Vol. 19, No. 9
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
25ยข September 1, 1989
[Front page:
Sparks fly in South Africa;
Neither Jaruzelski nor Solidarity can satisfy the Polish workers;
More police repression won't solve drug problem]
IN THIS ISSUE
| Step Up the Defense of Women's Rights! |
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| Pro-choice actions; NOW and the third party..................................... | 2 and 3 |
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| Strikes and Workplace News |
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| New York housing; Coal miners; Pittsburgh rally; N.Y. Hospitals; Telephone workers.............................................................................. | 3-5 |
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| 'War on Drugs' Is War on Blacks and Poor |
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| Colombia; Liberals; Boot camps; Cops sell drugs.............................. | 6 |
| Evictions; "Pregnancy police"; Death Squads.................................... | 7 |
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| Down with Racism! |
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| Racist N.Y. murder; Cincinnati gangs; Mohawks............................... | 8 |
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| To Fight Pollution, Fight Capitalism! |
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| Rocky Flats; Great Lakes Steel........................................................... | 8 |
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| Apartheid, No! Revolution, Yes! |
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| What path in S.A.: confrontation or moderation................................. | 9 |
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| U.S. Imperialism, Get Out of Central America! |
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| Nicaragua: Committees of Struggle; Tela deal................................... | 11 and 12 |
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| The World in Struggle |
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| Turkey; Peru; Sweden; Egypt............................................................. | 12 |
| Song: Intifada..................................................................................... | 9 |
[Photo.]
Neither Jaruzelski nor Solidarity can satisfy the Polish workers
More police repression won't solve drug problem
Step up the defense of women's rights!
Strikes and workplace news
Chickens come home to roost in Colombian drug war
When it comes to repression, liberals refuse to be outgunned
Boot camps - Bennett's idea of drug treatment
Drug police caught pushing drugs
Evicting tenants in the name of fighting drugs
"Pregnancy police" in the war on drugs
Government longs for its own death squads
DOWN WITH RACISM!
Rocky Flats protesters: No to nuclear poisoning!
Great Lakes Steel poisons the earth
What path in South Africa: confrontation or moderation?
Nicaraguan barrios give rise to Committees of Popular Struggle
The World in Struggle
Political prisoners in Turkey on hunger strike
Militant steel workers in Egypt
"Tela Agreement"
Dismantling the Nicaraguan revolution in the name of peace
The struggle for freedom in South Africa is again on the march. Barricades burn in the streets of Cape Town. Demonstrations break out from the Cape to Johannesburg. The people face off against the whips and guns of the white racists.
The call Defy Apartheid! is spreading across South Africa. The oppressed black people are saying: To hell with their repressive laws! Away with segregation!
Saying No to Segregation and Repression
Black people are the majority in South Africa but they are deprived of their rights under the white-minority apartheid system. They are forced to live in miserable, segregated ghettos known as townships. They have no political freedoms. They live in acute poverty, savagely exploited by white capitalists. Mixed-race ("colored") people and those of Indian descent are also oppressed in South Africa.
But the blacks and other oppressed people have never accepted this system. Time after time they have risen up for liberation, defying the whips, bullets and jails of the racists.
Just a few years back, in 1984, the black people launched a powerful rebellion against apartheid. The racist tyranny came down hard, with massacres and jailings. They imposed a state of emergency, and year after year, they added more suppressive laws against anti-apartheid activity.
However the black people's resistance could not be snuffed out. True, the wave of struggle eventually subsided. But just underneath the surface, the spirit of revolt kept on simmering, waiting to burst out in a new wave of struggle.
Just a few months back, anti-apartheid prisoners waged a mass hunger strike, forcing the regime to release many of them. Meanwhile, the townships have been stirring anew.
Today the black people have launched a new campaign against apartheid. This struggle has two fronts. On one hand, the masses are organizing actions to break down segregation, by directly going to whites-only facilities. On the other hand, they are saying they will openly defy the emergency decrees against mass gatherings, the bans on speaking, the curfews, etc.
Defiance Campaign Picks Up Steam
The present campaign got underway on August 2, when hundreds of blacks showed up at eight hospitals restricted to whites, and demanded medical treatment. In most cases the hospital staff defied restrictive rules and treated the patients. Since that time, there have been more actions against segregated hospitals.
A big weekend of protest was planned for August 19. One target of struggle was the whites-only beaches of Cape Town. The black activists were met with harsh repression. The police used helicopters, tear gas, shotguns, dogs and barbed wire fences to keep blacks out of whites-only beaches.
Mass rallies were called for August 20 in several cities, but the apartheid authorities tried to prevent them from taking place. Police occupied the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, turning away buses bringing supporters from Soweto and other townships. They banned a rally at the University of the Western Cape. They also banned a scheduled rally in Johannesburg, but a crowd of 150 showed up anyway.
On August 21, schoolchildren gathered in protest. They were met with rubber bullets and whips.
Throughout the week, police used tear gas and truncheons to scatter demonstrators in cities and on university campuses. But the police were not able to prevent youth from taking to the streets in black townships and setting up barricades of burning tires.
Each day brings news of more actions by the oppressed people, news of heroic attempts to stand up to the brutal racist rulers. So far, Cape Town has been the scene of the strongest protests, but the movement is spreading across the country.
Workers in Action
Millions of industrial and service workers are the backbone of the anti-apartheid struggle. And once again, the workers are in the thick of the current upsurge. Mine workers have taken the defiance campaign to whites-only cafeterias and buses. And strikes by different groups of workers are on the increase.
Thousands of black metal workers have been going out on wildcat strikes. They are demanding a pay raise of 50% together with cost-of-living protection in their new contract. Thousand of workers have walked off the job in plants owned by Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes, and other multinationals. Toyota responded by firing 3,600 workers on August 7, after the government's Industrial Court ruled their strike illegal.
On August 18, police used whips and shotguns against workers locked out of a bakery. And four days later, police arrested 100 striking hospital workers in Cape Town.
No to the Racist Elections
An immediate target of the defiance campaign is the upcoming September 6 national elections. Like past elections, this one also totally excludes the black majority from voting. It is only an election to determine who from among the white oppressors will rule. Coloreds and Indians have the "right'' to vote for their "own'' parliaments, but these are powerless chambers, only meant for deceiving the people.
The defiance campaign has called for a boycott of the elections from both the coloreds and Indians, as well as whites opposed to apartheid.
The elections are expected to reaffirm the current National Party regime in office. It will be headed up by F.W. de Klerk, who took over as president from P. W. Botha on August 14. An attempt is being made to portray de Klerk as a voice of moderation and reform, but the real story is told by the guns, whips, and gas being unleashed by him against the current wave of anti-apartheid protests.
The last elections in 1984 set off the protests that gave rise to the big upsurge of 1984-87. This time too the protests against the elections are connected with protests against all aspects of life under the rule of the racists.
The racist regime has long spoken the language of "reform," even as it has tightened the screws against the black people. It has become abundantly clear that no regime of the racists can bring progress to the black and other oppressed masses. Freedom will come, not bestowed by a Botha or a de Klerk, but through struggle, through struggle that builds up the strength towards a revolutionary showdown with racist rule.
Poland has a new Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Solidarity leader. The monopoly of power in the hands of the revisionist (false communist) Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) has been broken. Poland is about to have a government made up of Solidarity and two minor parties, with some key posts remaining in the hands of the PUWP.
Washington and other Western capitals are abuzz with excitement, and Moscow is willing. The U.S. media are crowing over what they are describing as a "victory over communism." They say Poland's crisis is a crisis of socialism and that the workers, led by their trade union Solidarity, are about to take a big step towards a capitalist system; this alone, they say, can lift the Polish people out of poverty and economic disaster.
Wrong on two counts. Poland's crisis is one born of capitalism, and the Western-style capitalist reforms about to be undertaken are a mirage being held up in front of the Polish workers.
It may not be fashionable in Moscow and Washington, or in Warsaw today, but the truth must be told. The workers of Poland, who have placed certain hopes and expectations in Solidarity, are about to be dealt a terrible deck. The planned capitalist reforms will bring a new disaster to the hard-pressed Polish working class: they mean layoffs, more wage cuts, and prices beyond the reach of most people.
The workers of Poland are disenchanted with socialism and communism because they associate such things with the despised PUWP regime. But in truth, the PUWP regime wasn't socialist or communist, and the way out of the crisis for the Polish workers is not Western-style capitalism, but a truly workers' socialist society.
Things are still unstable enough in Poland and Eastern Europe that it is possible that a Solidarity-led government may be turned out -- either by a coup or an invasion from the Soviet Union. But if a Solidarity government is allowed to rule, it will end up teaching workers valuable lessons about the realities of life under Western-style capitalism. Workers will see what the ideas of Thatcherism and Reaganism, so admired by Solidarity leaders, really mean. In the end, this experience will clear the way to a red workers' movement, a communist movement built by regaining confidence in the fight for workers' power and socialism.
The False Communists Have No Support Among the Masses
By name, the PUWP is a party dedicated to the interests of the working masses. At the end of World War II, when it established its rule on the ashes of Nazi-destroyed Poland, it did enjoy support and goodwill of large sections of the workers and poor. The days of prewar Poland, the Poland of landlords, capitalists, and militarist reactionaries, were put to an end. But although the new regime carried out various reforms, it ended up rigging together a new, oppressive state-capitalist regime under the tutelage of the Moscow revisionists.
Over the decades the PUWP completely lost what support it ever had among the workers. The PUWP presided over the building of a two-tiered state capitalist economy: one tier for the rich bureaucrats of the PUWP who shop in exclusive stores that accept hard currency only, who have plenty of housing and food and luxury vacations; a second tier for the workers, who must wait years for an apartment, who wait in long lines to buy food, and who struggle against constantly rising prices.
The roots of the present crisis go to the 1970's when the PUWP regime went into hock to the Western banks to finance an industrial development program geared to the world capitalist market. The promises of this plan fell through because of the ups-and-downs of world capitalism, and the Polish people were left holding the bag of billions of dollars of debt. To pay off this debt, the ruling bureaucrats have enforced one set of price rises after another. This debt crisis is at the core of the shortages, high prices, and poverty of the working majority.
The PUWP tried to rule simply through repression, but this proved untenable. Thus this spring new strikes finally forced the PUWP to allow partially open elections. The PUWP's only solution to the economic crisis is further austerity for the masses and privatization of the state-run economy, and Jaruzelski came to see that he would need some popular legitimacy to bring this off. He came to an accord with the once-banned Solidarity union. But the elections showed that the PUWP is completely discredited. Candidates put up by Solidarity won 260 of the 261 contested seats in parliament.
The plan agreed to by Jaruzelski and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa was that the PUWP would be allowed to rule Poland for a few more years, and implement the harsh austerity measures. For Jaruzelski this meant a few more years of stability and job security for PUWP bureaucrats. For Walesa if meant a few more years of discrediting the PUWP before Solidarity took over the government. By then, he felt, Solidarity would be able to win not only parliamentary elections, but election to the powerful post of president.
But events moved more quickly than they planned. PUWP got a worse thrashing in the elections than was expected. Jaruzelski himself could not have been elected president without parliamentary arm-twisting by Walesa. And Jaruzelski's choice for prime minister, the PUWP Minister of the Interior (police), could not be confirmed at all. Strikes began to break out against huge price increases enacted recently. The PUWP's traditional allies, the Peasant and Democratic parties, alarmed at the resurgence of strike activity, deserted the old regime and insisted on a Solidarity prime minister.
With the new breakout of strikes, Jaruzelski was in an extremely tenuous position. Solidarity refused to serve in a government led by the PUWP, and the PUWP could not rule without them. So Jaruzelski was forced to accept Walesa's choice for prime minister.
