunciations of the company and the scabs they have brought in. The workers have also organized spirited mass pickets, which have been warmly received by other working people. They have shown militancy and sacrifice in their resistance to the Oberto capitalists. Their stand deserves the support of the entire working class.

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Condemn Reagan's Attacks on Grenada!

(The following article is reprinted from the May 1983 issue The West Indian Voice, newspaper of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group.)

Reagan Waves the Big Stick at Grenada

As part of Reagan's escalating intervention in Central America, the warmonger Reagan has been hatching plots and issuing explicit threats of aggression against the Caribbean island of Grenada. During February, the Washington Post published a detailed account of a covert action prepared against Grenada by the CIA, which was supposedly cancelled by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Then, on March 10, Reagan declared that Grenada was a threat to U.S. national security, and made the outlandish charge that Grenada was the scene of a Soviet-Cuba "military buildup.'' Two weeks later Reagan offered photos to prove his point -- photos of a simple airport being built in Grenada -- known to the whole world.

Supposedly, it is just a matter of time before the "weak," "defenseless" U.S. imperialists face their "D"-day at the hands of Grenada! It may seem like paranoia, but there is method to this madness. Such chauvinist hysteria and bellicose threats are part and parcel of U.S. imperialist aggression against Grenada, and not the other way around.

The Case of the Mysterious "Military Buildup" in Grenada

Reagan's proof of a "Soviet military buildup" in Grenada centers on "spy- plane photos" of the well-known Point Saline International Airport being built on the island. Reagan's proof is that the airport's runway is 10,000 feet long!! Oh, what a terrible crime! But the Reagan administration has always known all the facts about this airport fully well. The U.S. was one of the governments approached by the Grenada government for money to construct the airport. The government of Grenada was denied U.S. capital for this project and has proceeded to build the airport through loans and "aid" from the European imperialist allies of the U.S. and from Cuba. Indeed, British, Finnish, Canadian, and American contractors are involved in different aspects of the airport project. In fact the United States' 800-man American Medical College operates directly adjacent to the airport project -- within direct eyesight!

Grenada's present Pearls Airport has a 5,000-foot runway which cannot receive most direct flights and has no night-landing facilities. The former government of the fascist dictator, Eric Gairy, had promised to build an airport similar to the one presently being built. When completed, the new runway will actually be 9,000 feet, similar to those at airports in Trinidad, Antigua and St. Lucia, and still shorter than most of the others in the region. The government of Grenada has projected that the airport will develop the tourist industry and reduce the unusual transport expenses it bears for its imports and exports. The government of Grenada even chose to officially reassure the U.S. that it never had any intention of using the airport for "any purpose other than...tourist potential...and...trade." But to justify threats of aggression Reagan has disregarded the assurances of the government of Grenada and he has decided that since Grenada "doesn't even have an air force" that the airport is a secret military base for the Soviet Union and Cuba!

Thus, it is strange that the Reaganites are accusing Grenada of aggression when it is the U.S. rulers who are making bloodthirsty threats against Grenada. In fact, U.S. imperialism has singled out Grenada among the other regimes in the West Indies, just because U.S. imperialism demands unquestionable allegiance in its own "backyard."

A Series of Aggressive Provocations Against Grenada

The recent actions by the Reagan administration against Grenada are the latest step in a campaign which U.S. imperialism has conducted against that country since 1979, when the pro-imperialist fascist dictator, Eric Gairy, was deposed and a new government set up. From that time on, first under Carter and then carried to a higher pitch under Reagan, U.S. imperialism has sought to isolate Grenada, bring economic hardships to the country, and do even worse.

Taking up from Carter, Reagan has refused even normal diplomatic contact with Grenadian diplomats, even though the Grenadian government has gone to great lengths to extend "diplomatic courtesies" to the Reagan government. The Reaganites have stepped up the anti-Grenada campaign greatly. They have threatened to deal with that "little nutmeg island," and charged it with everything from housing secret naval bases and Soviet MIG fighters to being a fomentor of revolutionary groups and subversion in the West Indies. The Reaganites have also made extensive use of all the pro-U.S. puppet regimes especially in Jamaica, Barbados and Dominica, and the bourgeois press throughout the West Indies for' such hysterical claims against Grenada. Indeed, while Grenada was being threatened, the nearby Barbados government was wining and dining 5,000 crew members from a U.S. aircraft carrier and two destroyers, and another 1,000 from a British destroyer all docked in Barbadian waters.

Throughout the past few years, U.S. imperialism has also used its might to bring economic hardships on the country in several ways, including blocking loans requested by the government of Grenada from such imperialist agencies as the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and the EEC [European Economic Community]. The Reaganites also ordered that U.S. loans, channeled through the Caribbean Development Bank, and "emergency aid" (for Hurricane Allen -- 1980) be denied Grenada. Knowing that the government of Grenada bases its development schemes largely on such loans, the Reaganites have made heavy use of the above means in an effort to bring the economy to a standstill and pressure the regime to either adopt positions more amiable to the U.S. or face the prospects of being overthrown through the machinations of U.S. imperialism. The Reaganites have made it clear that they will settle for nothing less.

Thus, U.S. military and naval maneuvers, featuring simulated military invasion of countries in the region (at least 11 massive maneuvers were conducted in the region in the past two years alone) have included strong overtones of being prepared against Grenada among others. For instance, one of these maneuvers conducted in August 1981 was nicknamed "Amber and the Amber- dines," deliberately leaving room for it to be interpreted as either Grenada and the Grenadines, or, as it was put at the time by the U.S. Naval Commander for the Caribbean, Rear Admiral Robert P. Mackenzie, that Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada are "practically one country." In fact, March 10 also marked the opening day of another month-long Caribbean exercise involving 77 U.S. and Allied warships. The U.S. has also continued to harbor the former prime minister and fascist puppet Eric Gairy. And moreover, the U.S. has deliberately held open the possibility of also using mercenaries and ruthless, murdering Cuban and Nicaraguan exiles who are being trained in various mercenary camps in the southern U.S. against Grenada. The hand of the CIA has also been strongly implicated in the June 19, 1981 bombing at a mass rally in Grenada in an obvious attempt to assassinate the entire leadership of the new government. The bomb, which was placed right under the officials' platform, blew up prematurely -- leaving three ordinary people dead and many others injured.

Therefore, it is more than a sick joke when the U.S. imperialist charges Grenada with threatening aggression. It is not Grenada but U.S. imperialism which is the #1 exploiter and aggressor against the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. Apart from fervently backing the fascist junta in El Salvador with dollars, guns and green beret "advisors," the U.S. imperialists are organizing military intervention against Nicaragua, and generally arming to the teeth the pro-U.S. regimes in Central America and the Caribbean. As well, the Pentagon has been busy establishing its own direct military bases and footholds in the area. Plus, the notorious CIA has been rapidly expanding its network of spies, propagandists and murderers throughout the region. This general militarization and imperialist intervention have been organized for the purpose of preparing to crush the revolutionary struggles of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. For as is seen by the heroic revolutionary struggles in Central America, the area is volatile with revolutionary ferment. As well, this militarization is part of the U.S. rivalry with the Soviet imperialists in the region. Today, among other targets, this militarization and aggression is being used to threaten Grenada. And the hysteria is being used to create justification to topple the government there.

Solidarity With the People of Grenada Against the Reaganite Aggressors

Working masses beware! Reagan is hatching more plots of aggression. He has escalated the intervention in Central America and is waving the U.S. imperialist big stick in the Caribbean. This is aggression against the suffering toilers of the region on behalf of the U.S. multinational exploiters and the fascists and puppets of the region. It is aggression to serve imperialist plunder and protect the profits of the U.S. billionaire exploiters of the working people at home and abroad.

The people of Grenada are determined to settle their affairs on their own. They are united against imperialist dictate, bullying and threats of aggression. Throughout the Caribbean -- as word of Reagan's latest threats of aggression against the Grenadian people has become known -- the peoples are voicing their outrage and determination to play their own role against the U.S. imperialist aggressors.

We too have a special duty! Reaganite aggression against the Grenadian people must be fought every step of the way. Already in New York protests and rallies are being organized. Spread the word of protest everywhere. Participate in the mass movement against imperialist war preparations and in solidarity with the peoples abroad against imperialist aggression. The..working masses must be drawn out in rallies and demonstrations against U.S. imperialist aggression. Only the concerted action of the working masses in solidarity with the peoples abroad can challenge the imperialist aggressors.

[Map.]

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Concerning the character of the government in Grenada

What is the nature of the Grenadian government that has so enraged the Neanderthal Reagan? The issue of The West Indian Voice of May 1983, which denounces U.S. bullying against Grenada, also carries an article on the character of the Grenadian government. This government is not socialist, as it portrays itself to be, nor is it a revolutionary regime of the toilers, but it is a bourgeois nationalist regime. It has carried out reforms which have moved Grenada out of the dark night of the former dictatorship of Eric Gairy, but it is nevertheless a government of the capitalists of town and country. It seeks to develop Grenada through soliciting imperialist investment. But the American capitalists are so reactionary and grasping that only a heavy-handed puppet regime will satisfy them.

Grenada is an island with about 110,000 inhabitants. It became independent ending two centuries of British rule in 1974. But from 1974 to 1979 it was ruled by the widely hated fascist tyrant Eric Gairy. This was the type of government that U.S. imperialism liked, a government at the beck and call of foreign imperialism, a government which denied the most elementary rights to the Grenadian people.

The Gairy dictatorship was overthrown in 1979 by the New Jewel Movement headed by Maurice Bishop. The Bishop government enacted various economic and political reforms. These reforms did not eliminate capitalist exploitation and were not socialist, but, as The West Indian Voice points out, they have meant that "Grenada has been brought from the dark rule and backwardness of the dictator Gairy, to the more refined capitalism and neo-colonialism such as exists in all the other West Indian countries. This means that the Grenadian toilers still face the task of carrying through their struggle against the hated local exploiters and imperialism." This is because the Bishop government "is a bourgeois nationalist government representing the interests of the Grenadian capitalists and big landowners."

The new Bishop government has, however, faced U.S. displeasure. It wasn't enough for the American exploiters that the new Grenadian government was a capitalist one that welcomed imperialist investment. After all, how could U.S. imperialism be bothered by coming to terms with the local Grenadian capitalists or with respecting even the most minimal rights of the Grenadian people? Imperialism is the bipartisan policy of American capitalism. And so Mr. "Human Rights" Carter began the policy of hostility to the Grenadian government, and the empty-headed butcher Reagan has continued it. According to the Carters and Reagans, the Caribbean is nothing but a private American lake, where no one may breathe without U.S. permission.

As a result, the Grenadian government has found itself in conflict with Washington. As The West Indian Voice points out, "The regime in Grenada has several conflicts with U.S. imperialist policy. It is a vocal critic of some of the U.S.-backed fascist juntas in Latin America. On occasion, the Grenada government also sides with rivals of the U.S. on various questions -- such as with the Soviet imperialists in their criminal invasion of Afghanistan."

