Vol. 19, No. 5
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
25ยข May 1, 1989
[Front page:
To fight pollution, fight capitalism!;
600,000 march for women's rights--Down with Bush's anti-abortion crusade!;
Gap widens between rich and poor--For a livable minimum wage!]
IN THIS ISSUE
| Resistance to anti-abortion 'holy week'................................ | 2 |
| Protest of NY Cardinal stand vs. women's rights................. | 2 |
| Confrontation at Oakland city hall........................................ | 3 |
| Why has Oakland agreed to INS prison?.............................. | 3 |
|
|
|
| Down with Racism! |
|
| Seattle; Bay Area; Cleveland; Long Beach; Connecticut; What's up with Jackson's Rainbow?............... | 4 |
|
|
|
| Students on the March: |
|
| Morris Brown in Atlanta; Law schools;Wayne State; Michigan State; Eastern Michigan.................. | 5 |
| Joe Clark: hero for black Reaganism.................................... | 5 |
| California tuition raise; NY budget cuts................................ | 14 |
|
|
|
| Strikes and Workplace News |
|
| Eastern; Pittston coal; Steel; AT&T contract......................... | 6 |
| GE union elections; Boston transit; Farmworkers; Cleveland hospital; Sparrow Point shipyard; Harris Beef;NYC anti-eviction protest; Record bank crashes.................................... | 7 |
|
|
|
| Stop Capitalist Ruin of the Environment! |
|
| Valdez oil spill -- blame Exxon and government................. | 8 |
| Pentagon; 22 billion pounds of pollutants............................. | 9 |
| Protest against incinerator poisoning.................................... | 9 |
|
|
|
| U.S. Imperialism, Get Out of Central America! |
|
| Bush and Congress give millions to the contras................... | 10 |
| Mr. Arias hails Bush's contra aid.......................................... | 10 |
| Supporters of Arias plan waffle on contra aid....................... | 10 |
| Differences between Sandinistas and Leninists.................... | 11 |
| ARENA'S 'moderate' facelift collapses................................ | 11 |
| No to aid for Salvadoran death-squad regime....................... | 11 |
|
|
|
| Death to Apartheid in South Africa! |
|
| UC-Berkeley: A day against apartheid and racism............... | 12 |
| Soviet revisionists scab on fight vs. apartheid...................... | 12 |
|
|
|
| For Workers' Socialism, Not Revisionist State Capitalism |
|
| The deal between Solidarity and Polish regime.................... | 13 |
| Hungarian perestroika: poverty for the masses..................... | 13 |
| Castro arm-in-arm with Mexican exploiters......................... | 13 |
|
|
|
| The World in Struggle | 13 |
| More Israeli peace talk, more killing.................................... | 16 |
| Rebellion against food price hikes in Jordan........................ | 16 |
| Teachers walk out across Mexico.......................................... | 16 |
| Crackdown on South Korean workers.................................. | 16 |
To fight pollution, fight capitalism!
600,000 march for women's rights
Down with Bush's anti-abortion crusade!
Gap widens between rich and poor
Anti-abortion "Holy week" hit by pro-choice resistance
New York's Cardinal O'Connor denounced for stand against women's rights
Confrontation at Oakland City Hall denounces INS prison
Why has Oakland agreed to an INS prison?
DOWN WITH RACISM!
Students on the march
Strikes and workplace news
The Valdez oil spill
EXXON and the government are to blame!
Pentagon and the environment
Creating 'National sacrifice zones'
Capitalism at work
22 billion pounds of pollutants
Protest against incinerator poisoning
U.S. imperialism, get out of Central America!
Death to apartheid in South Africa!
For workers' socialism, not revisionist state capitalism!
New York students blast Cuomo's budget cuts
3,000 California students rally against fee increases
Song: Down with Operation Rescue
'Kinder, gentler' Bush govt, in action
Army demands the right to assassinate
The World in Struggle
Whichever way you turn these days, you get hit with news of one environmental catastrophe after another. The Alaska oil spill is only the latest.
Last summer, medical waste washed up on the beaches. And that was merely the tip of a huge trash disposal crisis.
The other day, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reported that it was "startled" by its discovery that 22 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released by industry each year into the air, land and water. A report like this coming two decades after the EPA was founded shows just how much a "protection" of the environment this agency has been responsible for.
There have also been revelations about the problem of pesticide poisoning, both about the dangers to children eating fruit as well as the damage to the health of the farm workers.
Meanwhile, there is the enormous problem of hazardous waste produced by the military. It is no surprise that the U.S. military machine, which is set up to kill and lay waste, should also be one of the biggest threats to the environment.
The problem of waste at the Pentagon's nuclear weapons plants is widely known. There is another big calamity also in the making by the military. The army is planning to incinerate its nerve gas stockpiles in the midst of several populated areas around the country. An accident at one of these places, which is a strong possibility, might make the Bhopal massacre in India look like a minor affair.
How come we have such a big environmental crisis facing us when we've been assured for the last twenty years that the government and the captains of industry have all gained an environmental conscience?
The Capitalist Profit System Is the Root Problem
To some people, this is all the inevitable result of technology and humanity's selfish interests, which are a scourge destroying the Earth. But the root problem isn't technology -- it's the fact that the use and development of technology take place within an economic system where profitability, and not benefit to society, takes priority. Environmental crisis is inherent within the capitalist system.
In many cases, the technology exists or can be developed to minimize and eliminate environmental pollution. Just as technology exists or can be created to deal with the health and safety of workers at the work places. But capitalist ownership of production holds this back. To invest in such things means cutting into profits, it means weakening one's competitive position vis-a-vis other exploiters. The competitive system also means that each capitalist takes a devil-may-care attitude about what byproducts and wastes he produces.
Capitalism isn't such a benevolent system that the exploiters will willingly cut into their profits for the sake of the health of working people or for a clean environment. No, if we working people are to defend our interests we have to build mass struggle against the environ mental polluters.
Wage the Fight Against Pollution as a Class Struggle
This struggle must necessarily target the exploiters -- it has to be waged as a class struggle.
Some say, however, that the environmental issue is a non class issue, they say it concerns all of humanity. In the long run, it is true that environmental disaster affects the Earth as a whole and all inhabitants, rich and poor, will feel the impact, although wealth will still determine that the rich will feel it differently. But in the here and now, it is the working people who pay the consequences of environmental damage. Industrial and agricultural poisons are killing the workers in the plants and fields, not the executives. It is the workers who have to live near garbage dumps, nuclear waste sites, and chemical and other factories -- not the rich. In Alaska, it is not the oil barons who will suffer, but the fishermen.
Therefore the struggle against environmental poisoning must be based on the shoulders of the working people. The well-being and health of the workers and their children requires this. In many cases it is an immediate life and death issue.
And it is the working class which -- because of its numbers and economic position -- can build up a serious challenge to the capitalists and eventually overthrow their destructive system altogether.
Building up the struggle against environmental poisoning as a class struggle means developing it as a fight against the political power of the exploiters. The EPA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Occupational Health and Safety Commission and all the other regulatory agencies of the state have shown time and again that they do not defend the interests of the masses. They are in the back pockets of the corporations. This is because the government is not a servant of all the people, as it claims, but the instrument of the capitalist class.
We must fight both the Republicans, who are the openly declared party of big business, as well as the Democrats, who claim to be the party of environmental preservation. Words are not enough. One and all, the capitalist politicians feign concern for the environment these days. Even George Bush has become Mr. Environmentalist. It is actions which count. And Democrats have gone along with the Reaganite offensive in favor of gutting environmental and safety regulations to the bone.
For a Socialist Perspective
We have to put up the strongest fight we can mobilize against the environmental polluters. We have to force them to make cuts into their profits for the sake of the health and safety of the working people. We have to fight so that we do not have to pay for their crimes.
But we cannot succeed with the idea that we will have to live with an eternal tug of war with the exploiters. The capitalist system is destroying the Earth at an ever-accelerating rate. It is becoming more and more obvious that this system must be overthrown if we are to have a chance at recovering the Earth and its people from the terrible toll the exploiters have subjected it to.
In place of the rule of the rich and the profit system, we need the rule of the working class and socialism. Socialism won't be able to solve the problem overnight, but it alone can begin the work of cleaning up the mess made so far, tackle the full range of technical tasks necessary to radically alter production and disposal, and take up the reorganization of society such that a clean and safe environment is indeed a serious goal of society.
[Photo: One week before the gigantic Washington, D.C. demonstration 25,000 rallied in San Francisco, April 2.]
Washington D.C. got a spectacular show of the sentiment of the masses on April 9. As many as 600,000 people turned out to demonstrate their support for abortion rights. There were also marches that day in other cities, including one of 350 people in Kansas City and over 1,000 people in Anchorage, Alaska. Some 25,000 marched in San Francisco the week before.
The Bush government and the news media like to portray the reactionary anti-abortion movement as being huge and representative of the sentiment of the ordinary people in this country. But even by the official police estimate of 300,000 protesters, this demonstration dwarfed the biggest events of the reactionary anti-abortion crusaders. They could draw no more than 67,000 people to Washington even with the backing of the president, the hierarchy of the Catholic church, the Moral Majority TV evangelists and enormous publicity by the capitalist newspapers.
This pro-choice demonstration was filled with young people. It is estimated that students came from more than 500 high school and college campuses. Although the union big shots did almost no mobilization, there were small contingents of teachers, garment workers, government workers, auto workers, coal miners, and others. The contingent of Eastern Airline strikers received especially big cheers from the other marchers. As well, there were special contingents of black women, Asians, and Native Indians.
The Marxist-Leninist Party carried a big banner and placards declaring, "Working Women Arise," "Defend the Rights of Working Class Women," "Smash Operation Rescue" and "Smash Bush's Anti-Abortion Crusade." Although the National Organization for Women (NOW) wanted to keep this march tame, many people rallied to the Party's banner and over 200 people joined in shouting the militant slogans the Party raised along the march route. At the end of the march, the Party contingent regrouped on the sidelines and filled the air with slogans. Thousands of people joined in the shouting as they marched by. The Party's singing group was well appreciated as it sang songs in defense of abortion rights throughout the assembly. Some 15,000 Party leaflets, issues of the Workers' Advocate and 500 picket signs were grabbed up by demonstrators.
The enthusiastic response that the Party's work received indicates that a large of section of the people marching were looking for more militant politics -- for the politics of confronting the "Operation Rescue" anti-abortion goon squads, the politics of mass struggle against Bush, the politics of fighting the oppression of working class women by the capitalist slave drivers.
But the NOW leaders of the march tried to channel this militancy away from mass struggle and into lobbying Congress and election drives for the Democrats. NOW put more than 15 congress people and scads of other politicians on the podium to lecture people about voting.
NOW's president, Molly Yard, led the lecturing. "We will organize a political army," she said. "We will say to members of Congress and state legislatures who constantly try to chip away at access to legal abortion... If you still don't get the message, we'll work to replace you."
The NOW leaders also gave a prominent place to Democratic presidential hopeful Jesse Jackson. After vague, but colorful talk about opposing sexism, racism, etc. Jackson got down to his real message. He exhorted the crowd "not just to choose the life of a baby, but to choose governors, congress people and a president who cares."
Today the capitalists are on a brutal offensive against working women -- not only threatening abortion rights but also discriminating against women in jobs and pay and cutting child care, health care, housing, welfare and other social programs to the bone. We need a fight against the capitalists and their "kinder and gentler" government of George Bush. But the Democrats do nothing. Indeed, they have been helping Bush. And all Jackson can say is elect a president "who cares."
The march on Washington demonstrates the vast sentiment among the working people to defend women's rights. To organize that sentiment into a fighting force for real change, the movement will have to push aside the capitalist politicians and bourgeois feminist NOW leaders and build an independent movement of the working class.
[Photo: One week before the gigantic Washington, D.C. demonstration 25,000 rallied in San Francisco, April 2.]
The rich get richer while the poor are forced to pay for it. This is the law of capitalism.
The Congress is debating a raise in the minimum wage law. Even if the highest proposed increase passes, it won't restore the minimum wage to what it was in 1980. And in return many workers will be excluded from any coverage, and the principle is to be established of a subminimum wage along with the minimum wage.
Meanwhile a corporate president who doesn't make $1 million a year is just not with it. The average salary for heads of the top thousand corporations is almost two million dollars a year. (See Business Week for Oct. 21, 1988.) In a single workday he makes about what a minimum wage worker makes in a year, if the minimum wage worker is fortunate enough to have a full-time job. And many corporate heads make more, up to Toys 'R' Us Chairman Charles Lazarus' $60 million in 1987.
Rain or shine, these gigantic salaries of the rich continue on the way up. Corrected for inflation, they are two and a half times what they were 25 years ago. They continue up, while workers' pay has been cut again and again. Here we see one reason why workers are suffering "givebacks" although their productivity and labor intensity keeps increasing. Someone has to provide the feed for the hogs at the top.
The capitalists say that they are against a rise in the minimum wage for strictly humanitarian reasons. They say it will increase the cost of producing goods and eliminate jobs. But then why don't they tell us how much prices go up and how many jobs are lost because of the gigantic pig-out in the corporate headquarters?
And Worse Is to Come
The last eight years were supposed to be the "Reagan recovery." And executive salaries did grow, profits went up, and the wealthy rejoiced over their stock options. But this recovery was bought at the price of cutting wages, squeezing most workers and pushing the lowest-paid strata to utter desperation. The minimum wage has lost about 40% in value. User fees and cuts in social programs; hikes in rents, insurance and medical costs; "hidden" unemployment and part-time employment devastated the poor.
And now these "good times" are coming to an end. The collapse of many banks and savings and loan companies shows the frailty of this economic system. The profitable game of tearing into pieces huge and well-known corporations, from Eastern Airlines to "leveraged buyout" targets, has destroyed before everyone's eyes the alleged permanence of the large corporations.
Exploitation -- Basic Law of Capitalism
This is not an accident, but a result of the system of production for profit. It is an inevitable result of the capitalist law of the jungle. It is polarizing the country: the gap grows between rich and the poor; the golf greens prosper while the inner cities decay. It is creating the basis for a new wave of class struggles. It is laying bare conflict between rich and poor, between capitalist and worker.
Down with the lies of the rich about the benefits of starvation wages! Let us fight for a higher minimum wage so that the working poor can breathe! Let us tear aside the veneer of civilization from the capitalist politicians, Democrat or Republican, who can't live on $100,000 a year but who debate how deep in poverty they can push the working class!
And let us not forget that the contrast between rich and poor can never be eliminated so long as the capitalist law of the jungle exists. We must end the system of capitalism and replace it with socialist production for use in order to produce a truly civilized system, where all can enjoy the fruits of their labor, and there are no privileged parasites holding power and authority as their own special preserve.
At the end of March, to coincide with Easter, the right-wing anti-abortion group Operation Rescue (OR) staged their "Holy Week of Rescue." This was to be a week of blockading abortion clinics around the country. However, Operation Rescue's crusade was a big defeat for them. They called forth a torrent of actions in defense of women's rights. Wherever Operation Rescue appeared, pro-choice forces gathered to denounce them and protect the clinics.
The news media showered OR's blockades with lots of attention. But they obscured the fact that the pro- choice resistance to OR was loud and strong from coast to coast. In several places, the pro-choice demonstrators outnumbered the religious fanatics. And many clinics were successfully kept open.
Last month, The Workers' Advocate reported on the confrontation against OR in Detroit. Since then we have received more reports on the fight against the right-wing anti-abortion fanatics.
Philadelphia
On March 24 Operation Rescue tried to shut down two clinics in Philadelphia, the Planned Parenthood and Elizabeth Blackwell centers. At one center 500 pro-choice activists came out at 5:00 a.m. in pouring rain and confronted some 200 people brought by OR. The pro-choice forces succeeded in keeping both clinics open. Eventually some OR blockaders were arrested and taken away.