A Power-Sharing Arrangement Based on a Common Economic Strategy
Throughout the whole process of "democratization," Solidarity leader Lech Walesa has worked to conciliate President Jaruzelski and, behind him, the Soviet Union. They have agreed that there will be a power-sharing arrangement, where the PUWP retains the important Ministries of Defense and the Interior, the backbone of the state machine. And before agreeing to have Solidarity take the lead in a new government, Walesa issued a statement promising to keep Poland in the Warsaw Pact alliance with the Soviet Union. This has satisfied Moscow which sees Poland as part of its imperialist sphere of influence.
The basis of this agreement is not just fear of a Soviet invasion or a new round of martial law by Jaruzelski. The basis of it is that both the PUWP and the Solidarity leaders have a common strategy for dealing with the economic crisis. Both see the only way out for Poland to be increased austerity for the working masses and a rapid development of private capitalism. Their differences are over the pace of this change and some differences in emphasis, but their basic class outlook is the same. Both want to continue ransacking the working class's living standards -- what remains of them -- to finance the building of a new class of wealthy entrepreneurs. Both want to expand Poland's indebtedness to the Western banks, even though paying the interest on this debt has already bankrupted the country. They think these are the ways forward for Poland.
Thus the government, Solidarity and PUWP alike, are pointing to difficult days ahead. Plants and factories deemed inefficient are to be shut, laying off several hundred thousand workers. Subsidies to food and other necessities are to be cut, raising prices even higher.
Workers Need a Revolutionary Alternative
Polish workers have supported Solidarity out of the belief that it represented an alternative to the PUWP's discredited rule. But this is an alternative of rapidly expanding private capitalism. Noting that this will mean unemployment for many workers, Mazowiecki declares that they will have to be "understanding." Meanwhile, the Polish leaders are begging the Western imperialists to come forth with big sums of aid so that privatization does not collapse into massive working class-upheaval. So far, the Western capitals are proving too stingy. Even if this shifts, it's not too clear that the Western imperialists, already strapped economically, can bail out the new Polish order.
The appeals to the workers to be "understanding" are so much wishful thinking. Polish workers have heard too many promises in the past about how if only they tighten their belts a bright future is waiting them around the corner. They may allow Solidarity some time, but the recent strikes show that workers know well enough that they have to stick with their weapon of mass struggle. The recent strikes were waged in opposition to the counsel of the top Solidarity leaders.
There are still complicated twists and turns ahead, but there will inevitably be a revival of renewed class-wide struggle and the development of revolutionary consciousness. Sooner or later, workers' illusions in the Solidarity leaders will go away, as Mazowiecki and Walesa begin implementing the same austerity measures as the PUWP. Already workers have been heard shouting at Mazowiecki, "We need bread, not a prime minister!"
This inclination towards struggle provides the basis for the Polish workers to come out of the present situation searching for a real alternative based on their interests -- an alternative to both the rotting state capitalism of the revisionists and to the rapacious private capitalism of the Solidarity leaders. This alternative is workers' socialism and, to prepare the way to that end, the Polish workers need to build a revolutionary class movement, a communist movement guided by the theory of working, class struggle, Marxism-Leninism.
President Bush is going on television September 5 to hawk his new $7.5 billion "national strategy" for the "war on drugs." But everyone already knows what he's going to say. Like Reagan before him, Bush is calling for still more police, more prisons, more prosecutors, judges and laws to harass and persecute the masses.
Over eight years. Reagan forked out some $21 billion for more border troops and local police forces. But the drug problem has only gotten deeper. And recent studies provide a glimpse of why.
They show that drug addiction is especially growing among the youth and the unemployed. Obviously the deepening impoverishment and hopelessness among the masses has a lot to do with the spread of this social disease. But will Bush provide money for jobs or schools or housing or health care or even drug rehabilitation programs? Will he try to lift the masses out of their suffering and give the youth some hope for a future? Hardly a few pennies.
Instead Bush is dead set on a program of harassing and jailing the poor and working people -- not only those trapped in drug abuse, but also casual drug users and anyone else that happens to be in the path of the police ghetto raiders. How will evicting poor people from their homes stop drugs? How will throwing young people, caught using drugs for the first time, into military-style boot camps help them find the jobs and education they need? How will arresting pregnant women who have become addicted help them with the health care and rehabilitation they require?
Obviously these things won't help. They will not nab the big-time drug bosses. Nor will they stem the tide of social crime springing up from the growing impoverishment. Yet they are the heart of Bush's "war on drugs."
And the liberal Democrats have no other answer either. Oh, some wring their hands about the suffering of poor. But when it comes to doing something, they cry that the "budget deficit" has their hands tied. Meanwhile, Congress always seems to find the money for more police and jails.
The Democrats, like the Republicans, are a party of the capitalists. And the concern of the capitalist class is not so much to stop the pumping of drugs into inner cities as to maintain docile wage slaves for exploitation and cannon fodder for their imperialist wars. More police and jails and repressive laws may not stop the spread of drugs, they reason, but it will at least help them hold down the masses.
There will be no solution to the blight of drugs from the likes of Bush or Congress. The masses must find the solution on their own. By fighting for their real needs against the capitalists and their police terror. By drawing the youth into this struggle, providing them with new inspiration, ideals and hope for the future. This is the way the masses will push aside the plague of drugs and crime, along with their basis in the criminal exploitation of the capitalist system.
In July, the Supreme Court passed a signal to the state governments to impose new restrictions on women's right to choose an abortion. This has come as a big boost to the right-wing forces who want to turn back the clock on women's rights. They are readying anti-choice laws and ordinances in states and cities around the country. Meanwhile the holy bullies of Operation Rescue (OR) are continuing attempts to harass women in front of abortion clinics.
But the pro-choice resistance is also continuing to confront the right-wing challenge. August again saw a number of pro-choice actions around the country. These activities took place on a number of different fronts.
Defense of clinics against Operation Rescue continues to be an important focus of the pro-choice battle. As well, there were street marches which took the pro-choice message to the masses of working people. There were protests against the wealthy and powerful backers of the anti-abortion crusade. And there were actions which denounced the government attacks on women.
New York
Four hundred people marched through Greenwich Village on August 2 to protest the Reverend Jesse Lee and his so-called "Neighborhood Church.'' Lee is a leader of Operation Rescue who set up his church to function as an antiabortion front. He uses it to spread anti-women filth and recruit for the fanatics of Operation Rescue.
The demonstration also marched on Domino's Pizza; the pizza chain's owner Tom Monaghan is a principal bankroller of the anti-abortion movement. He has given tens of thousands of dollars to the crusade to deny women the right to choice.
San Francisco
Three hundred people marched here on August 20 in a militant demonstration for women's rights. The action was called to protest a $24.1 million cut in the California State Office of Family Planning ordered by Governor Deukmejian. He did this on July 6, within days of the Supreme Court ruling restricting abortion rights.
As a result of this cut, family planning agencies across the state are being forced to cut back the availability of contraception, cervical cancer tests, and other crucial health services for women. It hits especially hard at working class and poor women. This cutback shows that the attack against abortion rights is a signal for a wide-ranging attack on women.
Before the march began, there were a few speeches and songs, including the call-and-response song of the MLP, Down with Operation Rescue. The demonstrators maintained loud slogans throughout the march, denouncing Operation Rescue and calling for a fightback against the right-wing crusade. They marched through part of the black working class Fillmore district, receiving loud support from people hanging out of windows and those in the street. The protest was also greeted by people driving by and passengers on buses. Many joined in on slogans, cheered, and raised their fists in solidarity.
The march ended with a rally at the State office building. There were speeches from various organizations and parties, including the MLP. The crowd gave enthusiastic support to those speakers who denounced the state government and called for the building of a militant movement.
Chicago
Two pro-choice protests faced the national governors' conference, held here the last weekend of July. The first, on Sunday July 30, drew about 100 people marching to where the governors were staying. The next evening, some 60 people demonstrated, lining the route where the governors were being driven to dinner in their limousines.
Earlier that day, there was a protest at the City Council where a committee was holding hearings on anti-abortion ordinances. Proposals before the City Council threaten to make it illegal for abortions and birth control counseling to be carried out within 1,000 feet of a school, which in a crowded city like Chicago would affect not just abortion clinics but many hospitals and doctors' offices.
Los Angeles
The biggest struggle with Operation Rescue last month took place in Los Angeles, over the August 12-13 weekend. OR made a big show here because Randall Terry, the head of the group, was in town for a trial because of an arrest at an earlier clinic blockade.
Operation Rescue promised to shut down a clinic this time. Although they have made a series of attacks on clinics in the area, they have not yet been able to shut a clinic. Once again, pro-choice resistance thwarted their goals.
The local Catholic Archbishop, Mahony, made a strong attempt to boost OR's spirits. He came out to address a large OR gathering on the night of August 11. He urged them to step up their clinic assaults. This was the second display of the Archbishop's support for OR; he had earlier come out to one of their clinic attacks.
The next morning, OR made hit-and- run raids on nine clinics in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. But at each stop they were met by crowds of pro-choice forces. Pro-choice forces had gathered at seven clinics early in the morning and drove to those clinics which were attacked by OR.
The largest confrontations took place at a pair of women's clinics within two blocks of each other on Pico Boulevard about 10 miles west of downtown L.A. Militant face-offs also took place at the HER clinic on Figueroa and at the Medical Clinic on Westmoreland.
At the Pico clinics, about 1,000 pro-choice activists confronted about 600 OR bullies, with about half the people at each clinic. OR had gotten to the entrances first but were not in wedges thick enough to close the whole clinic, as pro-choice forces surrounded them and militantly denounced them. Slogans were kept up against the government and church-backed attacks on women's rights.
At one point Randall Terry himself with about 20 bodyguards was surrounded by a group of some 50 pro- choice activists, mostly women. Terry and his sidekicks were pushed up against a car; activists shoved signs in their faces and gave them 10 minutes of militant denunciation.
Meanwhile, OR had hit the Westmoreland clinic with about 350 fanatics. Soon over 600 pro-choice people converged there, angry as hell. Police moved in to form cordons of 20-25 cops to defend the OR people. The activists pushed right up to the cops and were not intimidated by the billy clubs. Groups of 100-200 stood right in the face of the cops and shouted slogans for two and a half hours. The police made no move to arrest OR. Finally at 1:00 p.m. they ordered OR to move, which they did.
The next day, OR made another assault on a clinic in Rosemead, but they were greeted by about 200 pro-choice demonstrators. OR did block the entrance, but since patients were already inside the clinic when the blockade began, the facility was not shut down.
Detroit
Operation Rescue organized a "prayer vigil'' outside a women's clinic in Livonia, a Detroit suburb, on Friday, August 18. But the 50 or so anti-abortion fanatics were met with a spirited picket of an equal number of pro-choice activists.
Boston
Operation Rescue did not make any attempts to blockade clinics in Boston in August. The small Saturday morning regular "vigils" in front of the local clinics continued to be confronted by pro-choice pickets. About 30-40 pro-choice people showed up to face a similar number of anti-abortion gatherings.
The pro-choice activists are discussing holding a demonstration on September 23, when there is the possibility of Bush coming to town to speak to Catholic lawyers and judges at the invitation of the local Archbishop. And a local pro choice march has also been announced for October 2.
[Photos: Above: New York. Below: San Francisco.]
[Photo: Facing Operation Rescue on Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles.]
A vigorous discussion is going on in the pro-choice movement today about how to build the struggle to defend women's rights.
