Vol. 22, No. 5
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
25 cents May 1, 1992
[Front page:
No Justice! No Peace! The racist system's got to go!;
BUFFALO: Mass clinic defense triumphs!;
Big strikes hit Germany]
IN THIS ISSUE
| No to police brutality and racism! |
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| Rage across U.S.............................................................. | 2 |
| Los Angeles erupts......................................................... | 3 |
| The verdict: Same old racist logic.................................. | 3 |
| European solidarity with L.A. protests........................... | 3 |
| Police brutality: a country-wide epidemic...................... | 4 |
| Racist justice in the USA................................................ | 4 |
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| Strikes & workplace news |
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| Kroger supermarket strike in Michigan.......................... | 5 |
| UAW leaders betray Caterpillar strike............................ | 5 |
| N.Y. transit workers picket headquarters........................ | 5 |
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| Defend women's rights! |
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| From the front lines in Buffalo....................................... | 6 |
| Buffalo update: the second week.................................... | 7 |
| April 11: preparing to fight OR...................................... | 8 |
| May Day brings pro-choice cause to workers................ | 8 |
| Difference among pro-choice forces.............................. | 8 |
| Bush and OR against birth control................................. | 9 |
| 600,000 march for choice............................................... | 9 |
| L.A. activists will keep the clinics open......................... | 9 |
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| Support the fight against toxic pollution |
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| Protest Rio Grande dumps.............................................. | 10 |
| Tijuana toxic burner stopped.......................................... | 10 |
| Fight pollution from the maquiladoras........................... | 10 |
| Mexicans denounce Guadalajara explosion................... | 10 |
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| The world in struggle |
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| Peruvian regime unveils iron fist.................................... | 11 |
| No to Bush's campaign against Libya............................ | 12 |
| Phone strike in Colombia............................................... | 12 |
| Russian health care employees strike............................. | 12 |
| Police fire on Nepal strikes............................................. | 12 |
| Quebec workers oppose wage freeze.............................. | 12 |
| General strike hits Lebanon............................................ | 12 |
No Justice! No Peace!
The racist system's got to go!
BUFFALO: Mass clinic defense triumphs!
The verdict: same old racist logic
European protests voice outrage over Rodney King verdict
Police brutality: A countrywide epidemic
Strikes and workplace news
Eyewitness report:
From the front lines in Buffalo
Buffalo update: the second week
Differences among the pro-choice forces in Buffalo
May Day brings pro-choice cause to the working class
Defend women's rights!
Along the U.S.-Mexico border: Support the fight against toxic pollution
Down with Fujimori's coup!
Peruvian regime unveils iron fist
The world in struggle
IN BRIEF
[Photo.]
Mass outrage has swept the country at the acquittal of four racist cops in the brutal beating of Rodney King. Los Angeles has been in flames. San Francisco was put under a state of emergency. Atlanta and Las Vegas have been beset with National Guard. From the West Coast to New York and to Baton Rouge, the masses have been taking to the streets to protest the verdict and to confront the racist police.
And everywhere the masses have risen, the cry has been heard: "There is no justice in America! The system does not work!" Not for black people and other minorities. Not for poor people. Not for the working class.
Oh yes, savings and loan bankers can swindle billions, and the system will bail them out. Corrupt politicians can rake in campaign bribes, and suffer little more than embarrassment. Police can beat and brutalize and shoot down ordinary people, and they are exonerated. But if you are black or brown, or jobless, or homeless, or out on strike, what justice can you expect?
The verdict in the Rodney King beating is just one more proof that open season has been declared against the oppressed African-Americans and other minorities. And this racist offensive is the cutting edge of an assault by the rich white ruling class against all sections of the working people.
But the outpouring of anger against this verdict is evidence that black people, and working people of all races, are fed up and no longer content to suffer in silence. There will be justice, but only by uniting all the victims of racism and exploitation. There will be justice, but only by taking to the streets in mass struggle directed squarely against the racist, man-eating system.
Bush calls out the army to protect the "rule of law"
As the outrage spread, President Bush has raced to stamp out the mass protests and to cover up the exposure of racist "law and order" in America.
Bush and the news media have focused on various sad incidents of random beatings of white motorists and the burning of some L.A. neighborhoods to obscure the large, and frequently integrated, mass confrontations with the police and the city government. In this way, they hope to discredit the street protests and to justify using "whatever force is necessary to restore order." Some 10,000 army troops, marines, federal marshals, and national guardsmen have been sent to back up the over 1,000 L.A. police and highway patrolmen. This show of force has been aimed not only at shooting down and arresting protesters in L.A. but, also, at threatening the harshest repression against protester's everywhere.
At the same time, Bush has been demanding that the masses put their faith in the system and wait for a Justice Department investigation to right any wrongs. But who can believe him?
This is the president who, shortly after the vicious beating of Rodney King, brought L.A.'s chief of police brutality Daryl Gates to the White House and praised him as being an "All-American hero." This is the man who mounted the so-called "war on crime and drugs" -- which unleashed the police terror in the ghettos and fostered an atmosphere where not only Rodney King but virtually every black or Latino youth is considered a criminal or drug abuser. This is the racist who originally vetoed the Civil Rights Act, and then pressured it to be so badly rewritten that he is now using it to step up job discrimination. And this is the leader who has presided over the capitalist offensive of job elimination, wage cuts, and slashing of social programs which is impoverishing the masses and has provided the basis for the spread of drug abuse and crime in the communities.