It is the task of the American workers to denounce U.S. imperialism's plunder and domination of the Caribbean in general, and its aggressive acts towards Grenada in particular. At the same time, we must have a realistic assessment of the Grenadian government and the New Jewel Movement, because its inconsistent attitude towards imperialism cannot be the model for our struggle. Instead, our class brothers are the Grenadian workers and peasants. As The West Indian Voice points out: "The NJM government is connected by 1,000 threads to U.S. imperialism, to the Canadian and Western European imperialists and to the Soviet imperialists. It has stated many times that it considers that imperialism should have a permanent place in Grenada, as long as it cooperates with the local private capitalists and landlords and with the state sector."

Furthermore, The West Indian Voice continues, "This is why, even though the NJM regime militantly denounces U.S. imperialist bullying and threats of aggression against the country, it sees these acts as 'excesses' of U.S. policy and of Reagan's. The regime opposes the dictates and bullying not in order to break with imperialism but in order to convince the imperialists that they are meant no harm and especially to persuade the imperialists that it is worth their while to operate in Grenada."

This conciliatory attitude will not convince U.S. imperialism to relent. As The West Indian Voice points out, U.S. imperialism "demands the complete capitulation of all the peoples and states in the area to its own hegemonic baton. And this is the real reason behind U.S. imperialism's bullying and obscene threats of aggression against Grenada. This is an example of Washington's unbridled imperialism.

Let us unite with the Grenadian people by denouncing U.S. imperialism's crimes. Let us use the struggle against imperialism to help prepare for the socialist revolution in the U.S. that will lift the bloody hand of U.S. imperialism from the peoples of the Caribbean once and for all!

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The Democratic Party "opposition" tramples on the Salvadoran people

The U.S. intervention in Central America has aroused the indignation of a broad section of the American workers and progressive people. It is showing up the thoroughly reactionary, imperialistic and brutal nature of the Reagan government. Every word out of Ronald Reagan's mouth on the question brands him as a liar, as a warmonger, and as a diehard champion of the notorious fascists and butchers of Central America.

But if there is anyone more worthy of contempt than Reagan it is his toadying accomplices in crime -- the hypocritical fakers of the Democratic Party.

The Democrats Want to Rescue the Reagan Policy

The Reagan policy in Central America is drawing U.S. imperialism into a quagmire. The CIA invasion of Nicaragua has stiffened the resistance of the Nicaraguan people and is stimulating the peoples' struggles against the U.S. interventionists throughout the region.

In El Salvador, despite the large- scale U.S. intervention, begun by the Democrat Carter and stepped up further under Reagan, and despite the massacre of 40,000 workers, peasants and other opponents, the fascist regime is losing its grip. The revolutionary forces now control between one-third and one-half of the countryside and they are striking hard blows at the crumbling U.S.-backed oligarchy.

The logic of U.S. intervention demands more hundreds of millions of weapons, more military "trainers" and CIA operatives. It demands ever deeper intervention right up to the dispatch of U.S. combat forces. This escalation brings with it great political dangers, not the least of which is provoking a storm here in the U.S. Just remember the enormous mass struggles against the U.S. aggression in Indochina which shook the whole country.

But from the halls of the U.S Congress can be heard the chorus of the liberal Democratic Party "opposition" singing sweet lullabies about "peace" and "human rights." Every day these gentlemen issue another dire warning about the dangers of Reagan's policy. They wring their hands at the horrors of the conflict, they bemoan the "no- win situation," and they fret about the big political costs of escalation.

But do these Democratic Party heros stand up to this growing U.S. intervention? Not on your life. At home they only want to keep the masses from taking to the streets; they want to derail the locomotive of the opposition that is building up steam among the working and progressive people. And in Central America they only want to undermine the popular revolt with lies about the "peaceful" intentions of U.S. imperialism; they want to disarm the revolutionaries in the face of the fascists and "death squads" that the Pentagon has armed to the teeth. In short, their only goal is to rescue the Reagan policy from fiasco.

The Democrats " Share Goals" With the Reaganites

If anyone is unclear about these objectives of the Democratic Party "opposition," they should simply listen carefully to the Democrats' own words. They should look, for example, at the Congressional Democrats' response to Reagan's April 27 address to the special joint session of Congress on Central America. This response was delivered by Senator Christopher Dodd, a leading figure in the Democratic "opposition."

Dodd got right to the heart of the matter:

"So first of all, let me state clearly that on some very important things, all Americans stand in agreement.

"We will oppose the establishment of Marxist states in Central America....

"...we are fully prepared to defend our security and the security of the Americas, if necessary, by military means.

"All patriotic Americans share these goals. But many of us in Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, disagree with the President because we believe the means he has chosen will not fulfill them." (New York Times, April 28, 1983)

In other words, the Democrats stand in full agreement with Reagan on the following "very important things":

First, the Democrats agree that the U.S. government must intervene in Central America to "oppose the establishment of Marxist states." In other words they agree with U.S. intervention to prevent the overthrow of the U.S. puppet dictators by the workers, peasants and revolutionaries (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras), and to subjugate any state which the U.S. government finds disagreeable (Nicaragua).

Second, the Democrats agree that the issue at stake is "our security," that is the "security" of the private Central American paradise for the U.S. multinationals, banks and other imperialists who make millions and billions off the rape and plunder of the resources and cheap labor of Central America.

And thirdly, like Reagan, the Democrats "are fully prepared" to use "military means," presumably up to and including the dispatching of U.S. combat soldiers to Central America to defend the U.S. imperialist jackboot.

This is what is fundamental about the Democrats' policy. Any disagreements with the Reaganites are not over matters of substance, as Dodd explains, but over the best means to accomplish the goals shared in common by all patriotic jingos and imperialist politicians, Democrat and Republican alike.

Every Dollar for the "Death Squads" Has the Blessings of the Democratic-Controlled Congress

Oh yes, the Democrats know how to shed a tear or two about the ruthless brutality and the massacres which the people of Central America suffer. They know how to wag their fingers about "democracy" and "human rights." But all this grandstanding is 100% hypocrisy. When it comes down to whether Reagan will get more millions to supply the "death squads" with more guns and bullets to massacre the people, the gentlemen of the Democratic-controlled House get in line to sign on the bottom line.

The Democrats themselves boasted about this shameful fact in their response to Reagan.

"Tonight the President himself told us that things were not going well in Central America," Dodd argued. "But for this the President cannot blame Congress. We have given him what he has asked. $700 million...has been delivered or is on its way to El Salvador since Ronald Reagan came to office, all at his request and all with Congressional approval."

Just imagine. Reagan wants $700 million to finance a gang of fascists and cutthroats. So what do our "human rights" champions do? They timidly whine about what a nasty business this is, while they dutifully fork over the $700 million. Then they have the nerve to declare that their hands are clean; they can't be blamed for Reagan's policies!!

No, far from being free of blame, along with Reagan, these Democratic Party hucksters stand hip-deep in the bloodbath that U.S. imperialism has unleashed against the heroic workers and peasants of Central America.

"Political Solution" -- the Carrot and the Stick

In a word, the Democratic Party "opposition" is no opposition at all. It is supporting Reagan's big stick policies down the line. But it also plays another vital role in U.S. imperialism's Central American strategy. The Democrats are holding out the carrot as part of Yankee imperialism's old carrot and stick tactics for driving the oppressed peoples into the yoke of submission. This is what their so-called "political solution" in El Salvador is all about.

Of course, Reagan too is for demagogical prattle about a "political solution." According to the White House, such a "political solution" will come about with the upcoming round of "elections," which will once again be carefully supervised by the fascist "death squads." But the Democrats argue that another "elections" farce is not enough; it is too transparent of a hoax and therefore won't have the desired result.

Instead the Democrats are pushing for "unconditional negotiations" between the revolutionary forces and the fascist Salvadoran regime. And they propose that the arrangements for such negotiations be entrusted to the reactionary governments of Mexico, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela.

This proposal is just another sordid maneuver to back up the dictators. At best such attempts at a "political solution" may provide a temporary respite for the beleaguered regime. At worst, they raise the danger of disarming and massacring the liberation fighters. Indeed this is precisely the intention of the Democratic chieftains. On the one hand they want to wield the big stick, to perfect the arming and training of the crack divisions of the fascist regime. And on the other hand, they want to lull the vigilance of the people, to rob them of the initiative, and most importantly they want to draw the revolutionaries into the fatal trap of laying down their weapons so that they can be easily dispensed with. No one should forget the fate of Sandino, Nicaragua's anti-imperialist hero who was treacherously assassinated in 1934 by General Somoza after he had signed a peace agreement.

Clarence Long of Maryland, a leading figure of the Democratic opposition, does not mince his words when he explains the significance of the "political solution." On his return from a tete-a-tete with the Salvadoran dictators at the end of last month, Long stated:

"What I have long favored is a carrot and stick approach. The carrot, of course, is a political solution; the stick is a military solution. Here I urge the military to develop a real stick and not a wet noodle, which is what I think it has had. I don't think the guerillas will ever come to a conference table or make an agreement until they feel that they are not winning in the field."

Take note, Mr. Long's frankness here is most instructive. It shows that the Democrats' "political solution" means building up the military stick of the fascist regime. It means "peace" through an ever-expanding U.S. intervention to back up the "death squad" commanders in their war on the Salvadoran workers and peasants.

For a Real Fight Against Reaganite Aggression

The working and progressive people in this country want a real fight against Reagan's criminal aggression in Central America. To tie this struggle to the maneuvers of the Democratic Party shadow boxers in Congress is less than futile; it amounts to sellout to the Reaganites. Nevertheless, this is exactly what the social-democratic, revisionist and pacifist leaders of the movement against the U.S. intervention are striving to do. And their efforts are doing too much damage.

This winter and spring the Democratic Party chiefs began a big clamor about cutting off aid to El Salvador. A big hue and cry went up that Congress would never allow another Viet Nam, and so on and so forth.

The social-democratic and opportunist leaders played the Democrats' game to the hilt. They tried to create anticipation among the activists that finally something was going to be done. Breaking from the tradition of the previous years, they liquidated the big March demonstrations against U.S. intervention in El Salvador. There is no question that people would have come out for these demonstrations if they had only been called because the indignation and sentiment for struggle against the U.S. intervention continues to burn hot among the masses. But the social-democratic and opportunist honchos didn't want to rock the Democrats' boat.

Of course the expectations about a Congressional cutoff of funds were hung on soap bubbles. And they popped just that quick.