The Philadelphia Committee in Support of the MLP,USA played an active role in the struggle. They marched in the picket line carrying placards saying: "A Woman's Place Is in the Struggle!" and "Only the Mass Revolutionary Movement Can Defend Women's Rights!" They also led many militant slogans and helped mobilize other protesters in escorting women patients into the clinics.
Some marshals from the National Organization for Women (NOW) tried to prevent the MLP supporters from holding up revolutionary placards. But the Marxist-Leninist activists defended their right to carry the placards and raise revolutionary slogans, which were in fact very popular with many of the pro-choice demonstrators.
Los Angeles
The Los Angeles area saw three days of clashes between pro-choice and Operation Rescue forces. The pro- choice movement kept tabs on all 90 abortion clinics in the area, tracked the movements of the anti-abortionists, and mobilized clinic defense actions accordingly.
The biggest confrontation took place Saturday, March 25 at the Family Planning Association clinic in mid-town L. A. In heavy rain some 1200 pro-choice activists shoved and denounced around 700 anti-abortionists who were blocking the door.
The 175 police present allowed the door to remain blocked from around 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., which prevented a nurse and at least one patient from entering. When the arrests finally began, the majority of the anti-abortionists were merely booked on misdemeanors such as trespassing and failure to present I.D., and then released on their "own recognizance." This kid-glove treatment of the right-wingers contrasted sharply with the rough handling, serious charges, heavy fines and high bail typically meted out to progressive, left-wing activists at anti-militarist or anti-discrimination protests.
Meanwhile, two more clinics were kept free from Operation Rescue by 200 people at Sunset Blvd. and 50 at Wilshire Blvd.
Supporters of the MLP in L.A. participated in all these actions and distributed close to 1,000 leaflets and newspapers which discussed how to build up the struggle of working women. Many pro-choice activists were enthusiastic to read about and discuss such issues as the importance of mass struggle and the need to expose the anti-choice role of the police. They were also receptive to the idea of basing the pro-choice struggle on the working people rather than relying on the police, courts and Congress, which is the policy urged on by the bourgeois leaders of NOW.
On March 23 and 24, hundreds of people also defended clinics in Cypress, Orange County; on Figueroa in L.A.; two places in Long Beach. The Cypress clinic and one in Long Beach were kept open all day.
Detroit
As we reported last month, there was a spirited fight by hundreds of pro- choice militants against Operation Rescue on March 24 at the Northland Clinic in Oak Park, a suburb of Detroit. At this event the local police had arrested four pro-choice protesters.
On the evening of April 10th, 25 people picketed the Oak Park City Hall shouting: "Stand Up and Fight! Abortion is Our Right!" and "Drop the Charges!" The City Council was meeting that night and pro-choice activists planned to denounce the role of the Oak Park police during the March 24 events.
The four pro-choice activists who had been arrested were charged with assault. They were trying to keep the clinic doorway free so that patients could get in. Meanwhile, out of the 250 anti-abortionists who illegally blocked the door all morning, not one was arrested. In fact the police continually threatened only the pro-choice activists that day to ensure that the clinic remain closed and that patients were turned away.
The police also filmed the faces of all the pro-choice activists and took down their license plate numbers for the purposes of espionage and harassment. Meanwhile they whispered all day with the Operation Rescue members and treated them like their best friends. The anti-choice role of the police was unmistakable in Oak Park.
[Three photos: Pro-choice militants in Long Beach, California cover up anti-abortion fanatic's sign and then knock him down.]
Two hundred people picketed on Sunday, April 2, across from St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. They were there to protest the role of the Catholic Church hierarchy in opposing abortion rights. The Catholic Church, well known for its strong stands against the rights of women, plays a key role in the antiabortion movement. And New York's Cardinal O'Connor warmly supports the fanatics of Operation Rescue.
As soon as the picket formed, activists began to shout slogans. These included, "Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate!" and "Right-to-life, your name's a lie, you don't care if women die!"
Half an hour into the event, a number of activists "decorated" the cathedral with a banner. About 75 people, banners and all, rushed across the street to join them, and began to shout slogans against O'Connor and the anti-abortion movement.
A small anti-abortion group which had been on another street corner tried to go into the pro-choice crowd on the steps of the cathedral. But the demonstrators confronted them and, shouting slogans in their faces, pushed them back.
The police arrested nine pro-choice activists for the "crime" of placing a sign on the cathedral. The police did not act as gentle as they have acted towards the right-wing Operation Rescue at clinic blockades.
The pro-choice demonstrators marched down 51st Street to the police precinct where the arrested activists were being held. They shouted slogans and waved their fists at the cops. At the station, they shouted: "Pro-choice, let them go!" The demonstration stayed at the precinct for several hours until everyone was released.
The chambers of the Oakland City Council became the scene of an angry protest on April 18. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) wants to set up a detention center in Oakland to lock up immigrant workers and Central American and other refugees. Last month, Mayor Lionel Wilson and the other smooth-talking Democratic politicians in the city council approved the plan. But progressive workers and anti-racist activists have launched a spirited fight against the INS prison.
The protest began with over 100 demonstrators marching outside city hall. They belted out slogans against the INS and in defense of the immigrants and refugees. Activists carried a big Fight racism! banner. The MLP carried the banner Fight racism with militant action! and placards declaring No INS concentration camp! and Full rights to the immigrants and refugees! A group of homeless people raised a banner and took part, and links were drawn with the attacks against the homeless and the attacks on the refugees.
At 7:00 p.m., when the council meeting was to begin, the demonstrators poured inside shouting "You better not build that concentration camp -- we're gonna tear it down!"
The protest took over the city council chambers. The stars and stripes were pulled down and the walls were decorated with anti-racist banners and picket signs. And for half an hour, this august room reserved for the honorable business of swindling the working people by lying capitalist politicians, was turned upside down by a loud and angry protest. All the while, the mayor and the council members cowered in a back room waiting to marshal enough police to clear the chambers and silence the protest.
With a show of police force behind him, Mayor Lionel Wilson came and retook his chair, nervously smirking at the crowd. Wilson had to sit there and take it as he and the other Democratic Party liars were loudly denounced up and down. They were denounced for the shameless act of accepting the INS prison. And. they were denounced for their hypocrisy. After all, this was the same mayor and city council that voted two years ago to make Oakland a "City of refuge" for Central Americans, Haitians, South Africans and others seeking sanctuary from oppressive U.S.-backed regimes.
The council then began to go through the motions of getting the meeting underway. The city politicians tried to keep their composure as they searched an empty wall for a flag to pledge their allegiance to. But in the face of the angry crowd the mayor was only too happy to declare the council in recess.
Then, as the protest moved down the steps of city hall it came under attack from an unexpected quarter. A large man in a business suit started pushing people around and violently denouncing them for the protest. This enraged gentleman was none other than black City Councilman Wilson Riles Jr., the most liberal, the most allegedly "left"-wing Democrat in the city council. Riles was beside himself with rage because the protest action had disrupted the council meeting.
Riles says that he is against the plan. But he doesn't want any militant actions. He wants to keep the issue within the stuffy confines of city council bargaining. He wants to be able to pose as a friend of the oppressed, but without antagonizing his cronies in city hall. That is why he was so angry. And with the show of his violent temper tantrum he hoped to distance himself from "unruly" protests in council chambers. The protesters were not impressed by his bully tactics. He was surrounded by activists who went nose to nose with him to shout him down and defend the protest action.
The truth is that militant action is just what is needed to block the INS prison. It is the heat of the working people coming into struggle that makes the powers-that-be think twice. And militant action helps bring the workers and oppressed into the struggle.
To build this fight the activists need to reach out to the immigrant workers and other workers in the factories and communities. They need to expose the dirty maneuvers and hypocrisy of the Democratic politicians. They need to make the link between this INS prison and the capitalist offensive against the workers and minorities. They need to draw the connection between the jailing and persecution of the refugees and U.S. imperialist intervention in Central America and other lands.
The action at the city council has put the capitalist politicians on notice. This is only the beginning! The fight is on against the INS prison!
(Reprinted from "Bay Area Workers' Voice," paper of the MLP-SF Bay Area Branch.)
[Photo: Demonstrators outside Oakland city hall, April 18, protest the plan to build an INS prison in the city.]
The Bush government is tightening the vise against the immigrant workers from Latin America, Asia and other countries. The refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Haiti are being hit doubly hard.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service wants to dig a trench four miles long and 15 feet wide on California's border with Mexico. The hype about this trench is being used to create a barbed-wire and barracks spirit against the immigrants and refugees.
Border Patrol at the Transit Stations
In the San Francisco Bay area, Border Patrol officers (500 miles from the nearest land border!) have been recently stationed at the rapid transit stops. Who are they looking for? Allen Dwelley, the Border Patrol's second in command in northern California, explains:
"We look at the clothing, the skin color. Furtive eye movements or lack thereof. The way a person reacts to the presence of someone in authority."
In other words, if you have the wrong skin color, the wrong clothes, or the wrong eye movements, or if men with guns and uniforms make you nervous -- then watch out! You are a suspect. If you can't produce the right papers you might just be brought in and locked up.
More Prisons and Camps
To provide the lock-up space the INS is expanding its prisons. In Brownsville, Texas it has just set up a virtual concentration camp to hold more than 5,000 immigrants and refugees. And other prisons are being built around the country.
One reason for the need for the prison space is that the INS is bearing down against the Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees. They come here seeking asylum from the death squads and the devastation that the U.S. government is sponsoring in their countries. But the federal policy is to treat them like criminals to be hunted and jailed.
In recent months a growing number of refugees -- men, women and children -- are being packed into prisons and camps to wait while the bureaucrats review their cases. They often are left to rot in prison for months and even years. If amnesty is denied, they are sent back to their countries to face the authorities and death squads.
The INS has hired the Brooklyn, New York firm Esmore Inc. to build and operate several of these prisons as a profit-making business. (Leave it to capitalist America to make prisons a target of venture capital!) So far Esmore has plans to build prisons for the INS in Denver, Houston, New York, San Diego and Oakland. The Oakland case provides useful lessons for anyone concerned with the plight of the refugees.
Oakland City Government Gives Its Blessing
Oakland city government is mainly black and liberal, led by the black Democratic Mayor Lionel Wilson. As a gesture to mass sentiment, the city council adopted a resolution in 1986 declaring Oakland a "City of Refuge" and requiring all city employees to refrain from cooperating with "any INS investigation, detention or arrest procedures."
But now it is clear just how empty this gesture was. With the mayor's support the council has just voted to allow Esmore to build its INS prison in a depressed area of West Oakland.
Bill Patterson, a consultant to Lionel Wilson, says there is no violation of the resolution here because the city didn't deal with the INS but with Esmore: "The Esmore group came to us just like any other business, like a Nordstrom's [department store]."
This only shows how shameless this deal is. Humanitarian resolutions be damned. There is hard cash involved here. And the city officials want a cut of the deal. No matter that they are dealing with the lives of refugees.
The truth is that the city has already, on the^quiet, made a contract with the INS to hold some 40 people with inadequate papers in a wing of the Oakland jail. The Esmore deal will create over 100 beds for INS prisoners.
A number of reformist politicians from the black community (both city council members and those aspiring to be) are questioning the Esmore deal. Among other things, they want better guarantees that Esmore will train and hire blacks from the area. As if it would be all right to build prisons to lock up men, women and children, whose only crime is being "the wrong color," just as long as a handful of blacks can become prison wardens.
This is the typical standpoint of the black upper crust. For the black bourgeois the racist, police-state, and imperialist policies of the capitalist ruling class are okay just so long as they can get in on a piece of the action. Meanwhile, these ruling class policies bear down harder than ever on the working and poor black majority.
The INS Prison Cannot Be "Improved" With Worthless Resolutions
The crowd in city hall has started to twist and turn in the face of the opposition to the INS prison. They are groping for a way to sell the Esmore deal to the working people of Oakland.
Unfortunately, the church-based reformist leaders of the "Sanctuary Covenant" seem to be trying to give them a hand. They say that they would go along with the prison if the city council "imposes language to regulate" the use of the prison by the INS.
Lionel Wilson and others have grabbed onto this. They are making promises of a resolution that would limit the use of the prison to those refugees seized at Bay Area airports or possibly only the Oakland airport. Supposedly, this would bar the INS from using the center for people picked up in street sweeps.
But one might ask, is it so much better to imprison immigrants captured at the airports than at, say, the rapid transit stops? In recent months, hundreds of immigrants have been grabbed in airports across the country. Large numbers of these were people traveling to the East Coast trying to avoid the INS crackdown in California.
Any such "regulating language" is worthless. It is pretty tinsel to dress up the Esniore deal and get the prison built for the INS. Then, of course, the INS will do what it wants with it. We have already seen how effective the "City of Refuge" resolution has been.
To defend the immigrants and refugees means to take a stand against building prisons and camps to lock them up. It means to have no faith in the empty resolutions of the Democratic Party swindlers. It means to build up the mass struggle of the workers and progressive people of all races and nationalities. To fight for the full rights of all working people. No matter their skin color. No matter the clothes they wear. No matter their "eye movements." No matter their legal documents. The denial of rights for one section of the working people is a challenge to all.
(Reprinted from the "Bay Area Workers' Voice,'' paper of the Bay Area Branch.)
[Photo: Protesters, including a contingent of the homeless, stormed into the Oakland city council chambers and decorated it with their banners.]
Racist groups have been calling meetings and marches around the 100th anniversary of the birth of the king of the Nazis, Adolph Hitler. A national conference of nazis, racist skinheads, and Ku Klux Klan was called for April 22 at the Aryan Nation compound near Hayden Lake, Idaho. The Populist Party of David Duke (who is now a Republican legislator in Louisiana) called a meeting at a Hayward public library in the San Francisco Bay Area. And racist skinheads called a "White People's May Day'' for May 1 in San Francisco.
But everywhere the racists are being confronted by anti-racist protests. Indeed, the mere call for anti-racist actions has put a stop to some of the racists' antics. The Aryan Nation racists originally planned a march through Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. But they called it off for fear of the anti-racist march. And the Populist Party backed out of their meeting when the local government canceled permission in the face of the mass outrage in the area.
On April 15, some 200 people joined a rally in Seattle, Washington to prepare for the April 22 protest in Idaho. A big banner of the Marxist-Leninist Party was raised at the center of the rally declaring, "Smash the Nazi Skinheads." Placards saying things like "Nazis are puppets of the rich" were carried by many people. And leaflets calling for people to confront the racist skinheads were spread all around.
The leaflet, put out jointly by the MLP and the Revolutionary Action Group, criticized the idea by organizers of the Idaho march that militant confrontational tactics will alienate people. The leaflet pointed out:
"Who are they afraid of alienating? In fact, it is the black bourgeois politicians such as Jesse Jackson and other liberal big shots who are 'alienated' by a real fight against the fascists. These liberals are pushing hard for non-confrontational tactics and purely symbolic actions. They are pulling strings behind the scenes to impose these tactics on the movement. The defeat of the fascists requires militant mass action such as that in Atlanta and Napa county. These tactics don't alienate the masses of working people and youth. Just the opposite. The victories inspire more to join in."
Although Duke's Populist Party agreed not to show in the Bay Area, about 150 people came out to protest on April 20 anyway. They marched from the BART station to the Hayward public library.
The Marxist-Leninist Party took an active part in the march. Its leaflet declared, "Confront the Racist Gangs with Mass Action!,''pointing to the example of the 800 anti-racists who confronted the "Aryan Woodstock" in the Napa Valley, California on March 4. The MLP leaflet pointed out:
"At every turn the protesters pushed for militancy. They closed the highway by marching up the middle of the road. When they reached the site, the activists broke through police lines and out onto the property of the wealthy doctor who gave the skinheads use of his ranch.
"Some skinheads were confronted and were sent scurrying behind the barbed wire and police. On the way back after the rally, activists punished a few robed Klansmen who were rescued by their police escorts.
