Workers Vanguard No 723 - 12 November 1999

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50C!:No. 723 .... 12 November 1999

Thousands Ride Klan Out of NYCClass-Struggle FIgBlack FWe print below, in edited form, a pres-entation by Ed Kartsen, one of he organ-

izers of the laborlblack mobilization thatdrove the Klan 'out of New York City, at aNew York Spartacist League public forumon October 30.On October 23, the American Knights

of the Ku Klux Klan were confronted inNew York City by at least 8,000 militantprotesters who came out to stop them.This demonstration was initiated with aunited-front call by the Partisan DefenseCommittee around the slogan: All Out toStop the KKK! Due to the mass, militantand disciplined nature of this mobilization, the 17 KKKel"s were forced toscurry back into a courthouse barelyhalfway into their rally. When it becameclear that the fascist KKK had beenforced off the streets by their mass, disciplined numbers, trade unionists and others assembled under the PDC bannerchanted: "We stopped the Klan!"This labor/black mobilization was asmall example of what a workers party isin action. It was an example of the working class mobilized in its own interest,independent of the government and thepolitical parties of the capitalist class.This anti-KKK mobilization changedthe political landscape of NYC. Analyzing all of the political forces put intomotion to prevent masses of anti-KKKprotesters from hitting -the streets in thethousands reveals the true political character of the organizations and politiciansin this city. The courts, the New YorkCivil Liberties Union, Republican mayorGiuliani, Democrats Scott Stringer and AlSharpton and the International SocialistOrganization (ISO) all lined up in variousways to prevent a mass, militant mobilization to stop the KKK.The Democrats called for a demonstration of "tolerance" and planned to share asound permit with the KKK. As it turnedout, this diversion wasn't taken seriously by anyone except the ISO, whichwas the main group that actively builtfor it. One group that did rally for theDemocratic Party diversion was the Latino Officers Association, a police groupwhose banner the ISO spoke in front of.But the crowd that accidentally ended upat that site had been mobilized around thePDC call to stop the KKK! They showedno tolerance for the rally for tolerance.And in fact they booed Democratic Partyelectioneering.Sharpton worked hard on black radioshows to convince black people not tocome out to stop the KKK and even fileda "friend of the court" brief on behalf ofthe Klan. At the very last minute, thenight before the KKK's scheduled rally,

October 23labor/blackmobilization tostop KKK gavetaste of socialpower neededfor fight againstcapitalist systemof exploitationand racistoppression.Below: Strikelast spring atVirginia'sNewport Newsshipyard, inracist "openshop" South.

rumors were spread that the KKK wasn'tgoing to march because an appeals courthad upheld the city' s requirement that theKKK rally without their masks. In defiance of the diversions and the deceptions,thousands of New Yorkers hit the st,reetsto stop the KKK. And the PDC-initlatedmobilization gave a political expressionand direction to these thousands.While it is widely understood that Giuliani is the enemy of working people, priorto this rally many workers and black people would have regarded Democrats likeStringer and Sharpton as some kind ofalternative. Many workers would haveregarded Dennis Rivera, presidentof 1199/SEIU (health workers) as some form of-progressive labor leader. Many liberalstudents would have regarded the ISO assome form of progressive organization.All of these actors are now exposed as

enemies of the working class and of allthe would-be targets of fascist terror.Capitalism BreedsFascist TerrorFrom the death-squad-style executionofAmadou Diallo to the killing of HasidicJew Gidone Busch by the NYPD, an atmosphere has been created in which theKKK feels that it has an opportunity togrow here. Nationally, the 1996 anti-crimebill pushed through by both Democratsand Republicans has led to a sharp escalation in the prison population as well asin racist cop terror. In this right-wingenvironment, the KKK felt that it couldbring its organizing for racist terror tothis city. This is the environment in whichMumia Abu-Jamal's appeal was turneddown by the U.S. Supreme Court, althoughhis death warrant has been stayed.

ht'for

The gap between the rich and the poorin the U.S. has grown so wide recentlythat the richest 1 percent of the population has as much expendable annualincome as the bottom 100 million people!This demonstrates that increased profitsfor the capitalist class means more poverty for the vast majority of the population. Fully conscious of the potential forsocial unrest caused by this trend, bothparties of capital, Democrats and Republicans, have been working to increasegovernment repression-expanding thenumber of crimes punishable by the deathpenalty, increasing the length of mandatory sentences and the types of crimesrequiring longer prison stays. They havetargeted the ghettos and the barrios forracist police terror.The capitalists maintain their enormous wealth and privileges by constantlyattacking the democratic rights of working people and the poor and by constantlystrengthening the repressive apparatus ofthe capitalist .state. There are historic conditions, however, under which the policeand the National Guard will prove insufficient to suppress mass unrest. Whenthe normal institutions for maintainingthis system of exploitation prove inadequate, the capitalist rulers look to the fascists to mobilize reactionary sections ofthe population for racist, union-bustingterrorism.Klan Terror fromReconstruction to theCivil Rights Movement

The American ruling class faced amajor crisis in 1873. In that .year, thecapitalist economy fell into the worstcrisis experienced up to that point incontinued on page 8


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"c'o P a r t i a u D e f e u eO ,t o . . . . . t t e eCLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES

c e i ~ . b ~ ~ ! . c ; . . . . . ~ ' i ! g Y i . ~ t 9 . a j , ~ Y ~ r . K l i . ~ ....../Jllild "e Nolldlll Appelllfor C/t/ss .Wt/r Pr/sollers!The labor/black mobilization that rodethe KKK out of New York City on October 23 was an important victory for allworkers and the oppressed, not leastthose imprisoned for fighting againstracist capitalist oppression. Join the Par-tisan Defense Committee in the 14thannual Holiday Appeal fund drive to celebrate that victory and to help build apoweiful movement to fight for the freedom of the class-war prisoners.

the PDC's monthly stipend program for16 class-war prisoners and providesextra funds for holiday gifts for them andtheir loved ones. This is not an act ofcharity, but rather the duty of fightersagainst injustice to those inside prisonwalls as we struggle for their freedom.The same forces-centered on the socialpower of the trade unions-which turnedout to drive the Klan from the streetsmust be brought to bear in the fight tofree Mumia and all class-war prisoners.he Holiday Appeal helps to sustain

Fo r New October Revolutions!November 7 (October 25 by the old Russian calendar) marks the anniversary of the1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, thefirst and to date only successful workers rev-olution in history. Surrounded from itsinception by hostile imperialist powers andundermined by Stalinist bureaucratic misrule beginning with the political counterrevolution in 1923024, the Soviet Union was

TROTSKY destroyed by capitalist counterrevolution LENINin 1991-92. As American Trotskyist leaderJames P. Cannon stated while the Soviet

Union fought for its life against Nazi Germany during World War 11, the Fourth International was founded in the fight to defend the October Revolution and to fight for newOctobers on a world scale.The Russian Revolution proved three things for all time ... Fitst, it proved that theparty and the leadership necessary for victory can be created by the proletariat, as theyhave been created by the Russian proletariat.Second, the Russian Revolution proved-I am now repeating what I said beforethat the system of nationalized industry and planned economy, introduced by a Sovietrevolution, is superior, more progressive, more productive, than any device of capitalism, whether democratic or fascist.And the third thing which we can say is demonstrated by the revolution, and provednow in the test of war, is that only one class is capable of solving the great social problems of our epoch. That class is the proletariat.The Fourth International, with its program and its tactics anchored to these threepropositions, has been proven correct by the whole test of events. Therefore, on thetwenty-fifth anniversary of the revolution, we do not change our course. We see notonly the Soviet regime's terrible weakness, which derives from bureaucratic mismanagement and control. We see also the strength and the power which derives from therevolutionary origin of the Soviet Union and its basic conquests ...The Russian Revolution is in the greatest peril today. We: do not delude ourselves

about that. We do not deceive o u r ~ e l v e s or others with any false optimism about thedanger confronting the Soviet U n i o n ~ We see the situa tion as it really is. We know thatthe fate of the Soviet Union hangs in the balance, that it depends now, more than ever,on the world revolution of the proletariat and the colonial masses. But we have faith inthe world revolution, and because of that, we retain our hope in the ultimate regeneration of the Soviet Union. We keep undimmed our faith that the world revolution willrelease humanity from this terrible vise of the war and open up a new stage of progresson the way to the communist future.

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-James P. Cannon, "The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Russian Revolution"(November 1942); reprinted in Speeches fo r Socialism (1969)

! ~ ! ! l ! ' ! ! J ! . 4 . t ! . . ~ ! ~ l ! . ! EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Alan WildePRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Mara CadizEDITORIAL BOARD: Barry James (managing editor). Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Jon Brule,George Foster, Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour,Alison SpencerThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (FourthInternationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and witli a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York. NY 10007. TelephOne: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Email address: [email protected] subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116.Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.The clOSing date for news in this issue is November 9.