Clarence Long, the chairman of the Democratic-controlled House subcommittee handling Reagan's request for $60 million more military aid, had been one of the loudest shouters about a cutoff. Then at the end of April, Long went down to El Salvador to hobnob with the dictators there. And when he returned he announced that really the Salvadoran military bosses are very "concerned about human rights" and fully deserve Congressional support. Long proposed a compromise of $30 million more aid on Reagan's request, and his subcommittee sped it on its way to El Salvador. As Long explained, "If we voted against it, it would look as if we were unresponsive to the President." (New York Times, April 27,1983)

Meanwhile to this $30 million stick they also attached a rotten carrot. They required that Reagan appoint a special ambassador to Central America to seek a "political solution." Reagan happily obliged and appointed former Democratic Senator Richard Stone to the post. The only thing recommending Stone was his years as a paid lobbyist for the genocidal military regime in Guatemala, and therefore he will be at home with the other butchers of the region. Long and co. applauded his appointment without batting an eye.

But just as soon as the Congressional "opposition" on aid to El Salvador evaporated into thin air, a new fuss began over the CIA invasion of Nicaragua. Here the Democrats were going to put their foot down on the flagrantly illegal covert operations to topple the Sandinista regime. They put their foot down all right, and they also put down $80 million so that now Washington will be able to funnel even greater assistance to the anti-Sandinista bands, but indirectly through overt aid to the Honduran generals.

To strengthen the fight against the Reaganite interventionists, the watchword of the activists must be: No illusions about the Democratic Party "opposition." The exposure of these contemptible fakers and accomplices in crime is essential to safeguard the movement from the sabotage of the social-democratic and opportunist chieftains.

The task at hand is to build the movement on the shoulders of the workers, the youth and the progressive masses. These are the forces on which a truly powerful, truly determined, and truly consistent struggle against U.S. imperialist aggression must be based.

[Cartoon.]

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CIA invaders and Congressional hypocrisy

On May 22 administration and congressional officials made public what everyone has known for a long time. They announced that the CIA and the State Department assess that the anti-Sandinista forces which they support are striving to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. And to this they add that these CIA mercenaries have "a good chance" of doing so by "the end of the year."

This announcement bears significance for a number of reasons.

It is one more official proclamation that the Reagan government is on a reckless course of naked aggression. It confirms that it is deeply involved in the criminal business of invading other countries and making andbreaking governments that do not meet the approval of the Reaganite reactionaries.

What's more, like any brutal gangster who wants to push over the weak nerved, Reagan is boastful and arrogant about his brutality. That is why his CIA enforcers are even giving a date for when they will "do in" the Sandinistas. What pompous fools!

It also shows that Reagan is a pathological liar. Without batting an eye Reagan is eating all his previous sworn denials that the CIA had any intention of overthrowing the Sandinista government, that the CIA was only "intercepting" arms traffic, and similar poppycock.

But there is more to this story.

These CIA and State Department assessments were reported to Congress by CIA Director William Casey and Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders during intelligence committee meetings in recent weeks about the CIA operation against Nicaragua. In other words the Senate and House committees were fully informed of these assessments when they took their recent decisions on funding the CIA action. In that light, let us look at what they decided.

The Senate committee voted 13-2 to keep up the funding as before until September 30. (Remember that the CIA is predicting it will be all over with by the year's end.) They voted for rule changes requiring, after October 1, clearance from the Congressional committees for any further funding of covert activity. In effect the Senate committee handed the CIA a blank check for its invasion of Nicaragua. Democrat Daniel Moynihan hailed this as a victory for the power of Congress, stating that "We are no longer simply to be informed. We want to be part of the process."

In the House committee it was a slightly different story. There the liberal Democrats expressed "grave doubts" that the CIA was acting within the Boland amendment that was passed into law by Congress last December and presumably bars any CIA operations to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Mind you, these were only "doubts," even though the CIA director was right there telling them the date when he thought the Sandinistas would be toppled.

So what did our "doubting" Democrats do? They didn't even consider enforcing the law that they passed only five months before by cutting off the funds. The law wasn't made to be enforced in the first place; it was designed with gaping loopholes to allow the CIA a free hand. But the Reaganites flagrantly violated it anyhow. And our Democratic Party heroes looked the other way and came up with a new, better law to allow Washington to back the invasion of Nicaragua.

On May 3, the House committee voted to cut off CIA funding for covert military operations against Nicaragua. And in its place the committee voted $80 million for overt aid to "friendly governments" (the fascist dictators of Honduras and Guatemala) to allegedly intercept arms shipments from Nicaragua.

If this House bill becomes law, which is doubtful, there are three possibilities. First, the Honduran army will simply become the indirect pipeline for the very same CIA backing for the Somozistas. Or second, the Honduran army will escalate its provocations against Nicaragua and dispatch its own invasion forces. Or third, some combination of the above two possibilities.

In any event the covert and direct CIA action would be replaced by overt and indirect action. The same war could be waged on Nicaragua. And, presumably, U.S. imperialism will pose with clean hands.

However history will not be so kind. The CIA invasion of Nicaragua will go down as a terrible crime against humanity. And not only the Reaganites and the CIA will be branded as the criminals, but also the Congress and the Democratic Party politicians which are the fully informed and willing accomplices.

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Boston:

4,000 March Against Reagan's Aggression in Central America

On May 14th, 4,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Boston to denounce U.S. imperialism's war against Nicaragua and its efforts to crush the liberation struggle of the Salvadoran people. This protest was an expression of the boiling anger building up among the masses in the U.S. against Reagan's bloodthirsty policy in Central America. As well, the demonstration reflected a growing disgust with the Democratic Party "opposition," who have shown with their statements and actions in recent weeks that they share "a common goal" with the Reagan administration in Central America.

The Boston Branch of the Marxist- Leninist Party diligently worked to spread the news of the demonstration in the days before it took place. A leaflet was issued entitled U.S. Imperialism, Get Out of El Salvador! Hands Off Nicaragua! It called on the workers to come to the march to express their outrage against Reagan's aggression and to demonstrate the solidarity of the working people of the U.S. with the fight for liberation in Central America. Leaflets were distributed at factories, universities and public transportation stops. Inside a number of factories militants of the MLP carried out discussions among the workers and strove to mobilize them into the struggle.

At the protest on May 14, the MLP worked to lend the action a militant, anti-imperialist character. Over a thousand leaflets were distributed. During the march, the militants of the MLP formed a spirited contingent. They raised anti-imperialist slogans and called for support for the revolution in El Salvador.

The anti-imperialist stand of the Party was warmly received by the demonstrators. Soon some 80 people gathered around the contingent and marched with it. Many more took up the slogans shouted by it. By the time the march emptied into the rally site, the group marching with the MLP contingent showed itself to be a vigorous force which attracted the attention of the entire rally. At the rally site, an MLP cultural group led in the singing of two songs against U.S. imperialism.

One important reason for the good reception to the MLP's work at the demonstration was the growing outrage of the activists against the Democratic Party's fraudulent opposition to Reagan's policies in Central America. The Party's agitation explained how the Democrats merely squabble with Reagan over what is the best way to crush the liberation struggle while providing Reagan with vast funds to prosecute the aggressive wars in the region.

The thousands who marched in Boston on May 14 showed that there is a broad ferment among the masses against Washington's war on Nicaragua and the people of El Salvador. Strengthening this movement calls for organizing mass actions everywhere. It calls for organizing the masses independent of both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

[Photo: A scene from the mass demonstration in Boston against U.S. aggression in Central America, May 14.]

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Denounce Jeane Kirkpatrick-- Mouthpiece of Aggression!

This spring, students and teachers at a number of universities across the country protested against the attempts of Reagan's U.S. Ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, to speak at these campuses. Kirkpatrick is well known for being a prominent mouthpiece for U.S. imperialist intervention in Central America and for vociferously supporting pro-U.S. fascist dictatorships generally. This stand of hers has made her the object of well-deserved contempt from wide sections of the masses.

Recently, the students and faculty at Barnard College, New York, successfully forced the cancellation of plans by the school administration to bring her as a guest of honor at the commencement exercises. Earlier this spring, she was also forced to call off plans to speak at Smith College in Massachusetts.

And when Kirkpatrick has shown up at campuses to speak, she has been met with militant denunciations. On February 15, protesters greeted her attempt to speak at the University of California at Berkeley with chants and slogans. She was forced to cancel her plans to speak the next day on the campus. As well, on March 2, activists disrupted her attempt to speak at the University of Minnesota. And just last week, protesters greeted her at the University of Oklahoma.

The U.S. imperialists, from the Reagan administration to the chieftains of the capitalist press and university administrators, have loudly come to the defense of Kirkpatrick. They have made a big hue and cry about how supposedly Kirkpatrick's "right to free speech" is being denied at the campuses. This is unbridled hypocrisy. Ms. Kirkpatrick along with the rest of her cronies in the Reagan administration are working night and day to bolster the fascist tyranny in El Salvador and other countries, and when people revolted by this policy fight against her attempt to do propaganda for fascism, the bourgeoisie shouts: Free speech is being denied! Not for the people of El Salvador, mind you, but for Ms. Kirkpatrick!

The U.S. imperialists are trying to wrap themselves in the mantle of loud defenders of the "right to free speech." The real character of this right is amply exemplified by the recent events concerning Ms. Kirkpatrick. From top officials of the Reagan administration on down to reactionaries in the university administrations, the call is going out to "punish the hecklers and disruptors." In the meantime, as anybody with two eyes can see, Ms. Kirkpatrick and the rest of the Reaganite bunch have full license to spout off their imperialist propaganda on the TV, radio, newspapers and dozens of other channels owned and operated by the capitalists. Clearly, the much-vaunted "freedom of speech" under the rule of the capitalist class amounts to, on the one hand, full freedom for the rich and their mouthpieces, and, on the other hand, harassment and threats of punishment against the masses who try to use whatever opportunity comes by to fight against the policies of the U.S. government.

Our Party fully supports the denunciation of Kirkpatrick. We reprint below an excerpt from a leaflet on the Kirkpatrick denunciation at UC-Berkeley put out by the San Francisco Bay Area Branch of the MLP on April 7, 1983.

Support the Militant Denunciation of Jeane Kirkpatrick

In mid-February students at UCB developed a vigorous protest against Jeane Kirkpatrick, a major apologist for U.S. imperialism in El Salvador. They effectively disrupted her speech and scared her so much that she canceled a second speech set for the next day. This activity of the students sent the White House, the university administration and the members of the faculty who are pro-imperialist into a frenzy. These forces -- trying to hide their frenzy with a fake concern for "free speech" -- immediately began drawing up punishments and restrictions aimed at stopping future militant actions. They want to be able to bring imperialist diplomats and politicians onto campus to "freely" prettify and apologize for U.S. aggression without facing any opposition. As Chancellor Ira Heyman moaned about Kirkpatrick: "I'd love to bring her back, and do it successfully."