The leaders of the National Organization for Women' (NOW) hold influential positions in the pro-choice movement, but they have been playing a negative role. Over the last year, an active struggle has emerged to defend women's clinics from assaults by the fanatics of Operation Rescue. This effort has been very important for building up the pro-choice forces as well as developing the militancy of the struggle. NOW leaders have worked to undermine this struggle. They have repeatedly come out against militancy. Instead they want to make the pro-choice struggle into a tail of the liberal Democratic politicians.
So what is one to make of the stories in the press about how NOW resolved at its recent national convention to reject the Republican and Democratic parties and work towards an independent political party? (Some stories described this as a call for a women's party, but the actual proposal appears to have been about a party dedicated to women's rights, civil rights, etc.)
Has NOW turned over a new leaf?
Nothing of the sort. True, some forces are trying to paint the NOW leaders as "extremists." Newspaper columnists, Democratic politicians, and such groups as the National Women's Political Caucus have denounced NOW's idea as "silly and dangerous."
But they are setting up a straw dog to rail against. NOW leaders are by no means breaking with capitalist politics. They only struck a pose -- although not for very long. NOW leaders have not made much of their resolution after the immediate publicity died down.
A Posture
It is no great mystery why the NOW leaders felt necessary to strike this pose. There is widespread disgust with the two parties. In the ranks of pro- choice activists as well as among working people generally. Even though NOW is largely middle class, they are not unaware of the mood among large sections of the people. And many NOW activists themselves have loyally worked for the Democrats, only to see the Democrats sell out women's issues time and again.
The NOW leaders weren't planning on adopting the resolution about political independence at their conference. Most reports suggest that it came up at the conference itself, born of disgust that many NOW activists felt with the Republican and Democratic parties. NOW leader Eleanor Smeal pointed out afterwards, "We really didn't expect this."
What the NOW leadership did was to turn the idea of political independence into a meaningless platitude. For one thing, they decided to turn it over to a committee to "explore" the matter (i.e. pigeonhole it). For another, they sought to use the idea to bluff the capitalist politicians. As NOW president Molly Yard put it, "I think we're sending a message" to the Democratic and Republican parties. "You better shape up or we'll ship you out."
NOW's Idea of "Independence" -- Support Republicans Too
But in terms of practical politics it didn't mean a step towards breaking with the capitalist parties. NOW leaders remain wedded to establishment politics. In fact, the very same resolution which called for exploration of a third party pointed to the need to support candidates that take pro-choice stands from both the Republican as well as Democratic parties.
Politics of Rich and Well-Off Women
The NOW leaders remain wedded to establishment politics because, as the principal voice of bourgeois feminism, NOW stands for the interests of upper class women. It sees the fight for women as a fight that brings women into sharing the corridors of capitalist power: in the upper echelons of corporations and the government.
And this upper class prejudice keeps showing through. It came out in a big way in another idea touted at the NOW convention, an idea that has not received much publicity. This was the appeal for the pro-choice movement to reach out to the reactionary population-control forces.
Wooing the Partisans of Sterilizing the Poor
Molly Yard declared that the movement has to "reach out to new allies." She referred to "environmentalists" and said, "The abortion question is not just about women's rights but about life on the planet -- environmental catastrophe awaits the world if the population continues to grow at its present rate."
This is the age-old racist garbage about how overpopulation is the cause of poverty. This is nothing but unscientific, bourgeois prejudice against too many poor people in the world. In the name of allying with those concerned with the environment, Molly Yard wants to woo those bourgeois sections who think that poor people would be best off if they were sterilized.
The NOW leaders are thus trumpeting the idea that abortion rights can be defended if we convince the public that they have an interest in not allowing too many poor people to be born. This is a theme we have already seen in NOW campaigns over the question of Medicaid funding for abortions for the poor.
Lawrence Lader, the founding chairperson of NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League), who is also a NOW board member, has let the cat out of the bag about what's behind this line of argument. He has written, "Above all, society must grasp the grim relationship between unwanted children and the violent rebellion of minority groups." (Quoted in a recent "Ashes and Diamonds" column by Alexander Cockburn.) In other words, these bourgeois are afraid of more poor people because they fear rebellion by the downtrodden.
The pro-choice movement must reject the "new allies" that NOW is seeking. Instead, we must build the struggle on the working people. The attacks on abortion rights are hitting especially at poor and working class women. They need the right to choice as a way out of unwanted pregnancies. Not as part of some wealthy people's scheme of "population control" against the poor. The fight for choice must be linked with the fight against sterilization abuses against poor people, and with the struggle to improve the conditions for the poor and oppressed masses as a whole.
The politics of NOW are a dead-end for the struggle of working class women.
[Photo.]
Shouting "Vacant housing -- take it back!" and "We're going to beat back the landlord attack!" protesters marched through the Harlem/Washing- ton Heights section of New York City on July 29.
The marchers denounced Alexander DiLorenzo and his holding company, Big River Realty. It owns over 20 buildings in the neighborhood. And they contain more than 250 empty apartments, some empty for five years. In a city where the high rents have driven many to live doubled up and subway stations are filled with homeless people such "warehousing" of empty apartments is outrageous.
The marchers supported several families who, desperate for housing, took over vacant Big River apartments. They are now demanding leases.
[Graphic.]
The coal fields remain tense in the wake of the wildcat that eventually drew out 60,000 miners in June and July.
The strikers at Pittston Coal continue their determined struggle. Fifteen more strikers were arrested August 9, after sitting down in front of Pittston's Moss No. 3 coal processing plant. And federal Judge Glenn Williams sentenced another striker, Philip Anderson, to five months in jail for not obeying the court's ban on actions. Over $7.5 million in fines have been levied against the Pittston strikers.
Meanwhile, contract strikes and fights against scabbing are also taking place at New Beckley Coal, Chafin Coal, and the A.T. Massey-owned Big Bear Mining and Rum Creek Coal. Daily pickets of from 50 to 100 miners prevented coal from being moved from the Rum Creek coal preparation plant. It was shut down by the July wildcat. Rum Creek declared bankruptcy, and is now trying to reopen the plant with scabs. On August 15, two women picketers were run down by a company truck.
Throughout the coal fields sentiment is still running high for an industry-wide strike in support of the striking miners. At the August 13 solidarity rally in Pittsburgh, miners from District 6 reported that a resolution had been passed calling on United Mine Worker (UMW) president Richard Trumka to call a national strike against the union busting at Pittston.
But Trumka has no intention of doing this. He is sticking to his "selective strike'' strategy and is trying to keep militant miners pacified with calls to nonviolent sit-downs and other ineffective tactics. Meanwhile, he is trying to find a face-saving way to sell out the strike.
In mid-August the UMW officials proposed that the union and Pittston form a joint committee to look into company claims that efficiency differences exist between its union and nonunion coal operations. Pittston cited such an "efficiency gap" to justify its concession demands at the federally mediated negotiations. Instead of looking to organize the nonunion mines, the UMW leaders promised to see whether contract changes could be made to close the gap.
[Photo: Pittston strike supporters denounce scab coal haulers.]
More than 5,000 workers joined a solidarity march through downtown Pittsburgh on August 13. Miners from strikes against Pittston Coal and the Duquesne Light Co. headed up the march. They were followed by Eastern Airline strikers and a contingent of 1,000 telephone workers. Workers from steel mills, hospitals, and other industries also joined the march.
The demonstration showed an outpouring of support for united action. Many workers carried home-made signs calling for national strikes in their industries and for a countrywide solidarity strike to support the miners, airline workers, and telephone strikers.
But the union leaders who led the march did not share the workers' spirit. Lynn Williams, the president of the United Steel Workers and head of the AFL-CIO committee to organize strike support, led off the speakers from the platform. And while spewing empty talk about solidarity, he ridiculed the rank-and-file calls for united strike action.
He claimed the rank and file were suggesting that "one dramatic moment, one dramatic incident, one particular event will solve this problem." And he counterposed to this the "day after day, week after week, month after month" struggle that is presently being waged. But this is just hypocritical word tricks.
Both the "month after month" struggles and the "dramatic moments" have been weakened by the union bureaucrats who have split up the workers into isolated, individual strikes -- whether it be in the coal fields, or airlines, or the splitting of telephone workers into separate contracts for ATT and each of the regional companies. The rank and file feels this weakness in their bones and is groping for solidarity to give them strength. The union leaders are opposing such solidarity. Even ordering strikers back to work -- as United Mine Worker president Trumka did to stop the wildcat that spread through the coal fields in support of the Pittston strikers. It is all too clear that the workers will achieve united action only by going around the union bureaucrats and by building a conscious movement against their sabotage.
[Photo: New York City hospital workers march during their strike.]
About 50,000 New York City hospital workers struck for three days in August. This is a continuing contract battle with the League of Voluntary Hospitals which includes 54 hospitals in the New York area.
The strike began August 14, with a solidarity march of tens of thousands from city hall through the financial district. Shouting "No contract, no peace!" and "Beat back the bosses!" the hospital workers were joined by striking telephone workers, Eastern airline strikers, and a contingent of coal miners. The demonstrators were cheered on by thousands of downtown workers who lined the streets. As the march wound its way to Battery Park, many left to join picket lines at the various hospitals.
The second day of the strike began with a mass march through the Bronx. And the next day mass pickets surrounded all of the struck hospitals. The hospital workers also waged two one-day strikes earlier in July.
The workers are fighting against the hospital bosses' concession drive. The League wants to slash health benefits, sick leave, regular and overtime pay, and job security. In addition, it wants to suspend payments into the workers' pension fund for three years.
The workers are fighting mad, and many are calling for a city-wide strike. But the leaders of the 1199 hospital union are only calling limited strikes to bring the League around to a contract patterned on a deal settled earlier with four hospitals run by the Catholic Archdiocese. During the short strike, 1199 officials announced that three League members had agreed to the Catholic pattern.
But this pattern falls far short of what the workers need. It would grant 8.5% yearly wage increases, but pay for them by suspending payments into the union's pension fund. As well, wages and benefits would be tied to the profits of the hospitals -- including a clause that would allow for cutting wage increases if the hospitals run into trouble. There are also givebacks in other benefits. Obviously, in limiting the demands to the Catholic pattern the union leaders are trying to sell the workers a bill of goods.
The union officials even ordered some members to cross picket lines during the three-day strike. Nurses from the Beth Israel Hospital voted to strike. But the 1199 executive board overruled them and ordered them to cross the picket lines. The union hacks claimed this was a necessary tactical retreat in the face of a de-certification campaign being conducted by the New York State Nurses Association. But nurses denounced them, pointing out that failing to fight only weakened the union. The hospital workers' outcry against the highhanded antics of the 1199 officials were so great that they had to issue a promise to call out the entire membership if any nurses joining the strike were victimized.
200,000 workers walked out at four of the seven "Baby Bell" regional telephone companies in August. Fighting new concessions demands, especially against cuts in health care, workers organized large solidarity rallies in many areas. And mass picket lines led to sharp fights, many arrests, and the death of one striker who was run down by a scab.
Toward the end of August union leaders agreed to various company concessions at two of the struck companies and ordered workers back to the job. Many have returned only reluctantly, after several days. And there has been a lot of grumbling against the proposed contracts. While they are carrying out mail-in votes that won't be counted until later in September, about 100,000 workers continue to strike against NYNEX in the Northeast and Ameritech in the Midwest.
Support Rallies and Mass Picket Lines
The telephone strikes have been marked by large solidarity rallies in cities around the country. Tens of thousands marched in New York City as telephone workers joined hospital workers who were launching a three-day strike. About 3,000 strikers surrounded phone company headquarters in downtown Detroit. In Newark, New Jersey 1,000 strikers tied up downtown traffic for nearly an hour. In Boston around 5,000 workers held a militant march. And thousands more demonstrated through the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., and other cities. In many of these rallies telephone workers were joined by other strikers from the coal fields, Eastern Airlines, hospitals and hotels. And there were frequent calls for an industry-wide strike to beat back the telephone companies' takeback drive.