"It wasn't easy to turn this into a militant protest. But protesters found ways to do it. It wasn't only the cops that they had to go against to confront the racists. The demonstrators also had to overcome obstacles put in their path by the reformist misleaders.
"Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) and other organizers tried to prevent confrontation and stop any militancy. When the march took the center of the highway, they tried to force it back to the shoulder. When the marchers went outside the police lines, they tried to herd them back into the soggy pasture the police had set up for 'crowd control.' As the crowd marched back to the assembly site, they tried to hurry them along the road so that the Klansmen would not be confronted.
"The reformists want to restrict the movement to tame and respectable protests so the Democratic Party will smile on them. They appeal to the bourgeois liberals, the media and the trade union bureaucrats.
"But workers and activists are not interested in tame protests. They want to stop the nazis in their tracks. And they know that to do this, the nazis have to be confronted every time they raise their heads."
[Photo: Confrontation against racist skinheads' "Aryan Woodstock in Napa Valley, California, March 4.]
Several mass protests broke out in Cleveland, Ohio at the end of March and the first week of April. The black people are outraged at a series of racist attacks and police involvement in selling drugs in the black community.
Racists Open Fire
In just the first two months of 1989 a half dozen racist attacks took place in the Cleveland area.
One black man was shot and killed by a carload of whites screaming racist slurs. A house was ransacked and painted with racial graffiti. Four teenagers were chased and shot with bird shot by a carload of racists. There have been several cross burnings in white enclaves around Cleveland. The black youth have faced increased police harassment.
Police Selling Drags to the Youth
As if this were not bad enough, it recently came out that the police department has been involved in pushing drugs among the youth.
The most outrageous incident began in 1985. The Cleveland Police Department worked with a drug dealer named Arthur Feckner during a supposed sting operation. The police actually set Feckner up in a drug house and watched as he sold a half a million dollars in drugs to the black community. The aim of this operation was said to be chiefly to raise money for plans for an even bigger sting operation that was supposed to take place later. After news of this deal got out, five police officers were brought up on charges. But they were let go and no other action was taken.
The black community was not satisfied. On March 27, over 2,000 people rallied to oppose the police involvement in selling drugs. The following day 100 people marched to city hall to demand to see the mayor. The mayor has not admitted to approving this operation, but he praised the fund-raising by selling drugs as "an innovative idea."
On March 11, over 100 students and anti-racist activists marched in Long Beach, California to protest the racist police abuse of blacks in the predominately white town.
A focus of the protest was the earlier arrest of a black off-duty policeman who was harassed and arrested after driving into Long Beach in a beat-up car. He was carrying out a sting operation of his own to see how long it would take for the Long Beach police to pull him over. After 15 minutes in Long Beach, he was pulled over for a supposed traffic violation. A white policeman named Dickey shoved his head through a plate glass window and then arrested him for "resisting arrest."
What the Long Beach police didn't know was that the whole incident was being videotaped. Their racist abuse was filmed and shown on national TV. Although the police had to change their story after seeing the video, Long Beach is still pressing the "resisting arrest" charge.
The demonstration was organized by Students Against Police Abuse. They demanded that the charges be dropped and that the racist policemen and the Long Beach police chief be fired. Slogans were shouted vigorously along the march such as "Re-teach the Long Beach police," and "One day when you're going to class, Dickey may shove you through glass.
On Saturday March 25, without prior announcement, three members of the Ku Klux Klan set up shop on a street corner in Unionville, a nearly all-white suburb of Hartford, Connecticut. Holding signs that read "Save our land--Join the Klan," they began to hand out their racist literature.
Almost immediately passers-by began to stop across the street. This grew into a militant crowd of opposition. Some white teenagers quickly made an- ti-Klan placards. They shouted insults at the racists and began to throw things at them. A dozen policemen showed up to protect the racists.
Despite threats from the police, the anti-racists crossed the street and chanted slogans right in the face of the KKK scum. The crowd grew even larger. And people driving by showed support for the spontaneous demonstration by honking horns and shouting insults at the KKK from their cars.
Seeing there was no support for their racist filth, the Klansmen finally slunk out of town with their tails between their legs. As the racists made their getaway, the crowd raised their fists in the air and cheered, "We did it!" and celebrated their victory.
When Jesse Jackson launched the National Rainbow Coalition, many left- wing groups hailed it as a new independent movement of the working masses -- an attempt to break free of the racist Democratic Party big shots and build the struggle against the reactionary capitalist offensive of Reagan and Bush. But Jackson has repeatedly dashed these hopes. Last year he relegated the Rainbow to a back seat as he stuck firmly within the Democratic Party, campaigned for Dukakis, and following the elections, stretched out his hand to find "common" ground in meetings with George Bush. Recently Jackson restructured the Rainbow as a further step to insure that it will not break out of the Democratic Party control.
On March 3, the coalition's board of directors met in Chicago. It scrapped the bylaws that were adopted at the last national convention of the Rainbow in 1987. In their place, it wrote new rules. The Rainbow president, Jackson, is given authority to appoint or remove state chairpersons and other local coalition officials. As well, Rainbow chapters must now get Jackson's approval for any political endorsements. And now national board members will be chosen for limited terms by the board itself, instead of being elected at biannual conventions.
Why were these changes made? The April 12 issue of the opportunist Guardian newspaper reports on the explanation of Jim Zogby, from the Arab American Institute and chair of the ad hoc committee on restructuring. "Zogby told the Guardian that the coalition has to incorporate more leaders of the constituencies that gave Jackson seven million votes in the 1988 presidential primaries (labor, black churches, etc.) and to foreclose the possibility of local chapters becoming dominated by unrepresentative sectarian groups."
In the language of political big shots this means: 1) the national board is not to represent ordinary people who might join the Rainbow, but is to be a vehicle for wheeling-and-dealing among union bureaucrats, "respectable" black leaders and politicians; 2) Jackson has given himself authority to wipe out any force that arises in the local Rainbow chapters (called "sectarian" groups) which threaten to take a stand to the left of Jackson and his plans for the Democratic Party. In short, instead of a mass movement for progressive change, the Rainbow is now officially nothing more than Jackson's plaything for election maneuvering among rich and powerful stalwarts of the Democratic Party.
Despite this change, the Guardian and other revisionist and reformist groups, continue to support and promote the Rainbow. This shows that these groups have given up fighting for the interests of the masses of black people and workers and are simply tailing after the black bourgeoisie in their quest for a "piece of the action" in the capitalists parties and government.
Over 300 students at Michigan State University rallied to oppose racist provocations on the campus April 6. They denounced a professor who had made the racist statement that minorities don't enroll in his class because it is "too tough'' for them.
This protest follows months of other racist provocations on that campus. In December a dead rat and racist graffiti were attached to the dorm room door of the president of the campus chapter of the NAACP. In February both he and the chapter vice-president found racist threats on their phone recorders.
The student newspaper has also printed a series of letters which have advocated the formation of white supremacist organizations and called for the end to equal opportunity programs. As well, the students have protested racist harassment by campus police.
Three hundred students rallied April 5 to support a student occupation of the Morris Brown College administration building in Atlanta. Fifteen students had entered the building that morning and chained the doors shut.
The occupation lasted two days. The students rallying in support stood on overnight vigil to guard the occupation. On the morning of April 6, they locked arms to prevent police from entering the building.
The demands of the protesters were over deteriorating living conditions and food on campus, for establishing a Pan- African studies program, and to end student expulsions.
A student strike spread through 36 law schools on April 6. The students demanded the hiring of more minority nationality people and women faculty members.
At UC Berkeley nearly 90% of the students joined the boycott of Boalt Hall law school. Over 100 people joined a noon rally. Students also sat-in at Boalt Hall and the dean's office. The students demanded that the next five faculty members hired for the law school be minority and include one Asian American, one Native American, and1 one minority woman. The administration refused the demand. After eight hours 46 of the students were arrested and the hall was cleared.
It is reported that over 50% of the students joined the class boycott at the University of Texas at Austin, Cornell and Harvard. At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, hundreds of law students joined the strike. They wore armbands and boycotted classes. Rallies, forums, and sit-ins were held at many other campuses. Students were also arrested at UCLA.
Recent studies have shown that only about 5.4% of the tenured faculty at law schools are minorities and only 13.7% are women. About a third of the schools have no black faculty members at all.
"Hey, hey, ho, ho, racism has got to go!'' The shouts rang out from 150 students marching April 19 at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.
Students are fed up with a growing number of racist incidents on campus. A display for black history month was defaced with KKK and racist graffiti. And racist abuse has been shouted at minority students on a number of recent occasions. They organized the protest by racing through the hall, opening classroom doors and shouting to students to join the rally outside.
Following the demonstration about 30 students took off for Detroit where they rallied outside the Wayne State student center in support of the black student sit-in.
For ten days 100 black students occupied the Student Services Center of Wayne State University in Detroit.
It began when black student leaders wrote a letter to President Adamany demanding that he stop dismantling the Center for Black Studies. When he failed to respond, the students took over the building April 12 in what they described as a "study in."
Hundreds of people -- including students from Wayne State and other college and high school campuses -- came out for two rallies to support those occupying the building.
The protesters denounced the administration for keeping down the number of black professors (99 out of 1,300 or 7.5%) and the lack of tenure of many of them. They also condemned the low number of black students at WSU (22%) in a city that is a majority black. And they complained about the Center for Black Studies being cramped into a corner of a fifth floor and denounced the racist insults and graffiti on campus. They put forward a list of demands including transforming the Center for Black Studies into an academic department with expanded funding and curriculum.
The administration surrounded the building with police and refused to allow other students and sympathizers inside. But the administration didn't want to risk retaking the building by force, when the students have received so much support. Instead, they tried to kill this struggle with kindness. Black Democratic Party bigwigs like John Conyers and Jesse Jackson showered them with praise. The administration gave into some demands. And when there was a hitch in the negotiations over the amount of money for black studies, Mayor Coleman Young jumped into the scene. Calling the students heroes, Young even offered $35,000 to help fund an expanded black studies program.
When Young's promise failed to get the students to give up the struggle, the administration issued an ultimatum that the students leave the building by Friday afternoon. But the students stuck to their guns, and the administration backed down and granted the students' key demands.
Inspired by this struggle and the fight against racism at Howard University and several Michigan colleges, 150 students at the University of Detroit also rallied on April 20. They raised demands for a department for minority affairs, increased financial aid, and more black students and faculty.
[Photo: Students at Wayne State U. in Detroit marching in support of students occupying the student center building.]
George Bush, after waging a thoroughly racist election campaign, turned around and launched a drive to recruit black people into the Republican Party. Of course Bush would never think of opposing discrimination or improving the economic situation for the hard pressed black masses. Oh no. He's out looking for blacks from the upper crust who are willing to turn on the black working masses to find a little favor for themselves.
Bush's recruiting drive suffered its first fiasco when black students at Howard University waged a militant battle that successfully kicked Republican Party chairman, Lee Atwater, off Howard's board of directors.
But just in the nick of time out comes the movie Lean On Me to make a hero out of Joe Clark and to provide Bush with an ass-kicking model for black Reaganism.
The movie portrays Clark as a black militant whose deep concern for the education of minority teen-agers leads him to take drastic measures at Eastside High in Paterson, New Jersey. According to the movie his bat-wielding crusade clears out the drug pushers and criminals, teaches black students discipline, and results in quickly raising the educational level and test scores of the students.
It doesn't matter this movie is just one lie and distortion after another. The Reaganites cheer it. They are vindicated. From this movie you would think that the problems in the inner city schools are not due to the Reaganite budget cuts, overcrowded classes, lack of books and other resources. Nor are they due to Reaganite cuts in social programs, to the loss of jobs and high unemployment, or to the crippling poverty that ensnare the youth with no hope of a brighter future. Nor are they due to the racism, the Reaganite crusade against "reverse discrimination,'' and so forth that keep blacks and other oppressed nationalities at the bottom of the pit. No, none of this matters. Because Joe Clark's bat supposedly whipped the youth in line and got them moving up the ladder to success without opposing racism or getting an additional cent for the schools or jobs.
But let us take a look at a few of the facts which are hidden by this fantasy movie script that Reagan and Bush so love.
Raising Test Scores by Kicking Out the Students with Lower Grades
The movie makes it appear that Clark's get-tough methods improved the education at Eastside High. It dramatically shows that in one short year the school went from some three-fourths of the students failing the standard minimum proficiency test to the majority passing it.
In fact, however, the students' test scores did not really improve. But by expelling the lowest achievers -- the movie shows some 300 students kicked out on one day, and there were more later -- Clark simply wiped out the lowest test scores and thereby raised the percentage of passing scores for the whole school.
Nor has there been much improvement in the years that have followed. Eastside High's proficiency test scores in reading and math remain in the bottom one-quarter of the schools statewide. (Mother Jones, January issue)
The dropout rate has actually increased from 13% in 1982, when Clark became principal at Eastside High, to 21%. (Time Magazine, Feb. 1) And only a handful of additional students are now going on to college.
Clark's program for education is, essentially, to drive the bottom third of minority students out of the schools. He denounces them as drug pushers and hoodlums and pathological deviants. But in fact, driving all these students out of the school does not end the drug and crime problems. It only pushes more students towards that life.
Blaming the Black People Themselves for the Oppression They Suffer
And what of the portrait of Clark as so concerned about the black students who were apparently oppressed by the handful of drug pushers and criminals? Well, in fact, Clark denounces all the black students and puts the blame on the entire black race.
"Blacks are out of control,'' Clark declared in an interview. (The South End, March 21) "Black males between the ages of 17 and 25 are out of control. There is a total disrespect for democracy and a neanderthal attitude. How am I gonna nurture and coddle these guys with AK-47's and Uzis? They are out there killing people, killing babies.''
And why is this? According to Clark, "There is something wrong with the black race...you have to understand that blacks -- blacks are a race of people that are politically and socially unproductive.'' But the slaves built up much of this country and the black workers remain the base of a large part of industry. Only the wealthy capitalist owners count in his mind.
So he continues, "They have no economic base whatsoever. The prognostication is that the whole damn race will self-destruct culturally by the year 2,000." Reagan, or for that matter Hitler, couldn't have said it better. Clark is simply blaming black people for the crimes committed against them by the racist capitalist ruling class of this country.
Caring Educator or Out for Himself?
The movie portrays Joe Clark as such a caring, committed educator that he gives up his nights to go around helping students, helping their parents, and driving other teachers at the school to voluntarily work overtime without additional pay for the sake of the students.
But in fact Clark has given up work in the schools altogether and is now pulling in big bucks by touring the country speaking out for black Reaganism. When asked about this, Clark replied, "I gotta look out for myself -- everyone does. That's the American way." (The South End, March 29)
At least that's the American way for capitalist exploiters who make their living by trampling on the backs of the workers and oppressed. And that's the way for the black bourgeoisie today. Clark is simply stating in crude terms what many of the black politicians and elite are doing in practice -- turning their backs on the masses of workers and poor black people to "look out for myself."
[Graphic.]
The 8,500 baggage handlers, mechanics, and other ground workers are standing firm in their strike against Eastern Airlines. They are determined to beat back Frank Lorenzo's demands for $125 million in pay and benefit cuts.
The strikers continue to receive full solidarity from the 5,900 Eastern flight attendants and 3,500 pilots who have refused to cross picket lines. As well, support rallies of tens of thousands of workers have been held in many cities across, the country. And a contingent of Eastern workers marching April 9 got tremendous applause in the 300,000 strong pro-choice demonstration in Washington.
Workers in every industry have felt the sting of capitalist takebacks in the Reagan/Bush era. And they've seen savage strikebreaking and union busting spread from PATCO into one industry after another. Workers everywhere support the Eastern strikers and hope the struggle here will finally throw up a barricade against the savage concessions drive of the capitalists.
Union Hacks Try to Trade Concessions for Seats on the Board of Directors
Unfortunately, the union leaders are trying to convert this from a strike against concessions into a fight to replace one capitalist slave driver with another one. Look at the deal agreed to in April by the leaders of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA).