Suppression Will Not Stop the Struggle Against Imperialism

More and more students are realizing that the speeches made by Kirkpatrick and other top government officials are a necessary part of U.S. aggression against the Salvadoran people. The Pentagon sends the guns; Kirkpatrick and her ilk use the podium to pardon imperialism and thereby pave the way for even more massive escalation of the war. Students everywhere are beginning to see that all facets of U.S. aggression must be opposed. Since February Jeane Kirkpatrick has also been denounced at the University of Minnesota, and forced to turn tail and cancel an appearance at Smith College. These protests are a positive step which helps to increase the militancy of the movement. As well, these protests uphold the fighting traditions of the anti-war movement of the 60's. In those days, war criminals like Johnson, Nixon and their cronies did not dare to show their faces or raise their voices in public because they faced certain militant opposition.

If we are going to contribute to getting U.S. imperialism out of El Salvador we must learn to be oppositional -- to become effective fighters. There can be no pipedreams of reconciliation between those forces of imperialism who send arms, money and advisors to slaughter the Salvadoran people and those who oppose this war. We cannot politely agree to disagree. Nor can we allow the opposition movement to be put in a position of standing politely on the sidelines where it can be ignored unless the imperialists themselves need it to "prove" there is "freedom of dissent." We must press forward the struggle against the U.S. war of aggression in El Salvador and build an ever larger and more militant mass movement against it.

[Photo: Jeane Kirkpatrick, infamous defender of the "death squads," continues to draw mass protest wherever she travels. Picture shows a section of the 200 people who picketed the San Francisco Fairmont Hotel where she spoke on May 5 at a Zionist reception which gave her an award for "outstanding achievement." The day earlier, 800 people demonstrated against Kirkpatrick outside the Statler Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.]

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Powerful protests rock the fascist generals

Argentine people demand accounting for the 'disappeared'

The fascist military junta in Argentina is once again being shaken by a series of mass protests. This spring the people of Argentina have taken to the streets in massive strikes and demonstrations. The masses are demanding that the military regime be held accountable for the monstrous crimes it committed in its reign of terror against the left in the mid-70's. As well, the workers of Argentina are continuing their struggle against the economic devastation which the regime has brought upon the working masses.

After the big strikes and demonstrations last fall, the military junta tried to pacify the mass discontent by announcing a promise to hold elections in October 1983. In reality this is nothing but a maneuver by the military dictatorship to hide behind a screen of civilian bourgeois politicians. But, as the protest actions this spring show, the Argentine masses have not decided to let up on the struggle against the hated military dictators.

Avenge the Disappeared!

One of the major issues agitating the Argentine masses is the question of the desaparecidos, or "disappeared." These are the thousands of Argentinians kidnapped by the military and police during the latter 1970's and never heard from again.

On Friday, May 20th, 30,000 Argentines marched on the National Congress to denounce the fascist generals. They carried placards which declared, among other things, "You took them away alive. Bring them back alive," and "The dictatorship will end."

On May 5 six thousand people demonstrated in downtown Buenos Aires. This was one of the weekly demonstrations called by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, an organization of relatives of the disappeared, but this time it was larger and more militant then usual. The demonstrators marched right up to the National Congress building in which the military junta was meeting and stood outside the doors chanting "Assassins!"

The May 5 demonstration came just a few days after the junta issued its "investigative report" on the disappeared. The junta has been under pressure to account for the thousands of disappeared, especially since last fall, when mass graves with 1,500 unknown bodies were discovered.

In this report, the junta admitted that the military was responsible for the operations against leftists in the late '70's, and that gross violations of human rights had occurred. But while claiming responsibility for the anti-leftist terror, the military refused to accept any blame. On the contrary, the junta's report characterized murderous operations against leftists as "acts of service" by the military in its "war against subversion." It asserted that security officials had a mandate to "annihilate subversive elements." Far from even giving an accounting of the terror, the report simply claimed that 2,050 civilians were killed although, in fact, 6,000 are known to be dead and another 30,000 are unaccounted for. Even with regard to the 2,050 murders it admitted, the report gave no details about how, when or where the victims died. Anyone who is not known to be in exile or in hiding, according to the junta, must now be considered dead, and there will be no investigation into the case. The junta stated that it will submit to no further questioning on this matter. The junta bragged in its report about having "saved the nation from terror," and warned that it will not hesitate to do so again.

As soon as the junta's report was issued, it was denounced by the masses in Argentina. By flaunting its murderous terror campaign against the left, the junta has only managed to further isolate itself.

A Powerful General Strike

Another major factor giving rise to intense struggles of the masses at this time is the deepening economic crisis in Argentina. On March 28, the working masses shut down the entire country in a powerful general strike. Nine million workers participated in this strike, which paralyzed Buenos Aires and other major cities. The strike was supported by over 95% of the industrial work force and 85% of other workers. All industry and transport, including airline flights in and out of Argentina, was shut down. In the cities all banks, shops, restaurants, and theaters were closed. There were no postal deliveries throughout Argentina, and even radio announcers fell silent for five minutes out of each hour in support of the strike.

The major demand of this strike was for immediate pay increases. Following the December 6 general strike (reported on in January's Worker's Advocate), the government had granted a 15% wage increase. But since then inflation has gone up 45% and is continuing to climb at an ever-increasing rate. Inflation was 209% for all of last year and may reach 300% this year. To avert a strike the government offered workers a 12% wage increase each month for the next three months. But this was rejected by the workers. In a last attempt to prevent the strike the junta declared the strike illegal, and threatened fines and imprisonment against participants. But this also failed, as the working class as a whole supported the action.

This massive strike was followed two days later by a mass demonstration in Buenos Aires against the political and economic policies of the junta. Ten thousand workers marched under the slogan "Peace, Bread and Work." This demonstration commemorated the death of a worker killed by the police one year ago in a demonstration, shortly before the government launched the Falklands invasion.

Argentina's economic crisis is aggravated by the country's heavy dependency on the bankers and multinational corporations from the U.S. and other imperialist countries. Indeed, directly contributing to fuel Argentina's raging inflation is the $39 billion foreign debt piled up by the junta. And to pay off this debt, the junta has only expanded the imperialist yoke on the country. In January, the junta negotiated a $2.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to pay the interest on its debt. As a result of this deal, the government devalued the currency and imposed other austerity measures, thus increasing the hardship faced by the masses. Such measures, along with the 20% unemployment, are working to intensify the struggle against the Argentine capitalists and their military dictatorship.

The Junta Maneuvers to Save Itself Through a "Return to Civilian Rule"

With the rising tide of mass actions in Argentina, the junta finds itself increasingly isolated. In this situation it is maneuvering towards a quiet transition to civilian political rule, behind which the generals can continue to pull the strings of power. To this end the generals have agreed to hold elections in October and to allow civilian politicians to take state office for the first time since 1976. In this way the generals hope to give themselves a "democratic" facade and to ease out of the picture, to avoid the wrath of the masses.

But the real nature of the junta can be seen by its report on the disappeared. As described above, the junta defends its terrorism against the left as "acts of service" and vows to "do so again" -- i.e., to stage a coup in order to smash any challenge from the left -- whenever it deems necessary. Furthermore, at the present time the junta is continuing its fierce repression. Recently the police and army murdered Raul Clemente Yaguer, a leader of the Montoneros, one of the organizations which took up armed struggle against the government in the mid-70's. (The Montoneros were originally, in 1970, a youth organization of the Peronist Party, but were expelled by Juan Peron in 1974 when they moved to the left and took up opposition to Peron's regime.) Yaguer had been in hiding for years, but was discovered by secret police; he was then surrounded by troops and killed. And just last week, the military kidnapped and murdered two more left activists.

While continuing its terrorist campaign against the left, the junta is planning to use the "return to civilian rule" as a means to legalize this campaign. The junta is considering laws which would grant amnesty to all the right-wing murderers of the latter 1970's and which would require any prosecutions arising out of the terrorist campaign to be pursued in military courts. With such laws accepted by a new civilian government, the military could rest easy, free from the prospects of any prosecution for its "war against subversion."

In the meantime, what is the stand of the civilian political leaders who are scrambling to win office in the October elections? The leaders of the Peronist opposition, Argentina's main bourgeois politicians, are watering at the mouth at the prospect of recovering some cozy government positions. At the time the junta's report on the disappeared was issued, the Peronist leaders issued some mild criticism of it, to the effect that the report did not provide enough information. But the Peronists have refrained from organizing any mass opposition to the report. Indeed, it is difficult to see how they could do so, since the Peronist leaders themselves participated in the war on the left. The military's terrorist campaign against the left actually began under the presidency of Isabel Peron, before the military coup of 1976. During her presidency 1,500 people were disappeared by the army and police. Also during this time Italo Luders, who is now the leading Peronist presidential candidate, helped draw up decrees legalizing the state of siege as head of the senate. Thus the Peronists can hardly be expected to take a firm stand against the military's fascist activities.

Clearly, the workers of Argentina cannot pin their hopes for freedom and a better future on the Peronist opposition. For one thing, given the record of the military junta, one can hardly even trust their promises about holding elections this year. But, what is more important, even if such military-supervised elections are held and the Peronists come to power, this will not signify any real changes for the benefit of the workers. The Peronists cannot be expected to harm the military caste which has long been the real wielder of power on behalf of the Argentine bourgeoisie. Nor will a Peronist regime mark any real break with the social and economic policies of the current government. It will continue to protect the interests of the U.S. and other multinationals and of the Argentine capitalist oligarchy of industrialists and big landowners. Exploitation and poverty will continue to be the lot of the workers.

Instead of relying on the promises of the generals and the sweet words of the Peronists, the workers of Argentina must carry forward their mass struggle to revolutionary conclusions. They should fight to smash up the fascist military dictatorship and use the revolutionary upheaval of the working people to carry through the socialist revolution. To prepare for this outcome, the working class has to throw off all dependence on the Peronist politicians and trade union leaders and fight for their own independent policy in the struggle against the capitalists and their military junta.

[Photo: 10,000 workers demonstrate on March 30, in Buenos Aires.]

[Photo: Mothers of some of the "disappeared," demonstrating with pictures of their missing relatives.]

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Trinidad and Tobago:

Texaco oil workers fight big layoffs

(The following article is reprinted from The West Indian Voice, newspaper of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group, May 1983.)

Some 6,800 workers at the imperialist Texaco oil company in Trinidad and Tobago are waging a very important struggle against brutal attacks by this imperialist oil company and the People's National Movement (PNM) government of George Chambers.

Under the threat of closure of its operations and claiming "poverty" the Texaco oil billionaires are demanding the reduction of the taxes and royalties it pays; and with the clear backing of the Chambers government the workers are being saddled with widescale layoffs. As of May 1, all workers age 60 and over are to be forced into early retirement. This agreement which has already been signed and sealed between Texaco, the government and the Oil Workers Trade Union (OWTU) leadership is expected to affect up to 2,100 of the workers employed at Texaco operations in the country. The Texaco imperialists, with the full support of the government and a whole array of vicious bourgeois propaganda against the oil workers, are using the crisis in the oil industry to strengthen their stranglehold over onshore oil production and over the power they wield through their monopoly of the major refinery operations in that country.