There were also battles against scabs, managers and police as the strikers organized mass picket lines in many cities. Some of the sharpest fights took place at NYNEX facilities in the Northeast.
800 strikers blocked traffic and harassed scabs August 10 at the New England Telephone offices in Boston. The police escorted scabs out of the building and arrested seven strikers. Another 28 strikers were arrested that day in Oxford, Massachusetts as strikers waged a militant picket at a NYNEX construction site. In the first four days of the strike some 65 strikers were arrested in picket line actions in Massachusetts.
Similar actions took place at sites around New York. In Valhalla, north of New York City, there were several days of confrontations.
Eventually one striker was run down by a scab driving through the picket line at high speed. This scab, the daughter of a manager, was working at NYNEX for the summer. She had a confrontation with the picket line the day before and had been kept out. She was determined not to be stopped, hit Edward Gerry Hogan at high speed throwing him onto the hood of the car, and carried him several hundred feet before throwing him off head first. Hogan died the next day.
After hearing of the murder, 1,000 angry workers rallied in Valhalla to protest. They so frightened NYNEX that it shut down the facility and evacuated all scabs and managers. Some 2,000 workers also protested the killing in White Plains, New York and about 1,500 workers attended his funeral the following day.
Fearing sharper confrontations, various courts jumped into action to help out the phone bosses. A New York state judge issued an injunction against mass picketing or interference with phone company operations on August 21. A similar ban on mass picketing had been ordered a few days earlier in New Jersey.
Union Leaders Split Up the Struggle
The sharpest issue in this strike is health care. All the telephone companies have been demanding cuts in medical insurance, which the workers had won only through a number of strikes in the past. As well, some companies have demanded other takebacks like lower wage scales for clerks, maintaining no cost-of-living allowance (COLA) or cutting it if it exists, allowing more low-paid, part-time workers and nonunion workers, and so forth.
The workers have been determined not to give up what they've already won through struggle and to press for wage increases. But the leaders of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have not shared the workers' militancy. From the beginning they have split up the workers and weakened their struggle.
Since the break up of AT&T in 1983, the workers have been divided into separate contracts for AT&T and each of the regional companies, and even some of the regional companies are broken into separate contracts in each state.
The union leaders not only allowed this without a fight, but have spurred on the split up.
In this year's struggle the union leaders extended contracts to keep workers on the job at Southwestern Bell and USwest, while settling early at BellSouth and AT&T. Thus these workers were kept out of the strike.
As well, IBEW leaders organized some scabbing against CWA strikers. The IBEW officials settled with companies in Illinois and Indiana and sent their workers to cross CWA picket lines in those states. Many of the rank and file, however, refused to cross picket lines. Similarly, the IBEW leaders split with the CWA to settle with PacTel on August 14. This brought more pressure for a CWA settlement, which took place a week later.
Hacks Cave In To Concessions
It comes as no surprise then that the union leaders have caved in to many of the companies' concession demands.
The tentative PacTel agreement sells out the health care demands of the workers. The agreement covering 43,000workers in California and Nevada accepts a health care plan that would force workers to pay from 5-10% of the cost of most medical treatment at a network of doctors and hospitals chosen by the company. If workers chose treatment outside of this network they would have to pay the first $1,000 of treatment.
The pay increase is said to be 9.4% over three years, but some militants say most workers would be held down closer to 6%.
Militants are also denouncing the failure of the union bureaucrats to win amnesty for strikers. Some workers have already been suspended by PacTel for their strike actions.
Many workers at PacTel, and those covered by a similar agreement at Bell Atlantic settled on August 17, are angrily denouncing the contract. Still, although the mail-in vote won't be counted until later in September, the union leaders ordered the workers back to the job -- splitting them off from those still striking.
The rank and file can have nothing but contempt for the dirty dealings of the union officials. If takebacks are to be defeated, the rank and file has to get organized on its own. The urge for solidarity and militancy seen in this strike is a good sign. It must be carried forward to overcome the union hack's sabotage and give the companies a serious blow.
[Photo: On the picket line against Pacific Bell in Los Angeles.]
[Photo: Boston phone workers obstruct scab vehicle from crossing picket line.]
[Photo: Telephone workers march in New York City.]
The papers are filled with the bloody news from Colombia. The multi-billionaire Medellin drug cartel reportedly assassinated a presidential candidate just after murdering a national police colonel and a judge. The Colombian government ordered a crack down. And U.S. president George Bush is sending $65 million in helicopters, guns, and "advisory" troops to back up the Colombian government.
The politicians and news media of the rich are whining that the government is an underdog in an uphill battle. But they fail to mention that both the Colombian and U.S. governments themselves encouraged the death-squad activities of the drug lords as long as they were directed against the movements of the workers, the peasants and the left. In Colombia the chickens are coming home to roost.
Colombians' Dirty War Against the Masses
Colombia is a capitalist country where extreme poverty wracks the peasants and workers. Now, as in the 1960's, the masses have been waging determined strikes and demonstrations against the capitalist rulers. As well, leftist guerrilla groups continue to exist, after emerging in the revolutionary upsurge of the 1960's when they launched an armed struggle against government troops in the countryside.
For decades, the Colombian ruling class has been waging a dirty war of mass murders, executions, and other atrocities against the fighting masses. As part of this war, the ruling class encouraged the development of right-wing paramilitary death squads to hunt down and assassinate leftists. This included not only groups launched from the military and the private armies of the capitalists but also murder squads of the drug cartels.
The drug bosses are reactionaries who hate the leftists. As attempts were made to organize and defend peasants and workers who are terribly exploited by the drug cartels, the drug bosses launched murder gangs against the left.
The Colombian government was only too happy to accept this assistance in their dirty war on the masses. But now, today, some of the same death squads that the government encouraged to attack the struggling workers and peasants are turning their guns against the Colombian rulers themselves.
U.S. Draws Drug Kings into War On Nicaragua
The U.S. government has also been wheeling and dealing with the Colombian drug cartels in its drive to stamp out the Nicaraguan revolution.
The Reagan-Bush administration worked with the drug runners to finance, supply, and transport the contras in their dirty war against the Nicaraguan revolution. In return for which, the drug runners were allowed to use contra airstrips and the U.S. government even squashed investigations of them.
In fact, the U.S. government had extensive ties with the Medellin drug cartel which is said to be behind the present assassinations and bombings in Colombia. A convicted member of this cartel, Ramon Milian-Rodriquez, testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations. He admitted that he personally helped transfer over $3 million in drug money to the CIA for the contras. Milian-Rodriquez testified that even after he was arrested by the U.S. authorities, he was never questioned about his payments to the CIA although his written record of the CIA transaction was captured with him.
The Senate subcommittee's investigation also showed that the State Department's Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office (NHAO) sent funds to a Costa Rican seafood business set up by Milian-Rodriquez to launder the Medellin cartel's drug money. (For more details see June 1 issue of The Workers' Advocate.)
Despite all of Bush's hysterical cries against the Colombian drug runners, he and Reagan were neck deep in working with these thugs in order to attack the revolution in Nicaragua.
U.S. Keep Out!
The scourge of the drug lords must be wiped out. But neither the U.S. imperialists nor the Colombian ruling class can be trusted to do it. They have shown time and again that they are more interested in attacking the workers and peasants and their left-wing organizations than in dealing with the drug runners.
While the current military build up is apparently directed at the Medellin drug operation, it can be expected to be used against the fighting masses as well. Here in the U.S. we must support the fighting workers and peasants of Colombia and declare: U.S. imperialism, keep out!
[Photo: May Day march in Bogota. Workers condemn paramilitary gangs spawned by the exploiters against the toilers.]
The liberal Democrats are determined to not be out-gunned by Bush's hysterical appeals for more police measures in the war on drugs.
In August, for example, Michigan's liberal Democratic Senator Carl Levin attached an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would empower state governors to call out the National Guard for local anti-drug operations.
Never mind that governors already have that power. Never mind that the federal government will actually pay for Guardsmen to be used for backup duty for local drug police if only the governor declares an "emergency." The liberals want to show that they are tougher than Bush, so Levin hits the front page news with his appeal to bring out the National Guard.
But all that Levin has proved is that when it comes to unleashing the police against the masses, the Democrats are in full agreement with the Republicans. The capitalist class is opening up a new reign of terror in the ghettos of America in the name of fighting drugs. And the Democrats, like the Republicans, are dancing to the capitalist tune.
The government's war on drugs seems to have no room for helping drug abusers. While Nancy Reagan toured the country crying "Just Say No!" her husband convinced Congress to cut funding for drug treatment and prevention by 40% from 1981 through 1986.
Then during last year's election campaign, Congress patted itself on the back for passing the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Some Democratic liberals aimed this bill would change the course of the "war on drugs" because it authorized a few pennies for drug-abuse education, cocaine treatment, and medical care for addicts with AIDS. But once the noise of the elections died down, Congress, for most of these efforts, failed to supply the promised pennies. "We aren't funding the [anti-drug] program," acknowledges Democratic Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware. "We aren't making an attempt like we promised the American people we would." (Wall Street Journal, August 10)
But not to worry. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act did create the position of national drug policy director. And William Bennett, Bush's appointee to the position, has been stumping for innovative "drug rehabilitation" programs.
Throw first-time drug offenders into military-style "boot camps," Bennett urged during a recent nationwide tour. He vowed to favor those "treatment programs" that emphasize coercion as well as therapy. "Crack addicts don't just get up one morning and say, Hey, I think I'll go in for some treatment. You have to force people sometimes." (Wall Street Journal, August 10)
In New York City, addicts seeking help must wait an average of six months before they can get into a treatment program. And the situation is similar in much of the rest of the country. But Bennett claims "you have to force people." Baloney! This just shows that the government is not really out to solve the drug problem in the country. Rather, it is using talk of a "war on drugs" to step up police terror against the masses.
Another official of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was arrested for drug trafficking on August 14. This is the fourth DEA agent arrested this year on drug-related charges. And this time, he worked right in the DEA headquarters. Edward K. O'Brien was a staff coordinator with the international programs office overseeing DEA operations in Europe and the Middle East. He may have been tipping off a Miami-to- Boston cocaine distribution ring about DEA operations.
Liberals and conservatives alike have been preaching that the solution to the drug problem is to hire more police. But this latest case has them wringing their hands over the corruption that has spread through the police forces across the country.
Yet, how could it be otherwise when making deals with the wealthy dope pushers is considered standard operating procedure from the White House on down?
Look at, for example, the report "Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy" issued in April by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations. Evidence before the subcommittee showed that the Reagan-Bush administration established an entire Nicaraguan contra aid pipeline in collaboration with international drug cartels. The drug dealers helped transfer U.S. funds to the contras, helped finance the contras and transported supplies to the contras. In return, the U.S. allowed the drug dealers to use contra airstrips, gave a free hand to the drug kingpins, and even squashed investigations by U.S. law enforcement officials. In 1986 alone, the State Department's Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Operation, acting on advice of the infamous Ollie North, paid out over $800,000 to four companies known for their drug ties. (See "Senate investigation shows drugs finance the contras" in the June 1 issue of The Workers 'Advocate.)
[Photo: Police set up metal detectors as part of "anti-drug" lockdown at Rockwell Gardens housing project, Chicago, August 16.]
Jack Kemp, Bush's head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is supposed to be dealing with the housing crisis and the plight of the homeless in this country. But he seems more interested in finding innovative ways to evict people from their homes.