The union bureaucrats hatched a plan for Peter Ueberroth to take over Eastern from Texas Air. The union hacks actually agreed to give up even greater concessions to Ueberroth than Texas Air's Frank Lorenzo was demanding. The IAM hacks offered $168 million in wage and benefit cuts each year of a five year contract. The ALPA offered $30 million a year in concessions. And the TWU offered lesser takebacks and a wage freeze.
In return for these mammoth takebacks, the workers were supposed to receive 30% of the stock of the bankrupt company. And officials from the IAM and ALPA were to get seats on Eastern's board of directors.
This deal fell apart at the last minute when Lorenzo refused to allow a trustee to take over Eastern until the sale to Ueberroth went through. But it shows what the union leaders are actually up to. They are not fighting against concessions. Rather they want seats on the board of directors to help manage the concessions drive against the workers.
Of course the IAM officials argue that Lorenzo is such a bad manager that they are willing to give up a lot of concessions (of the workers' money) to get a supposedly good manager, like Ueberroth or TWA boss Carl Icahn. But this is just the same game they played back in 1986. Then the bad guy was Eastern's head Frank Borman. The IAM officials actually welcomed the buyout of Eastern by Lorenzo as supposedly just what was needed to get rid of the bad manager Borman. Trading one slave driver for another hasn't help the workers a bit.
All the airline capitalists are scrambling for takebacks from the workers. Bankruptcies and buyouts are all through the industry. And they are used time and again to grab more concessions from the workers. Meanwhile, the big capitalists are making a mint off these deals.
The issue for the workers is not to haggle over which capitalist is going to rob them, but to mount a determined, united fight against the robbery. Obviously, such a struggle also requires a fight against the sellout union bureaucrats.
[Photo: Striking Machinists from Eastern Airlines at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia.]
In April, hundreds of miners formed mass picket lines and began battling scabs at Pittston Coal Company mines in Virginia and West Virginia. Some 1500 miners struck April 5 demanding job security and improved benefits.
The government immediately stepped in to back up Pittston's union busting drive. Two coal drivers were arrested April 9 and four on April 11 for throwing rocks and blocking scab trucks near Clintwood, Virginia. Meanwhile, at two other mines a circuit court judge banned mass picketing and limited picketers to ten. Hundreds of miners at those sites had blocked the transport of coal to a processing plant. With the protection of Virginia and West Virginia state police, Pittston is preparing to hire scabs and reopen its operations.
Over the last few years, Pittston has laid off thousands of union miners and transferred work to nonunion mines and subcontractors. Fourteen months ago it refused to sign the national Bituminous Coal Operators Agreement. It then cut off health insurance and pension benefits for disabled and retired miners. And in the mines, it arbitrarily instituted forced overtime, job combinations, and layoffs without regard to seniority. In November, it announced its "best and final" contact offer which would eliminate premium pay for Saturday and Sunday work and gut health insurance and protections against subcontracting.
Despite these vicious attacks, the leaders of the United Mine Workers (UMW) violated the miners' tradition of "no contract, no work" and kept miners on the job for fourteen months. Instead of struggle, they have pinned their hopes on a legalistic strategy of filing "unfair labor practices" lawsuits to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Even when they finally allowed the strike, they called it an "unfair labor practices strike," promised to obey all court injunctions and NLRB rules, kept Kentucky Pittston miners at work, and are holding miners back from mass picketing and other forms of militant struggle -- all this in the hopes that the NLRB will harness Pittston.
But decades of struggle have shown that the miners have never won anything from the operators or the NLRB except by uniting in militant picket lines, spreading strikes with roving pickets, and using other tactics of mass confrontation against scabs and police. Today, when the miners are hard pressed by layoffs, mine closings, and shifts to nonunion operations, they must return to their militant traditions and unite miners throughout the industry for determined struggle.
Contracts for nearly 50,000 steel workers don't expire until August 1 at Bethlehem, Inland and National Steel. The USX contract expires in January. But leaders of the United Steel Workers (USW) have begun early bargaining in the hopes of heading off any strikes.
In 1986, the USW hacks broke up the national contract, and divided the workers into separate contracts for each company. With the workers thus divided and weakened, and under a cry of "saving" the crisis-ridden industry, most of the steel workers were saddled with wage cuts or freezes and other concessions. Under pressure from the angry rank and file, the USW hacks are now saying they'll bargain for "get backs." In January the USW Wage and Policy Committee conference issued its statement on goals for the upcoming contracts. It was filled with vague talk of good things, but workers' shouldn't expect much from these sellouts.
Workers Need an Immediate $3 Pay Increase
Take wages for example. The Wage and Policy Statement admits that purchasing power for steel workers has fallen 22% since 1982. Of course, what the hacks don't admit is that this fall is largely the result of their treachery in agreeing to concessions and not fighting for higher wages during that time. And more, the hacks don't say what "substantial" means. In the USW's recent settlements in the can industry "substantial" apparently meant only 2% in each of the first two years, 30 cents the third, and a $300 bonus the fourth (yes, the hacks gave the companies a four year contract). This is ridiculous.
Since the workers lost 22% they should immediately get back at least 22%. That would average between $2 and $3 an hour immediately. And with inflation starting to soar, the workers must get the restoration of cost of living allowances that were lost in past contracts.
Fight for Job Security, Bring Back the Laid Off!
The union heads aren't doing much for job security either. They chiefly argue that "The tabor Management Participation Teams experiment has proven invaluable...we are prepared to expand and strengthen this program..."
But the "cooperative partnership" of the hacks with the steel companies has been the vehicle for widespread job combination, loss of jobs, and an offensive of firings and disciplinary actions against the workers. This has included the imposing of arbitrary drug testing at a number of plants.
The collaboration of the union hacks with the company, through "labor management participation teams" etc., has spelt disaster for the workers. But instead of scrapping this program, the hacks demand its extension to "middle and top levels as well, including representation on corporate boards." In other words, the union bureaucrats want seats on the corporate boards where they will in fact help manage the slave-driving of the workers.
Workers have become fed up with the "cooperative partnership." This contract is a good time to put a stop to it. Get organized, independent of the union sellouts! Get organized for mass struggle!
(Based on April 3 "Detroit Workers' Voice," paper of MLP-Detroit.)
Thousands of telephone workers joined informational pickets April 5 in preparation for upcoming contract struggles. The contracts for 175,000 workers at AT&T expire May 27.
Telephone workers have been under severe attack since Reagan "deregulated" the industry a few years ago and broke seven regional bell companies off of AT&T(regional contracts come up later this year). The deregulation has been a gold mine for the telephone companies. AT&T alone raked in $2 billion in profits in 1987 and over $2.3 billion in 1988 (although it claimed less due to a one-time write-off of assets). But the companies' wealth has been taken out of the hides of the workers. About 80,000 jobs have been shifted to nonunion subsidiaries created by AT&T and the regional companies. And AT&T announced in December that it plans to eliminate 16,000 additional jobs in the next five years. As well, the companies have greatly extended the hiring of "temporaries" who have no rights or benefits.
Unfortunately, union leaders from the Communication Workers (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have weakened the workers' resistance. Instead of uniting the struggle, they have allowed each company a separate contract with separate expiration dates. And they are holding back struggle even at individual companies. For example, March 3 the contract expired for 15,000 workers at GTE in the Los Angeles area. GTE is demanding concessions. The workers voted overwhelmingly to strike. But CWA leaders have refused to call one and are extending the contract day-to-day.
Elections for local officers for the International Union of Electrical workers (IUE) were held in March at GE's Lynn factory complex outside of Boston.
The incumbent McManus slate was soundly defeated. It stood openly for cooperation with GE and against rank-and-file action, which it blamed for the loss of thousands of jobs at GE.
The winning slate, headed by Charlie Ruiter, claimed it would put up some sort of resistance to the farm out of jobs and the speedup inside the complex. Unfortunately, no sooner were they in office than they brushed aside a petition of 270 workers calling for a plant-gate rally to protest cuts in health benefits.
As well, they put forward a program of raising productivity (that is, speedup, job elimination, and other cost cutting concessions) in exchange for a promise from GE to freeze layoffs. In the name of job security, on March 25 the new union hacks even suggested a plan to set up plant-wide worker involvement groups to raise productivity, including a detailed comparison of each job with farm-out shop costs to determine where the job would be done. Instead of uniting the workers at GE and the farm-out plants for struggle, the new union hacks are playing the old game of making the workers compete between plants over who can do the most work for the least pay. Despite their rhetoric, the new union leaders represent little change.
But there was another significant feature shown by the March union elections. This was the campaign, in the Aircraft section, of Mike Olmstead for militant rank-and-file action against speedup, concessions, and farm out It was a campaign that forced to the fore the issue of health insurance cutbacks. It was a campaign openly associated with the Marxist-Leninist Party and the Boston Worker.
The leaflets of the Olmstead campaign were widely read and appreciated. Many workers stood up to the attempt to spread anti-communism by pro-company workers. There were 118 workers who voted for Olmstead, and many others not in Aircraft supported him. The Olmstead vote confirms that there is a serious trend of militant workers who are fed up with the union bureaucrats and want a real fight against GE.
(Based on April 4 "Boston Worker," paper of MLP-Boston.)
On March 15, motorman Mike Campbell was suspended indefinitely with a recommendation that he be fired. The excuse for this firing was that Campbell was seen "engaged in a casual conversation with a passenger while operating a train." In fact, a passenger had requested directions from Mike while the train was stationary. When the train left the station, he informed the passenger that he could not talk while driving. At the next station, the passenger left.
Why was Mike fired when everyone knows that he has a squeaky clean safety record and better than average attendance? Why, because the Transit Authority has been setting up conditions for the last year to get rid of Mike for his activity in organizing workers for resistance to the management attacks.
Mike Campbell is a militant, anti-racist, revolutionary-minded worker who is widely known as a supporter of Boston Worker and the Marxist-Leninist Party. He has been an extremely outspoken advocate and organizer of mass struggle to defend the workers' rights. He has also been an opponent of the union leaders' tum-the-other-cheek policy -- the policy of relying on useless lobbying instead of mass action to roll back management rights.
And at a time when the Authority is going after major concessions in the new contract, it is no wonder that they want to get rid of people like Mike Campbell. The Authority wants to get rid of the organizers among the transit workers so that they can more easily shove concessions down their throats.
Workers should organize support for Mike and, wherever possible, management officials should be confronted with the demand for his reinstatement. It is mass actions of the rank and file that can defend militants such as Mike Campbell.
(Taken from March 19 "Boston Worker," paper of MLP-Boston.)
Farm workers at the Webb Ranch in California have been fighting to organize in a union. On April 6, the Agricultural Relations Board announced that the United Stanford Workers had won a union election at the ranch 36-5. Now workers will fight for a contract to alleviate the rotten conditions at the ranch.
The Webb Ranch is owned by Stanford University. Stanford is an elite school and the home of the right-wing Hoover Institute. It is also apparently a capitalist slave-driver. Workers at the Webb ranch averaged $4.50 an hour, but gave most of that back to the ranch operator for inflated costs for food and shelter. And the living conditions are horrible. Last February, San Mateo County inspectors found more than 60 violations of housing and other codes at the ranch. Stanford attempted to claim it had no responsibility for the horrible conditions because it had leased the land to another operator.
Over 2,200 hospital workers struck at the end of March against the Metro Health System of Cleveland, Ohio. The strikers represent 40% of the total hospital work force. They include almost all employees other than doctors, nurses, supervisors and administrators. The health system they service includes the third largest hospital in Cleveland -- MetroHealth Medical Center. The workers are demanding better wages, hospitalization and sick leave.
Some 1,400 shipbuilding workers struck the Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point Shipyard in Baltimore, Maryland on March 16.
The workers struck after defeating a new three-year contract which offered only paltry wage increases. The workers are demanding far greater increases to make up for lost ground due to a wage freeze in 1983 and concessions to the company in 1984.
The company is claiming financial losses of nearly $100 million over the past three years. It, along with local politicians, is threatening the workers with the loss of key contracts if they do not abandon their fight.
Since the end of February, slaughterhouse workers have been on strike against the Harris Ranch Beef Co. in Selma, California. The largely Mexican and Chicano work force has voted down three rotten contract proposals of the company. They have had enough!
For nine years, they have not had a raise. In fact, some job classification wages were rolled back by $2.25 an hour in 1983. More wage cuts were imposed three years later. New hires receive no benefits for the first year of their employment -- and one-third of the work force has less than a year of seniority, due to the high turnover from bad working conditions.
Harris is the largest, and only union, slaughterhouse left in the area. Support for these workers is important to beat back the union-busting drive of the capitalists.
On the morning of April 1, a crowd quickly gathered to fight the police eviction of squatters from a New York building. The squatters had lived in the six- story structure for a number of years. But as part of its gentrification of Manhattan's lower east side, the government has decided to tear down the building.
Dozens of cops and 15 squad cars were mobilized for this action. The protesters denounced the police. There was pushing and shoving. The police grabbed and arrested six of the protesters.
Later in the afternoon, the protest shifted to the front of the Christadora House -- a 16-story luxury condominium tower. The Christadora is the biggest symbol of the gentrification and the elimination of affordable housing in the neighborhood. Cement blocks and rocks were thrown through the glass lobby doors and a second-floor apartment window. A bag of garbage was dumped in the lobby. The police again showed up and arrested three more of the protesters.
The demolition and eviction are part of the New York City administration's attacks on the homeless. Recently, the City announced plans to ban sleeping in the parks. And threats are being made against the "abhorrent" large numbers of homeless in Grand Central Station and other public buildings. But the homeless are fighting back.
Real wages keep going down, overwork is increasing, poverty is worsening, and the environment is being poisoned. But the capitalists call this "good times," and are worried that things are going to get worse. One of the many threats to the economy comes from the tottering financial system.
Record Savings and Loans Losses
It is well known that the Savings and Loans companies lost a record amount of money last year. The Bush bailout plan calls for pouring in money to the tune of at least $50 to $100 billion. This huge sum is not being used for paying off the small depositors, but for giving new bonanzas to big capitalists who are being paid billions to take over the bankrupt savings and loans companies after the federal government reorganizes them. And Congress is fretting that the bailout may end up costing far more than planned, with the present subsidies to the capitalists only creating conditions for bigger crashes in the future.
Record Bankruptcies of the Commercial Banks
And the ordinary banks? They have their own troubles. They have been going bankrupt at record rates. Last year 198 commercial banks failed, the most since federal deposit insurance was created. Just as the Federal Savings and Loans Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) went bankrupt from the losses of the savings and loan companies, so the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporations (FDIC), which ensures the commercial banks, is under pressure from the bank failures. Having suffered losses of $4.1 billion last year, due to these bank closings, it now has only $14.1 billion left. Relative to the size of the deposits it insures, this is the least money the fund has ever had. If this trend continues, the savings and loans bailout will have to be followed by a bank bailout.
International Debt Crisis Grows
Meanwhile the international debt crisis continues unabated. Latin America, in particular, is staggering under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars of debt. The mass revolt in Venezuela at the end of February and the current rebellion in Jordan show the mass anger building up against the capitalist profiteers, the local governments, and the international bankers.
On March 24, the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska and spewed out at least 240,000 barrels of crude oil.
The resulting slick has devastated one of the most ecologically sensitive areas in Alaska. It has destroyed both the herring and salmon hatcheries in the region, crippling the livelihood of the fishermen of that area. Hundreds of sea birds and animals have been killed. How many wildlife casualties there will be, how long before the Sound will return to its former state, how the toxic chemicals will affect the fragile fish hatcheries and the fishermen who depend on them for their living, will not be known for some time.
A catastrophe of this scale did not have to be. It was not an inevitable accident. No, this was a criminal tragedy directly caused by a combination of reckless profiteering on the part of Exxon and a complete lack of supervision by local, state and national authorities who are in cahoots with the oil monopolies.