No. 723 12 November 1999

Mumia Abu-Jamal, December marks18 years of Muroia Abu-Jamal's imprisonment. Former Black Panther, well-knownjournalist, "Voice of he Voiceless," MOVEsupporter-Jamal was framed up on falsecharges of killing a Philadelphia cop andsentenced to die for his ,political beliefsand defiance of the racist capitalist order.This October 13, Pennsylvania governor Thomas Ridge signed a warrant forMumia's execution. Ridge's order, settingan execution date of December 2, camejust nine days after the U.S. SupremeCourt opened its term by turning down anappeal by Jamal. While Mumia has nowwon a stay of execution from a federaljudge pending a decision on his habeascorpus petition, he is no less endangeredby the police and government forceswhich have sought his execution. Ridge'sdeath decree came amid an escalatingcampaign for Jamal's legal lynchingspearheaded by the Fraternal Order ofPolice and a broader speedup in theassembly line of death pushed by both theRepublican and Democratic parties. Thecrusade to kill Jamal is designed to sanctify the state's machinery of death.Jamal continues to fight from behindbars with biting commentaries which arepublished in newspapers across the country. Mumia's book, Livefrom Death Row,is a searing iqdictment of this racist injustice system. Jamal's case has won supportfrom death penalty abolitionists, laborand anti-racist fighters internationally.When Ridge ordered Mumia's death in1995, international mass protests stayedthe executioner's hand. The PDC callson working people, minorities, youth andall opponents of racist capitalist repression in the U.S. and around the world toraise the cry: Freedom Now for MumiaAbu-Jamal! Abolish the Racist DeathPenalty! .

Jerry Dale Lowe, United Mine Workers (UMWA) member framed up on federal charges in the July 1993 shootingdeath of a scab contractor in LoganCounty, West Virginia. The scab was partof a convoy leaving the mine, shot in

WV PhotoJerry Dale Lowethe back of the head from the ditection ofthe bosses' thugs. Lowe was singled outby authorities because he was a militantdefender of the picket line. For the"crime" of defending his union, Lowewas sentenced to nearly eleven years injail in Ashland, Kentucky with no possibility of parole.

Ed Poindexter and WopashitweMondo Eyen we Langa, former BlackPanther supporters and leaders of theOmaha Nebraska Committee to CombatFascism. Victims of racist FBI COINTELPRO operation, framed up for anexplosion in 1970 which killed a cop.Both were convicted on the basis of perjured testimony and sentenced to life.Nebraska Board of Pardons refuses tolessen sentences so that they can be considered for parole. Poindexter is at Lino

WVPhotoMumia Abu-JamalLake, MN and Mondo is at Lincoln, NE.

Jaan Laaman and Ray Luc I:evasseur were ar rested in 1984 and ' 85 andare radical activists with a shared historyof opposition to racism and imperialism.They were sentenced to 45 years to lifeunder RICO conspiracy laws on allegations of bank expropriations and bombings targeting symbols of U.S. imperialism in the late '70s and '80s. JaanLaaman is at Leavenworth, KS and RayLuc Levasseur is in Atlanta, GA.

Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison. Militant anti-racist,leader of prison rights organizing alongwith George Jackson, who was murderedby prison guards in 1971. In prison foro v e ~ 30 years. He is currently serving alife sentence at the notorious Pelican Bayprison in Crescent City, CA.

Eight MOVE members are in their 22ndyear in prison. They were sentenced to 30-100 years after the 1978 police attack ontheir Philadelphia home, falsely convictedof killing a police officer. Chuck Africaand Michael Davis Africa are imprisonedat Graterford; Debbie Sims Africa, JanetHolloway Africa, Janine Phillips Africaat Cambridge Springs; Edward Goodma n Africa at Camp Hill; Delbert OrrAfrica and William Phillips Africa atDallas. This past summer MOVE filed aPCRA appeal to overturn the frame-ups.Jamal Hart, Mumia's son, was sentenced last year to 15Y2 years on bogusfirearm possession charges, targeted forhis prominent activism in the campaign tofree his father. Although Hart was initiallycharged under Pennsylvania laws, whichwould have meant a probationary sentence, Clinton's Justice Department tookover the case in order to have Hart thrownin prison. Jamal's appeals have beendenied and he is not eligible for parole.Hart is at Fairton, New Jersey.

Send Your Contributionsto the PDC Now!The cops and courts seek to ensure thatthose who fight the poverty and racismendemic to capitalism are "safely" housedin prison hellholes or their graves. In1986, the Partisan Defense Committeerevived an International Labor Defense(lLD) tradition of sending monthly stipends to class-war prisoners as an expres

sion of solidarity. In addition to its regular monthly support, the ILD raised extrafunds during the holidays for the prisoners and their families. Help build our program of monthly stipends to these victimsof racist capitalist injustice.The PDC is a class-struggle, nonsectarian legal and social defense organization that champions cases and causes inthe interests of the whole of the workingpeople. This purpose is in accordancewith the political views of the SpartacistLeague.All proceeds collected for the HolidayAppeal will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund.

~ 8 e l l e l l t 10' Cltlll-WtI, P,IIOlle'I"Organize for Jamal's Freedom'HewVorl(

Friday, December 106 to 9 p.m.AFSCME District Council 170775 Varick St. (at Canal)

For more information:(212) 406-4252P.O. Box 99, Canal St. Sta.New York, NY 10013

~ h i 9 ' 9 9 Sunday, December 53 to 8 p.m.UE Hall37 S. Ashland (at Monr,oe)

For more information:(312) .454-4931P.O. Box 802867Chicago, IL 60680

iil3ayAr,aSunday, December 51 to 4 p.m.

ILWU Local 34 Hall4 Berry St., San FranciscoFor more information:(510) 839-0852

P.O. Box 77462San Francisco, CA 94107SPONSOR: PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE

WORKERS VANGUARD


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Free Mumia! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!On October 26, a federal districtjudge in Philadelphia granted MumiaAbu-Jamal a stay of his. execution,which had been scheduled for December2. This must not lull for one moment themillions of workers, youth and opponents of racist state repression who haverallied to Mumia's defense internationally. As Jamal wrote in 1995 whenan earlier death warrant was stayed

through an international campaign ofprotest, "The state of Pennsylvania stillhas every intention of killing me-justnot right now."Pennsylvania governor ThomasRidge waited only nine days after theU.S. Supreme Court refused to hearJamal's legal appeal before signing anew death warrant on October 13. Thewarrant came even as Mumia's attorneys were preparing a federal habeascorpus petition detailing 29 constitu-

When the Partisan Defense Committeepublicized black Democrat Al Sharpton'scollusion with Republican mayor Giuliani and the KKK in seeking to preventthe PDC-initiated labor/black mobilization to stop the Klan, Sharpton retorted,"Who is the PDC?" This demagogue,who would himself be a target of Klanterror, worked every angle he c o ~ l d trying to dissuade black people from coming out to stop the hooded nightriders,cynically claiming it would be a diversion from fighting police brutality andthe threatened execution of Mumia AbuJamal. This is a sick joke coming froma fink who wore a wire for the Fedsagainst black community leaders a fewyears back and has done next to nothingto win Mumia's freedom.Nonetheless, we will take Sharpton'sslimy innuendo as the opportunity toexplain to the many thousands of theKKK's intended victims-trade unionists, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews,immigrants, gays and others-who rodethe Klan out of New York what the PDCis and the class-struggle policies throughwhich this mobilization was built. As westate on the back page of every issue ofClass-Struggle Defense Notes, "The PDCis a class-struggle, non-sectarian legaland social defense organization whichchampions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people.This purpose is in accordance with thepolitical views of the Spartacist League."The PDC is guided by the Marxist understanding that the capitalist state-thecops, courts and prisons-is an organ forthe repression of the working class andoppressed: "We place all our faith in thepower of the masses and no faith whatever in the 'justice' of the courts."

.P .r.... . . . . . . . . . 8an .De f eneJr"'.ouanai.teeE ! ~ i - $ i i ; j i l t t i j . j l ] 4 i 4 ~ , . . i i ~ [ . i . * ' "" - --ree Mumia Abu-Jamal!AbOlish the RacistDeath Penalty! .....- ..

'.... ~ - ' T . j - i t e . ' i ~ ~ ~ ~ I ' - B ; ~ ; , H , ! b ~ - ~ ~ D . * ' -!; 11 NEW I'0Il1( CHrc CO Ul'-.., I:, H = ~ ~ : ' ~ ~ 1 : - ' ~ ~ ' ; " i ....... __ ~ J i . ~ : ~ E : . ' . : ..... _ " : ~ _ : : J : : _ .. : ~ ; ; , . . tNo. 26, Winter 1998-9950 (16 pages)Order from/pay to:Partisan Defense CommitteeP.O. Box 99, Canal Street StationNew York, NY 10013-0099

12 NOVEMBER 1999

tional violations in the travesty of justice which led to the 1982 frame-upconviction of this innocent man. Thefederal judge who will rule on thehabeas appeal then forced Jamal to wait13. torturous days before granting a stay,which routinely follows immediatelyafter such an appeal is filed.With 83 people dragged off to thedeath chambers since January, 1999has already seen the highest executionrate in 45 years. Meanwhile, the forcesscreaming for Jamal's legal lynching,spearheaded by the Fraternal Order ofPolice (F.O.P.), have revved up theircrusade to speed his execution andintimidate the growing ranks of hisdefenders. Most recently, the F.O.P. hascalled on cops throughout the area tostage a "protest" provocation outside arock.concert featuring Sting this monthin Upper Darby, Pennsylvania in order

Cases and causesin the interest ofthe whole of theworking people:Raising fundsfor victims ofU.S.-backedAfghan mujahedincutthroats, 1989;NYC united-frontspeakoutforMumia Abu-Jamalchaired byOssie Davis(far right), 1994.