Recently Kemp has reportedly encouraged local housing authorities to implement a new approach begun by officials in Berkeley, California. They have been summarily evicting people accused of selling drugs by using a no-business clause that prohibits commercial businesses from functioning in publicly subsidized housing. So much for proof, the right to appeal, etc. Feeling this provision was still not strong enough, on August 25 Kemp proposed new HUD regulations allowing evictions if tenants are accused of using of drugs or any violent criminal activity, even if the activity does not take place at their apartment.
This spring Kemp agreed to exempt Virginia from HUD's normal rules for evictions and to allow the eviction of anyone even "suspected" of taking drugs. Kemp promised to agree to the same policy for any city in the country that asked for it. More recently, San Diego officials came forward with their own plan to evict people on the mere say-so of the police.
Kemp also endorsed the mass evictions in Washington D.C. launched by Bush's drug czar William Bennett and local authorities in May. Kemp and Bennett claimed that turning hundreds of people out of their homes was aimed at fighting drugs. But these were mostly just people who had failed to pay their rent either due to impoverishment or in protest against landlord's failure to make repairs. There were 1,800 people on Washington's backlogged eviction roster. Bennett asked their landlords if any were involved in drugs. The landlords were not asked to provide any proof. But if they claimed a tenant was suspected of drug involvement, then Bennett put them on the top of the list and sent the police with assault rifles to kick them out.
This is what the "war on drugs" is actually about -- terrorizing and oppressing the masses of poor and working people, especially in the black, Chicano and other minority ghettos.
Bush's new anti-drug strategy calls for increased efforts to find and treat drug-using expectant mothers. This may sound like a noble humanitarian effort. But what Bush actually has in mind can be seen in a recent case in Florida.
Jennifer Johnson tried to get help to overcome cocaine addiction last fall. But a Florida out-patient drug program refused to admit her because she was pregnant. Officials claim they feared potential liability if her fetus didn't survive the stress of withdrawal.
Yet now, because she was addicted while pregnant, Jennifer has been arrested and convicted of "delivering cocaine to a minor."
Such is the logic of Bush's "war on drugs" -- don't treat but persecute poor people who have gotten trapped in drug abuse. And now that logic is being spread against women who are pregnant.
Cases similar to Jennifer's are pending in Ohio, Massachusetts and South Carolina. In Rockford, Illinois a prosecutor tried to indict a woman on an involuntary manslaughter charge when her cocaine-addicted daughter died two days after birth. One county in California is testing newborn babies and then taking them away from their mothers if the test shows positive. And the list goes on.
Obviously mothers like Jennifer need help. But there are virtually no drug treatment programs for pregnant women. And Bush is not planning on creating any. Instead, the government is building up the "pregnancy police" to persecute women.
The Bush administration is discussing whether to jump deeper into the assassination business. On April 10 a U.S. army spokesman, Lt. Col. Richard Bridges, talked about a proposal to organize death squads to assassinate "terrorists." (See the article in the May 1 issue of The Workers' Advocate.) More recently, the Bush administration is talking about using the excuse of the struggle against drug dealers. One way or another, the Bush government is determined to legitimize death squads and government murders.
A task force of the National Security Council has been assigned to consider the issue of murder in the name of fighting drugs. Representatives of the State Department, the Justice Department, the Pentagon, the Treasury and the CIA have been debating the issue. George Bush and CIA Director William Webster are reported to be among those who are particularly hot to carry out such covert 4 4military operations."
Some details of this plan were revealed in the Miami Herald on June 9 and the Detroit Free Press on June 10.
The government doesn't appear to have any moral scruples against murder. Those opposing the plan are only worried about practical problems, such as whether there will be retaliation against U.S. diplomats. Some have apparently raised the problem of a 1976 presidential order supposedly banning assassinations. But there are many practical suggestions for getting around this:
* The army's plan is to redefine murder as "self-defense."
* Others suggest officially labeling the targets of covert action as drug operations, not the individuals, and then presenting the murders as unfortunate, unintended accidents.
* Another plan is to hire hitmen or mercenaries so that any connection to the U.S. government could be denied.
* And William Webster, CIA head, thinks the main thing is that such actions are "thoroughly defendable to the American people" anyway, so long as they vilify the victims enough.
These are the ravings of the men and women who have control of the secret police operations that affect the lives of every American and, it seems, any person around the world within reach of American military might. Isn't it comforting to know that, for them, murder is just another policy decision? But don't worry. It is said that President Bush would have to authorize the murders personally, and there would be Congressional oversight. No trial, mind you. Just the personal word of Bush and a few Congressional friends, similar to the way they arrange a HUD payoff or a tax loophole for the rich.
Today they talk of murdering terrorists and drug dealers. (Except, of course, for the terrorists and drug dealers who are on the CIA payroll or in the government death squads or business partners with Oliver North in the contra supply network.) And tomorrow, who knows? After all, back in the 70's a Senate committee, no less, held that the CIA had conspired to murder Cuban President Fidel Castro and the late Chilean President Salvador Allende. Yet no one was ever indicted or tried in court for these conspiracies. No one served a day in prison for plotting first-degree murder.
But we cannot be too surprised about the current discussions about death squads. In fact, it is well known that the CIA and Pentagon helped organize the death squads in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America, Indonesia, and elsewhere. A month ago, Robin Wright and John M. Broder, in the Los Angeles Times, reported that the U.S. government has had a systematic policy of training so-called "counter-terrorism squads" for other governments -- squads which are well known for torture and murder. These squads are in "dozens of countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America." The U.S. government's purpose was to use these foreign death squads as "proxies" to avoid "the legal, political and logistical difficulties" in using American squads.
Bush and the politicians talk about the "rule of law," but they know no law, no morality other than keeping the capitalists in power all over the world. Murder is just another business decision for them. It is long past time for these fiends to be driven from power and replaced by a socialist rule of the working class.
Hundreds of angry black people rallied August 26 and again the next day to condemn the racist murder of a black New York teenager. On Saturday the rally began at the Slave Theater in Brooklyn and then moved in buses and cars to the white enclave where the black youth was gunned down.
Yusef Hawkins was sixteen years old and had done nothing to harm or offend anybody. But he was black and in racist America that's enough to get the death sentence. He and friends had entered a white neighborhood in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn to buy a car. They were set upon by a bat-wielding gang of 10 to 30 white youth. Shouting, "Let's club the... nigger!'' "No, let's shoot one!'' four shots were fired. Two hit Hawkins in the chest. One of his friends was also injured.
The racist gang had apparently gathered to take random vengeance on blacks because one of their ex-girlfriends had begun dating a dark-skinned Hispanic man. The news media, and Mayor Koch, have tried to play down the racism. As Koch said at a news conference, "This is a case involving bias, but it's more than that. It's a spurned lover.''
No, that's wrong. That's turning things upside down. Perhaps this case involved a spurned lover, but more than that it is a blatant example of the racist poison that's being spread through New York and much of the country. This takes place because Reagan and Bush and the Supreme Court have cultivated a racist offensive in this country. Because liberal Democrats have tolerated and all too often gone along with this racism. Because Mayor Koch and his gang have created a racist climate in New York; have stood behind their police shooting down one black person after another; have let racist gangs off with a mere slap of the wrist.
Racism is a disease that spreads like the plague unless it is confronted. And that confrontation must be directed not only against the racist gangs but also against the racist government that has spawned them.
Fifty demonstrators demanded action against racist gangs in a rally at the Hamilton County Courthouse outside Cincinnati on August 9. A series of racist incidents have occurred in Cincinnati suburbs this past year. Legal charges against the racists from previous incidents are still bottled up in the court system. So anti-racists went into the streets to protest.
The most recent victim of the racist gangs was a black family in Lincoln Heights. They were driven from the home they had moved into only two weeks before. Racist gangs marked the house with racial epithets and converged on the front lawn shouting threats and slanders at Dorothy Hale and her children. Several neighbors have come forward to denounce the racial attacks in this segregated neighborhood and asked the family to return.
About 500 New York State troopers and FBI agents raided the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation July 20, arresting 10 people. This attack was carried out under the pretext of shutting down a number of gambling casinos.
Since the raid, the police have been preventing the press from access to the reservation. And when a group of unarmed Mohawks went to the border July 25 to speak to reporters, the police brutally beat them. Two children ended up in the hospital from this attack. A 2 year-old was beaten unconscious. One of the Indian leaders was dragged off to jail after being beaten. With the typical nazi-logic of the police, the victim of the beating was charged with "obstruction of justice.''
In response, Akwesasne Mohawks set up roadblocks to stop any further invasion of their lands. The police threw up their own roadblocks, and were stopping anyone who tried to enter the reservation.
Many of the Mohawk people are very poor. And some leaders have hit upon gambling on the reservation as a source for much needed money. This is a questionable solution at best, one that is still a major controversy among the Mohawks themselves. But since a number of major cities in the U.S. are turning to the same solution, it is hard to see why the Mohawks deserve such a vicious police attack on this count. It would seem that underlying this controversy is the drive of the government to keep the native peoples under its racist heel.
Four thousand people demonstrated at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant on Hiroshima Day, August 6.
Rocky Flats lies only 16 miles from Denver and employs 6,000 people. It is a Department of Energy (DOE) installation which manufactures plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons. Rockwell International has run the facility for the DOE since 1975.
Rocky Flats has been a target of opposition throughout the last decade. It is widely hated both for its contamination of the Denver area and for its role in nuclear war preparations. This plant typifies the U.S. ruling class' ruthless drive for world domination. In their haste to produce weapons for aggression abroad, the government and the military-industrial monopolies poison the people at home at the same time.
The management of Rocky Flats has been so outrageous that it has even become a target of a new federal criminal investigation into radioactive and toxic waste contamination. After a two-year probe of the plant by the FBI and the EPA, the Justice Department sent 100 agents to the site June 6 for a 10-day, round-the-clock stay to take samples, seize records and interview employees.
Among the many instances of contamination of the site itself and the surrounding area, one of the most serious is the radioactive poisoning of the water supply for metropolitan Denver, which has a population of two million.
In a December '88 report, citing 32 new safety problems at the plant, the DOE itself asserted that the ground water contamination there is the greatest single environmental hazard at any DOE facility. That is saying a lot, since the DOE oversees several highly dangerous nuclear facilities around the country; and it is well-known for whitewashing their hazards.
The fact that the government itself shut down Rocky Flats' main plutonium reprocessing building for four months in '88 over safety, also indicates that something is seriously wrong there. As well, this summer, Congress began considering proposals to study a possible link between Rocky Flats pollution and cancer cases or birth defects in Denver.
One of the worst fears about Rocky Flats is that the water contamination and other poisoning have been caused by accidental nuclear reactions, completely out of control.
In 1987 plant personnel discovered two products of nuclear fission, strontium and cesium, in underground water at Hillside 881, which is near public reservoirs. Strontium and cesium are man-made radioactive elements, formed only in fission. They should not be present at the facility at all, since it is only a metallurgical plant, and does not have a nuclear reactor or accelerator. It is suspected that the radioactive products were formed in an unplanned fission chain reaction, triggered by piling up too much plutonium together. If fission did occur, then large, lethal doses of radiation were released at the facility.
Accidental fission may also account for the serious and unexplained fires at the site in 1957 and 1969.
Whether or not fission is in fact one of the sources of the contamination, Rocky Flats is clearly a hazard out of control. It is one of many similar military-industrial installations in the country which are threatening us with the double nightmare of deliberate holocaust and accidental slaughter.
The government and the military monopolies are responsible for this outrage. We can hardly expect the new federal investigation to deal with this danger. They've only acted because the problem is so big that it could give rise to even stronger protest.