The Lack of Preparations
It has always been a contention of the oil industry in Alaska that a major oil spill in any area of the pipeline was so unlikely as to be impossible. This was assured again and again when the oil companies lobbied for opening up Alaskan oil in the 60's and early 70's.
Furthermore, the company responsible for the pipeline, Alyeska Pipeline Co. (a consortium of major oil companies, including Exxon) had supposedly developed an elaborate plan with full local and state government approval in the unlikely event of an emergency spill, including the stockpiling of large amounts of equipment on-site and a fully trained crew.
The reality turned out to be quite different. Over the years, in order to preserve their profit margins, Exxon and Alyeska have been cutting back on the staff and equipment needed to clean up spills. And government officials accepted this.
In Exxon's case, nine experts on oil spills left the company in 1985 and 1986 as part of wider workforce reductions.
Alyeska had originally subcontracted a full-time response team with 16 staff members on duty at any one time. The company got rid of this and established its own much-reduced crew. The result was nobody on full-time cleanup at all -- the equivalent of a volunteer fire department was left responsible for spills!
Meanwhile, maintenance of the cleanup equipment was also allowed to deteriorate.
Who's Responsible for the Accident?
Much has been made of the role of the ship's captain, Captain Hazelwood. The captain obviously had a severe drinking problem which impaired his ability to command his vessel. It turns out that his driver's license had been revoked around the time of the accident.
As reprehensible as this is, it brings up the obvious question: what the hell was Exxon doing letting someone who wasn't allowed to drive a car pilot a supertanker? !!
But the captain's problems need not have created such a disaster. Why weren't there other experienced crew members? Exxon has reportedly made dangerous cuts in its personnel on tankers, using its influence to get waivers from manning requirements. And they want to cut crews further.
What's more, by using double-bottomed tankers (such as is now used for liquid natural gas ships) oil spills could be greatly reduced. One estimate puts the additional cost at 1/2 cent per gallon at the pump. Apparently Exxon views this extra cost as an unnecessary competitive liability in the wondrous workings of the capitalist marketplace.
Beyond that, there's also the fact that tankers going through Prince William Sound are supposed to be tracked by Coast Guard radar. The Coast Guard should have warned the ship away from the reef, but it didn't. It's still not known why, but a related factor appears to be that the Coast Guard station has also scaled back its operations due to Reagan's budget cuts.
Still, you can never eliminate all possibility of human error or technological or natural mishap. Under such conditions, the ready presence of a clean-up apparatus is vital. In the final analysis, Exxon is merely using the "drunk captain'' excuse to divert attention from their enormous crime of helping to dismantle the oil spill clean-up apparatus at Valdez.
The Pathetic Response
Once the accident actually happened, both Exxon and Alyeska were abysmally slow to respond.
As luck would have it, the Exxon Valdez ran aground during very favorable weather, something extremely unusual for that time of year in the Sound. The seas were extremely calm, helping to keep the oil from spreading too far, too fast. Had there been an immediate effort to contain the spill, the damage could have been minimized. But now the earlier cuts began to tell.
Because of the lack of on-site equipment and crews, Exxon had to fly in crews and equipment from around the U.S. and as far away as England. All in all, it took an unbelievable three days for Exxon to get its butt moving on the spill, and when they did, the results were pathetic.
After five days of this, the slick had grown to a fifty square mile area and the first of many birds and other animals were washing up on the shores. The local fishermen took matters into their own hands. They began moving out to the various islands and shores with what equipment they could get out of Exxon or in some cases buying their own, desperately attempting to keep some of their livelihood intact.
The Government is the Handmaiden of the Oil Monopolies
The government is supposedly responsible for the protection of both the environment and the fishermen's livelihood. But the Valdez oil spill has revealed where the loyalties of local, state and federal government actually lie.
The oil companies have a very cozy relationship with the state of Alaska. In fact 85% of Alaska's state budget of $2.3 billion is supplied by oil sales and taxes collected from oil companies.
Exxon and the other oil companies pumped $434,000 into the campaign funds of their favorite candidates in the 1986 elections alone. And that no doubt is the tip of the iceberg, as it doesn't even include contributions to political parties, and perks for lobbyists and former legislators.
State officials were more than happy to repay the favor by letting the companies get away with whatever plan, or lack thereof, they felt appropriate. As Richard Finberg, oil and gas advisor to Alaska's Governor Cowper, admitted, "There has been no emphasis on environmental compliance since the late 1970's.... The oil spill contingency plan was a joke from the start. A few people tried to point this out, but we called them environmentalists. Nobody listened. We all pretended everything was fine.'' (Seattle Times, March 31)
Of course, after the spill, Alaskan officials have tried to strike the proper tone of indignation and outrage. What hypocrisy!
George Bush, "Mr. Environmentalist"
The federal government's role in this is outrageous as well.
George Bush, who rediscovered himself as "Mr. Environmentalist'' during last year's election campaign, sent a team of high-level officials to Alaska, citing his concern over the pace of the cleanup.
This included the head of the Coast Guard. At the same time, however, the Coast Guard was reopening the Port of Valdez to tanker traffic. "There's a strong need to get that crude oil to the lower 48 states,'' said Admiral Nelson, head of Coast Guard operations in Alaska. A strong need to get the crude profits to the oil companies, is more like it.
But, not to worry! The team of experts reported back to Bush that the cleanup was going well and didn't need to be federalized. After all, Exxon was doing all it could. This, mind you, on the same day when Don Cornett, Exxon's Alaska coordinator, was flatly saying, "When you spill 240,000 barrels, you don't ever expect to pick it up.''
The Spill Goes On -- and On
Meanwhile, the cleanup continues to proceed at a snail's pace. So far the spill has grown to a size larger than the state of Delaware, moving out into the Gulf of Alaska. Its present location makes it a direct threat to the fishing industry in towns such as Seldovia and Kodiak.
The oil giant goes on its merry way, defending its cleanup in the face of every fact to the contrary. Exxon is hiring workers to help clean up, but you can tell a lot about Exxon's attitude from the fact that it is a condition of employment that workers not talk with the media!
Exxon's capitalist stockholders aren't too concerned. Its stock has barely fluctuated more than a point since the accident. The rich know very well that they aren't going to be hurt by any of this.
Said one oil industry analyst, "...even if the cleanup cost $400 million and they had to pay for all of it themselves, it wouldn't have any impact on them.'' Of course they won't pay. Cleanup costs themselves are limited to $14 million personally for Exxon, and a total of $100 million set up in a fund maintained by all oil companies doing business in Alaska.
As for who pays for this ultimately, Exxon spokesman Don Cornett was remarkably frank: "It's just like any other normal expense of doing business; if it gets to the consumer, that's where it gets.'' (Seattle Times, April 11) Actually, it appears to have already "gotten'' the consumer; as anyone who has bought gas recently can testify to.
As usual, it is the working people who are made to pay for the crimes of the capitalists. Such is the marvel of the "free enterprise'' system.
But the working people should not accept such an outrage. Mass protests against pollution are essential. They need to be built up against both the capitalists and the government of the rich.
However we cannot rest content with merely limiting the destruction the capitalists are able to get away with. We have to start working towards a lasting solution. For that it is necessary for the protests to be combined with a socialist perspective. It is becoming more and more obvious that the profit system is destroying the environment at an accelerating pace. This system must go.
(Based on an April 14 leaflet of MLP-Seattle.)
[Photo: 2,000 rallied on a beach in Seattle, Washington in early April to protest the devastating oil spill by the Exxon Valdez.]
Remember all the stories in the media last year about the hazardous nuclear waste sites of the Pentagon? Remember all the promises from government officials and politicians in Washington about cleaning up these dumps?
Well, what happened? What's the government doing about these sites which hang as daggers aimed at millions of people around the country?
The sad truth is, when it came time to produce, the hot air turned up little commitment or action. In his budget proposals for 1989, Bush asked for a mere $401 million for dealing with the nuclear weapons plants. This is nothing. All serious estimates show that over a hundred billion dollars are needed to clean up the nuclear weapons sites.
Meanwhile, the government is quietly spreading the word that the costs of cleanup are too high -- now they are talking of simply entombing these sites and leaving them as they are. Navy Captain Michael Caricato, who heads the Pentagon's toxic cleanup program at military bases said that these islands of pollution will become "national sacrifice zones.'' (U.S. News and World Report, March 27)
What this means is that they are talking about leaving thousands of toxic time bombs scattered around the country with deadly nuclear material in them. There are some 3,000 toxic sites at the Energy Department's 17 nuclear weapons plants.
Experience does not lead one to have much confidence in the Pentagon's interest in ensuring the safety of the people and environment around these dangerous sites. Take the Hanford nuclear weapons plant in Richland, Washington. More than 200 billion gallons of hazardous waste -- enough to inundate Manhattan to a depth of 40 feet -- have been poured into unlined pits and lagoons. Toxic seepage has contaminated at least 100 square miles of ground water. Some 45 million gallons of high level radioactive effluent are stored in giant underground tanks, and more than 50 Nagasaki-size bombs could be built from the plutonium that has leaked from these containers.
Making such sites into "national sacrifice zones'' means that the government won't take responsibility for its blunders. It means sacrificing the people in communities across the country to the greater glory of war making.
While the words may be newly coined, in fact the idea of "national sacrifice zones'' has long been the actual policy of the government. Remember the fate of the people who were slowly infected with radiation around the nuclear weapons test sites in Nevada? Or the people in the Pacific Islands around the nuclear test sites in the ocean? All those people were sacrificed by the government for the greater interest of beefing up this country's nuclear arsenals with more and more atomic bombs.
Stand Up Against Capitalist Militarism
Clearly the people cannot rely on the government to provide them with security from the Pentagon's dumps. The working people have to mount protests and build up a powerful struggle against the government. For such a struggle to develop, it is essential to stand up against the militarism of the government.
The ruling class and the generals hope that the idea of patriotism will help them in avoiding a serious fight. After all, weren't they simply working for the defense of the country and don't the people have to bear the necessary costs for defense?
But the truth is, the people and the rulers do not have the same interests. "Defense of the U.S.'' is not defense of the interests of all the people, rich and poor alike -- it is defense of the interests of the billionaires. The war machine of the Pentagon is meant to ensure world domination for U.S. imperialism, to ensure the steady flow of profits to U.S. corporations from the exploitation of labor and resources abroad. While the rich are served, it is the workers and poor people who are sacrificed, who serve as cannon fodder.
Take note: the Pentagon is not setting up "national sacrifice zones" near the homes and playgrounds of the millionaires but around communities where workers live.
On April 12, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that each year U.S. industry pours a "startling'' 22.5 billion pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, water and land. If the bureaucrats of the EPA are "startled,'' the rest of us should be alarmed.
An Underestimate
The EPA itself acknowledges that this figure underestimates the actual amount of toxic chemicals released into the environment. For example, while the report says that some 2.7 billion pounds of toxic chemicals were released into the air, the EPA says that the total amount released into the air may be twice as much. The EPA report is only based on annual toxic disclosure forms filed with the government by about 17,500 factories and industrial facilities in 1987. The EPA survey does not cover all chemicals nor does it include emissions from smaller companies and certain industries.
What's more, when you take a survey based on what the corporations themselves say, one has to take it with a big grain of salt. The capitalists are hardly known for their loyalty to the truth when it comes to such things.
A Killer Brew of Nerve Gases and Carcinogens
Of course the capitalists say that there is little to worry about. The Chemical Manufacturers Association insists that its members have reduced emissions since 1987, and that in any case the chemicals become so diluted in the air that they become innocuous.
But the junk being spewed into the air is hardly so benign as the capitalists say.
In Kansas, for example, the emissions included 69,000 pounds of phosgene, which is a nerve gas that killed thousands of soldiers in World War I. Meanwhile, the air in Indiana received about 144,000 pounds of methyl isocyanate -- the same gas which killed over 3,000 people near the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India in December 1984.
In total, the toxic emissions also include 235 million pounds of carcinogens such as benzene and formaldehyde, and 527 million pounds of toxins which damage the nervous system, such as toluene and tricholoroethylene.
A Grave Threat to the Working People
The bureaucrats of the EPA say that no hard and fast conclusions can be drawn about the human health impact of the massive releases. But it does not take a sage to see that the capitalists are destroying the health of millions of men, women and children with the kind of materials they are releasing into the environment. Not to speak of the ecological impact to plant and animal life.
As an agency of the government of the rich, the EPA is not known for acknowledging the full environmental damage done by the corporations. However, the EPA's own estimates in the past have suggested that toxic emissions into the air cause more than 2,000 cases of cancer each year -- and that's based on just 20 chemicals, not the 329 in the latest survey. The agency has also said that living near chemical plants poses a lifetime cancer risk greater than one in 1,000. Studies have found unusually higher cancer rates near plants in West Virginia and Louisiana. As well, there is the poisoning of the workers inside the plants who come in closest contact with the dangerous emissions.
Since the late 60's the people have been told that the government and the corporations have made a commitment to a clean environment. In 1970 the Clean Air Act was passed and the EPA was created. Subsequently other environmental bills have been passed. But the latest EPA figures confirm what is shown by innumerable daily stories: the rape of the environment continues unabated and the health and lives of working people are sacrificed at the altar of capitalist greed.
The EPA's latest report is another testimony of the bankruptcy of the government on the environmental front. It shows that the masses cannot rely on the corporations, or the government which is in their back pockets, to defend their health and the well-being of the environment. The working people must take action on their own. We must organize for a radical change of the economic and political system.
[Graphic.]
On April 11th, 200 people demonstrated outside the Michigan state capitol in Lansing. They were there to oppose legislation which seeks to exempt ash from trash incinerators from being subject to hazardous waste rules.
At a time when the politicians claim to be oh-so concerned with the environment, why are they trying to weaken regulations in Michigan?
Incinerators have become very fashionable around the country as a quick fix for the trash disposal problem. Today there are more than 100 incinerators and many more are being planned. The search of city governments for a quick fix has come as a big bonanza to the big construction and trash management monopolies. There is one big problem however: trash burners spew poison into the air and create a hazardous ash.
In Michigan, tests on ash from several incinerators have shown that the ash contains dangerously high concentrations of lead, cadmium, etc. The authorities have built these trash burners with the idea of disposing the ash cheaply in regular landfills. But the test results showed that since the ash was hazardous it would have to be placed in special disposal sites for hazardous waste. That would drive the costs of ash disposal much higher, destroying the myth of the trash incinerators as a cheap way to dispose of waste.
Thus the politicians in Lansing are out to weaken the hazardous waste rules in Michigan. One of the bills would exempt incinerator ash from hazardous waste laws altogether, while another one -- which has passed the House -- says that incinerator ash can be put in regular garbage dumps if it is kept separate from other kinds of trash.
But regular landfills have a higher degree of possibility of toxic materials leaking into the ground and water. The end result will be to turn these waste dumps into toxic time bombs around the state. Michigan's lowered standards will also mean a welcome mat for hazardous incinerator ash from other parts of the country. And pollution of the environment in the state is already a scandal.
The Detroit Trash Burner
The latest events highlight the danger posed by the world's largest trash incinerator which is now scheduled to start on July 1 in Detroit. When it starts up, it will spew out filth and poison into the air and into the lungs of millions in Michigan and Ontario.
From the outset, this project has been the target of many demonstrations, the most recent one on March 20. The incinerator had begun testing in December, but conditions proved so unhealthy that construction and electrical workers struck twice in January, protesting exposure to the toxic ash produced by the burning trash.
The problem with the toxic ash verified what protesters have long been pointing out: this plant is a grave threat to the lives of the masses. But Mayor Coleman Young arrogantly discards the concerns of the people. He has defended the ash as "eminently safe." But even state tests bore out that the ash was hazardous.
Then stepped in the politicians in Lansing to water down the regulations for ash disposal. There's capitalist politics for you: instead of working to eliminate the toxic ash, they work on watering down the environmental regulations which already exist!