The oil workers are outraged and are in a fighting mood. They have been engaging in various protest actions including lunch time meetings, rallies, placard protests throughout the company's installations and they have staged big demonstrations and marches in the south of the country.

Theirs is a struggle of major importance not only for themselves but for all the working masses in Trinidad and Tobago. The attacks on the oil workers today is the touchstone for major retrenchments and demands for concessions being made by the capitalists and the PNM government against the broad working masses. What the oil workers do about this will have a significant bearing on the pace of the development of the resistance of the broad working masses to the offensive of the capitalists, local and foreign, and the PNM government. The dangers which the oil workers face have increased because the policy being followed by the leaders of the OWTU is to call on the corrupt government of the Trinidadian millionaires to do the fighting -- to restrain the hand of the Texaco billionaires and to convince the oil workers that the government is on their side in the dispute.

The oil workers are taking temporary setbacks but they will eventually rebound, for the oil workers of Trinidad and Tobago harbor deep hatred for all exploiters and they have powerful traditions of militancy and determination in the class struggle.

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Jamaica:

18,000 teachers stage walkout

(The following article is reprinted from The West Indian Voice, newspaper of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group, May 1983.)

On Tuesday April 18, some 18,000 teachers throughout Jamaica's schools staged a one-day strike. This strike was the third one called in recent weeks by various categories of employees in the public sector against ridiculous wage contracts being imposed by the Seaga government under the pretext that the imperialist International Monetary Fund (IMF) has ordered strict limits on pay increases. The opposition to the government's contract offers include a current strike by some 9,600 civil servants and a one-week strike staged by nurses at the beginning of April.

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Across Latin America

Movement builds against capitalist austerity and IMF dictate

This spring, workers across Latin America have taken to the streets in militant strikes, demonstrations and rebellions. In one country after another, the workers are saying NO! to the terrible misery wrought by the worldwide capitalist depression. As reported in the accompanying articles, even the most entrenched military regimes, such as Chile, Argentina and Brazil, are being rocked by the mass actions of the working class.

A powerful factor which is giving impetus to the class struggle today is the severe economic crisis. The current crisis is truly a worldwide crisis. It has brought ruin and suffering to the workers and poor everywhere, from the richest and strongest capitalist economies to the poorest ones. But the working masses of the dependent countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where even in the "best" of times, the toilers live in the most terrible conditions.

The crisis in the rich capitalist countries has led to sharp drops in the export earnings of the poor countries. This hits especially hard at these dependent export-oriented economies. Unemployment and starvation spread ever wider among hundreds of millions of toilers.

These countries end up with heavier and heavier debts to the bloodsucking bankers of the imperialist countries. Unable to pay back their interest payments, the capitalist rulers of the dependent countries beg for more loans from the foreign banks and the International Monetary Fund, the Western imperialist-dominated world banking institution which is the "lender of last resort." It is the working masses who are forced to bear the burden of these debts. Austerity measures are piled up one after the other on the already poor and starving workers and peasants.

But as the protests across the countries of Latin America show, the workers are saying "Enough!" They refuse to quietly lie down in front of the cruel offensive of the domestic capitalists and the international financiers. In this article, we look at some of these inspiring struggles which have broken out this spring.

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General strike paralyzes Peru

On March 10, the working class of Peru shut down the country with a general strike against the economic policies of the government. The day before the strike the government declared a state of emergency and banned all strikes and demonstrations. But the workers courageously defied this edict. One million of them -- 85% of the country's total urban work force -- went out on strike in Lima and other cities. The strike paralyzed Lima, shutting down industrial plants, shops, businesses, banks, hospitals and public transport.

The government called 15,000 soldiers into Lima to break the strike. The army attacked workers' demonstrations with tear gas and gunfire. The workers, supported by students, threw up barricades across major thoroughfares and fought the troops with rocks. The army then attacked the barricades with tanks. By the end of the day, four workers had been killed and 20 injured.

Such fierce repression is nothing out of the ordinary for the Peruvian government. The recent period has seen a big wave of terror unleashed against the workers and peasants. In recent months the army has carried out a series of massacres in the countryside.

The present government of Peru is derided by the masses as the " Wells Fargo Cabinet," because of its close ties with the California-based bank. The government has indebted the country to foreign banks to the tune of $12 billion, and debt service on these loans consumes 50% of the national budget! To maintain these interest payments, the International Monetary Fund last summer loaned Peru $952 million. With this, they also imposed an austerity program which requires that the government sacrifice everything else for foreign debt service. Thus the government has removed subsidies for consumer items and thereby caused rising prices for food, gasoline, and electricity and phone rates. With 70% inflation and 60% either unemployed or underemployed, the working class has been hit very hard by these measures.

[Photo: Police in Lima, Peru attacking workers during the general strike on March 10.]

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Two-day general strike shuts down Ecuador

In March, the government of Ecuador announced a new round of austerity measures against the working masses. Shortly afterwards, the major trade unions of the country called for a general strike in protest. This strike began on Mach 23 and continued through the next day. The entire country was brought to a standstill. The workers put forth demands that the government revoke the new austerity measures, such as the increases in the price of milk and fuel. The strikers also demanded increased salaries, a freeze in prices and dismissal of the economic ministers of the government.

As in Peru, the government banned this strike but the workers defied this order. In support of the strike, students carried out militant demonstrations which closed the public schools and universities.

This latest strike is part of the growing anti-austerity movement launched by the working masses against the government of President Osvaldo Hurtado which took office in May 1981. This struggle gave rise to two big general strikes last fall, which we reported on in the November issue of this paper.

A few years ago, apologists for the worst burden falls on the shoulders of capitalist rule in Latin America were waxing enthusiastic about the prosperity which Ecuador's oil wealth was allegedly bringing to that country. But despite having this important resource, Ecuador's economy is a capitalist economy, and a dependent one at that. During the oil boom, the rich did enrich themselves but the poor remained poor.

Then in the current economic crisis, Ecuador's earnings from its major export goods, oil and bananas, have fallen sharply. As well, the country has run up a big debt to the foreign bankers and has been unable to meet its payments. The capitalist government here, as elsewhere, has traveled the same route of imposing austerity measures to placate the international bankers and the IMF. But the workers and other sections of the people have continued to resist this assault. And they have refused to be intimidated by the growing reaction imposed by the government.

[Photo: A scene from street demonstrations in Quito during the general strike in Ecuador, March 24.]

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Strike movement develops in Mexico

Mexico is yet another country where oil resources were supposedly opening the door to prosperity. But here too, this has not brought improvement in the conditions of the working masses. The economic crisis and the huge $80 billion foreign debt piled up by the Mexican oligarchy have brought disaster for the masses. Since last fall, the Mexican government has been imposing one austerity measure after another. This has given impetus to the growth of the class struggle.

At the beginning of this year, the government granted workers a wage increase of 25%, with another increase of 12.5% due at mid year. But with the skyrocketing inflation, this remains a huge wage cut. In the last few months, a number of strikes have begun to break out.

In February 8,000 workers struck DINA, the state-owned Mexican-French diesel consortium which includes Renault de Mexico as a subsidiary. DINA was planning to lay off 2,500 workers and impose rigorous productivity measures on those remaining on the job. To oppose this, the auto workers occupied plants and held mass rallies. By striking for a month, the workers were able to win some reduction in the number of planned layoffs, as well as a 20% increase in wages and an additional monthly food allowance.

As part of his austerity program, President Miguel de la Madrid has also been slashing aid to education. As a result there have been a number of strikes at national and state colleges. Educational employees at universities in Mexico City, Guerrero, and Juarez carried out strikes in recent months for higher pay and for increased funding.

The Forces for Great Revolutionary Upheavals Are Growing

The strikes, demonstrations and rebellions of the working masses across Latin America show that powerful revolutionary upheavals are impending across the continent. Everywhere, the masses are refusing to accept the status quo and are making their voices heard loudly. The ruling governments of the capitalists and landowners are unable to find any solutions for the deep economic crisis. They only offer the working masses even more austerity measures and bring out the big stick of increased repression. But the political crises being suffered by the fascist regimes of Pinochet and the Argentine generals show that repression, even of the most ferocious kind, cannot hold back the class struggle of the toilers.

Indeed, there are no solutions to the terrible misery faced by the masses under continued capitalist rule and imperialist slavery. The exploiters have to be overthrown through revolution. Only this road can put an end to the plunder of the land and labor of the Latin American people by the imperialist bankers and corporations. Only this can do away with the parasitic fat industrialists and landowners who live in luxury off of the backs of the toilers. Only this can mobilize the tremendous creative energies of the toilers for putting an end to the dependent character of the economies of these countries and advance towards all-round development for the benefit of the masses.

Today, with their strikes and protests the workers and peasants of Latin America are preparing the forces for the revolution. The current struggles show the great weight which the working class has in the general revolutionary movement. Those who can bring entire countries to a standstill can certainly, with proper organization, unity and consciousness, smash the chains of capitalist and imperialist slavery and open up the road for a brighter future.

[Photo: Auto workers holding a mass rally in Mexico City on February 10. Thousands of workers occupied auto plants during their month-long strike.]

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Unemployed Workers Rebel in Brazil

As elsewhere in the capitalist world, the workers and peasants of Brazil are being devastated by economic crisis. With each passing day, the misery facing the masses increases. And the anger of the poor also goes on mounting. In early April, this discontent boiled over into powerful rebellions of the unemployed. The tremors set off by these actions reverberated through the top ranks of the military dictators and capitalist board rooms in Brazil. They also spread nervousness among the imperialist banks and corporations on Wall Street and other Western capitalist centers who have invested billions to plunder the working masses of Brazil.

The actions of the unemployed broke out in a number of places, including Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's two biggest cities. But they were mainly centered in Sao Paulo, the city of 12 million which is the country's auto and steel industrial center.

The situation in Sao Paulo has been quite explosive for some time. The unemployment rate here is well known to be quite a bit above the conservative estimate of 15% made by the local businessmen's association. For almost four years, the poor of this city have been fighting to survive the economic depression, without any unemployment compensation or social security.

The rebellion in Sao Paulo grew out of a movement that has been developing among the unemployed. This struggle has been organized by the Committee of Struggle Against Unemployment. A prominent force in this organization are the militants of the Communist Party of Brazil, PC do B, the Marxist-Leninist vanguard of the Brazilian proletariat. (Note that this is a different party then the Brazilian Communist Party, the PCB, which is the pro-Soviet revisionist party.)

This spring, the meetings of the Committee have attracted large numbers. On April 4, its ranks were swelled by thousands of unemployed workers who had rushed to a nearby factory after a few vacancies were advertised. The crowd decided to march to Morumbi Palace, the seat of the regional governor of Sao Paulo. The workers marched for five miles under the slogan, "Jobs and food for the unemployed!"