Initiated by the SL in 1974, the PDCstands in accordance with the record ofprincipled defense work.conducted by theSL, guided by the anti-sectarian principles of the early communist movement.We draw on the internationalist defensetraditions bequeathed from the earlyyears of the Communist International(CI), organized by Lenin and Trotsky inthe aftermath of the Russian OctoberRevolution of 1917. Through the tactic of the united front-"march separately, strike together"-the CI sought toachieve the maximum unity of the working masses in their defensive struggleswhile exposing in action the bankruptcyof the reformist misleaders and the inability of their program to win against the ruling class. The free debate of contendingstrategies and programs in the context ofunited action around common demands isvital to advancing the consciousness ofthe working class and anti-racist youth.In 1922, the CI launched the International Organization for Relief to Revolutionaries (MOPR), known as the International Red Aid, whose first activitieswere relief efforts for victims of counterrevolutionary White terror in East andCentral Europe in the 1920s. Our legaland social defense work is modeled on

to "send a message" to this supporter ofMumia's cause (Philadelphia DailyNews, 1 November).While favoring the use of all possiblelegal levers on Mumia's behalf, the Partisan Defense Committee has stressedfrom the moment it took up his defensemore than 12 years ago that the way tofree him from the clutches of the state'sexecutioners is through mass mobilizations centered on the social power oflabor. A taste of that social power couldbe seen in the streets of New York Cityon October 23 in the PDC-initiatedlaborlblack mobilization which rode theKKK out of town. Thousands of tradeunionists, minorities and youth joinedin chants of "Free Mumia! Abolish theracist death penalty!" The political program on which they were mobilized isbased on an understanding that labormust champion the fight for black free-

the International Labor Defense (ILD) ,American affiliate of MOPR, in its earlyyears when James P. Cannon was its secretary. Cannon's ILD merged the nonsectarianism of the Industrial Workers ofthe World (IWW)-encapsulated in theslogan, "An injury to one is an injury toall!"-with the internationalism of theMOPR.Our first major international publicityand protest campaign succeeded in winning asylum in France for Mario Munoz,a Chilean miners' leader who fled the1973 coup there only to be targeted fordeath in 1976 by the Argentine militaryjunta. In 1985, the PDC launched the AidTo Striking British Miners Family FundDrive, which raised over $23,000 fromworkers around the world to help supportthe miners after their union's funds wereseized by the British government underMrs. (later Baroness) Thatcher duringtheir bitter year-long strike.In 1989, the PDC offered to organizean international brigade to Afghanistanto fight alongside the forces of the leftnationalist Kabul regime against theimperialist-backed anti-woman Islamicfundamentalists on the occasion of thewithdrawal of Soviet troops. When theAfghan government instead proposed

dom, that the capitalist state is a forcefor organized violence against theexploited and oppressed.Counterposed to this class-struggleperspective are those who build deadlyillusions in the "justice" of the capitalist courts. Supporters of Jamal havebeen active in recent weeks both in theU.S. and internationally. But the perspective of the liberal and reformistorganizers of many of these events isexemplified by an editorial in the liberalNation (\5 November) signed byAngela Davis, June Jordan and AliceWalker calling for "a new trial"-as ifJamal could ever get a fair trial fromthe courts of the Dred Scott decision,the courts which sent the Haymarketmartyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti and theRosenbergs to their deaths. Just as manythousands around the world raised thecontinued on page 11

that we organize financial support, welaunched a campaign which raised over$44,000 for the victims of the mullah-ledassault on Jalalabad. More recently, thePDC joined in the campaign initiated bythe Italian COBAS (Rank and File Committee) at Alfa Romeo to aid the workersof Zastava and other factories in Yugoslavia bombed by NATO. Through theefforts of the PDC and other fraternaldefense organizations, the InternationalCommunist League fought to extend thisimportant campaign internationally, giving many workers in the countries wherewe are present the possibility of makinga concrete internationalist gesture indefense of the Yugoslav workers andagainst their "own" imperialist rulers,without giving an iota of political support to the Serbian capitalist regime ofSlobodan Milosevic.Central to our work has been support tothose imprisoned for standing up to racistcapitalist oppression. In 1986, the PDCrevived an ILD tradition of sendingmonthly stipends to class-war prisoners(see Holiday Appeal, page 2). Past recipients inCluded British miners lockedaway for defense of their union duringthe 1984-5 strike, U.S. steel workercontinued on page 11

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Join the SYCI workers revolution, with the leadershipbeing people like the ones who were outthere last week. In that light, what wethink is necessary for the youth in thisroom is to go out to build this party that'sg ~ i n g to lead this.The following are excerpted commentsby a New York Spartacus Youth Club member during the floor discussion at the October 30 NYC Spartacist League forum.We worked very hard alongside thePartisan Defense Committee and theSpartacist League for the last couple ofweeks to build this demonstration and tobring it to the campuses. And you can seefrom the photographs on the walls thatcontingents came from NYU, Columbia,Bronx Community College-from acrossthe city. And one of the things you encounter in building such a demonstrationis the difference between a revolutionarysocialist party that puts out a call to stopthe KKK and all the other organizationsout there that claim to be revolutionary,but in reality have no interest in doingsuch things.All of them basically stayed silentfor a whole week waiting to see whatthe Democratic Party w a ~ going to do.And when Scott Stringer issued his call

for a "rally for tolerance," defending theKlan's "rights," suddenly they all jumpedon that demonstration. The ISO and theCommunist Party endorsed the Democratic Party diversion, against the labor/black mobilization. They didn't want tosee labor and black come out that day.They didn't want to see all the intendedvictims of the Klan coming out behindthe power of the trade unions to stop theKKK on the streets of New York City.That was the last thing they wanted tosee, that was the last thing the Democratic Party wants to see, and that's thedifference between us and them.We want to build more of these things.We want to bring the understanding ofwhat fascism is and what the capitaliststate is. The cops were clearly on the sideof the Klan-they herded the Klan intothe courthouse, appropriately enough.That's what the capitalist state does. Wefight against the idea that capitalism canbe reformed, that the capitalist state canbe reformed. We think there needs to be a

You have to ask yourself a question:Who issued the call last week that mobilized all these people? It took socialiststo do that. And we think what's necessary is to build this workers party. Youthcan be a very important component ofthat by mobilizing on the campuses andwhere they work to help build the Spartacus Youth Clubs that are the youth groupof the revolutionary socialist SpartacistLeague. So if there are youth here whoare interested in socialism, you shouldjoin the Spartacus Youth Club and become a communist fighting for a betterfuture against all forms of racial and sexual oppression.

Meet the New York Spartacus Youth Club!Come meet and join the New York SYC every Saturday in the month of November at our office from 2:30-4:30 p.m. The address is 299 Broadway (north of Chambers St. between Duane and Reade), Suite 318 in Manhattan. We also have plannedweekly meetings and public events to build on the October 23rd victory againstKlan terror. For more information: (212) 267-1025.

Mexico: Down With State RepressionAgainst UNAM StrikelWe reprint below a leaflet distributedon October J5 by the Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico, section of the International Communist League, and theJuventud Espartaquista in response toa vicious police attack against striking students at Mexico City's NationalAutonomous University (UNAM). Thestate continues its campaign of terroragainst the student strikers. On October13, Ricardo MartInez, an activist with aZapatista solidarity group, was kidnapped and held for a day' and a halfThe six-month student strike, which ha$gained considerable support from teachers and workers, particularly in theSTUNAM campus workers union, isdirected against administration plans tosharply raise tuition, privatize the university and further restrict access, especially for working-class youth.The brutal beating on October 14of UNAM student strikers by riotpolice of the DDF [Federal District

Department]-leaving several studentsinjured, one seriously-was carried outunder orders of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) government,now under the administration of RosarioRobles. This once again exposes the roleof the PRD as a bourgeois party and classenemy of the workers, and the cops as thearmed fist of the bourgeois to repress thelabor movement, the left and all theoppressed. Cops are not "workers in uniform." They are the guard dogs of thebourgeois state, and they must be expelledfrom workers unions. On the UNAMcampus, the cops of Auxilio-UNAM arein charge of maintaining the bourgeoisorder. That is why we Spartacistshave called for Auxilio-UNAM out -o fSTUNAM and UNAM!4

On the other hand, the administration's dirty tricks are obvious. Theysay they want to negotiate, and then theyunleash a bloody police riot against thestrikers to try to intimidate them intocapitulating. This bourgeois terroristcampaign against education and theunions was already manifest on October5, when the well-known student leaderAlejandro Echavarria (el Mosh) wasabducted and brutally beaten. That sameday, Humberto Herrera, a longtimeunionist and supporter of the strike, whois a supporter of the Grupo Espartaquistade Mexico, was abducted for severalhours and threate,ned with death. The

only real response to this criminal stateterror is to extend the strike to the proletariat, which has the social power to fightagainst the bourgeoisie's privatizationdrive that aims to put an end to publiceducation as well. .We Spartacists of the InternationalCommunist League h ~ v e \nitiated emergency protests around the world, urgentlydemanding: "Defend UNAM strikersbeaten by Cardenas' cops!-Down withstate terror against the left!" Protests havebeen held at Mexican consulates andembassies in Boston, New York, Chicago,San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto,Vancouver, London, Berlin, Paris and

Sydney. Sections of the ICL have alsoobtained significant solidarity statementsfrom powerful workers unions, representing tens of thousands of members. Particularly noteworthy are the powerful minersand transport unions of South Africa, theFrench CGT/CEGELET, as well as dozens of other unions from postal workers inCanada to Service Employees Local 1877Justice for Janitors in California.Free quality education for all, in thecities and the countryside! For unionstrikes against privatizations and indefense of education! Cops out of theunions! For workers revolution! Build. aLeninist party!.