The case of the Detroit incinerator shows that the people cannot leave things in the hands of the capitalist politicians. They are too eager to cut costs, no matter what the cost on the health of the masses. They are too eager to buy the quick fixes offered by the capitalist monopolies.
Long-Term Solution to the Trash Problem
Isn't it amazing that an economic system that produces $10,000 cars which fall apart in a few years can also produce plastic hamburger containers that will last for centuries buried in the ground? Capitalism -- a system where goods are produced on the basis of profitability for the rich rather than social usefulness -- is directly responsible for this grossly wasteful sort of production which leaves us stuck with mountains of trash, polluted air, polluted water, and depleted natural resources.
The disposal of waste is a difficult problem. Solving it requires a broad- scale approach, involving changing both production and disposal. The competitive capitalist system -- where exploiters are only concerned with their own profit and don't believe in taking any responsibility for their byproducts and leftovers -- prevents any serious long-term solution to the waste problem.
Only a socialist society can fully take up the thorny technical tasks as well as carry out the necessary reorganization of society to deal with the problem. Only through socialism, where all industry would be run by the workers for the benefit of the workers, can we produce goods that we need, cut out the waste, eliminate pollution, and pass onto our children and grandchildren a world that's fit to live in. Socialism is a system where the overall result to the people, not the balance sheet of some profiteer, is the guide on which economic decisions are made.
[Photo: Demonstration against Detroit trash incinerator on March 20.]
[Graphic.]
On April 13, the Democratic- controlled Congress passed another $67 million for the Nicaraguan contras. There was hardly any debate, and the vote was by the huge margins of 309 to 110 in the House and 89 to 9 in the Senate. A majority of the Democrats voted for this bill, written in the blood of the Nicaraguan people. This money will keep the CIA-organized mercenaries intact as a military force ready to launch more murderous assaults on the Nicaraguan people.
Democratic Party Lovefest with Bush
This aid package is the ugly offspring of the Democratic Party honeymoon with Bush. There was no fight, no harsh words, nothing but sweet murmurs and cordial negotiations. The Democrats had voted over $500 million for the contras during the Reagan years while shouting to the world that they were opposed to Reagan's war. Now they are voting even more money, and with nothing but praise for Bush. Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright says the bipartisan agreement is "a peace program, not a war program."
Senator Kennedy calls it ''an excellent compromise." Even Representative David Bonior of Michigan, supposedly one of the strongest critics of the contra war, is crowing about Bush's so-called ''radical departure from the policy of the previous administration."
But if the Democrats' agreement with Bush is a "peace program," then Ollie North is an anti-war activist. In fact, their deal with Bush is for a "carrot and stick" approach to U.S. aggression against Nicaragua. The threat of the contra war is the big stick, and it is also designed to keep bleeding Nicaraguan resources. Meanwhile, the carrot of words of "peace" and promises to lift the economic blockade are being dangled in front of the Sandinistas. All they have to do is agree to the demands of the contras and the counterrevolutionary Nicaraguan businessmen, the demands of the Congress and the American corporations.
"Safeguards"
Bush and Congress call this aid "humanitarian" because the contras have to use other funds for weapons and ammunition. In fact contra murders and arson continue, with the contra criminals secure in the love, concern and money given them by their solicitous parents in Washington.
Congress couldn't, however, resist adding some "safeguards" to the aid. Allegedly four Congressional committees and various Congressional personages could cut off the last three months of the aid if the contras misbehaved.
But it turns out this agreement is not part of the aid bill. Instead the Democrats are relying on the "good word" of Bush, who promised that he will cut off aid if Congress asks him to. This is the same Bush, of course, who is currently trying to lie his way out of the Iran-contra scandal. The same Bush who for years helped provide secret funding for the contras. And the promise applies only to a fraction of the aid anyway.
Relocation Aid
Some in Congress did vote against the bill. A few Republicans wanted even more money for the contras, along with more weapons, ammunition, advisers, etc. But the main opposition was a minority of Democrats. They were no prizes either. In the main, they were also for contra aid, provided it had stricter conditions or was "relocation aid."
This relocation aid would ensure that the contras could be resettled in Nicaragua or elsewhere with a better financial position than the Nicaraguan toilers who fought against them. These Democrats believe that the contras had failed militarily and that there are better chances to impose a right-wing government on Nicaragua through financing an internal opposition. They want to use "relocation aid" to reinforce the right- wing forces inside Nicaragua with new forces, to finance political campaigns against the Sandinistas, and to demonstrate to the Nicaraguan people that Congress would never stop favoring the worst dregs and criminals. This is pretty much what the actual bipartisan bill is supposed to do anyway, so the differences are really only over details.
No Aid for the War Against Nicaragua!
The cementing of the Bush-Democratic Party unity on money for the contras shows that they are both imperialist bullies. It shows that there can be no fight against U.S. aggression, no support for the self-determination of the Nicaraguan people, without opposing both the big capitalist parties, the Democrats as well as the Republicans. It shows that the Democratic Party politicians who talk in the name of "peace" are really giving a free hand to Bush's reactionary plans.
Down with the CIA's contras!
Down with Bush and Congress, organizers of war against the Nicaraguan people!
Support the Nicaraguan workers and peasants!
[Cartoon.]
Most of the revisionists and reformists worship Arias' Central American "peace" plan. Among other things, they claim it is the answer to U.S./contra aggression against Nicaragua. But although every few months it is announced that the Arias plan has eliminated the contras, U.S. government blood money continues to fill contra coffers.
Faced with this reality, what's an opportunist to do? Have they reconsidered their support for the Arias plan?
No. Instead they waffle on contra aid. They pretend that the continued contra aid from Congress violates the Arias plan, and then they add that they support that type of contra aid that is really in accord with this plan. Or they denounce the Bush-Congress bipartisan contra aid, and then find some positive points in this plan anyway. This is brazen treachery against the elementary demand of not a penny for U.S. intervention against the Central American toilers.
The Search for a Peaceful Contra Aid
The Guardian is one example. Its April 5 issue leads off with an editorial article called "Contra aid: A cocked gun." But by the end of the editorial, the Guardian is talking about "solidarity groups want(ing) legislators to take a public stand against all aid for the contra, except for funds for their demobilization." (Emphasis added) Here the Guardian and the reformist wing of the solidarity movement are backing those Democratic Party politicians who want to present "humanitarian" contra aid as "relocation aid."
And what is the Guardian's main charge against the Bush-Congress deal on contra aid? You think that the "cocked gun" they talk about is aimed at the Nicaraguan people? Why, it seems, it is really aimed at President Arias of Costa Rica. It is supposedly "the political equivalent of cocking a gun at the head of the Central American peace plan."
But, surprise, surprise, Mr. Arias himself begs to differ. As we point out in an accompanying article, Arias endorsed the bipartisan contra aid plan as fully in accord with his Central American peace plan. So far, the Guardian and other "left-wing" supporters of the Arias plan, who normally trumpet every word of Arias, have remained silent about this.
Prettifying Bush's Contra Aid
Or take the pro-Soviet revisionist "Line of March" (LOM) organization. They also claim that the bipartisan contra aid deal "is an explicit and flagrant violation of the accord reached by the Central American presidents..." (Frontline, April 10, p. 6)
But as defenders of the Arias plan, they have to start backtracking on opposition to contra aid. In fact, the main point of their article on the contra aid is to show that this very same aid package also reflects "the tremendous momentum gained by the regional peace process among the five Central American nations, a new force which has dramatically limited the options available to the U.S." Thus they come to the remarkable characterization of the aid package as "both openly aggressive and largely defensive." (Ibid.) What double talk!
LOM goes on to make it sound like the Arias plan has tied the hands of the U.S. Why, according to them, even the reactionary Honduran regime is a bunch of peace activists who are pushing Bush around.
Arias Plan Aims at Destabilization of Nicaragua
But LOM itself admits that this program consists of "accepting the need for a transition from military to political warfare" and using "a policy of destabilization more on the model of U.S. moves against the socialist government of Chile over a decade ago." This, of course, is also the entire object of the Arias plan. But why in the world would any progressive person support "bipartisan 'Chileanization'," as LOM calls it? One would think that the years of brutal rule of the CIA-installed General Pinochet in Chile would be a sufficient warning of the nature of such a CIA-directed process. But LOM considers the transition to Chileanization a positive thing, better than a "purely military option."
"Relocation" Aid for the Chileanization of Nicaragua
Part of this "Chileanization" is giving yet more money to the contras. Most reformists say that what they support is just aid to relocate or disband the contras and resettle them peacefully. Few of them are as brazen as Frontline in admitting that this is just blood money by another name, and that it is part of Chileanization. Few of them follow Frontline in proclaiming Chileanization as a step forward in the irresistible march of peace. Nevertheless, in supporting what is often called "relocation" aid, or aid for "demobilization," they are actually supporting funds for carrying up stepped-up Chileanization.
Oppose Contra Aid and Arias
The dilemma of the reformist supporters of the Arias peace plan concerning contra aid holds an important lesson. The issue for the anti-intervention movement should not be which U.S. imperialist option to line up behind, but opposing all forms of U.S. aggression against Nicaragua.
The Democratic Party promotes the Arias plan as the alternative to U.S. military intervention in Central America. But at the same time they are sending more money to the murdering bands of CIA-organized contras. And it turns out that Mr. Arias himself is supporting the recent agreement between Bush and the Democrats to send this aid to the contras, the hired gun thugs for the U.S. war against Nicaragua.
The latest agreement under the Arias plan took place at Tesoro Beach in El Salvador where a new declaration was issued by five Central American presidents. And, as Mr. Arias put it: "1 don't think there are any significant differences between Tesoro Beach and the American bipartisan plan [for contra aid -- WA] (New York Times, April 5)
So Arias holds that the Tesoro Beach accords allow for more contra aid. And the official "Joint Declaration of the Central American presidents" specifically allows such aid, so long as it is labeled "humanitarian aid which contributes to the ends of this document." (See the text of this agreement as given in Barricada International, Feb. 25, p. 3.)
According to Mr. Arias, Bush has decided to abandon the past U.S. policy of Reagan and to accept the Arias plan. Talking of the Bush administration, he states: "What the Americans are now saying to me is: 'Our policy didn't work. Your approach is right.'" (New York Times, April 5)
This can only mean that Arias is endorsing Bush's current aims and methods. But Bush aims to crush Nicaragua, and he is using the method of funding the contras, while bleeding Nicaragua white and sponsoring internal political destabilization. And Bush backs to the hilt the death-squad regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Thus Arias' own words shows that his "Central American peace plan" is a fraud. It is no alternative to the imperialist policy of the White House and the CIA.
The right-wing, pro-contra parties in Nicaragua are in love with the Arias plan whose real aim is to bring them to power. They are demanding that contras still in the pay of the CIA be given the right to vote, and at the same time they demand that those who fight arms in hand against the contras must be denied the right to vote. ("Managua opposition forges demands for fair elections," New York Times, April 2) This is their idea of "democracy," which owes more to the ideas of the U.S. Congress and the late dictator Somoza than to justice.
Nevertheless the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, which has fond illusions about the Arias plan, is trying harder than ever to come to a deal with the right-wing, pro-contra parties. Indeed, according to the Sandinista paper Barricada International, "The FSLN has frequently been in the paradoxical position of trying to strengthen the opposition..." (March 25, p. 4) And revisionist parties of Nicaragua, such as the "Socialist" and "Communist" parties go even further in helping the right wing; they have actually joined the right-wing political coalitions.
Only the Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua (MAP-ML) leads the revolutionary class struggle of the workers. It alone stands firm against the demands of the right-wing and the contras. It alone opposes the petty-bourgeois policies of the Sandinistas from the standpoint of the workers, from the left. It alone stands for continuing the revolution, against the Arias plan, and against joining in an embrace with the reactionary pro-U.S. regimes of Central America.
Even Barricada International recently admitted the different status of the MLPN (MAP-ML) from other parties. It said that: "Post-1979 it clashed severely with the revolutionary government which it described as 'bourgeois.' Unlike other 'left' parties it has not formed alliances with the right wing, instead maintaining a consistent position of left opposition. Refused to sign the Constitution on the grounds that it institutionalized bourgeois power." (Ibid., p. 5)
Of course, when the Sandinistas, hand in hand with the bourgeois parties, represses the revolutionary workers, they describe that as the workers "clashing severely with the revolutionary government." Nevertheless, they have to admit that MLPN is the voice of the left wing.
This was also seen in the debate on the pardoning of the imprisoned national guardsmen who committed crimes in the service of the late, pro-U.S. tyrant Somoza. As part of an Arias plan deal with the death-squad regimes of Central America, the Sandinistas agreed to a mass release of these criminals. They got no concession in return for this; the pro-U.S. regimes did not agree to a mass release of imprisoned anti-imperialist fighters. Inside Nicaragua, this release was controversial. But who spoke for the discontented masses?
According to Barricada International, "only the Sandinista Children's Association and the workers' Front union [associated with MLPN -- ed.] made concrete request for the non-release of some imprisoned Guards." (Ibid., p. 3) And it says that MLPN demanded the participation of the trade unions and mass organizations in deciding the question of the release of the Guards. But the Sandinistas decide these questions in consultation with the death- squad governments of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, not with the Nicaraguan masses.
U.S. imperialism tries to justify its massive aid for the military dictatorship in El Salvador by portraying the country as a blossoming democracy. For years the CIA and State Department used Duarte's Christian-Democratic government as a cover for bloody repression. But now this so-called democracy is ruled by the fascist ARENA, the party of the notorious death-squad organizer, Roberto d'Aubuisson. So the White House and Congress have discovered that ARENA isn't so bad after all and have been working overtime to give it a "moderate" image.
But this "moderate" image is already unraveling. Since the election of ARENA'S Alfredo Cristiani as president of El Salvador, the terror of the army and the death squads has only increased. Eight poll watchers from the opposition were seized by the army. There have been dozens of disappearances, assassinations, kidnappings. There have been blockades of trade union offices and the National University. And an attempt to give a "human rights" image to the government, by holding a trial of one of the many gangs of right-wing thugs, has turned into a fiasco.
The trial involved close associates of ARENA president-for-life d'Aubuisson who were charged with kidnapping five wealthy businessmen for ransom. The defendants include a former military officer who was previously implicated in the murder of two Americans who worked for AIFLD, AFL-CIO's foreign labor front. The first attempt to hold a trial was under the Christian-Democratic President Duarte. It ran into a little snag. Death squads killed the judge and several key witnesses.
The second attempt, this time with ARENA in power, fared no better. On April 1, the judge dropped all the charges. Fearing exposure, the ARENA government condemned the judge's decision and ordered an investigation.
As of now, it is not clear if there will be a third attempt at a trial. But if it is so hard to convict death-squad gangsters for kidnapping rich businessmen, what chance of justice do the ordinary people have?
This case illustrates why Bush and Congress have some qualms about ARENA. The U.S. wants to continue the savage repression against the anti-government workers and peasants. But the U.S. gets annoyed when ARENA also strikes at the AFL-CIO's AIFLD, which works hand in glove with the CIA, and at wealthy businessmen. But it only took days after the election for Bush and Congress to swallow their doubts and commit themselves to work with the ARENA fascists.
The FMLN is the main organization of the armed struggle against the military dictatorship in El Salvador. Our Party supports the gallant guerrilla actions, which along with the mass protests and strikes, have shown the revolutionary potential of the workers and peasants.