When the workers arrived at the governor's palace, they demanded that the governor meet with their leaders to discuss their demands. These included demands for unemployment compensation and public works programs. At first, the governor arrogantly refused to meet with the protesters. At this, the demonstrators became enraged and began chanting, "End the unemployment or we will stop Brazil!" They assaulted the governor's palace despite the fact that it was guarded by hundreds of police. The workers ripped up an iron fence around the palace grounds and used the iron rails to fight the police. They also fought with rocks and sticks against the heavily-armed police. Finally, scared of the anger of the masses, the governor decided to meet with the workers' representatives and made some promises of spending more on public works programs.

On the following two days, widespread riots broke out in the city. In downtown Sao Paulo, thousands of the urban poor, who have been facing starvation, broke into food stores -- bakeries, butcher shops, supermarkets, etc. -- and cleaned them out. Some banks were also attacked. The governor called in 10,000 special police to suppress the masses. The troops attacked with clubs, tear gas and gunfire. In the fighting, two people were killed, a hundred injured and 700 arrested.

In the face of the revolt of the unemployed and the prospects of even greater actions to come, the authorities in Brazil were forced to promise certain concessions. The Sao Paulo government agreed to create 40,000 jobs, and even the federal government of General Figueiredo outlined some plans to alleviate the conditions of the jobless.

Nevertheless the government is still refusing to set up unemployment compensation. The fight for this is continuing. The lessons of the April rebellions will not go forgotten by the masses. They will certainly remember that even the minimal promises of relief have been forced through the weapon of mass action. And it is by continuing to build up the mass struggle that the working masses of Brazil will get any further improvements in the conditions faced by the unemployed.

Indeed, the ruling authorities in Brazil and the entire capitalist establishment are scared to death of the actions of the toiling masses. This is the case not only with the military dictators who control the Brazilian federal government but also certain liberal and social-democratic opposition politicians. The governors of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are characters of this type. In the recent actions of the unemployed, both these governors exposed the capitalist fangs hidden behind their sugar-coated words. Franco Montoro, the governor of Sao Paulo, not only sent the police against the rioters but has also opened up a repressive drive against the left. Meanwhile, Lionel Brizola, the governor of Rio who had posed as a great champion of the poor, has opened up a campaign against squatters. Overall, it is reported that closer links have been established between the opposition governors and General Figueiredo over the need to maintain capitalist law and order against the masses.

But it is hardly likely that a few minimal relief programs or the brutal repression of the security forces can keep the lid on the popular movements of the Brazilian toilers. The economic crisis facing Brazil is very, very deep. Like the rest of the dependent and neo-colonial countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Brazil has been hit hard by the depression in commodity exports to the rich industrialized countries. As well, Brazil is hard hit by the world financial crisis. With its foreign debt of $88 billion, it ranks among the biggest debtor countries. The depression has made it hard to meet its interest payments. It is having trouble with the payment plan it worked out with the foreign banks last December.

The response of the Brazilian government has been to go begging to the IMF, like the other debt-ridden dependent countries. And this has brought IMF-imposed austerity measures such as wage cuts, reductions in public spending, hikes in gasoline prices, etc. But these measures are only helping to further contribute to the mass discontent among the workers and peasants of Brazil.

The actions of the unemployed in Sao Paulo herald the greater waves of class struggle that are bound to come against the reactionary Brazilian government. They are also an inspiration for the struggle of the unemployed throughout the depression-wracked capitalist world. They show the great rebellion that is brewing throughout the hundreds of millions of unemployed who have been cruelly tossed into the streets by the capitalist bloodsuckers.

[Photo: Unemployed workers storming the governor's palace In Sao Paulo on April 4.]

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Nurses strike in Barbados

(The following article is reprinted from the May 1983 issue of The West Indian Voice, newspaper of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group.)

On March 21, nurses in Barbados took strike action at six state-owned hospitals against the government's rescheduling of their work hours and the bad working conditions in the hospitals. During the 14-day strike, the nurses organized several demonstrations and rallies -- winning wide support for their struggle. The strike climaxed with a massive demonstration of hundreds of nurses, public sector workers and other government employees in front of the reactionary parliament.

The strike started at the district hospitals, the Psychiatric Hospital and the Geriatric Hospital. On March 24, nurses from a seventh hospital, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, took part in a demonstration through the streets of Bridgetown in solidarity with the striking nurses. And by March 27 these nurses, who had themselves been saddled with rescheduled work hours, joined the strike. The nurses won wide solidarity for their strike among hospital workers and staff, who joined them on the picket lines and at the rallies and demonstrations. As well, sanitation workers, traffic controllers and other government employees conducted "go-slows" and "work-to-rules" in solidarity with the nurses.

This far-reaching strike by the nurses rapidly became a symbol of the continuing struggle of all the working masses of Barbados against the austerity measures and the productivity drive of the reactionary Tom Adams government. This latest strike and round of demonstrations follow on the same track as the one-day strike by public sector workers last July against the attempts of the Adams government to introduce a fascist "Essential Services Act" -- outlawing strikes in most of the state sector -- and another one-day strike last October against the government's attempt to legislate a new wage contract for public sector workers.

The nurses' strike erupted in direct response to stringent measures taken by the Adams government to increase the work load by rescheduling work hours and thus pave the way for eventual layoffs. The rescheduling called for nurses to be on duty five nights a week for 10-hour periods supposedly with a two-hour break during the night. Previously, the nurses worked four nights a week for 10 and 12 hours; the breaks existed only in theory as it was, since there were seldom sufficient nurses to relieve each other because of tremendous understaffing. In effect the rescheduling called for the nurses to work 52 hours per week and lose one day off.

This rescheduling plan was on the drawing board since December 1981 and was to be implemented at the beginning of this year. But with the militant mood rising among the nurses, the government decided to postpone its plans and bide time. But when the government did order the rescheduling, the nurses immediately defied the government's dictate and continued to work the old schedule. In an attempt to crush the workers' defiance, the Adams government threatened to reduce the leave eligibility of the nurses and take other reprisals. Faced with the threat of reprisals, the nurses immediately took strike action.

The regime of Tom Adams, whose Barbados Labor Party is a member of the social-democratic Second International, has been spearheading a vicious offensive against the working masses of Barbados. Faced with a deepening economic crisis, the government has been unfolding one round of attacks after another against the already hard-pressed toilers. Promptly after winning the last elections the Adams government began to unfold a vicious program to increase taxes, order more layoffs, cut wages and start a "productivity" bonanza to sweat the workers to the bone.

An important feature of these attacks has been the moves made by the government to bypass contract negotiations and directly legislate contracts on behalf of the capitalists and itself. The government has been making concerted efforts to pass legislation outlawing strikes in much of the public sector and banning demonstrations -- it was this that brought the working masses out onto the streets in their thousands last summer, forcing Adams to back down for the time being. But the criminal Adams regime is just retracing its steps and seeking revenge; it will not change its colors.

This important strike by the nurses and the widescale solidarity it received is a blow to the offensive being conducted by the Adams regime. The nurses won a victory -- but only a temporary one. Their militant mass actions have blocked the implementation of the rescheduling of work hours. The working masses in Barbados are seeing the power of their struggle -- but they will have to remain on guard and build up a powerful revolutionary movement against the social-democratic Adams regime.

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80,000 demonstrate in Melbourne

Some experience from the anti-war movement in Australia

(Reprinted from the March/April 1983 issue of Workers Voice, a publication published in Melbourne, Australia.)

People for Nuclear Disarmament (PND), in its leaflet promoting the recent Disarmament rally, said: "Tens of thousands of Australians will be marching for nuclear disarmament on March 21."It was no idle speculation. Some 80,000 people demonstrated in Melbourne alone.

This and other big rallies in all major cities around Australia testified to the peoples' concern at the possibility of the outbreak of a major world war and to their growing opposition to current wars and war preparations.

The huge Melbourne rally was a magnificent peoples' effort that had a spirit of optimism and a determination to be heard on the issue of war and peace.

Opportunists In the Van

The national press, on the day following the rallies, could not but make them front page news.

Reports of both the Sydney and Melbourne rallies were accompanied by pictures -- not of the thousands upon thousands of people in the streets -- but of the prominent "personalities'' that made up the front line of the procession. In each case Labor Party parliamentarians predominated. In Sydney it was Uren and Geitzlet (Ministers in the Federal Government) and Kirkby of the NSW [New South Wales] State Labor Government. In Melbourne Labor Premier Cain was featured as a speaker, and was joined in the front line of the march by Holding, a Federal Minister.

Actions Louder Than Footsteps

Just one week before the anti-war demonstrations, the Federal Labor Government announced "wide ranging'' changes to Australia's foreign policies which directly contribute to imperialist war and war preparations.

These included improving relations with the butchers of East Timor, the Suharto regime of Indonesia. It was also confirmed that U.S. bases in Australia would not be closed down.

Uren, Holding and Geitzlet are all party to this foreign policy which has its foundations in the so-called U.S.- Australian Alliance. As for Cain, he is doing his own special job for U.S. imperialism in Victoria.

Cain Runs With U.S. Imperialism

Two weeks before the March 27 rally, a U.S. warship visited the port of Melbourne. The U.S.S. Hoel, armed with ASROC nuclear-tipped antisubmarine missiles sneaked into Melbourne at the tail of an Australian flotilla for a four-day visit over the Moomba holiday festival. It came virtually unannounced, engaged in routine "public relations'' exercises. It departed with limited protest from two unions and a minimal response from the recognized "peace'' organizations: PND and Congress for International Co-operation and Disarmament (CICD).

Despite its "Nuclear Free Victoria'' policy and its stated opposition to visits by nuclear-armed and nuclear- powered warships, the Victorian State Government, led by Cain, was clearly a party to the smuggling of U.S.S. Hoel into port. How else would it have been provided with berthing and other facilities?

The Cain government's capitulation to Federal Government pressure on this issue is now, apparently complete. Its compliance with the visit by this floating nuclear war base was excused by the fact that such visits are now a "federal matter'' -- made so by special legislation introduced by Fraser and recently confirmed by Hawke.

Cain Runs True to Form

OMEGA, the U.S. war base in Gippsland, Victoria, was opened in November 1982. This event was marked by a number of meetings and rallies in Melbourne, at which members of the Cain government opposed OMEGA.

But when people demonstrated at the base itself, Cain's police vigorously defended the base and made a number of arrests.

The very real pro-U.S. stance of Cain and his Police Minister was made clear by their strong condemnation of the anti-OMEGA demonstration. Much was made of the "violence'' of the demonstration in which $ grappling hook was thrown over a fehce at this base, which exists to sendee nuclear submarines carrying the ultimate in present day military violence.