The people must continue the struggle to shut down Rocky Flats -- and all such facilities!
[Photo: Protesters at the west gate of Rocky Flats nuclear facility.]
(The following article is taken from Aug. 22 "Detroit Workers' Voice," paper of the MLP-Detroit.)
Corporate greed is poisoning the Earth. This is a fact as sure as the hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer. The world capitalists are dumping toxic waste into the water, land and air at an alarming and increasing rate. This is true in the West and East (state capitalist countries like Poland, Soviet Union and China).
And as it turns out, one of the worst polluters in North America is Great Lakes Steel. This may seem obvious to the workers who are working there. But some interesting facts have come to light recently, showing the magnitude of the toxic dumping GLS has been doing.
Hundreds of Millions of Pounds of Toxic Waste
On August 10, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) released a report listing the top 500 corporate polluters in the U.S. The report was based on a 1987 EPA survey of 1,500 corporations.
The NWF listed GLS as the second worst polluter in the U.S. In 1987 GLS dumped over "423 million pounds of toxic waste and other hazardous chemicals into Michigan's environment...." (Detroit News, August 11, 1989) That amounts to 75 pounds of toxic waste per minute!
The principal waste dumped was aluminum oxide. Aluminum oxide has been linked to Alzheimer's disease and other brain and respiratory system damage. GLS dumped over 347 million pounds of it into the environment in 1987 alone.
Other wastes include: magnesium compounds, over 55 million pounds; zinc compounds, over 4.3 million pounds; hydrochloric acid, two million pounds; phosphorous, 1.5 million pounds; lead compounds, 1.8 million pounds; benzene, 580,000 pounds, just to list some.
The Working Class Must Fight to Save the Planet
At GLS, like all capitalist corporations, profit is the motive for production. Expecting the corporate executives, whose fat salaries are based on company profits, to stop polluting is like expecting the fox to guard the chicken coop. Our planet does not belong to the rich capitalist polluters. The Earth belongs to the toiling masses, worldwide. It is up to the working class to struggle to put an end to capitalist pollution. We workers should join in the environmental movements and protests. The workers at GLS should demand that the rich owners clean up and stop polluting our environment.
The many problems of capitalist pollution of the Earth will probably take decades to solve. In the end, the only real solution for the working class is genuine socialism. Under genuine socialism, the working class holds state power and runs industry for the people's benefit, not corporate profit. By holding state power, the working class can use the vast social wealth it creates to clean up the environment.
[Cartoon.]
[Graphic.]
The revival of militant struggle in South Africa shows that the black masses continue to yearn for the smashing up of racist rule. What has the racist government not brought down against the people, and yet the black people are ready to throw themselves again into self-sacrifice for freedom.
Today's defiance campaign is being carried out by hundreds, and thousands, of ordinary workers and youth. But unfortunately the campaign is dominated by political forces who follow a reformist and liberal policy. Such figures, who include Reverend Tutu, Alan Boesak, and other leaders of the United Democratic Front (associated with the banned ANC), are influential in the Mass Democratic Movement that is carrying out the defiance campaign.
There is a major discussion going on in the anti-apartheid movement in which these leaders are promoting a backward orientation. They are counter- losing the current campaign to the upsurge of a few years back, saying that the problem with the past struggle was that it became "too confrontational.'' Instead, they say, this time, the people must be stricter in adhering to peaceful and non-violent methods. (This kind of talk is being regurgitated in such reformist publications here as the People's Daily World, published by the revisionist CPUSA.)
But wait a minute. The liberals and reformists sang the same tune back then too. Then as now, the Tutus and Boesaks tried to hold the masses back. Told them to cut short their actions whenever things got sharp. Suggested that the only issue was to "make their point'' and then quietly go home.
However, then as now, what started as peaceful protests came face-to-face with the massive violence of the state. And the logic of the struggle itself led to confrontation and the raising of militancy. And quite justly so.
The problem with the last wave of struggle was not that it got too militant, but that the people proved unable to build and maintain their own underground mass revolutionary organizations, based on consciously breaking with liberal and reformist misleadership. Then as today, this is a priority task. The issue is not whether that or this wave of struggle will be sufficient to overthrow the racist system, but whether the people can use the upsurge to build up and accumulate the forces that will one day surely bring the hated oppressors down.
What underlies the liberal and reformist appeals is the fact that they do not think it is necessary to have a revolution to smash racist rule. Instead they want to use the anti-apartheid struggles merely to pressure the racist government into negotiations, through which they hope to strike a power-sharing deal. A deal in which some black faces are brought into government positions.
But such a compromise will not bring freedom and democracy for the majority. The racist minority will hold on to the key positions of power and privilege. Some crumbs may be thrown to a few black leaders, but the vast majority of blacks, the toilers, will remain enchained to capitalist exploitation and misery.
The idea of a "power-sharing'' compromise is being pushed by liberals in the U.S. and Western Europe, by international social-democracy, and the bourgeois black-ruled African governments. It is also getting strong backing from Gorbachev and the Soviet revisionists. More and more influential Soviet spokesmen are coming out with statements which openly scorn revolution and suggest that the only realistic option is the path of reconciliation and compromise.
But such '"realism'' is a dead-end road for the oppressed people. Such "realism'' only shows how inconsistent the world's liberals and reformists are in their claim to uphold democracy and freedom for the downtrodden.
The fact remains: Only a revolution that smashes the power of the racists can bring justice to the black majority in South Africa.
Shaking the West Bank
Awaking Gaza
When the stones fly
Hear the young fighters cry (hey-hey-hey)
No more will they wait
No more time to lose
Workers fill the front lines
Fight to free Palestine
In-ti-fa-da
Breaking the silence and raising the dream
Into the light
The struggle's alive
Into the fight they go
Send the word around
Shut Nablus down!
Workers showing their might
Call the general strike (hey-hey-hey)
The enemy they hate
The Israeli state
Bulldozing their homes
Soldiers breaking their bones
In-ti-fa-da
Joining the toilers in one mighty fist
Building their strength
Lessons are learned
Freedom's flame bums again
What will come of this?
How can they win?
What must be done
To bring revolution (hey-hey-hey)
Reach the class allies
Then organize
Working Arab and Jew
Against the wealthy few
In-ti-fa-da
Sowing the seeds of the struggles to come
Revolution
Growing below
Long live the In-ti-fa-da!
A song (with guitar chords) by A. Feraico
[Chords in the original.]
The Intifada is the uprising of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories against Israeli zionist rule. This song is reprinted from the Summer 1989 issue of STRUGGLE magazine.
In the last issue of The Workers' Advocate we reported on the growing economic crisis in Nicaragua and the development of Committees of Popular Struggle in the neighborhoods. The Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua (MAP-ML) is encouraging the workers of town and countryside to stand up for their own solution to the problems facing Nicaragua. They cannot rely on the Sandinista government, which is devoting all its attention to coming to terms with the bourgeoisie. Instead, the workers and laboring peasants must put forward their own plan, that of continuing the revolution to socialism. The development of neighborhood organization to fight for some pressing elementary demands is just one step in developing the initiative and confidence of the masses. The article below is taken from the February 15 bulletin of the Committee of Popular Struggle in the Ciudad Sandinobarrio of Managua. (Translation by The Workers' Advocate)
Declaration From the Committee of Popular Struggle of Ciudad Sandino
Every day the conditions of life of those who live in the barrio are more precarious. We lack the most vital services: transport, health, education, supplies. A series of difficulties have fallen onto the backs of our neighbors who, in their great majority, depend on a wage. And as a last straw the wages are being frozen making every day that passes more difficult. [The Nicaraguan currency is suffering hyperinflation. For example, its value dropped from 5,000 cordobas per dollar in March to 25,000 per dollar in June. Meanwhile workers wages are held down. -- WA]
Today the neighbors most interested in seeking a solution to these problems have organized ourselves into our Committee of Popular Struggle, taking into account the tradition of struggle waged by our committee in the epoch of the Somoza dictatorship. The struggles that took place for water and transport services demonstrated the action of our barrio that knew how to respond to its barrio organization, the Committee of Popular Struggle, that knew how to give lines of struggle for the interests of those who live in the barrio.
Plan of Struggle
For the right of health for the people.
* To demand that the medical centers pay quality medical attention and are supplied with medicines and that these will be free.
* To mobilize ourselves so that the vaccination campaigns cover the whole barrio.
For a barrio with schools.
* To promote education at the adult and preschool level.
* Not a single closed school, nor a single teacher laid off.
* The free use of schools for all the pre-school and adult students.
Efficient transport to be efficient in work.
* More buses for the barrio.
*More stops and better protection of those who use them from the sun and the rain.
* Subsidies for the fares of the workers from each center of work. [A typical worker of this barrio may earn 12 to 15 U.S. dollars a week. A third of his or her salary may go for the several buses it can take to get to work and back. -- WA]
Work for the unemployed and laid off.
* To demand immediate placement of the compactados. [Some 30,000 employees and workers were recently cut from the pay rolls in a compactacion of government agencies and state-owned enterprises.]
* To demand that the Ministry of Labor provide information in the barrio about work placement.
* Support the unions in the struggle for a minimum wage in line with the cost of the basket of the basic necessities.
* Struggle against unemployment.
For the development of popular culture.
* We call on the intellectuals and artists to work with the barrio and for the barrio.
* The committee with your support will work to bring to the barrio recreational activities, amusements and culture and develop sports.
Struggle for the freezing of prices of basic consumer goods.
* Strengthen the popular pressure against the government to guarantee price controls on the basic consumer products.
* Promote consumer co-ops.
* Popular mobilization in the face of the constant price increases.
* Seek economic aid from the state and non-state institutions.
* Struggle as much against private as state speculation and demand a better control over distribution.
The people of Ciudad Sandino, your participation is for the improvement of our barrio!
To organize and mobilize ourselves with the Committees of Popular Struggle!
[Graphic]
[Photo: Sit-down in solidarity with hunger strike.]
Two thousand political prisoners in Turkey launched a hunger strike two months ago, and many are still continuing. They are protesting their imprisonment at the hands of the country's dictatorial regime. And they are also demanding an end to brutal treatment of prisoners. Their struggle has been joined outside the prison walls by a solidarity hunger strike by 500 friends and family members.
The right-wing Turkish dictatorship has tried to crush the prisoners' struggle with beatings and other punitive measures. The struggle outside has also been attacked: relatives of prisoners were arrested as they tried to deliver a protest note to the Ministry of Justice at the beginning of August.
An outrage committed by the government against the prisoners has brought widespread public attention to the prison struggle. On August 2, authorities forcibly transported 319 inmates from the hunger-strike bound Eskihir prison to Aydin jail, about 250 miles away. It was a punitive measure taken after two escape tunnels had allegedly been discovered. During the move, two Kurdish political prisoners died, succumbing in their weakened condition to beatings at the hands of guards.
Meanwhile, other hunger strikers are also close to death.
The murder of the prisoners created an outcry among the Turkish people. Solidarity with the prisoners mushroomed. As a result, on August 13 the government said it would implement a major reform of prison conditions. They promised such things as: no more chaining of prisoners together when they are moved as a group from their cell block; no more solitary confinement in dark cells; no more beatings; no more bread- and-water diets for "troublemakers." They also promised that prisoners can have wider visitation rights.
But so far these are just words. After all, the government has in the past strongly denied that it was carrying out such abuses.
More importantly, however, the issue at stake isn't just prison conditions -- which are indeed atrocious -- but political imprisonment itself. Turkey keeps thousands of political dissidents in jail, mostly activists from left-wing groups. Most were brought in during the big wave of repression following a U.S.-backed military coup in 1980. Since then, the military regime has put on a civilian facade, but tyranny remains.