But we are concerned about the present strategy of the FMLN leadership, which doesn't aim for a decisive victory for the fighting masses but for a deal with the Salvadoran bourgeoisie and U.S. imperialism. To get this deal, the FMLN leadership is bartering away all demands for radical change. As FMLN leader Joaquin Villalobos recently stated, "all the allegations of supposed radicalism or geopolitical danger rest on a superficial analysis of...the FMLN.... (see The Workers' Advocate, April 1, p. 5)
Recently, one FMLN official went so far as to drop opposition to U.S. aid to the ARENA regime, provided ARENA holds negotiations with the FMLN. The official, Oscar Orellana, states: "North Americans can contribute a lot to the solution of the problems of our country. One of the things to be done is letting people know where U.S. aid to El Salvador should be going, and that it should be conditioned on political negotiations." (Frontline, April 10, p. 10) Clearly, if he is talking of conditioning aid on political negotiations, Orellana is referring to aid to the fascist government regime, and not to the FMLN.
U.S. aid is what enables the dictatorship to maintain its terror against the people, including the FMLN combatants. Everyone knows this. It is this aid which finances the government atrocities. Yet Oscar Orellana apparently hopes that Bush and Congress will use this aid to force the ARENA government to do good things for the people.
This endorsement of some U.S. aid to the fascist regime was reiterated in the newest offer by the FMLN to ARENA and Bush. This plan was announced at a press conference on April 6 in Washington, D.C. It calls for cutting off not all aid to the fascist regime, but only some of it. It calls for a "cutoff of military aid and the withdrawal of the U.S. advisers." It can be noted that the huge sums of U.S. economic aid is what keep the regime afloat. But, according to a laudatory article in the Guardian, it is the cutting off of only the military aid which "is a more explicit statement" on what the FMLN now means by "U.S. intervention" in its various proposals. ("Rebels present Arena with a new peace plan," Guardian, April 19, p. 16)
So far the offers of the FMLN for a deal have been rejected by Bush and the Salvadoran death-squad leaders. But these offers threaten to reduce the vigilance of the revolutionary movement in El Salvador and file solidarity movement in the U.S. Workers and activists in the U.S. must oppose all aid to the bloody Salvadoran exploiters. We must support the revolutionary movement of the Salvadoran toilers, and not place our hopes in deals with Bush and the lobbying of Congress.
As part of the Arias plan, the Sandinistas have stepped up their efforts to woo pro-contra businessmen. While the masses are told to tighten their belts, President Ortega gives one assurance after the other to the businessmen. Several recent speeches by Sandinista spokesmen underline this contrast.
The Masses Are Going to Lose a Lot More
Orlando Nunez, described by the pro-Sandinista newspaper Militant as a prominent official, spoke recently to a gathering of the Sandinista youth organization, JS-19. He told them that "people are going to lose a lot more. They are going to lose their jobs, their land, and face inflation and poverty. But they can withstand it if we succeed in inculcating socialism as a value, like the belief in God." (Militant, April 21, p. 5)
But Not the Rich Cattlemen
So the people are to tighten their belts in the belief that this is socialism. But all this sacrifice and "socialism" vanished when President Ortega and Minister of Agrarian Development and Reform Jaime Wheelock addressed the rich ranchers and cattlemen at the Nicaraguan national cattle fair, "Hatofer '89," in mid-March. The pro-Sandinista farmers and ranchers of UNAG did not attend, but Ortega and Wheelock addressed the wealthy cattlemen associated. with COSEP, the business association dedicated to the overthrow of the revolution.
According to the Militant, Wheelock reviewed a series of recent Sandinista decisions that put more money into the hands of the cattlemen. (Militant, April 14, p. 9) They are to receive higher prices, quicker payment, and even to be allowed to directly export some cattle (i.e., they get the benefit of the foreign currencies, not the government). As the Militant says, "In addition, negotiations are taking place over a proposal by ranchers to return at least one state-owned meat-packing plant to private hands, with the right to bypass the government monopoly of sales of major agricultural exports." The Sandinistas promised no more confiscation of large landholdings. So it is clear that the wealthy cattlemen aren't those whom Nunez says are going to lose their land in the future.
There Are Those Who Won't Lose Their Land
Ortega praised the large landholders saying: "If a man is productive and he is producing well on 5,000 or 10,000 manzanas, then let him work those 5,000 or 10,000 manzanas." (A manzana equals 1.73 acres.) It is clear that one man doesn't work this land alone. It is those who lose their land who work it for the one "productive" man. After all, as the Militant points out, "'producers' [is] a term often used by government figures to refer to capitalist farmers or ranchers."
Ortega also promised protection to the large cattlemen, saying "And if the peasants rise up, what will they do? They will take the producers' properties. And what would we gain with that?"
Ortega Expresses Solidarity With the Suppression of the Venezuelan Masses
Ortega went on to discuss general Latin American problems. He expressed his solidarity with the days of the mass rebellion in Venezuela of late February. Hundreds of workers were killed and thousands injured by the frenzied bourgeois government in the first few days of this mass upsurge against austerity measures. But who did Ortega send his solidarity to? Not to the working people, but to chief executive President Andres. He stated: "I telephoned Carlos Andres to express my solidarity with him, the solidarity of the Nicaraguan people, the solidarity of the Sandinista Front."
Of course, Ortega added "But I also expressed to him a repudiation and condemnation of the foreign and domestic policies that lead to situations like this one." Oh wonderful. Ortega disagrees with Andres' policies, but has solidarity with the leader of the regime that killed hundreds to enforce these same policies.
The Militant pointed out that Ortega's solidarity with Andres is "a theme that he had stressed on several occasions since the outbreak of the revolt in Venezuela and its drowning in blood by government repressive forces."
And Support for the Heads of Some Death-Squad Regimes
What policies did Ortega praise? He did find that "chiefs of Latin American of Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Great Britain. Bush talked of punishing those guilty in words that the bourgeois press interpreted as death threats.
But don't worry. The Army assures one and all that assassination would have to be approved by the president, and there would be oversight by the congressional intelligence committees. Just like in the Iran-contra scandal. So why be concerned about replacing the principle of innocent until proven guilty with innocent until one is on the president's hit list? And if the president isn't a careful enough judge, or a new Col. North is a bit too eager, one could always appeal after the fact to St. Peter.
This is apparently being presented as a defense against foreigners. But life is no less valuable on foreign soil than it is here. By declaring that its death squads want to roam the globe, the Pentagon is declaring that it is the enemy of all humanity. It is declaring that no one may breathe freely as long as American imperialism is still alive.
[Graphic.]
South Africa Day was observed on April 3 at the University of California at Berkeley. Over a thousand students joined in for a day-long protest against apartheid in South Africa and racism on campus.
The action, organized by the Campaign Against Apartheid (CAA), began with a noon-time rally. This was followed by a spirited march through the streets of Berkeley and later a teach-in continued late into the night in front of the administration offices.
At the rally, speeches from CAA, other campus groups, exiled South African student organizations and the MLP, were interspersed with South African cultural performances. The gathering heard speakers denouncing both the university's connections with apartheid in South Africa and its racist policies on campus.
Speakers exposed the university's propping up of racism: its exclusion of all but a token few minorities and women in the teaching staff; its policies which ensure a high dropout rate among black and Latino students; and its curriculum which often presents a racist view of the world. It was drawn out that the corporate interests that stand behind these racist policies also stand behind the university's support for apartheid. The importance of linking the two struggles was brought home.
The speaker from the MLP brought out how the U.S. government was being joined by the Soviet revisionists in the effort to undercut the revolutionary struggle in South Africa. (See adjoining article on this issue from the Bay Area Workers' Voice.)
The rally went on to defy university restrictions which say that events with sound amplification can only be from noon to 1:00 p.m. When the rally went over the time limit, the authorities' demand that it stop was ignored. The university shut off power, but CAA activists, who were prepared, turned on a portable generator and continued on. Although there were several squads of cops standing by, they were afraid to attack the rally because of the large size of the protest.
During the march that followed, the streets of the city rang out with loud slogans. The teach-in afterward lasted for eight hours. There were discussions on the role of the bourgeois press in backing up U.S. imperialism's stand in favor of apartheid, on the support given by the Israeli Zionists to the racist South African regime, etc. Videos on previous anti-apartheid actions were also shown.
The Marxist-Leninist Party helped build the action and took part in the activities throughout the day. The Bay Area Workers' Voice, local paper of the MLP, produced a special issue promoting the event. And the MLP had a contingent in the march with a banner which declared: Revolution Yes! Apartheid No!
Since the events on South Africa Day, there have been a series of ongoing actions on campus around anti-racist issues. There was a one-day strike at the law school. And several rallies demanded more women and minority teachers, and steps to reduce the dropout rate among black and Latino students.
[Photo: Anti-apartheid march through Berkeley on South Africa Day, April 3.]
Despite years of brutal suppression, the struggle of the black South African masses persists. Millions have come to revolutionary conclusions. Their experience has convinced them that only with the overthrow of white minority rule will they have any future.
The U.S. and other Western imperialist powers are deeply concerned about the possibility of revolution in South Africa sweeping away their rich source of profits. They are currently pursuing a dual tactic which they hope will bring an end to the mass motion. On the one hand, they support the apartheid rulers' brutal suppression of uprisings. On the other, they urge Pretoria to begin negotiations with black reformist forces to cut a deal that will pull the rug out from under the struggle of the masses.
Most recently, the Soviet Union has joined in the effort to discourage the mass struggle in South Africa. (The Soviet Communist Party turned its back on revolution and socialism in the mid-30's and the state eventually degenerated into a bureaucrat-capitalist and imperialist state.) For years its imperialist interests in Africa were served by posing as a big opponent to apartheid, including financial contributions and limited arms supplies to the African National Congress (ANC). But now such policies interfere with its desires to maneuver more closely with the U.S. and to step up trade with the white racists of South Africa.
Over the last year, the Soviet revisionists have been discussing a change of policy towards South Africa. On March 15, they made their most official statement so far. They are dropping their pretense of support for revolution in South Africa. "We would prefer a political settlement and want apartheid to be dealt with by political means,'' said the head of Moscow's Foreign Ministry's Department of African Countries. A "peaceful solution" in which "South Africa [read the current racist regime] should not be destroyed. It should also be spoken to not only through threats or pounding our fist on the table. There should be dialogue." (New York Times, March 16) Outrageous! Don't destroy the racist apartheid regime but have polite negotiations with it.
Could such negotiations, between those who claim to represent the people and those who represent the ruling white capitalists, bring an end to apartheid? Will they result in one-person one-vote and majority rule? Will the racist regime which has brutally and systematically crushed any sign of opposition to apartheid just fold its tent because it is asked to do so across a negotiating table? If you think so, step into our office, we have a bridge for sale.
The Soviet bureaucrats don't believe it either, so they talk about negotiations as part of some vague process which will somehow bring on majority rule. "There would have to be a program of reforms submitted to nationwide discussion at which all sections of society would be represented." (Ibid.) And from that, apartheid would be ended in stages.
The Soviet officials have even begun to waffle on one-person one-vote. A honcho of the Africa Institute in Moscow proposes "a bicameral parliament that would give the white minority an effective veto within a majority-ruled government." (Ibid.)
But haven't the masses already put forward their demands? Haven't the wealthy white racist sections of society already given their answer? Hasn't there already been a tumultuous "nationwide discussion" taking place in the streets? And as for ending apartheid in stages, isn't that exactly what the current ruling party claims to be doing? Clearly, the negotiations and process the Soviet revisionists are promoting is the same as those promoted by the Western imperialists. And in fact, this is the only kind of negotiations and process that the apartheid rulers will consider -- negotiations where the struggle of the masses is bartered away for minor reforms and empty promises. Such a process will not hasten the end of white minority rule -- only prolong it.
For the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S., the call to turn our backs on the revolution in South Africa must be rejected no matter what quarter it comes from. The future of the black masses lies in seizing power in their own hands and sweeping away every aspect of white minority rule. This can only come through revolution.
Solidarity with the black masses means solidarity with the revolution in South Africa!
(Based on "Bay Area Workers' Voice," paper of the MLP-San Francisco Bay Area.)
The Polish government and the leaders of Solidarity, along with their advisers from the Catholic Church, have recently struck a deal. This is being hailed by all and sundry -- from the Pope to Bush to Gorbachev.
The agreement legalizes Solidarity. On the surface this appears to be a legalization of union rights for Poland's workers. But what actually was negotiated is giving the Solidarity leadership a place in the establishment as a firefighter against the workers' struggles.
Solidarity to Endorse Economic Policies
The basic thrust of the agreement is that the government will allow Solidarity to exist as a legal trade union organization, in return for which Solidarity will agree to support the government and its main economic policies. In particular, this means support for wage cuts and other anti-worker austerity measures.
As part of the agreement, Solidarity will come into the government with a substantial minority share of the seats in parliament. The reins of power will continue to be held by Gen. Jaruzelski and his misnamed United Workers' Party, while Solidarity and other Church-connected organizations will be taken in as a loyal opposition. Jaruzelski has also agreed to an upper house of parliament to be contested by free elections, but fearing that the ruling party will lose, this chamber is not to have any real powers.
The fruits of this agreement are already appearing. Walesa is touring Poland exhorting his followers to refrain from strikes and protests. To promote his message, Walesa is given plenty of time on Polish TV and radio. The Soviet press, which for years denounced Walesa as a "hireling of Washington,'' now describes him as a "man of the people'' and "a man of principle." There are plans for Walesa to make a tour of the Soviet Union sometime soon.
As part of the agreement, Solidarity was also to endorse a call on Western governments to eliminate economic sanctions that were imposed on Poland in 1981, after the declaration of martial law and the crushing of Solidarity. Walesa is already being rushed into meetings with Western officials and bankers to aid the Polish capitalists in their search for debt relief and new loans.
In response, offers of Western aid are already being rushed to Warsaw.
Rotten Fruit of a Sellout Policy
The coming agreement represents the culmination of Solidarity's search, during the last few years, for political respectability. Walesa and Solidarity's other national leaders have no problem in endorsing Jaruzelski's economic policies, since for the last year they have seen eye to eye with Jaruzelski on economic issues. Both parties agree that living standards for the workers must decline, and that Poland must move more quickly to develop private capitalism.
Their major difference has been over the Solidarity organization itself. While advocating austerity and opposing strikes in general, Solidarity leaders had the sense to support local strikes that broke out in the last year. Their willingness to lead local strikes and to gain some wage improvements for the workers maintained Solidarity's reputation as a fighting organization and made it circumspect in Jaruzelski's eyes.
Today the crisis in the Polish economy has gotten so bad that Jaruzelski has had a change of mind, and has decided to recognize the union (with the requisite guarantees, of course). He decided it was better to have Solidarity as a loyal opposition, endorsing an occasional local strike but opposing any general class-wide movement, than to risk the development of a militant class-wide movement, with or without Solidarity.
For the moment the Solidarity leaders are happy with the positions they have won. But obviously they hope to use these positions to exert greater leverage over the government. They are the representatives of the private capitalist sector and their aim is to work towards transforming Poland into more of a Western-style capitalist society. Jaruzelski thinks that he can keep them in the role of a junior partner, but that may unravel. The prospect of political crisis is built into the new agreement, especially if the ruling party is routed in the elections for the proposed upper chamber.
As well, the workers may well refuse to subordinate themselves to the coming round of austerity and upset the apple cart. It cannot be predicted what will happen, but it is clear that far from a new period of harmony, Poland is entering a new stage in its crisis.
For a Revolutionary Workers' Movement
The Polish workers are burning mad at the economic crisis engulfing Poland and at the corruption and privileges enjoyed by the ruling bureaucrats. But their struggle can advance only if they cast away the influence of the Solidarity leaders and the Church. The deal engineered in Warsaw by Walesa and his Church advisers shows once again the importance of building a workers' movement independent of all bourgeois and revisionist influence.
At the same time, in opposing the sellout of the workers' struggle and the pro-capitalist policies of the Solidarity leadership, workers must beware of the right-wing Solidarity factions, who are denouncing Walesa as a sellout for coming to terms with the "communist" enemy. The right wing of Solidarity will never be satisfied until every word of pretense about "socialism" is abolished, and Poland is firmly entrenched in NATO.