Tagging Along Behind Labor Governments

The condemnation of the OMEGA demonstration in November by the Cain government was echoed by the leaders of the "peace'' organizations who described it variously as "ill advised," "provocative," and "confrontationist."

The U.S.S. Hoel represented U.S. imperialist war preparations. Its visit on the eve of a major anti-war rally revealed a distinct unwillingness on the part of the same "'peace" leaders to get involved in any active response. They acted as if they just did not want to know about its presence -- it was "top inconvenient" with a big disarmament rally coming up.

At the same time, other people who did "want to know" and who did want to take some action had a great difficulty in organizing an effective stand at short notice without the "umbrella" of the recognized "peace" organizations.

These two aspects of the struggle against war require to be studied and acted upon.

One arises from tailing behind the "respectable" cover of parliamentary and other establishment figures and organizations.

The other problem arises from the lack of an effective, independent, self-acting anti-war organization which is firmly based in the working class and that has clear political perspectives on both the effects of war and war preparations, and their social cause -- imperialism.

In trying to understand this, it is worth examining the experience of the anti-war struggle over the last twelve months.

The Anti-War Rally of April 1982

The 1982 rally was conducted under the slogan of "Celebrate Peace" -- despite the fact that the Falklands war was in full swing; the cauldron of war that is the Middle East was bubbling and boiling over; the people of Afghanistan and El Salvador were being blown to bits in wars directly involving the two imperialist superpowers.

To "Celebrate Peace" in these circumstances represented a crude opportunist refusal to face up to concrete issues of the day in regards to wars that were actually being waged, to the threat of any future war (except nuclear war), and, more importantly, to the cause of all war, the social system of monopoly capitalism -- imperialism. Its effect was to try and pacify people, to contain their anger against war! It also exposed a characteristic tactic of such opportunism. That is, in the name of preserving the "breadth and unity" of the movement, the whole emphasis is placed on the "horror of nuclear war," and on appeals to the imperialist rulers who plan such wars to extend their spheres of influence and exploitation to see "reason" and "disarm." It is this same class of exploiters who stand behind the "minor" wars that rage continuously and who wax fat on the arms race.

At the same time the 1982 rally was enthusiastically attended by 30-40,000 people whose deep concern for the danger of war; their opposition to war preparations; their support for the peoples of the world fighting for liberation, their opposition to U.S. war bases in Australia and to the mining and export of uranium, was made abundantly clear by the posters, leaflets, and banners displayed in the demonstration.

These contradictory trends continued beyond the April 1982 rally.

Hiroshima Day 1982

As August 1982 approached, a number of organizations prepared to commemorate Hiroshima Day in accordance with the usual tradition. Some of the planned activities were to take the form of public anti-war demonstrations. Most of the recognized "peace" organizations distanced themselves from these preparations by concentrating on the call for public meetings, receptions, and special functions for distinguished overseas speakers and some local politicians.

This contradiction was brought to a head by the intrusion into the Melbourne scene by U.S.S. Goldsborough, a nuclear-armed sister ship of the Hoel. It arrived on August 4, two days before Hiroshima Day.

Goldsborough's visit was in defiance of the wishes of the State Labor Government and met with considerable public opposition.

Waterfront unions took industrial action, including stop-work action. A round-the-clock picket was mounted at the entrance to Station Pier where the Goldsborough was berthed, necessitating a permanent police guard. The normal visits by the public to such a ship had to be cancelled.

Job meetings held on the waterfront donated money and organized food and firewood for the beach camp.

All this activity was looked upon with disapproval by the "official peace organizations." Their organized activity was confined to a press conference on the end of the pier the day the ship arrived, press statements, and a planned public meeting and short march on the eve of the ship's departure.

In fact the Hiroshima Day rally did take place on August 6, as originally planned in the center of the city. It moved from there to Station Pier, Port Melbourne, where it joined the PND "official" rally. Overall, this concluding event, involving some 3,000 people, was very successful and without doubt this was largely attributed to the three days of intense activity in opposition to the Goldsborough's visit that preceded it.

The vacillations and hesitations of the main "peace" organizations was probably best summed up by the Congress for International Co-operation and Disarmament. In its publication, CICD Anti-War News and Views, September 1982, it complained:

"The timing and scope of the visit (by U.S.S. Goldsborough) was clearly a calculated act, coming as it did at the height of the Hiroshima Day activities.... It is easy to see how a violent protest or industrial confrontation would have served the Fraser cause well." (emphasis added) CICD's weak excuse for retreating before the fear of reaction from a warmongering Prime Minister who had organized the Goldsborough provocation, illustrates the kind of opportunism that leads to the serious consequences that flow from the failure to fight one's "own" ruling class in the struggle against war.

[Photo: Thousands protesting nuclear war in Sydney, Australia on March 27. On that day protests brought out tens of thousands in many cities across Australia.]

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Sasebo, Japan:

Thousands protest U.S. nuclear warship

(The following article is reprinted from The People's Star, newspaper of the Communist Party of Japan (Left), April 1983.)

Immediately after taking part in the U.S.-South Korean joint military maneuvers dubbed "Team Spirit '83," the American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise, accompanied by the nuclear-powered cruiser Bainbridge and some other warships, forced a port call on March 21 at Sasebo, Nagasaki prefecture. On the same day, more than 11,000 workers, toiling people and students from various parts of the country, mostly from Nagasaki prefecture, rallied in a city park, and then staged a militant demonstration to protest against the port call.

It was the rank and file workers who voluntarily organized the struggle from below against the first port call of the Enterprise in 15 years. The struggle hit the Japanese imperialist effort for war preparation and disclosed the real nature of the labor bureaucrats as traitors.

As a component part of the military maneuvers "Team Spirit '83," this port call by the American flattop was designed to turn Sasebo into its mother port, as well as to get the Japanese people ready for the scheduled visits to the Japanese ports by the battleship New Jersey equipped with the Tomahawk cruise missiles and the newly-built aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, both of which are going to belong to the U.S. Seventh Fleet this summer. In other words, the Enterprise visited Japan to consolidate the Japan-U.S. alliance and the U.S.-Japan-South Korean military cooperation, thus turning Japan into an anti-Soviet advance base in the framework of the American imperialist "winnable strategy" against the Soviet Union. For its part, Japanese imperialism aims to tighten its control of the Japanese people and establish its own hegemony in Asia, by following the world strategy of U.S. imperialism.

In order to contain the protest movement by the people, the bourgeois mass media were given full play by the monopoly bourgeoisie and the government, demagogically saying that in Sasebo city "the opinion of the majority is that they have to accept the port call to boost the local economy... people are used to nuclear weapons... most of the citizens want the outsiders to go away" and "the protest movement is inactive."

The port call of the Enterprise had been made public by the end of last year. However, it was not until just before the port call that the labor bureaucrats issued a specific order for protest action. Furthermore, they restrained the rank-and-file workers from rising into struggle, under the pretext of the unified local elections now underway.

What made the anti-Enterprise struggle successful was the resistance from below against the labor bureaucrats' attempts and the extensive support from the local working citizens. This indicates that the indignation is rapidly getting explosive among the Japanese people against the U.S. imperialist anti-Soviet world strategy, as well as against the military buildup and war drives by the Nakasone government which, in dependence on the U.S. strategy, stresses that "Japan shares the common destiny with the United States...Japan should be an un- sinkable aircraft carrier" and "she will blockade her four straits in case of emergency."

For over one month from the beginning of March to early April when the anti-Enterprise fight was in a critical phase, the newspaper Jinmin No Hoshi (Organ of the CPJ(Left)) conducted a publicity campaign to encourage the struggle of workers, working people and students against the port call, and to promote the anti-imperialist war movement on the basis of the successful struggle.

[Photo: Snake-dancing demonstrators protest the visit of the U.S.S. Enterprise to the port of Sasebo in Japan.]

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Another round of protests targets U.S./NATO missiles in Western Europe

This spring there has been another wave of protests in Western Europe against the preparations for nuclear war being carried out by the imperialist superpowers and their allies. The demonstrations were called to oppose NATO's plans to deploy a new generation of nuclear missiles in Western Europe later this year.

The major demonstrations took place over the long Easter weekend, April 1-4. Half a million workers and young people poured into the streets of West Germany, Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands. Other anti-war actions against NATO were also recently organized in Greece and Spain.

According to NATO's plans, the new cruise and Pershing II missiles are to be placed in West Germany, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium. The first missiles are going into Britain in December. But because of the rising anti-nuclear movement, the deployment of these missiles may not go according to plan. West European imperialist governments are under intense pressure from the mass movement.

The major European imperialist powers have been eager to see the missiles positioned in NATO. This has included the open warmongers of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party and the social-democrats of Mitterrand's Socialist Party in France. Meanwhile, it has especially been Reagan's "winnable nuclear war" threats which helped galvanize anger among the widest sections of the people of Europe.

Thus, lately the European political leaders have been pleading with Reagan to tone down his bloodcurdling rhetoric and appear more "reasonable" in the "disarmament" talks between the two superpowers. And when Reagan recently made some new proposals in the Geneva negotiations, European government chieftains praised the proposal as "even-handed" and "progressive." All this is in reality an attempt to defuse and undermine the popular opposition, while the NATO imperialists proceed with their war preparations.

As the date of the deployment of the new missiles draws closer, the actions of the European masses are expected to develop further. Activists across Europe are discussing how to move the movement forward.

West Germany

The biggest demonstrations on Easter weekend took place in West Germany. Protesters blockaded American and West German military bases. As the weekend went on, local demonstrations developed into huge regional rallies in the big cities.

Confrontations with the authorities took place at NATO military bases. Demonstrators concentrated on bases in the industrial Ruhr and in Bavaria, where the cruise and Pershing missiles will be stationed. A total of 75,000 people demonstrated at seven American Army bases.

At the NATO facility in Kellinghusen, Schleswig-Holstein, 10,000 people formed a human chain around the base to blockade it. In Neu-Ulm, Bavaria, demonstrators blockading the military base were attacked by police, who used tear gas and attack dogs against the protesters. In all, 160 demonstrators were arrested.

Over the weekend local demonstrations were held in over 90 cities. From these localities, columns of demonstrators then set out for the larger cities, where the final, large rallies were held. The weekend concluded with eleven major rallies, including ones in Dortmund, where 120,000 marched through the streets shouting slogans; Hamburg, where 80,000 rallied; Frankfurt, where 70,000 massed; and Cologne, where there were 50,000.

Signs and slogans at the demonstrations opposed the arms buildup of both the Warsaw Pact and NATO, but were mostly aimed against the U.S. and the planned deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles.

The West German demonstrators were supported by contingents of 2,600 from Switzerland and 8,000 from France. It was notable that a number of West German soldiers in uniform also participated in the demonstrations.

The West German masses are aroused on the question of nuclear war preparations. At present there are several hundred short-range nuclear weapons deployed in West Germany, along with a quarter-million U.S. troops. NATO's plans call for 108 Pershing II and 96 cruise missiles to be stationed in West Germany.