A thousand prisoners are continuing their hunger strike. And across the country, the cry for freedom for the political prisoners is growing.
The prisoners' strike is part of a revival of workers' and popular movements in Turkey. Strikes and workers' protests have been growing. May Day this year was marked by spirited demonstrations, which confronted police repression. And the struggle for the national rights of the heavily-oppressed Kurdish people is also developing.
Peru's 70,000 miners began an all-out strike on August 14 for better wages and benefits.
Although mining is the backbone of the economy, bringing fat profits for the mining capitalists, Peruvian miners have a miserable existence. Many of them earn less than $12 a week, a wage which won't even buy two pounds of meat.
Miners waged two strikes last year with the same demands, but they did not win. The mine capitalists remain adamant in refusing the workers' demands, but this time the miners are more determined to press their fight.
The miners' strike this year is part of a new strike wave involving thousands of people in various sections of the economy. Sanitation workers, bank workers, court clerks and doctors have carried out work stoppages in August. And other groups also intend to go out. They are seeking relief from inflation; real wages have fallen at least 25% already this year.
Meanwhile, the social-democratic APRA government of Alan Garcia responds to the workers with police action. Police use tear gas and water cannons against nearly daily marches by workers in the center of Lima, the country's capital.
More than 3,000 Swedish railway workers staged a one-day wildcat strike on August 21. They successfully shut down most passenger train service. Train drivers struck to demand a pay hike and to force the social-democratic government to back down from its plans to increase the pension age from 60 to 65.
This is the latest in a series of strikes that have hit Sweden this summer. Job actions have been launched by steelworkers, woodworkers, metalworkers, and railway workers. In June, workers struck at 24 companies demanding higher wages than they were being offered. In May there were 10 strikes.
An earlier rail strike went on for a week. It started in a maintenance shop in the northern city of Lulea and then expanded south to 10 depots. It shut down all northern freight traffic.
Most of the earlier strikes were also wildcat actions, carried out without authorization from the union officials.
Workers at the huge Helwan Iron and Steel Works in Egypt waged a militant strike in early August. It forced the government to grant workers some raises in wages and benefits. But not before the government of Hosni Mubarak attacked the workers in a murderous display of capitalist military power.
Workers had occupied the plant to enforce their demands for higher pay, better working conditions, and the reinstatement of their two elected representatives on the plant's control board. The two representatives had urged workers to strike for economic improvements, and so had been suspended from the board.
Before dawn on August 2 the government sent troops and police against the 2,500 workers occupying the plant. The troops smashed in with guns, tear gas, and armored cars. They killed at least 82 workers are due to stand trial for charges such as "abstaining from work."
The Egyptian government was desperate to maintain control at the plant. This is an important industrial complex -- it employs 25,000 workers and is the country's only steel plant. The government was also in the midst of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund over its $50 billion foreign debt, and it wanted to send a message to the imperialist bankers that it is not soft towards the workers' demands.
The Mubarak regime is the same power which is constantly praised as a "moderate" Arab government by the U.S. government and media. They neglect to mention, however, that strikes are completely illegal in Egypt. Or to expose that the country has been under martial law for the entire eight years of Mubarak's rule.
On August 7, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and four reactionary, pro-U.S. regimes in Central America reached a new agreement in Tela, Honduras. For the fourth, or fifth, or is it the sixth time, an agreement under the Arias plan promised to disband the contras in return for yet more concessions from Nicaragua. The contras are supposed to be disbanded as a military force by early December. The, supporters of the Arias plan are praising this agreement to the skies.
And indeed, progressive people everywhere want an end to U.S. aggression against Nicaragua, and they want to see the dismantling of the CIA's mercenary army of contras. But behind all the hype about the Tela accords lies an ugly reality. For the new accords mark another milestone in the dismantling of the Nicaraguan revolution. They trample on the self-determination of Nicaragua and submit Nicaragua's internal politics and economy to the demands of the Central American bourgeoisie, including the death-squad rulers of El Salvador and Honduras and Guatemala. They require setting up the contras as a privileged force inside Nicaragua under the protection of the U.S. Congress and the Central American presidents. The contra war may perhaps end, but U.S. interference, bullying and aggression will continue.
Moreover the pact is still subject to State Department veto. Various loopholes give the contras and their U.S. backers the option of continuing the dirty war on Nicaragua if they so desire.
Undoing the Revolution
Under the Arias plan, Nicaragua has agreed time and again to dismantle more and more of the revolution. It has granted more privileges for the pro- contra forces. Each time it was promised the disbanding of the contras. Each time it saw the contras funded again, while Nicaragua was asked to bow even lower. Indeed the present Tela agreement was reached right after the Sandinistas agreed to some 30 more concessions.
This time the Central American presidents may be more serious about ending the contra war, provided the U.S. agrees. The Sandinistas have gone so far with turning Nicaragua into an ordinary bourgeois system that the reactionary presidents of Central America may be willing to see them enter their club, although as a junior member.
Over the years, in the name of the "mixed economy" and, more recently, of the Arias plan, the Sandinistas have eliminated the institutions of mass initiative in Nicaragua. They are dismantling various of the reforms that they themselves implemented right after the revolution; this is an essential part of winning the trust of the European bourgeoisie, of the Central American presidents, and of the American politicians. Instead of relying on the masses, they have attempted over and over again to win to their side the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie and its pro-contra parties, and they have offered them political privileges, and given them financial subsidies. While the Sandinistas are saddling the workers and peasants with heavy layoffs, and with cutbacks in the health clinics, schools and other programs which were so cherished a part of the revolution, the pro-contra exploiters are being offered incentives in dollars, land in the countryside, and the return of confiscated property.
And this goes for the contra criminals themselves. Under the Tela accords, while the Sandinistas are saddling the workers and peasants with the burden of a severe economic crisis, all sorts of pleasantries await the contras if they decide to disband and return to Nicaragua. They may get back property confiscated by the masses. And the Nicaraguan government is required to offer the contra criminals extra government assistance, and to allow U.S. relocation aid to go to the contras, while the victims of contra rapes, murders and mutilations are left to fend for themselves. Thus the contras would be offered better conditions than those who fought them to defend the revolution.
This process of erecting a bourgeois economic and political system, complete with encouragement for reactionaries, is an essential part of the Tela agreements. The upcoming national elections, for instance, are being tailored to suit the pro-contra capitalists. The Sandinistas have gone so far as to allow U.S. financing of the pro-contra forces, permitting the U.S. to try to buy the elections. These concessions have gone so far that all 21 allied right-wing Nicaraguan parties endorsed the Tela plan. It is the class conscious workers led by the Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua (MAP-ML), who oppose the Tela accords and the whole Arias plan.
Why the Pro-American Regimes Signed the Tela Accords
The extensive concessions by the Sandinistas are one of the main reasons the reactionary Central American regimes have set yet another timetable for the disbanding of the contras. For two years of the Arias plan, these pro-U.S. governments, despite their promises, avoided any real measures to interfere with the U.S.'s contra war. But now these regimes may be more confident in the pro-bourgeois course of the Sandinistas.
Moreover, the contra war itself had become a debacle for the regimes. The contras were never able to gain a foothold in Nicaragua due to the heroic resistance of the Nicaraguan toilers. Meanwhile, the contra war tended to destabilize the pro-U.S. rulers in Central America. The presence of contra bases in Honduras, for example, helped fuel mass outrage against the Honduran rulers and their cozy relationship with U.S. imperialism.
Given this situation, the Central American reactionaries concluded that they would be sacrificing little and gaining a lot to make a deal with Nicaragua over disbanding the contras. According to the Tela accords, the contras are to surrender their arms to a United Nations (UN) force composed of troops from Spain, West Germany and Canada. The U.N. force is supposed to patrol the Nicaraguan/Honduran border to prevent hostilities. As well, it is to oversee the relocation of the contras.
At the same time, these regimes are not themselves making any concessions to their own people. The Honduran regime, for example, is even stepping up its death-squad terror. It is reported that now the death squads don't even bother to hide the bodies of their victims, but dump them openly in the street like in El Salvador.
The Loopholes
Nevertheless, the agreement leaves the last word to the U.S. government. The White House has the ability to veto the sending of the UN border force with its vote in the UN Security Council. Also, according to the U.S. government and the Central American bourgeoisie, the Tela accord states that the disarmament process is to be "voluntary." Thus the contras can simply refuse to disband, especially if promised more supplies and money from the CIA or if the border force is vetoed.
In particular, Bush might prefer to delay the disbanding of the contras until after the Nicaraguan elections in February. Then, if the vote count isn't to the liking of the CIA, Bush could decide to step up the contra war again.
The pro-U.S. regimes in Central America want to nudge the U.S. towards dismantling the contras. But they have left it up to their U.S. master whether to follow their lead.
Condemning the Struggle Against the Salvadoran Death Squads
The Tela accords have yet another ugly feature. They demand submission from the Salvadoran workers and peasants who are fighting against the death-squad regime of President Cristiani. They demand that the Salvadoran people give up their struggle and believe in the good will of the fascist regime of the ultra-right ARENA party.
Cristiani, and the U.S. diplomats, demanded that the Salvadoran militants be disarmed if the contras were to be disbanded. The final agreement simply calls for disarming the Salvadoran revolutionaries, rather than requiring it as a prerequisite for the rest of the agreement. But it still puts its signatories, including the Sandinistas, on record against the Salvadoran struggle.
Hands Off Nicaragua!
How the Bush administration will respond to the Tela accord is not clear. It may decide to maintain the contra camps at all costs. Or it may, as various liberal Democrats are suggesting, accept the peace plan. Or it may decide on some combination of these two positions, such as seeking to modify the Tela timetable. But, no matter which option, neither Bush, nor Congress, are even considering agreeing to self-determination for Nicaragua.
Friends of the Nicaraguan workers and peasants! Activists against war and imperialism! We must continue to oppose the contra warmongering and all U.S. aid to these butchers. We must also oppose all efforts to dismantle the Nicaraguan revolution and violate its self-determination, whether through the CIA's contras or through the CIA's "political" means. This is why it is necessary to oppose the Tela accords. These accords demand the further erosion of the gains of the revolution. They mean a bigger opening for the White House and the CIA to carry out their political destabilization campaigns against Nicaragua.
The pro-U.S. Somoza tyranny was defeated by the revolutionary efforts of the workers and peasants of Nicaragua. And that is the only way to solve the economic crisis and defeat the pro- contra political effects.
[Photo: At the Victoria brewery: Frente Obrero slogan declares "Down with the Somocista labor code that oppresses the workers." Frente Obrero is the trade union center of the MLP of Nicaragua. FO/MLPN have been fighting against the Somoza labor code which the Sandinistas have preserved.]
[Photo: Sit-down in solidarity with hunger strike.]
Two thousand political prisoners in Turkey launched a hunger strike two months ago, and many are still continuing. They are protesting their imprisonment at the hands of the country's dictatorial regime. And they are also demanding an end to brutal treatment of prisoners. Their struggle has been joined outside the prison walls by a solidarity hunger strike by 500 friends and family members.
The right-wing Turkish dictatorship has tried to crush the prisoners' struggle with beatings and other punitive measures. The struggle outside has also been attacked: relatives of prisoners were arrested as they tried to deliver a protest note to the Ministry of Justice at the beginning of August.
An outrage committed by the government against the prisoners has brought widespread public attention to the prison struggle. On August 2, authorities forcibly transported 319 inmates from the hunger-strike bound Eskihir prison to Aydin jail, about 250 miles away. It was a punitive measure taken after two escape tunnels had allegedly been discovered. During the move, two Kurdish political prisoners died, succumbing in their weakened condition to beatings at the hands of guards.