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WORKERS VANGUARD


5/12

Running Dogs of the DemocratsISO Covers for KKK

Mass Labor/BlackMobilization Rattles PLThe October 23 laborlblack mobilization that drove the Klan from the streets

of New York left an imprint on the consciousness of thousands of workers, blackand Hispanic militants, students and others who got a taste of what could happenwhen the social power of the multiracialproletariat was mobilized independently.of the capitalist class enemy. It also laidbare the obstacles to such a class mobilization in the form of not only the openagencies and parties of the capitaliststhe cops and courts, Giuliani's City Halland the "friend of labor" Democrats-butalso the self-styled socialists who dotheir bidding. The International SocialistOrganization (ISO) acted purely and simply as running dogs for the capitalistDemocrats. For its part, the ProgressiveLabor Party (PL) dismissed the masslabor-centered mobilization initiated bythe Partisan Defense Committee andsought to substitute its own small forcesagainst the Klan terrorists.The ISO social democrats provided apale pink cover for the cynical machinations of Democrats Scott Stringer and AlSharpton as they actively worked to headoff the labor/black mobilization. Stringercolluded with the Giuliani administrationas the Klan's rally site was secretlymoved from where the PDC had calledfor the laborlblack mobilization to stopthe Klan and then agreed to share a soundpermit with the KKK. Sharpton workedthe airwaves trying to convince blackpeople not to come out against the KKKlynchers, then endorsed Stringer's "tolerance"-for the Klan-diversion and evenwent to court on the Klan's behalf onOctober 20.That very evening, at an organizingmeeting for the Stringer/Sharpton "demonstration for tolerance," an ISO membergushed about what a wonderful speakerSharpton was and how many people hewould draw. On the morningof the October 23 mobilization itself, an ISO member from Columbia University baited oneof our comrades: " If anyone is going tobring out thousands, it's Al Sharpton, notyou guys!" In the upshot, Sharpton didn'teven bring himself out, no doubt illinclined to face the fury of demonstratorsdisgusted by his defense of the Klan.Now, well after the fact, the ISO's Social-ist Worker (5 November) slaps its erstwhile idol Sharpton on the wrist fordefending the KKK!In another ruse to cover its tracks, theISO put out a flyer for an October 28meeting on "Lessons of the Anti-KKKDemo" which asks: "Who Do the Government and Cops Serve?" Well, on theafternoon of October23, some of thesecops served to hold up the banner of theLatino Officers Association that provideda backdrop for the ISO speaker on theDemocrats' platform, while their fellowcops massed to protect the robed andhooded racists.Left Wing of "Democratic"Imperialism

Providing cover for the racist nightriders in league with the cops and capitalistpoliticians certainly strips bare whatsocialist pretensions the ISO has. Butsuch treachery comes naturally to thesereformists, who see in the "democratic"capitalist state and its cops and courts12 NOVEMBER 1999

potential allies of the oppressed and havesupported police "strikes" from one inNYC in 1971 to one by Toronto prisonguards in 1996. The ISO's British patron,Tony Cliff's Socialist Workers Party,even ran an article titled "Are All Coppers Really Bastards?" which claimedthat the cops would cease to be "agentsof the state" if they "rebel collectively"(Socialist Worker, 8 February 1997).How about the NYPD's "collectiverebellion" in September 1992, when10,000 armed cops besieged City Hall ina lynch mob frenzy against black Demo-

and China against U.S. and British imperialism in the Korean War. In the nameof "anti-Stalinism" and their spurious,anti-Marxist "theory" that the Sovietdegenerated workers state was "state capitalist," the Cliffites went on to support every reactionary force intent onsmashing the Soviet Union-from cutthroat Islamic fundamentalists fightingthe Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan toCIANatican-backed Polish Solidarnosc(see "The Bankruptcy of 'New Class'Theories," Spartacist No. 55, Autumn1999). When Russia's Boris Yeltsin and

ISO cynically asks who cops serve after sharing platform with them atDemocrats' tolerance-for-Klan diversion on October 23. ISO views cops as"workers." ISOer with security guard at Columbia University.

Are all coppersreally bastards?, . I If 'h . : t ~ .HOWPIOPLI . . . .= : . - ~ ~ -..!i:.::i'..=.,::

;::r::.:=:;-.::~ . : : : : : . " ....;7 ~ ; ~ ,Kl "'j

~ = . . - : atIM .. __ _ ., ................' : : : . . . . ~ ~ : : : . . ~ ...-:..-:---.. . . . , . . . o-JlIIf wIdI cl'hM The"""" dil l "'11MYIIDrIIII'I ............ _ ~ I I - - - .. .... . . . . . . . . .=' ... ~ . - - - = ~ . = - . : = : =-.::::-.::-:.....".._. , ~ _ . forIk .. . ..... ~ " ' ' ' ' ' a f ' ' ' ' ' SocialistWorker.... ,............... - -8 February 1997

I ~ ~

cratic mayor David Dinkins? When thecops "rebel collectively," it is to get morefirepower and throw off any constraintson their murderous rampages againstworking people and minorities.Just as the ISO views cops as "workers," it looks to the capitalist class enemyto "clean up" the unions. The ISO-supported Teamsters for a Democratic Unionliterally wrote the blueprint for the Justice Department's takeover of that unionin the late 1980s, capping a decades-longgovernment vendetta against the Teamsters. We say: Cops out of the labormovement! Government hands off theunions!Embrace of "democratic" capitalismhas been the Cliffites' lodestar since thattendency's formation. Cliff was expelled_ by the Trotskyist Fourth International atthe outset of the Korean War in 1950,when he refused to defend North Korea

his pro-imperialist "democrats" in 1991launched the capitalist counterrevolutionwhich led to the final undoing of theOctober Revolution of 1917, the Cliffitescheered, "Communism has collapsed ....It is a fact that should have every socialist rejoicing" (Socialist Worker [Britain],31 August 1991).As long as the Soviet Union and thedeformed workers states of East Europeexisted, we Trotskyists called for theirunconditional military defense againstimperialism and internal counterrevolution, as we do today in the case of China,North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. We fightfor proletarian political revolution to oustthe nationalist Stalinist bureaucracies.PL: RevolutionaryPhrasemongering

Where the social -democratic ISOopenly embraced the Democrats who pro-

vided a platform for the Klan, the Stalinoid Progressive Labor Party counterposed its confrontationist posturing tothe PDC-initiated mobilization of labor/black power which rode the Klan out ofNew York. PL actually called on peopleto assemble at the PDC rally site andhad a contingent there, endorsing thelabor/black mobilization on the spot.Immediately after the mobilization, a PLInternet statement ludicrously claimedthat "thousands" were "led by PLP" thatday and crowed, "It took the PLP to leada breakaway march of hundreds whoreally wanted to confront the Klan." Infact, aswe wrote last issue, "what PL didwas 'lead ' itself straight into a line of riotcops a short distance away."Now PL's Challenge (3 November)rails about "the enemy in our midst" in theform of "two counter-demonstrations,"one organized by "liberal politiciansfrom the Democratic Party" and the otherby "the fake leftists of the Spartacist/Partisan Defense Committee." The Chal-lenge report recounts futile attempts byisolated groups of PLers to push throughpolice lines-"Back and forth we went,fighting the cops, trying to get more people into our group so we could lead an allout attack on the Klan"-and enthusesthat when the KKK first showed up "threeanti-racists organized by PLP" managedto land a few blows against the Klansmen.The PDC has contributed to the legal

defense of the arrested anti-Klan protesters and demands: Drop all charges now!But such substitutionalism is utterlyineffective as a strategy to stop the fascists. It dismisses the need for and is infact cOlinterposed to the mass mobilization of labor and its allies. As the PDCcall for the laborlblack mobilizationdeclared: "What is needed is a determined. disciplined mobilization of laborstanding at the head of all the oppressedto stop the fascists, not for small groupsto engage in confrontations with thepolice which accomplish nothing otherthan getting some heads busted and people thrown in jail." What kept the copsat bay on October 23 was the show oflabor power, including disciplined contin

gents of trade unionists, mobilized bythe PDC.PL is clearly rattled by this mass antiKlan mobilization initiated by those it .customarily denounces as "Trotskyite fascists." In the issue of Challenge (27 October) immediately following the anti-Klanmobilization, PL came out for the defenseof Mumia Abu-Jamal after refusing foryears to defend him on the grounds thatJamal is a "black nationalist." Challengeeven acknowledges that "the Trotskyitegroup, the Spartacists, have made Mumiaa major thrust of their organizing one ofthe main defense committees." PL thenattacks us as "very unprincipled" for"never criticizing Mumia's nationalistpolitics." Our policy of class-struggledefense of those victimized by the racistcapitalist state is non-sectarian, i.e., it isnot dependent on the political viewpointsof those we defend. Moreover, our position for revolutionary integrationism asagainst all currents of black nationalismand liberal n;formism is expressed innumerous publications which we distribute at Jamal defense rallies.

PL's sectarianism is directly linkedto its rejection of the need for a political struggle to win the proletariatto revolutionary consciousness. In fact,while in practice carrying out "ieft-centercontinued on page 7

5


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We publish below excerpts from areport by a Workers Vanguard correspondent who interviewed Spartacist Leaguesupporters and others actiVely involved inbuilding the Partisan Defense Committee-initiated united-front laborlblackmobilization that rode the KKK out ofNew York City.