Britain

In Britain the Easter anti-nuclear demonstrations were concentrated on the U.S. Air Force base at Greenham Common, 35 miles west of London. Greenham Common is the site of the first deployment of NATO's new missiles. Beginning in December, 160 cruise missiles are scheduled to be installed there.

Over Easter weekend tens of thousands of people converged on the U.S. military base. Numerous actions were organized throughout a two-day period, culminating in a 14-mile human chain on April 1. On March 31 demonstrators had blockaded all the gates of the air base and prevented any entry and exit by construction personnel building new silos for the cruise missiles. Military personnel going in and out of the air base had to be ferried by helicopter.

While demonstrators were protesting outside Greenham Common on April 1, some 200 demonstrators scaled the fence of the air base and were able to demonstrate briefly inside before being taken away by police. Following the chain the demonstrators converged for a massive rally. Approximately 100,000 people participated in the chain and nearby demonstrations.

Other mass actions were also organized in Britain over the weekend. The largest of these were in Scotland. On April 2 approximately 20,000 people marched through the streets of Glasgow to protest a planned base for Trident submarines. Demonstrators held mass rallies in the city's main squares. April 3 saw thousands of demonstrators converge on a nuclear submarine base operated jointly by the U.S. and Royal Navies. Five of the demonstrators were able to get over the fence and demonstrate inside, before being arrested.

Italy

On April 2 there was a mass demonstration outside the NATO base at Comiso, Sicily, where NATO plans to install 112 cruise missiles. Comiso is scheduled to become NATO's largest base -- 5,000 NATO officials and their families are scheduled to move there next year as the missiles are installed. But there is fierce opposition to the missiles from the residents of Comiso and all of Sicily.

Spain

In Spain, a new wave of the nationwide campaign against Spain's participation in NATO began with a demonstration of 25,000 on February 27 in Zaragoza, site of a U.S. military base. This was followed on March 20 by a march of 25,000 from Madrid to Torrejon, nine miles away. Torrejon is the site of a U.S. Air Force base. The demonstrators protested the U.S. military presence in Spain. The anti-NATO actions were not supported by the Spanish Socialist Party which controls the Spanish government today. The social- democrats had promised to hold a referendum on NATO entry but since they came to power they have been reneging on this promise. This has provided a sharp exposure of the nature of social-democracy of the SP.

Greece

The most recent manifestations of the European anti-nuclear movement occurred in Greece. On May 15 tens of thousands of Greeks demonstrated against the planned deployment of the new American-made missiles in Europe and called for the removal of U.S. bases from Greece. In Greece, too, the social-democrats who run the government have come in for exposure among the masses. Before the social-democrat Papandreo came to power in the fall of 1981, he pledged to throw the U.S. bases out. But this has proved to be an empty promise.

* * *

The renewed wave of protests across Western Europe this spring shows that working people are determined to carry forward the fight against the preparations for nuclear war. For several years now, the people of Europe have raised their voices against the plans to deploy more nuclear weapons in their midst. But the imperialist chieftains of the U.S. and European powers have gone right ahead with their murderous plans. True, there have been many pacifist postures from many a capitalist politician but these have been nothing but empty words thrown out to deceive the masses while the war plans have gone ahead. Clearly the movement against the war danger cannot rely on these smooth-talking liars but must target imperialism as a system which is the real source of the war preparations. It must be linked with the class struggle of the European workers and oriented towards the socialist revolution against the European imperialist bourgeoisie and the U.S.-West European imperialist alliance.

[Photo: One of the European protests of April 1 against war preparations. Here demonstrators in Marburg, West Germany denounce the planned deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles.]

[Photo: Anti-Nuclear demonstrators block gate to Greenham Common Alrbase in Britain on April 1. These protestors were part of a 14-mile human chain involving tens of thousands of people.]

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May Day Around the World

[Photo: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. A militant contingent of the Communist Party of Labor (PCT) marching in the May Day march of 10,000 workers.]

[Photo: Another view of the Santo Domingo march.]

[Photo: Lisbon, Portugal]

[Photo: Tirana, Albania]

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MAY DAY - 1983

May Day is International Working Class Day. This is the day when workers across the globe stand up and declare their determination to fight capitalist tyranny. It is the day when workers everywhere proclaim that their dream of building a socialist society, a society without exploitation, lives on. It is the day when the call issued by Karl Marx echoes from one end of the globe to the other -- Workers of all countries, unite!

May Day Around the World

On May Day 1983, millions of workers again took to the streets on every continent, from Tokyo to Lagos to Mexico City.

In country after country, the workers denounced the austerity measures of the capitalist governments through which the burden of the depression is imposed on the shoulders of the working people. In Spain, hundreds of thousands protested against unemployment. In Japan over a million and a half raised their voices against the austerity measures of the "administrative reform.'' In Latin America, in one country after another, the workers stood up against the high unemployment, skyrocketing inflation and the ruthless dictates of the imperialist International Monetary Fund. The workers also raised aloft the banner of struggle against nuclear war preparations, particularly in Europe, Japan and Canada.

In many countries where the toilers suffer under cruel fascist tyrannies, the workers used their May Day celebrations to militantly fight for freedom from dictatorial rule. In Chile, fierce clashes took place against the guardians of Pinochet's brutal regime. In Uruguay, thousands marched on May Day for the first time since the generals seized power a decade ago.

In many countries where the class struggle of the toilers has assumed especially violent forms, May Day was marked by the roaring guns of the liberation fighters. In El Salvador, the armed forces of the workers and peasants opened up powerful assaults against the U.S.-backed "death squad'' regime; a town not far from the capital city was liberated by the insurgents.

And in socialist Albania, the only genuine socialist country in the world today, the working people took to the streets to celebrate the victories of socialism and proclaim solidarity with the international working class.

May Day Celebrations in the U.S.

The tradition of celebrating May Day originated in the U.S. with the historic battle for the eight-hour day almost a century ago. It was to commemorate this struggle that May 1st was proclaimed as International Workers' Day by the international workers' movement. But for decades the tradition of May Day has been the target of a ruthless onslaught from the labor bureaucrats and their capitalist masters. Despite this, the tradition has lived on, marked by the revolutionary workers. This year too, May Day was celebrated militantly by the Marxist-Leninists and class conscious workers.

This year the Marxist-Leninist Party again organized the May Day campaign as a weapon in the fight against the Reaganite capitalist offensive. A special issue of The Workers' Advocate was published for the campaign. This gave the call to celebrate May Day under the slogans: All Out Against Reagan! Organize the Class Struggle! It called for a vigorous fight against Reagan's policies of unemployment and starvation, imperialist aggression and nuclear warmongering, and racist segregationism. It explained that this fight must be waged on the basis of the struggle of class against class, for the policies of Reagan are the bipartisan policies of the entire capitalist class. It exposed the utterly fraudulent nature of the "alternatives'' offered by the Democratic Party. The MLP explained that an effective fight against Reaganism requires building the independent political movement of the working class.

This year, the MLP stressed two particular burning issues in the fight against Reagan -- the fight against unemployment and the struggle against U.S. aggression in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Furthermore, since May Day 1983 came in the year when the hundredth anniversary of the death of Karl Marx is being commemorated, the MLP's May Day campaign also stressed the ever-fresh lessons of Marxism for the contemporary struggle of the working class.

In the weeks leading up to May 1st, the militants of the MLP took the message of May Day widely among the workers and oppressed people. Almost 50,000 copies of The Workers' Advocate were distributed in the factories, in unemployment and food distribution lines, in demonstrations and picket lines. Countless discussions were carried out with workers. Thousands of revolutionary posters were put up.

Everywhere the Party comrades went they found that the theme of organizing the class struggle against Reagan struck a deep chord among the masses. Everywhere the masses cursed Reagan and his reactionary policies up and down. They joined in denouncing the Democratic Party politicians as well. The workers, the unemployed and the young people eagerly received the calls to organize mass actions against Reagan and the capitalist exploiters. Indeed, in many places, the masses wanted to know, why aren't there more demonstrations and protests organized against Reagan? This reveals something of the broad ferment which is simmering among the working masses.

This mood of the masses was also reflected in the reception given to the Party's May Day demonstrations in many places. This year the MLP organized marches in Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo and New York City. As the demonstrations made their way through working class neighborhoods, immigrant districts, the black communities, they were warmly.greeted. In a number of places, people joined in. The pictures printed on this page show the enthusiasm with which the May Day actions were greeted.

The Party also organized rallies in Buffalo, New York City, Seattle and Oakland. At these meetings, speeches were delivered on various themes of the May Day campaign. This issue of The Workers' Advocate publishes a speech from the Buffalo meeting on the fight against unemployment (see front page). In the next issue, we plan to print other speeches, including on the life and work of Karl Marx. The speeches at the May Day meetings provided a focus for discussions on how to organize the movement of the working class. The celebrations were capped off with the singing of many revolutionary songs, from the revolutionary working class movement of the U.S. as well as other countries. A number of new songs were sung, two of which are printed elsewhere in this paper.

The singing of songs of the international workers' movement, and this year's May Day theme of solidarity with the revolution in Central America, along with the Marx centenary campaign -- all gave a marked internationalist character to the May Day gatherings and actions. The celebrations organized by the revolutionary workers of the U.S. strongly condemned our "own'' imperialist ruling class for its crimes in Central America. We rejoiced in the victories of the liberation fighters. As well, at the New York rally, solidarity messages were delivered on behalf of the Information Office of the Communist Party of Labor of the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean Progressive Study Group. Revolutionaries from a number of other lands also took part in the May Day events.

May Day 1983 was thus yet another step in the building of the independent movement of the American working class.

Hail May 1st, International Workers' Day!

All out against Reagan!

Organize the class struggle!

Fight unemployment, wage cuts and takebacks!

U.S. imperialism, get out of El Salvador!

No to the CIA invasion of Nicaragua!

Fight back against racism, segregation and KKK and police terror!

To hell with the Democrats and Republicans -- parties of unemployment, nuclear weapons and racism!

Build the independent movement of the working class!

Commemorate the centenary of Karl Marx!

Socialist revolution is the way out of this capitalist hell!

Down with Soviet and Chinese revisionism, enemies of Marxism-Leninism and socialism!

Workers of all countries, unite!

Uphold the banner of Marx!

[Photos: Picture display of the May Day celebrations organized by the MLP across the country. Militant marches were organized in Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo and New York City. The Party's call for struggle against the Reaganite offensive struck a strong chord among the working masses. The MLP also organized meetings in various cities, with programs including speeches, songs, etc.

1. New York City, April 30

2. 3, 4. Detroit, April 23

5. Chicago, April 23

6. Oakland, May 1

7. Seattle, April 30

8. Buffalo, April 30

9. New York City, April 30

10. Buffalo, April 29]

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