Meanwhile, other hunger strikers are also close to death.
The murder of the prisoners created an outcry among the Turkish people. Solidarity with the prisoners mushroomed. As a result, on August 13 the government said it would implement a major reform of prison conditions. They promised such things as: no more chaining of prisoners together when they are moved as a group from their cell block; no more solitary confinement in dark cells; no more beatings; no more bread- and-water diets for "troublemakers." They also promised that prisoners can have wider visitation rights.
But so far these are just words. After all, the government has in the past strongly denied that it was carrying out such abuses.
More importantly, however, the issue at stake isn't just prison conditions -- which are indeed atrocious -- but political imprisonment itself. Turkey keeps thousands of political dissidents in jail, mostly activists from left-wing groups. Most were brought in during the big wave of repression following a U.S.-backed military coup in 1980. Since then, the military regime has put on a civilian facade, but tyranny remains.
A thousand prisoners are continuing their hunger strike. And across the country, the cry for freedom for the political prisoners is growing.
The prisoners' strike is part of a revival of workers' and popular movements in Turkey. Strikes and workers' protests have been growing. May Day this year was marked by spirited demonstrations, which confronted police repression. And the struggle for the national rights of the heavily-oppressed Kurdish people is also developing.
Peru's 70,000 miners began an all-out strike on August 14 for better wages and benefits.
Although mining is the backbone of the economy, bringing fat profits for the mining capitalists, Peruvian miners have a miserable existence. Many of them earn less than $12 a week, a wage which won't even buy two pounds of meat.
Miners waged two strikes last year with the same demands, but they did not win. The mine capitalists remain adamant in refusing the workers' demands, but this time the miners are more determined to press their fight.
The miners' strike this year is part of a new strike wave involving thousands of people in various sections of the economy. Sanitation workers, bank workers, court clerks and doctors have carried out work stoppages in August. And other groups also intend to go out. They are seeking relief from inflation; real wages have fallen at least 25% already this year.
Meanwhile, the social-democratic APRA government of Alan Garcia responds to the workers with police action. Police use tear gas and water cannons against nearly daily marches by workers in the center of Lima, the country's capital.
More than 3,000 Swedish railway workers staged a one-day wildcat strike on August 21. They successfully shut down most passenger train service. Train drivers struck to demand a pay hike and to force the social-democratic government to back down from its plans to increase the pension age from 60 to 65.
This is the latest in a series of strikes that have hit Sweden this summer. Job actions have been launched by steelworkers, woodworkers, metalworkers, and railway workers. In June, workers struck at 24 companies demanding higher wages than they were being offered. In May there were 10 strikes.
An earlier rail strike went on for a week. It started in a maintenance shop in the northern city of Lulea and then expanded south to 10 depots. It shut down all northern freight traffic.
Most of the earlier strikes were also wildcat actions, carried out without authorization from the union officials.
Workers at the huge Helwan Iron and Steel Works in Egypt waged a militant strike in early August. It forced the government to grant workers some raises in wages and benefits. But not before the government of Hosni Mubarak attacked the workers in a murderous display of capitalist military power.
Workers had occupied the plant to enforce their demands for higher pay, better working conditions, and the reinstatement of their two elected representatives on the plant's control board. The two representatives had urged workers to strike for economic improvements, and so had been suspended from the board.
Before dawn on August 2 the government sent troops and police against the 2,500 workers occupying the plant. The troops smashed in with guns, tear gas, and armored cars. They killed at least 82 workers are due to stand trial for charges such as "abstaining from work."
The Egyptian government was desperate to maintain control at the plant. This is an important industrial complex -- it employs 25,000 workers and is the country's only steel plant. The government was also in the midst of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund over its $50 billion foreign debt, and it wanted to send a message to the imperialist bankers that it is not soft towards the workers' demands.
The Mubarak regime is the same power which is constantly praised as a "moderate" Arab government by the U.S. government and media. They neglect to mention, however, that strikes are completely illegal in Egypt. Or to expose that the country has been under martial law for the entire eight years of Mubarak's rule.
On August 7, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and four reactionary, pro-U.S. regimes in Central America reached a new agreement in Tela, Honduras. For the fourth, or fifth, or is it the sixth time, an agreement under the Arias plan promised to disband the contras in return for yet more concessions from Nicaragua. The contras are supposed to be disbanded as a military force by early December. The, supporters of the Arias plan are praising this agreement to the skies.
And indeed, progressive people everywhere want an end to U.S. aggression against Nicaragua, and they want to see the dismantling of the CIA's mercenary army of contras. But behind all the hype about the Tela accords lies an ugly reality. For the new accords mark another milestone in the dismantling of the Nicaraguan revolution. They trample on the self-determination of Nicaragua and submit Nicaragua's internal politics and economy to the demands of the Central American bourgeoisie, including the death-squad rulers of El Salvador and Honduras and Guatemala. They require setting up the contras as a privileged force inside Nicaragua under the protection of the U.S. Congress and the Central American presidents. The contra war may perhaps end, but U.S. interference, bullying and aggression will continue.
Moreover the pact is still subject to State Department veto. Various loopholes give the contras and their U.S. backers the option of continuing the dirty war on Nicaragua if they so desire.
Undoing the Revolution
Under the Arias plan, Nicaragua has agreed time and again to dismantle more and more of the revolution. It has granted more privileges for the pro- contra forces. Each time it was promised the disbanding of the contras. Each time it saw the contras funded again, while Nicaragua was asked to bow even lower. Indeed the present Tela agreement was reached right after the Sandinistas agreed to some 30 more concessions.
This time the Central American presidents may be more serious about ending the contra war, provided the U.S. agrees. The Sandinistas have gone so far with turning Nicaragua into an ordinary bourgeois system that the reactionary presidents of Central America may be willing to see them enter their club, although as a junior member.
Over the years, in the name of the "mixed economy" and, more recently, of the Arias plan, the Sandinistas have eliminated the institutions of mass initiative in Nicaragua. They are dismantling various of the reforms that they themselves implemented right after the revolution; this is an essential part of winning the trust of the European bourgeoisie, of the Central American presidents, and of the American politicians. Instead of relying on the masses, they have attempted over and over again to win to their side the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie and its pro-contra parties, and they have offered them political privileges, and given them financial subsidies. While the Sandinistas are saddling the workers and peasants with heavy layoffs, and with cutbacks in the health clinics, schools and other programs which were so cherished a part of the revolution, the pro-contra exploiters are being offered incentives in dollars, land in the countryside, and the return of confiscated property.
And this goes for the contra criminals themselves. Under the Tela accords, while the Sandinistas are saddling the workers and peasants with the burden of a severe economic crisis, all sorts of pleasantries await the contras if they decide to disband and return to Nicaragua. They may get back property confiscated by the masses. And the Nicaraguan government is required to offer the contra criminals extra government assistance, and to allow U.S. relocation aid to go to the contras, while the victims of contra rapes, murders and mutilations are left to fend for themselves. Thus the contras would be offered better conditions than those who fought them to defend the revolution.
This process of erecting a bourgeois economic and political system, complete with encouragement for reactionaries, is an essential part of the Tela agreements. The upcoming national elections, for instance, are being tailored to suit the pro-contra capitalists. The Sandinistas have gone so far as to allow U.S. financing of the pro-contra forces, permitting the U.S. to try to buy the elections. These concessions have gone so far that all 21 allied right-wing Nicaraguan parties endorsed the Tela plan. It is the class conscious workers led by the Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua (MAP-ML), who oppose the Tela accords and the whole Arias plan.
Why the Pro-American Regimes Signed the Tela Accords
The extensive concessions by the Sandinistas are one of the main reasons the reactionary Central American regimes have set yet another timetable for the disbanding of the contras. For two years of the Arias plan, these pro-U.S. governments, despite their promises, avoided any real measures to interfere with the U.S.'s contra war. But now these regimes may be more confident in the pro-bourgeois course of the Sandinistas.
Moreover, the contra war itself had become a debacle for the regimes. The contras were never able to gain a foothold in Nicaragua due to the heroic resistance of the Nicaraguan toilers. Meanwhile, the contra war tended to destabilize the pro-U.S. rulers in Central America. The presence of contra bases in Honduras, for example, helped fuel mass outrage against the Honduran rulers and their cozy relationship with U.S. imperialism.
Given this situation, the Central American reactionaries concluded that they would be sacrificing little and gaining a lot to make a deal with Nicaragua over disbanding the contras. According to the Tela accords, the contras are to surrender their arms to a United Nations (UN) force composed of troops from Spain, West Germany and Canada. The U.N. force is supposed to patrol the Nicaraguan/Honduran border to prevent hostilities. As well, it is to oversee the relocation of the contras.
At the same time, these regimes are not themselves making any concessions to their own people. The Honduran regime, for example, is even stepping up its death-squad terror. It is reported that now the death squads don't even bother to hide the bodies of their victims, but dump them openly in the street like in El Salvador.
The Loopholes
Nevertheless, the agreement leaves the last word to the U.S. government. The White House has the ability to veto the sending of the UN border force with its vote in the UN Security Council. Also, according to the U.S. government and the Central American bourgeoisie, the Tela accord states that the disarmament process is to be "voluntary." Thus the contras can simply refuse to disband, especially if promised more supplies and money from the CIA or if the border force is vetoed.
In particular, Bush might prefer to delay the disbanding of the contras until after the Nicaraguan elections in February. Then, if the vote count isn't to the liking of the CIA, Bush could decide to step up the contra war again.
The pro-U.S. regimes in Central America want to nudge the U.S. towards dismantling the contras. But they have left it up to their U.S. master whether to follow their lead.
Condemning the Struggle Against the Salvadoran Death Squads
The Tela accords have yet another ugly feature. They demand submission from the Salvadoran workers and peasants who are fighting against the death-squad regime of President Cristiani. They demand that the Salvadoran people give up their struggle and believe in the good will of the fascist regime of the ultra-right ARENA party.
Cristiani, and the U.S. diplomats, demanded that the Salvadoran militants be disarmed if the contras were to be disbanded. The final agreement simply calls for disarming the Salvadoran revolutionaries, rather than requiring it as a prerequisite for the rest of the agreement. But it still puts its signatories, including the Sandinistas, on record against the Salvadoran struggle.
Hands Off Nicaragua!
How the Bush administration will respond to the Tela accord is not clear. It may decide to maintain the contra camps at all costs. Or it may, as various liberal Democrats are suggesting, accept the peace plan. Or it may decide on some combination of these two positions, such as seeking to modify the Tela timetable. But, no matter which option, neither Bush, nor Congress, are even considering agreeing to self-determination for Nicaragua.
Friends of the Nicaraguan workers and peasants! Activists against war and imperialism! We must continue to oppose the contra warmongering and all U.S. aid to these butchers. We must also oppose all efforts to dismantle the Nicaraguan revolution and violate its self-determination, whether through the CIA's contras or through the CIA's "political" means. This is why it is necessary to oppose the Tela accords. These accords demand the further erosion of the gains of the revolution. They mean a bigger opening for the White House and the CIA to carry out their political destabilization campaigns against Nicaragua.
The pro-U.S. Somoza tyranny was defeated by the revolutionary efforts of the workers and peasants of Nicaragua. And that is the only way to solve the economic crisis and defeat the pro- contra political effects.
[Photo: At the Victoria brewery: Frente Obrero slogan declares "Down with the Somocista labor code that oppresses the workers." Frente Obrero is the trade union center of the MLP of Nicaragua. FO/MLPN have been fighting against the Somoza labor code which the Sandinistas have preserved.]