New York City's working people embraced the anti-Klan mobilization as l{Ieirown. When we did sales, flyer distributions and soapboxing the weekend beforethe demonstration, at some sites the literature tables were practically overwhelmed. This was particularly the caseon Saturday at the Fulton Mall and atFlatbush and Nostrand in Brooklyn.At one Manhattan Sanitation facility,workers practically dragged one comradeinto the shop and told other workers toshut up while they had her give a speechon the demo. When Giuliani's name wasmentioned, one of the workers said,"Giuliani is our boss. We hate him." AtHarlem Hospital, when our comrades gotthere for the first time early in the weekbefore the demo, the flyer had alreadybeen posted all around the hospital, inthe lounge and the reception area, in thecoffee shop across the street. One blacktransit worker told a co-worke'r he hadnever seen anything like this before:

Young SpartacusSYC rallies support at NYU for October 23 labor/black mobilization.

"Everybody in the neighborhood is talking about it. The leaflet is everywhere."At a UPS location, a black worker volunteered to help build the demo but said,"I thought the Klan was denied a permit."When a comrade argued that you can'ttrust the courts, the cops and Giuliani, theworker turned to his friend, a youngAsian, and said, "That's right. Look, it'slike for us. We never trust the boss. Weknow that everything he says is a lie."Two young women from the FortGreene housing projects in Brooklyncame to the SL public office and got leaflets to build the demo. Four students fromTransit Technical High School in the EastNew York section of Brooklyn helped distribute some 2,000 leaflets. On her wayhome the night before the rally, a comrade ran into a group of black womentransit workers talking about the PDCmobilizing leaflet and sold a WorkersVanguard subscription to one of them.Another pointed to the leaflet and said,"Is that you organizing that demonstration? I want that paper." As comradeswere walking to the mo,bilization site onSaturday morning carrying "Stop the

KKK!" posters, bus drivers honked in solidarity. At the demonstration, one transitworker said, "This is working peopleagainst the Klan."The party acted as the tribune ofthe people, mobilizing blacks, Hispanics,Asians, immigrants. Scores, probablyhundreds, of merchants posted the flyeror took stacks for distribution. Everyfast-food restaurant in the FlatbushINostrand area took it, as did all the storesand coffee shops around one of the busdepots in Brooklyn and Indian newsstandvendors in lower Manhattan. A Koreangrocery store owner in Harlem came outof his store to contribute $10 and startedgiving out leaflets. Some grocers offeredour comrades free cokes when they sawthe poster. A bar owner near a Brooklynbus depot offered free drinks to anyonewho went to the demo. Hundreds of individuals took stacks of leaflets to distribute, from a jogger in Jersey City's Journal Square to black youth in FlatbushlNostrand.When comrades were soapboxing inChinatown, a merchant came out, took astack of leaflets and told them how tosay KKK in Chinese-San K Dang ("3KParty"). After one youth told them howto say "Stop the Klan"-Tingzhi San KDang!-the response was enormous.A number of people reported discussions on subways and buses. In oneinstance, someone involved in buildingthe mooilization offered the PDC flyer to

S p a r t a c i s t ~ Forums L

6

Black and Red: Class-Struggle Road to Black FreedomLabor/Black , . , o t i l f i z i i f ~ q : < ' R.i.diJ.s KKK O.lJt of. ...N.'", y ' ~ ~ : ~ I ~ I ! , ) -Organizers' Eyewitness Reports-Saturday, November 13, 7 p.m.

Lecture Hall E, Science CenterHarvard UniversityFor more information:(617) 666-9453

BOSTON

Monday, November 15, 7 p.m.Mary Ward Residence, Cantina Rm.San Francisco State University ,

For more information: .(415) 395-9520 or (510) 839-0851BAY AREA

T ' o ~ k y i $ t l . . e a g u e l U f i t l e t ' o t $ I C Y ~ ~ .Plus: Update on Urgent Fight to Free Mumia Abu.Jamal

Saturday, November 20, 7:30 p.m.st. Paul's Centre, 427 Bloor Street West (One block west of Spadina Station)TORONTO For more information: (416) 593-4138

another passenger on the subway andsoon everyone in that section of the trainwas talking about the demo. When thesupporter said that everybody who istargeted by the Klan should come out -blacks, Jews, Hispanics and homosexuals-a black woman who had beenreading Farrakhan's Final Call said,"Right on!"As one PDC worker was taking themobilization leaflet to the printer, shetold the Asian cab driver about the demo.He said the Klan provocation was part ofthe government going after immigrants.He added, "We're all immigrants in thiscountry, especially in this city."On the campuses, a wide variety ofimmigrant and other groups leapt tomake the demo their own. A memberof the Arab Club ~ a t Hunter Collegetook leaflets to help organize the demo.At NYU; the organizations that endorsed included LUCHA, Asian Initiative, Womyn's Center, Catholic Center,Islamic 'Center, Chabad. The 14 studentswho attended a Spartacus Youth Clubplanning meeting at NYU included anNAACPer who had already been leafletting for the demo; a woman fromChabad, a Jewish religious group, whosupported the anti-Klan mobilization butcouldn't come because it was on a Saturday; and an Islamic woman in a headscarf who said, "Giuliani probably wantsto be in the Klan, but he can't becausehe's Italian Catholic."At Borough of Manhattan CommunityCollege, there was a bitter debate in thestudent government over the question of"free speech for everyone." Some Caribbean students argued that Hasidic Jewsalways try to stop their Caribbean Dayparade, so why should they stop a paradeby people who hate Jews, A PDC representative spoke sharply against this kindof backward consciousness and antiSemitism, which had been evidenced onboth sides of the debate. The studentgovernment voted to endorse the antiKlan mobilization.Many of these campuses have, in thepast period, become practically policestates. At Hostos, a comrade was escortedoff campus by cops and told that even students cannot distribute leaflets or postflyers without administration approval.When some students at Bronx Community College raised the "free speech"issue, this comrade told them, "You'reworried about free speech for the fascists,and you don't even have that right!" Bythe end of the week, students were putting up mobilization flyers without getting approval.Many of the community college students have to hold down jobs while they

study, and they spread the news at theirworkplaces. The morning after a mobilizing team went to Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, a team at a UPS facilitymet a worker who told them that the student government at Medgar Evers wasbuilding the demo.The call to stop the KKK also strucka chord at a number of private colleges.A contingent of 40 students from NYUmarched into the demo chanting. Othercontingents came from Columbia andCornell. Students at Sarah Lawrenceorganized a van of 18 students to come tothe demo, plus some others who came ontheir own. One student said, "I really likethis idea of the working class being theones who have social power."Our political fight against the Democratic Party's ''free speech" cover for theKlan acted to polarize the unions andblack organizations. As the date of theKKK provocation drew closer, and workers came to understand that the PDC wasnot calling on Giuliani to ban the Klan butrather for a mobilization of laborlblackpower to stop the racist terrorists on thestreets, the question of "free speech"became much less of a hot issue. By theThursday before the demo, the day afterAl Sharpton filed his "friend of the court"brief on behalf of the KKK, workers inone transit shop who had been defendingSharpton weren't doing so any more. Oneworker said, "Sharpton is just a politicianlike all the rest of them."The polarization caused by our political fight against the "free speech for theKlan" forces was reflected in the tradeunion bureaucracy, which was caughtbetween the grounds well of pressure atthe base to stop the KKK and its traditional Democratic Party allies. Sharptonand Assemblyman Scott Stringer promoted "tolerance" for the KKK and triedto organize a diversion from the onlymobilization aimed at stopping thelynchers. One union local president saidhe couldn't endorse our demonstration(because the union lawyer told him hecouldn't!), but he kept asking incredulously, "Why is Sharpton doing this?How could he do this? What's up withSharpton?"A municipal union official we hadbeen trying unsuccessfully to contact allweek finally took a phone call on Friday,saying, "It's a damn shame. It looks likethey're going to let them march." Sheoffered to get an endorsement fromAFSCME District Council 37 but latersaid DC 37 was split down the middleand therefore was not endorsing eitherthe PDC demonstration or the one calledby Democrats Sharpton and Stringer.Another municipal union official alsotold us, "We can't endorse either demonstration. Our local is divided down themiddle." The same was true with otherunion locals.SEIU Local 1199 president DennisRivera, himself a leading figure in thestate Democratic Party, endorsed theStringer/Sharpton "free speech" diversion in his own name. But the local didnot take a position. At a Local 1199 delegates meeting, the delegates overwhelmingly understood that this was not aquestion of free speech, and many tookstacks of leaflets from a PDC representative to take back to their work locations.When the purpose of the DemocraticParty rally endorsed by Rivera wasexplained, one Local 1199 member tolda teaqlleafletting outside her hospital, "Ivoted for Rivera but I can't support himanymore if he's helping the Klan."Some unions that didn't endorse gavesoine support to the PDC-initiated mobilization in other ways. The. LaborersUnion didn't endorse, but they took

WORKERS VANGUARD


7/12

WV PhotosMembers of SEIU Local 371, postal, civil service, transit and otherunions formed backbone of October 23 mobilization to stop the KKK.stacks of leaflets and put them in theunion halls. An official in another unionsaid he couldn't get an endorsement butput us in touch with the union dispatcherto try to organize some marshals for thedemonstration.When a team distributed flyers nearRev. Herbert Daughtry's church inBrooklyn the Sunday before the demo,Daughtry had just given a news confer-