It is not communism which is the source of Poland's problems -- rather it is the rotten state-capitalist system imposed under the false label of socialism. The answer for the problems of the Polish workers does not lie in a more naked type of capitalism, but in building a movement towards genuinely revolutionary socialism. It is revolutionary Marxism-Leninism which can guide the struggle for genuine class independence and a revolutionary way out of the crisis in Poland.
Recently Hungarian TV's top news-in-depth program revealed a shocking truth about the reality of Hungarian "market socialism": it has created widespread, deep poverty.
For years Hungarian "market socialism" has been promoted as the model for how to stimulate the stagnant state capitalist economies of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. U.S. media praised the Hungarian economic "miracle" which allowed entrepreneurs, like the inventor of Rubik's cube, to become millionaires.
But in reality this "miracle" was a dream built on foreign loans and parasitism, a dream covering the nightmare of naked capitalist exploitation. Part of this nightmare was uncovered by recently released government statistics, which show that about 25% of Hungary's people live under the official poverty line.
The widespread poverty is forcing the government to introduce stopgap welfare measures of the sort that exist in Western countries. Unemployment benefits are being introduced for the first time in over 40 years, and the official trade union organization is pressing for the introduction of food stamps.
Meanwhile the mass impoverishment is increasing. The government's economic report says that real wages declined by 6-7% in 1988 and predicts that they will decline by another 4-5% in1989, thus bringing wages back to the level of the early 1970's. Consumption actually declined in 1988 for the first time in 30 years, as the masses' falling wages cannot keep up with the soaring prices of consumer goods. Each week the electric utility in Budapest cuts off service to about 150 apartments for nonpayment of bills.
The other side of this picture is the wealth of the upper crust, both of government bureaucrats and private capitalist "entrepreneurs." They live in expensive houses and drive around in BMWs, Mercedes Benz and Alfa Romeos. One report says that there seem to be almost as many Mercedes Benz in the hills of Buda as in Beverly Hills.
But to the officials of the ruling party, the falsely-named Socialist Workers' Party, the gulf between rich and poor is just fine. As Janos Berecz, Politburo member in charge of ideology puts it, "This used to be called exploitation. But if the wealth created by entrepreneurs helps improve the standard of living of the whole nation, then it must be considered inequality, not social injustice." (New Perspectives Quarterly, Winter 1988-89)
This is what "ideological work" has become in the revisionist parties -- how to justify the evils of capitalism while maintaining a mask of socialism.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro is trying to appear as a revolutionary-sounding critic of Gorbachev's "market socialist'' reforms. Castro says that while the Western-style capitalist reforms of perestroika are okay for the Soviet Union, Cuba does not believe in using capitalist methods to build socialism.
Some years back, Cuba did embrace some similar reforms, but at the moment it has decided not to proceed along that path. However, despite Castro's rhetoric, this does not mean that Cuba is truly a socialist country. Like Russia, Cuba is a state-capitalist society. The Cuban revolution did bring major gains for the toilers there, but the revolution did not proceed towards working class socialism. In Cuba, power is not in the hands of the workers but in the hands of a bourgeoisified bureaucracy.
Behind the fancy talk of socialism and Marxism-Leninism, Castro's regime is thoroughly permeated with a capitalist spirit. We can get a glimpse of this from a small but telling incident during Castro's recent visit to Mexico.
In December, Castro attended the inauguration ceremonies for the new Mexican president, Carlos Salinas. Salinas, it may be remembered, stole the presidential election last year through blatant fraud and thuggery. The workers of Mexico despise the new regime, but Fidel blessed the Salinas government. This outraged even supporters of the reformist politician Cardenas, to say nothing of revolutionary-minded Mexican workers.
Castro also met with the big capitalist chieftains of Mexico. He held a private three-hour party designed to encourage Mexican investment in Cuba. He is reported to have so impressed the millionaires that one of them, Antonio Madero Bracho, ended the party by declaring, "If you were in Mexico, you'd be a great businessman. You've got the talent for it."
Fidel replied, "Chico, I am a businessman, but of the state.'' (Reported in NACLA Report on the Americas, March 1989.)
There is more truth expressed in this private chitchat with the Mexican millionaires than in all the long speeches Castro gives in Havana. Cuban-style socialism is merely state-run business -- or state capitalism -- where the economy is run like one big corporation. And this corporation is run according to the capitalist ideas of good business, with a ruling elite and exploited mass. That's why the Mexican industrialists were so enthusiastic.
Some 2,000 students marched outside the World Trade Center offices of Governor Mario Cuomo on April 11. The students were burning with anger at Cuomo's plan for budget cuts and increased tuition in New York's City College system.
Cuomo is planning to sock City College system students with a $200 increase for New York State residents and a $750 increase for out-of-state students. As well, budget cuts would eliminate 817 faculty and staff positions, double class size, slash library hours, and cut academic and financial advisors.
Although Cuomo is a liberal Democrat, he is following the same Reaganite policy as President Bush in carrying out budget cuts against the masses.
On April 10, more than 3,000 students joined a protest in Sacramento against education cutbacks in California. The rally included both college and high school students. And the students were joined by numbers of teachers and also by striking cannery workers from Salinas.
The students demanded that Governor Deukmejian rescind a 10% increase in student fees for the state schools. They also called for more funding for colleges and high schools, particularly for bilingual education programs and for programs to reduce dropouts.
While the students wanted to fight, the organizers of the rally tried to convert the protest into an election rally for Democrats. Jesse Jackson and other Democratic Party politicians dominated the platform. They postured as if they opposed the state Republican administration. But since Jackson and other top Democrats have been honeymooning with the Bush administration in Washington, it's hard to believe they will fight the Republicans in California -- at least not so as to help the students.
[Graphic.]
(Sung to the tune of "Hambone")
CHORUS
Down with Operation Rescue
Hit men for the wealthy few
''Right to Life " is a dirty lie
They don't care if women die
Just like the Nazis and the Klan
They say woman must serve man
CHORUS
Women must work for the rich all day
At 60% of a workinman's pay
They say women must have more kids
To fill the army of the rich
"Pro-life," who you kiddin'
They're pro-war and anti-women!
CHORUS
Bush cheers on the religious right
So government can take back women's rights
The holy bullies get careful support
From the police and the courts
CHORUS
Democrats say they'll stop Bush short
But they confirmed the Reagan court
It's time to organize mass action
To fight 'gainst women's oppression
Now's the time to organize and fight
Build the movement for women's rights!
CHORUS
Now's the time to organize and fight
Build the movement for women rights!
(From the Boston Branch of the MLP)
The army is circulating a proposal in the Bush administration to free it to form murder squads to assassinate "terrorists," it was recently revealed. According to Army spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Bridges, secret murders of Pentagon foes are the "proper" role of the armed forces. All one has to do to justify this first-degree murder is label the victim a terrorist. "If we're going after terrorists as a matter of self-defense, that is not assassination, but the proper employment of military force," said Lt. Col. Bridges on Monday, April 10.
In fact, this is already government and CIA policy. From the Phoenix program in Viet Nam, to the training of death squads in El Salvador, or the assassination of various black activists of the 60's, the U.S. government has made free to kill civilians that oppose it. But in order to pursue assassination with peace of mind, and to expand the practice, the Pentagon wants it clarified that its murder squads are exempt. It felt that now was the time, presumably in order to take advantage of the bombing of Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Great Britain. Bush talked of punishing those guilty in words that the bourgeois press interpreted as death threats.
But don't worry. The Army assures one and all that assassination would have to be approved by the president, and there would be oversight by the congressional intelligence committees. Just like in the Iran-contra scandal. So why be concerned about replacing the principle of innocent until proven guilty with innocent until one is on the president's hit list? And if the president isn't a careful enough judge, or a new Col. North is a bit too eager, one could always appeal after the fact to St. Peter.
This is apparently being presented as a defense against foreigners. But life is no less valuable on foreign soil than it is here. By declaring that its death squads want to roam the globe, the Pentagon is declaring that it is the enemy of all humanity. It is declaring that no one may breathe freely as long as American imperialism is still alive.
[Graphic.]
The news media in the U.S. these days is full of talk about how the Israeli government is busy with a "peace plan" for the occupied territories. Prime Minister Shamir has promised local elections. Although these will be held under the Israeli iron heel, we are told this heralds the coming of peace. However, the more the Israeli regime talks peace, the more it shoots Palestinians.
At the end of March, and into April, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza continued the intifada (uprising) with militant strikes and demonstrations. After a successful Land Day demonstration, Israeli forces took their revenge on the Palestinians with record-high daily shootings.
Land Day, March 30, commemorates the day when Israeli troops murdered Palestinians protesting against land confiscations in 1976. This year it was marked by a general strike and numerous demonstrations throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The anniversary was also observed by Palestinians inside Israel, who staged a general strike and demonstrations in some towns.
The Israelis banned all newsmen from the occupied territories on Land Day. They also declared a curfew, sealed the roads, and cut electric and phone lines. Some news did leak out, however: four Palestinians were killed and 35 wounded. At least one of the killed was shot by an Israeli death squad, a number of which infiltrated demonstrations by posing as groups of journalists. Policemen also used this tactic to infiltrate protests and then arrest demonstrators.
Whenever the subject of Israeli brutality is raised, the Israelis (and their U.S. imperialist backers) loudly protest that all they are doing is trying to keep "law and order" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But the truth is just the opposite. Israeli forces not only shoot down unarmed demonstrators on a daily basis, they are constantly devising new methods to brutalize and terrorize the Palestinian masses.
Another example of this was the April 13 massacre in the village of Nahhalin, in the West Bank. Following Land Day, Nahhalin became a center of militant protests. To "keep the peace," the Israeli military sent in their special border police to patrol the village. These border police are Arabic-speaking Druze mercenaries. The Israeli military says they are "specially trained for riot control," but in fact they are "specially trained" for provoking riots so that they can have an excuse for massacres.
For two weeks the border police swaggered around the village, taunting the residents, shouting obscenities, exposing themselves to women, etc. Then on April 13 they raided the entire village in the middle of the night. At 3:30 a.m. they ordered everyone out of their homes and commanded them to rid the village of signs of resistance -- erase graffiti from walls, tear down Palestinian flags, remove roadblocks, etc. Then at 4:30 a.m. they ordered everyone back inside and declared a curfew.
Enraged by this abuse, crowds of Palestinian youths remained outside and began pelting the policemen with stones. The police then opened fire, killing at least five -- a record number for one day of the intifada.
A few days later, on April 19, the Israelis shot another 23 Palestinians, and 11 of these were children.
Despite all the fierce repression, the Palestinian intifada remains as strong as ever. It continues to expose the ugly reality that exists behind the democratic pretensions of Israeli zionism. Freedom for the Palestinians will not come from the hands of the oppressor, nor from the talk of peace by U.S. imperialism, but from the revolutionary struggle of the Palestinian masses.
[Photo: 400 people demonstrated against Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir when he visited New York City on April 4.
A rebellion against food price increases is spreading throughout Jordan.
Thousands of people rampaged through the streets of the city of Maan in southern Jordan on April 18. The next day, demonstrators and army troops faced off in Maan, firing guns at each other. At least five people were killed, including one soldier.
The protests then spread to other towns in southern Jordan, and by week's end, they had spread to the north of the country. Small protests were even reported in Amman, the capital. More people have been killed by the police.
The upsurge was sparked by food price increases which were part of a debt rescheduling deal between Jordan's King Hussein and the International Monetary Fund.
The protests occurred while King Hussein was in Washington, D.C., scheming with George Bush on how best to isolate and undermine the Palestinian struggle.
From the very beginning of the Palestinian uprising, the Jordanian government has been worried stiff that the example of Palestinians standing up to the Israeli repression may end up as an example to the toiling people of Jordan. The Jordanian tyrant exercises a ferocious oppression against the masses. Now it seems that the king's worst fears of rebellion at home are beginning to come true.
The Crown Prince, running the government in the absence of his father, admitted this. He complained that the images of Palestinian rebellion on TV day after day have had their impact in Jordan.
But while that may be a nightmare to the chiefs of exploitation and tyranny, this is a welcome happening for the toilers of the Middle East. Revolution against all oppressors and tyrants is the way forward for the suffering masses. Let the spirit of the intifada catch on in yet more places!
Twenty-five thousand people marched through Mexico City on April 19 in support of a nationwide teachers' strike which began two days earlier.
Teachers in Mexico City and the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca have pledged to stay out until their demands are met. Meanwhile, the national teachers' union leadership only authorized a strike for one or two days. Militant teachers are angry at the weak- kneed stand of the national union bureaucrats.
The teachers are demanding a salary increase of 100%. They rejected a miserly offer of a 10% pay increase from the government.
A demand for a 100% pay increase may sound incredible, but that's not so high when compared to what's been happening with the income of the working people of Mexico. Inflation has cut the real value of incomes by half since 1982.
The cutting of real pay is just one of the ravages of the economic crisis hitting Mexico. Mass unemployment is another. Full-time jobs are now a fantasy for half of all Mexicans. Over the past six years, more than half the young people who entered the work force could not find employment.
And still more jobs are due to be axed. The government of Carlos Salinas is busy restructuring industry, which means cutting more jobs, and imposing wage cuts and speedup against the workers. For example, 4,500 steelworkers at Monclova are due to get laid off soon as their mill is "restructured."
[Photo.]
South Korea -- we are told often by Washington -- has become a democracy. The dictatorship is gone and the country is ruled by the democratic Roh Tae Woo.
But tyranny does not end just because the old dictator's hand-picked successor is elected as a president. Roh Tae Woo showed his real reactionary colors in late March when he went on a binge of repression against workers and leftist youth. The worst example of this was the military-style assault on the strikers at Hyundai Heavy Industries.
On March 30, riot police raided the Hyundai shipyard in Ulsan which had been occupied by striking workers since December. Over 9,000 police in full riot gear assaulted the shipyard at 5:00 a.m. Many came ashore in an amphibious assault, using Hyundai ships as landing craft. Helicopters flew cover for the assault, laying down clouds of tear gas. The police smashed in the gates of the plant and arrested workers sleeping there.
The police then went on to an apartment complex in Ulsan where about 1,000 striking workers were staying. They assaulted the apartments and tried to arrest the workers' union leaders. The workers fought back with iron bars and firebombs. At last report about 600 workers had been arrested, but the union leaders managed to escape.
The raid in Ulsan came just a few days after Roh announced a new crackdown on "leftist forces trying to overthrow the government." The government announced that police would be issued M-16 rifles and authorized to fire at the legs of protesters to break up militant demonstrations. The same week Roh vetoed a bill providing a shorter work week and allowing teachers and other government employees to form unions.
Roh's new repression is backed to the hilt by the U.S. government, which has soldiers in South Korea. One of George Bush's first acts as president was to visit South Korea and lavish praise on Roh. As his ambassador to South Korea Bush appointed a trusted adviser, Donald Gregg. Gregg was a CIA agent for 28 years, coordinated counterinsurgency operations in Viet Nam, and more recently was a top security adviser to Bush when he was vice-president. Early in the Reagan administration Gregg was involved with the contra aid network, supplying guns to the contras financed by drug deals before Oliver North's operations took over.
The Korean workers and youth have courageously stood up against the myth of a new era of democracy in South Korea. The liberal opposition groups that previously denounced Roh have now grown tame, as they settle into the routine of being a parliamentary "loyal opposition." Indeed, they want to help Roh defuse the mass struggles. At the end of April, Kim Dae Jung asked the workers and youth to stop their "violent protests" and announced plans to meet with President Roh to discuss how to end the protests. The workers and youth cannot trust the liberals, they have to fight and organize on their own for their liberation.
At last report workers and students all over South Korea are organizing protest demonstrations against Roh's repression. In Changwon, an industrial city in the south, 10,000 workers rallied at three factories and beat back police attacks when they started to march. More than 40,000 students demonstrated at campuses, especially in Seoul. Demonstrators called for the overthrow of Roh Tae Woo and chanted "Yankee go home!"