The mobilization of New York City'sworking people and minorities to ridethe Klan out on October 23 required aceaseless political battle by the PartisanDefense Committee against the courts,the Giuliani administration, DemocraticParty politicians like Scott Stringer andAl Sharpton and the phony socialistswho covered for the Democrats' effortsto provide a "free speech" platform forKlan terror. They failed in their attemptto sabotage this laborlblack mobilizationto stop the KKK, and now the Democratsand their "left" tails are desperately trying to cover their tracks.Stringer now proclaims, "The realstory is that we ran the KKK out of town(New York Press, 3 November [emphasisin the original]). The real story is thatStringer and his fellow Dems whopreached "tolerance" for the Klan werejeered by many of the thousands whohad come to run the KKK out of town.Chiming in is the Communist Party(CP), which endorsed Stringer's diversionand now talks of "a spontaneous antiKlan protest by 8,000 New Yorkers"(People's Weekly World, 30 October). Ina similar vein, the Workers World Party(WWP) reported, "Thousands of antiracists turned out to confront the Ku KluxKlan here on Oct. 23" (Workers World, 4

November)-without any mention ofeither the Democrats who opposed thosethousands or the PDC-initiated mobilization which brought them out. With thisbit of deception, WWP tries to hide itsown role: while not openly supportingStringer's diversion, WWP (in the nameof an "Emergency Mobilization" whichmobilized nothing) issued a last-minutecall for protesters to gather at the Stringerrally site.That the WWP covers for Sharpton'sdespicable role in defending the Klanshould come as no surprise. Two yearsago, Workers World (25 September 1997)urged its readers to support this capitalist

ISO ...(continued from page 5)coalition" opportunist maneuvers withinthe unions, PL dismisses the unionsas "pro-boss" organizations that mustbe "smashed." PL explicitly denies anyclass distinction between the mass organizations of the working class under procapitalist leadership and church groups,the imperialist army and thoroughly reactionary outfits like the all-male religiousbigots of Promise Keepers!The social-democratic ISO is abjectlyservile to the bourgeois liberals. The12 NOVEMBER 1999

ence calling for free speech for the Klan.One deacon tried unsuccessfully to makethe team go away, while another latertook an endorsement packet and told thecomrades that there was a split amongthe deacons and that he did not agreewith Daughtry.The danger posed by the Klan wasunderstood by the mass of the popula-tion. Many New Yorkers had directly

experienced racist Klan terror. Workerswho came from the South, or had familyin the South, were especially clear onthe need to stop the Klan. One said, "Weshould be right there, where the Klanis!" A transit worker who brought histwo children to the demonstration andbought a subscription to WV originallycame from Mississippi and said hisneighbor's family had been bombed,

Workers World, CPCovering for Democrats,Disappearing the Reds"ll::T

'"

NYC, October23: WWP'sInternationalAction Centersows illusionsin "justice" ofcapitalist courts,SL fights forfreedom forMumia.

politician's mayoral bid as a "vote of solidarity with the African American, Caribbean and Latino communities." Continuing its opportunist sleight of hand, theWorkers World account of the anti-Klanmobilization reports that "signs and placards . demanding freedom for politicalprisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal were clearlyvisible." Indeed they were, but the bulk ofthe signs distributed by the WWP, in thename of its International Action Center,read, "New Trial for Mumia!" WWP evensent a handful of supporters to the PDCrally site to distribute its signs. But ofthe anti-Klan demonstrators who hadunwittingly taken them, most traded themin for PDC signs demanding freedom forMumia when our comrades explained

Stalinoid PL combines adventurist confrontationism and empty "fight for communism" rhetoric with philistine bacls:-wardness. But these are flip sides ofthe same opportunist coin: both the ISOand PL despair of the possibility of making the working class conscious of itshistoric interest in overthrowing capitalism. For this, it is necessary to forge arevolutionary workers party on themodel of Lenin's Bolsheviks, who ledthe Russian proletariat to victory in theOctober Revolution of 1917. The October 23 laborlblack mobilization in NewYork City was a step on the road to forging that party

that the "new trial" call sowed illusions inthe very courts which had railroadedJamal to death row and had upheld theKKK's "right" to rally for genocide.As many thousands of New Yorkersknow-and is evident from the numerousaccounts in our "Reporter's Notebook"

CHICAGOSaturdays, 3 p.m.

November 13: Stalinism-Gravediggerof RevolutionsNovember 20: Black Oppression andRevolutionary Integrationism328 S. Jefferson St., Suite 904(corner of Jefferson and Van Burennear Clinton stop on Blue Line) .Information and readings: (312) 454-4930or [email protected]

NEW YORK CITYAlternate Tuesdays, 7:30 p.m. at NYU

November 16: Trotskyism vs.Stalinism: The Revolution BetrayedNovember 30: For Black LiberationThrough Socialist Revolution!Student Events Center, Rm. 307 or 3095 Washington PI. (at Mercer St.)Information and readings: (212) 26 7-1025or [email protected]

out of their home by the Klan.A Mexican worker said that he hadworked in Georgia for a guy whose fatherwas in the Klan. A member of the SocialService Employees Union described howshe had been terrified as a child in theSouth when the Klan burned a cross onher family's lawn. Another demonstrator said, "My mother brought me fromSouth Carolina 38 years ago to getaway from stuff like this. They killed mygrandfather. Now iCs 39 years later andit's the same thing." His wife added, afterthe Klansmen had scurried off into thecourthouse under police escort, "Andthey're protected within the confines ofthe courthouse!"As a PDC spokesman led chants of"Remember Greensboro, Stop the KlanNow!" at the demonstration, workersfrom the SSEU Local 371 contingentcalled out the names of other victims ofKlan terror to him on the podium:"Remember Emmett Till ... RememberJames Chaney .. Remember MichaelSchwerner. .. Remember Andrew Goodman .. Remember Medgar Evers!"At the victory party after the Qemonstration, one woman from the NewSchool said, "I saw on TV that therewere several different demonstrations,but I knew which one I wanted to go to. Ifelt empowered today.".

(page 6)- i t was the PDC call "All Out toStop the KKK on October 23!" whichgal vanized the mass outrage against thefascists. Hundreds of working people,students and others joined in distributing175,000 flyers for this united-front demonstration, which was endorsed and builtby the Spartacist League, Spartacus YouthClub and Labor Black League as well asdozens oftrade-union, student and minority organizations.As we wrote in our article on themobilization (WV No. 722, 29 October),"What was seen on the streets of NewYork City on October 23 was a microcosm of a workers party in action, i.e.,the working class mobilized in its owninterests, acting independently of thegovernment and parties of the capitalistclass." For the reformist tails of theDemocratic Party, such a mobilization isa crime against nature.In his History of the Russian Revolu-tion, Bolshevik leader Leon Trotskynoted: "The mystic doctrine of spontaneousness explains nothing ... To the smugpoliticians of liberalism and tamed socialism everything that happens amongmasses is customarily represented asinstinctive." It was clear from the outsetthat there was mass outrage among NewYorkers against the Klan. But it took Bolshevik leadership and organization togive direction and political expression towhat the most politically conscious workers, black militants and others knew hadto be done .

BOSTONSaturday, 2 p.m.

November 20: Reform vs. RevolutionZamparelli Room 112, Mayer CampusCenter, Tufts UniversityFor room and information: (617) 666-9453

TORONTOAlternate Wednesdays, 7 p.m.

November 17: The Family andWomen's OppressionInternational Student Centre, U of T33 St. George St. (north of College St.)For room and information: (416) 593-4138

VANCOUVERAlte.rnate Tuesdays, 7 p.m.

November 23: For the Communism ofLenin and Trotsky: The Fight for aRevolutionary PartyRoom 212, Student Union Bldg., UBCInformation and readings: (604) 687-0363

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Black Freedom...(continued from page 1)u.s. history. Millions lost their jobs andunemployment remained high for severalyears. By 1877, the cumulative hardshipsstemming from the prolonged depressionhad created widespread discontent. TheGreat Railway Strike broke out in 1877,and the capitalists mobilized the policeand the National Guard to suppress it.Also in 1877, the last nail was put in thecoffin of Reconstruction with the complete withdrawal of Union troops fromthe South. .This, of course, only encouraged theKKK in its campaign to destroy as manygains of the Civil War as possible. A former Confederate general and Freemason,Nathan Bedford Forrest, founded the KuKlux Klan and served as its first ImperialWizard. Following the Civil War, the KuKlux Klan launched a campaign of terrorthat targeted for beatings or assassination local Radical Republican leaders aswell as blacks who asserted their rights indealings with white employers. The Klandecimated the Republican organizationin many localities. Increasingly, the newSouthern governments looked to Washington for survival. Congress enacteda series of Enforcement Acts authorizing national action to suppress politi-

cal violence. In 1871, the administrationlaunched a legal and military offensivethat virtually destroyed the Klan.The depression that began in 1873,however, put economic questions in theforefront of capitalist politics, and Reconstruction became expendable. When Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in 1874, for the first timesince the Civil War, it was clear thatSouthern Republicans could expect littlefurther help from Washington. NorthernRepublicans, besieged by labor strikesand economic crisis, forged an alliancewith the Southern Democrats to stabilizeAmerican capitalism on the fotmdationsof anti-strike terror by cops and troops inthe North and KKK lynch mob terror inthe South.The strength of the KKK has peakedand receded at various times in history,coinciding with the rise and decline ofsocial and economic discontent. Therewere surges in KKK membership in the1870s, the early 1920s and in the 1950sand 1960s. This corresponds with theracist terror campaign to overturn Reconstruction in the 1870s, the white race riotsand economic downturn of 1919-1921,and the civil rights movement of the late1950s and '60s, when the KKK went ona rampage of violence against civil rightsworkers.The 1990s has seen a resurgence ofKKK activity. The KKK faction that waschased off the streets of New York lastSaturday was the Indiana-based American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, whichhas been the most active KKK faction inthe last two years. Led by Jeffery Berry,it was formed in 1995 and has organizedrallies throughout the Midwest and theSouth. It has carried out a recruitmentdrive in central Illinois. The Rantoul,Illinois chapter of this KKK factionshares a post office box with the World,Church of the Creator. This is the fascist8

organization Benjamin Smith was associated with, the man who went on ashooting spree last July Fourth weekend,killing two and wounding nine Jews,blacks and Asians.These are the .kind of killers the capitalists plan to unleash when mass discontent erupts on a scale that will overwhelmthe existing forces of the state. In August1998, the New York Stock Exchangeplunged 554 points. This led to a meltdown in September of stock marketsaround the world. In a matter of a fewweeks, $2,300 billion of "paper profits"vanished into thin air! This illustrates theanarchy of capitalism. This illustrates thebasic instability of international financialcapital, where thousands of dollars ofpaper speculation are traded for everydollar of real value.The capitalists keep the fascists inreserve, intending to survive the mostdevastating economic collapse and socialcrisis by placing the fascists in power atthe head of a mass movement of reactionary violence. The capitalists protect theparamilitary fascists of the KKK, including by invoking "freedom of speech," asif the lynch rope and the gas chamber aresimply forms of expression. The courts,as part of the capitalist state, used the"free speech" argument to justify granting the KKK a public platform in Manhattan to organize terror. Meanwhile, they

1868 electionrally of freedblack slaves inSouth duringpost-Civil WarReconstruction.KKK was formedto smash newlywon blackfreedom throughterror.

refused to grant the PDC a sound permitfor the site where the city administrationhad moved the KKK rally. The capitalistcourts will bend over backwards to protectthe KKK while attacking the democraticrights of the would-be victims of the fascists to be heard!Revolutionary Leadership andthe Fight Against Fascism

Al Sharpton played a major role for thecapitalist rulers; he went so far as to filea "friend of the court" brief on behalf ofthe KKK's '-'right" to spread lynch mobterror in NYC! Al Sharpton has beendeveloping the image as an opponent ofracist cop terror for years. He has nowbeen exposed as a defender of the KKK.This should spell the end of his politicalcareer as a fake opponent of racist repression. I f some of his followers overlookedthe fact that he was a fink for the FBI inthe 1980s, they will find it impossible tosupport this black front man for the KKK.Malcolm X would have had utter contempt for Al Sharpton and all the defenders of the KKK! Malcolm X warned thehead of the American Nazi Party that "ifyour present racist agitation against ourpeople there in Alabama causes physicalharm to Reverend King or any other blackAmericans who are only attempting toenjoy their rights as free human beings,that you and your Ku Klux Klan friendswill be met with maximum p h y s i ~ a l retaliation from those of us who are not handcuffed by the disarming philosophy ofnonviolence, and who believe in assertingour right of self-defense-by any meansnecessary."The pro-capitalist trade-union leaderssubordinate the independent power of theunions to the Democrats. When transitworkers called for a union mobilizationto protest the cop execution of AmadouDiaJlo, TWU Local 100 president WillieJames refused to mobilize the member-

Democrat.AI Sharptonled pro-cop "anticrime" march inBrooklyn inAugust; defenseof KKK inOctober madeheadlines inblack press inBritain.ship and instead had a token contingentofTWU officials at a Sharpton rally.Thetrade-union leaders who tie the unions toDemocrats like Sharpton must now beseen as fake union leaders who are subordinating the labor movement to thedefenders of the KKK.The Democratic state assemblymanfrom the 67th District, Scott Stringer,played a prominent role in organizing adiversion from the PDC united-frontmobilization to stop the KKK. On October 21, Stringer worked out a deal withthe city that allowed his demonstration toshare a sound permit with the KKK: theStringer p'eople would speak between 12noon and. 1 p.m. and the KKK wouldspeak from 2 to 4 p.m. The Stringer leaflet was tilled "Come tell the KKK theirmessage of hate has no place in NY!"It was clear that the thousands whocame out on the streets of NYC last Saturday weren't interested in a dialoguewith the KKK. They came out to stopthem! The intent of the Stringer demonstration was to divert people from thatobjective. Fortunately, their call for adialogue with the KKK was aggressivelyrejected by the thousands who came out.Stringer is a liberal Democrat who, likeSharpton, pretends to defend the interestsof the oppressed. But his collaborationwith the Giuliani administration in afailed attempt to divert and split themobilization to stop the KKK clearlyexposes him as an enemy of labor and allthose targeted by the KKK.

On October 20, representatives of thePDC attended a meeting built by the ISOand several other left and liberal groupswhich was advertised as an organizingmeeting to protest the Klan. It turned outthat this was an organizing meeting forthe Stringer diversion. The PDC representatives appealed for the broadest pos.-sible unity against the fascists of theKKK and for endorsing the united-frontmobilization that the PDC had called.Eventually, a spokesman for Stringer simply stated that the difference betweenthem and us is that they. recognize theconstitutional rights of the. KKK! Andthey went on to build a rally for tolerancefor the Klan.In Germany during Hitler's rise topower, there was a political party muchlike the ISO, the Social Democratic Party(SPD). Unlike the ISO, the SPD had areal mass base in the working class ofGermany. By 1932, the year before Hitlerbecame chancellor, the SPD rested on thesullen, halfhearted support of the German

$1 (32 pages)

workers. The Social D e m o c r a ~ s workedhard to make German society safe forcapitalism by sacrificing struggles evenfor reforms. They kept a suspicious watchon the working class in order to appeasethe capitalists. But for the German capitalist class, the time for halfway measureshad passed. In order to find a way out ofthe crisis, the capitalists sought to ridthemselves of all pressures exerted by theworking class. Their intention was toeliminate the workers organizations, thatis, to completely crush them.The Stalinist-led Communist Partyof Germany was politically incapableof tearing the masses away from the influence of the Social Democratic Party.For one thing, instead of proposing tothe SPD united-front defense measuresagainst the Nazis as revolutionary leaderLeon Trotsky was urgently calling for,the Communist Party ultimatisticallydemanded that social-democratic workers abandon the SPD, which it labeled"social fascist." The subservience of theSocial Democracy to the capitalists andthe inability of the Stalinist CommunistParty to provide a revolutionary alternative opened the road to the seizure ofpower by Hitler's Nazis. We do not intendto allow this to happen again!The October 23 labor/black mobilization was a united-front demonstrationinitiated by the PDC, a non-sectarian legaland social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League. Theunited front provides the only effectiveorganizational method for stopping theKKK with the maximum possible forces.In the united front last Saturday, everyone who came out to stop the KKK waswelcomed to join the demonstration andpresent their own opinions. These opinions are not necessarily harmonious. Butthe expression of all these opinionsoffers workers an opportunity to determine which is the most effective strategyfor defeating the KKK.We base our tactics on the lessons ofthe October Revolution of 1917 and theleadership of Lenin and Trotsky's Bolshevik Party. The Russian word for council is soviet. And the workers sovietswhich were the basis' upon which powerwas seized in Russia were the highestexpression of the united front. But it wasthe Bolsheviks who provided the leadership for revolution. Two months beforethe workers seized power, the Bolshevikswere able to lead workers to defeat acounterrevolutionary mobilization led byGeneral Kornilov, winning over troops to

$1.50 (72 pages)Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Pub: Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

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u.s. Imperialism Hands Off Iraq!For eleven months since lastDecember's concentrated four-day airassault, the Clinton administration hascontinued to wage a savage aerial waragainst the people of Iraq. In one ofthe few reports in the capitalist press onthis constant terror bombing, the longest sustained American military operation since U.S. imperialism's counterrevolutionary war in Vietnam in the1960s and '70s, the Washington Post(30 August) headlined "U.S. Air Raidson Iraq Become an Almost Daily Ritual." The U.S. and its ally, Labour primeminister Tony Blair's Britain, have carried out over 27,000 sorties-includingthe use of 2,000-pound concrete-filledbombs against densely populated areascontaining supposed military targets-killing some 200 Iraqi civilians sinceDecember.Meanwhile, the starvation blockadeimposed under the auspices of theUnited Nations in 1990 continues toclaim the lives of 6,000 children everymonth, while fully one in four Iraqichildren suffers from chronic malnutri

tion. On top of the tens of thousandskilled by the U.S.-led "Desert Slaughter" in 1991, some 1.5 million Iraqishave died from disease and hungerbecause of the imperialist sanctions.Having failed to get rid of Iraqi leaderSaddam Hussein through repeatedassassination attempts and starving andimmiserating the population, the U.S.has also devoted nearly $100 million tofantastical schemes aimed at coheringan internal mercenary force through theIraqi National' Congress, an unsavorylash-up including Islamic reactionaries,

the side of the revolution as they prepared to march on the capital. Kornilovwas placed under arrest. After his defeat,the masses decisively swung to the sideof the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution moved ahead more rapidly.A social and economic crisis in Russialed to a successful workers revolutionbecause of the leadership of the Bolshevik Party. In Germany in the 1930s, asocial and economic crisis led to the conquest of power by the Nazi Party due tothe fact that an effective revolutionaryworkers party didn't exist.For a Class-StruggleWorkers Party!

America needs a workers party thatwill ensure a workers' future. The massoutpouring of militant defiance to theKKK last week must be transformed intoa class-conscious revolutionary workersparty. The demonstration to stop theKKK was an expression of what a partylike this would be in action. With disciplined workers at its core, it would mobilize all those who are oppressed by capitalism, who are also the intended victimsof the KKK. A workers party will leadthe working class in fighting the oppression of immigrants, blacks, Hispanics,Asians, Native Americans, women, gays,youth and others. It would stand in firmopposition to all forms of bigotry.Last week's anti-KKK mobilizationdemonstrated the ability of labor to winwhen it is mobilized in its own name,independent of the capitalist politiciansand the capitalist state. The struggle bythe working class to free itse lf from wageslavery is inseparable from the strugglefor black liberation. Karl Marx put it thisway: "Labor cannot emancipate itself inthe white skin where in the black it isbranded."Labor must not only mobilize to stopthe KKK as it did last Saturday, it mustdestroy the system that promotes the.growth of the KKK. Labor must fight to _offer a future for the youth in the ghettos12 NOVEMBER 1999

.Constant Terror Bombing,Starvation BlockadeAmerica's imperialist rivals, especiallyFrance, have been increasingly vocal inpushing for an end to the UN sanctionsin order to facilitate investment in thearea. Within the U.S. as well, there hasbeen growing sentiment among sectorsof the bourgeoisie that the economicsanctions against Iraq have outlivedtheir usefulness.

Echoing such sentiments, groups likethe International Socialist Organization(ISO) and the Workers World Party(WWP) plead with Democrat Clinton to"lift the sanctions" and "end the bombing." Betraying its appetites, the ISOrecently gave as an example of growingopposition to the U.S. rulers' war onIraq a liberal anti-sanctions advertisement in the New York Times (28 April)which "evenhandedly" declared: "TheIraqi people are suffering because of theactions of both the Iraqi and U.S. governments."

AFPCivilian buildings in Iraq reduced to rubble by U.S. bombing in summer.

Reformists like the ISO and WWPpromote the illusion that Americanimperialism can be pressured to pursuea more peaceful and humane policy.But the death and destruction beingwreaked upon the people of Iraq showwhat imperialism is all about, a rapacious system based on the exploitation,SUbjugation and murder of the workersin order to expand the profits of a handful of filthy rich capitalists. The onlyway to put an end to imperialist massmurder, exploitation and oppression isthrough the forging of a revolutionaryworkers party to lead the multiracialU.S. proletariat to the conquest of statepower. Down with the starvation block-ade! U.S. hands of f Iraq!

former military men, monarchists andpro-imperialist Kurdish and Shi'iteminority sPQkesmen. The New YorkTimes (28 October) recently reportedthat some of these imperialist stoogesare being trained at a military base inFlorida "to organize a military in anemerging state." Saddam Hussein is abutcher of Iraqi workers and Kurds andother minorities, whose bloody antiCommunist efforts were fully supported

by the U.S. imperialists for years. It isthe task of the Iraqi proletariat, led by aTrotskyist vanguard party committed tothe program of permanent revolution, tolead the peasantry and all the oppressedin sweeping away his despotic regime.Washington's cynical prating aboutrestoring "democracy" in Iraq is a transparent cover for its real purpose: toassert control over the vast oil and natural gas resources in the region. In turn,

to be here. The unions must fight for fullcitizenship rights for all immigrants.

Wide World

But in order for the unions to be effective in the struggle to win these gains,they must break free from the stranglehold of the Democratic Party. Labormust get the courts out of the unions andtake responsibility for cleaning its ownhouse. The cops who are the first line ofenforcers of strikebreaking, who play therole of an occupying army in the ghettosand the barrios and who defend the KKKkillers are not part of the labor movement. Labor must demand: Cops out ofthe unions! The unions need to protestin large numbers against racist policeshootings like the execution of Amadou Diallo and fight for the freedom offramed-up class-war prisoner MumiaAbu-Jamal.lack poet Claude McKay speaking at Communist International's Fourth. Congress, Moscow, 1922. First issue of CI journal, 1919. TWU Local 100 members, whose contract expires in December, should regardthe policy of the union's New Directionsoutfit of suing the union in the capitalistcourts with contempt. It was these courtsthat imposed the Taylor Law fines following the sellout of the 1980 strike. But

and barrios other than that of poverty andprison. The unions need to win a livingwage protected by a full cost of livingadjustment. They need to establish unionrun recruitment and training programsthat will provide union jobs for all thosewho have been thrown on the economicscrap heap by this system. They need tofight for full employment and a reductionof the workweek with no loss in pay.Trotsky wrote in the Transitional Programin 1938:"Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit thetransformation of an increasing section

of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the crumbs ofa disintegrating society. The righl to em-ployment is the only serious right left tothe workers in a society based uponexploitation."All the slave-labor programs that forcewelfare recipients to work for their benefits must be abolished. Giuliani's newscheme to force the homeless to slave inorder to sleep in city shelters must bedefeated as well. All "workfare" workersshould be recruited to the unions withfull union wages, benefits and protection.This is also the case for immigrants

that slave in thousands of sweatshopsthroughout this city from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.In addition to full union wages and benefits, they need to be defended againstanti-immigrant laws. The position of theworkers movement should be that anyonewho has made it to this country has a right continued on page 10

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORYNational Office: Box 1377 GPO, Ne w York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860

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Black Freedom..(continuedfrom page 9)it should also be remembered that a moresevere anti-strike law called the CondonWadlin Act was effectively abolishedafter the victorious 1966 TWU strike.Last week's mobilization showed thatthe determined mass, militant socialpower of labor was able to overcome allof the legal obstacles and police threatsprotecting the KKK. I f labor beat backthese obstacles to driving the KKK fromthe streets of Manhattan, it can defeat theTaylor Law. The working class needs aleadership that understands that strikesaren't won or lost in the courthouse or inthe legislature but on the picket line!The fight to organize the open-shopSouth with its newly built industries willmean carrying out a struggle to defeatthe KKK. In November 1979, the KKK,with the assistance of federal agents,massacred five leftists at an anti-Klanrally in Greensboro, North Carolina.Throughout the South, the KKK has beenassociated with the burning of blackchurches, cross-burning and murders, including the dragging death of James Byrd .Jr. in Texas last year. Organizing the Southmeans the formation of massive workersdefense squads to protect labor organizing efforts from KKK terror.

To paraphrase Trotsky, ultimately itwill be disciplined, militant detachmentsof armed workers, who feel the supportof tens of millions of toilers behindthem, which will successfully defeat thetascist gangs. The struggle against fascism starts in the factories and ends inthe streets. Scabs in the factory plants

AP1966 NYC transit strike broughtcenter of finance cap.ital to a halt.are the basic nuclei of the fascist army.Strike pickets, on the other hand, are thenuclei of the workers' army.The Wall Street capitalists serve as the

Spartacist LeaguePublic Offices-MARXIST LlTERATUREChicagoTues.: 5-9 p.m. and Sal.: 12-3 p.m.328 S. Jefferson SI., Suite 904Chicago,IL Phone: (312) 454-4930

Los AngelesSaturday: 2-5 p.m.3806 Beverly Blvd., room 215 (near Vermont)Los Angeles, CA Phone (213) 380-8239OaklandSaturday: 1-5 p.m.1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland, CA Phone: (510) 839-0851New York CityTues.: 6:30-8:30 p.m. and Sal.: 1-5 p.m.299 Broadway, Suite 318 (north of Chambers Sl.)New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025San FranciscoSaturday: 11 a.m.-1 p.m.564 Market SI., Suite 718San Francisco, CA Phone: (415) 395-9520

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lilfTlWtM,W " f r r : ~ j ; I ' : ~ fill}.SIIMEt;;rtMJIJl.E/

Spartacist1966 antiwar protest: SL fought for revolutionary perspectivein struggle against imperialist slaughter in Vietnam, racistoppression in U.S. Right: SLlLBL at March 29 NYC protest overcop execution of Amadou Diallo.nerve center for promoting anti-labor terror internationally, from backing thepolice-state measures of the Mexicangovernment agatnst striking UNAM university students to the terror bombing inSerbia and Kosovo. There can only be aworkers' future if workers of all countriesstand as one against the capitalists of allcountries. The main enemy of the American working class is the American rulingclass. This means that workers in thiscountry must fight for the right of selfdetermination for the U.S. colony ofPuerto Rico. Those countries where capitalism has been overthrown-Cuba,North Korea, China and Vietnam-mustbe defended against imperialism andcapitalist counterrevolution.The only way to permanently removethe threat of fascism is to take industryout of the hands of the incompetent, corrupt, racist exploiters and rebuild societybased on a socialist economic plan. Aworkers' future means a socialist future,an economy that will no longer rest onthe chaos of the capitalist market and theimpoverishment of human society for thebenefit of a minute minority. It will meanthe final elimination of poverty, racismand imperialist war. In order to accomplish this, a workers party needs to bebuilt. We of the Spartacist League are thecore of that party.

Documents

Workers Vanguard No 723 - 12 November 1999