For 14 months, the government put off the cops' trial in the hopes of cooling off the outrage in L.A. And then they moved the trial to a small white enclave and let the cops go scot free. Can anyone believe that the Justice Department investigation has any purpose other than giving the government more time to stamp out the fires of mass protests and shore up the racist system which Bush likes to call the "rule of law"?
"Respectable" black leaders try to "restore hope" in the system
Yet the "respectable" black leaders like L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, NAACP head Benjamin Hooks, and SCLC leader Joseph Lowery have supported Bush's show of force against the black masses. And others like Jesse Jackson have rushed to L.A. to preach that the masses should calm down, stop their struggle, and put their trust in Bush's Justice Department.
Oh yes, some have eloquently denounced the racist verdict. And some have even pointed out that Bush's policies have meant the abandonment of the black communities and the loss of hope among the masses. But the "respectable" black leaders don't really represent the masses. Oh no, they represent the upper crust of the community, those who have made it into government positions and onto corporate boards, those who have received some benefit from the system and hope against all hope that it can be reformed so they may continue to climb up the ladder of success.
And so instead of calling on the masses to transform their spontaneous outbursts of rage into an organized and more powerful struggle, they are decrying "violence" and calling on the masses to cool out. Instead of calling for building up the mass protests against the Bush administration, they are crying that Bush must "act quickly" to "restore hope in the system."
Tinkering or fundamental change
Oh to be sure, not only pro-establishment black leaders but also Democratic Party politicians and other would-be reformers chatter about tinkering with the police departments, voter registration drives to vote Bush out of office, and other "proper" forms of action to bring some token changes in the system.
But this system cannot be fixed up. Racism is as much a part of it as banking swindles at the top and grinding exploitation and poverty at the bottom. Racism ensures the capitalists that there is a specially oppressed section of the working people that can be thrown out of work when business is bad, and forced into poverty wages when industry is on the upswing. Racism is a poison the capitalists spread to split up the workers along race lines and undermine the building up of a class-wide movement against the rich ruling class. As long as the capitalists rule, their system will mean racist injustice and brutality.
For the masses, justice can only be won by turning this system upside down. We must target the rich, white, capitalist ruling class which stands behind and benefits from the racist outrages. We must direct our anger at the racist government which keeps the capitalists in the drivers' seat. We must unite the masses on the bottom, the workers and poor of every race, and build up a class-wide struggle. Let it be a revolutionary struggle to tear down the racist system and to build a new order where the masses are in control and where a socialist economy buries all exploitation and the racism that it breeds.
Get organized!
The outpouring of rage in L.A. and other cities has shaken up business-as-usual and shown the masses grasping for change. But these were only spontaneous outbursts of pent-up anger, which at times flailed around to hit the wrong targets. What is needed now is to get organized.
We must build up organization in the work places and neighborhoods and schools. Organization that builds resistance to the daily abuses and cutbacks. Organization that spreads the word about mass protests. Organization that uses outrages such as the King beating to expose the entire racist "justice" system. Organization, independent of the capitalist parties and "respectable" leaders, that builds up a systematic movement against racism, against police brutality, and against the whole capitalist system that has produced these outrages.
The Rodney King affair has shown there is no justice in America, that the system does not work. Let's get organized to fight it!
More on rebellions: pp. 2-4
[Graphic.]
The holy crusaders of Operation Rescue (OR) boasted that they were coming to Buffalo to stop all abortions. They would close down the health clinics, drive out the doctors and patients, and would harass and terrorize women as they had in Wichita.
But OR leaders Randall Terry and Reverend Tucci could boast and shout until they were hoarse, and they couldn't intimidate anyone. OR couldn't close anything down. After two weeks of struggle, it could only close up tent. It ran away from Buffalo. It left with the refrain in its ears, "wherever you go, you'll remember Buffalo."
What was the difference between Wichita and Buffalo?
It was the mass action of people at the clinics. People came from all over Buffalo. And they came from across the country. And a few even came from Canada. And they were willing to stare OR in the face and say no! You are not going to take away our rights! You are not going to bully anyone! We are going to boot you out of Buffalo.
It wasn't the police who stopped OR. Wichita had plenty of police and federal marshalls, and OR had still harassed patients.
It wasn't just that the people opposed OR. In Wichita too, the people had seen OR and grown to hate them. They hated OR's bigotry and bible-thumping. They hated OR's callous pushing of kids into the way of cars.
It was that in Wichita the defenders of women's rights were mainly kept away from the clinics. And at the clinics, they were kept on the side, away from confronting OR. But in Buffalo the defenders of women's rights went directly to the clinics.. They stood there and denounced OR and refused to budge. When ORcharged, it could get through police lines, but it couldn't get through the clinic defenders.
Why were the clinic defenders so active?
It wasn't because of the big-name organizations like NOW and NARAL or the Democratic Party. NOW president Patricia Ireland posed for the cameras and said a few words, but what did she say? She looked to the Democratic National Convention and she talked of channeling all the clinic action into supporting this or that politician. In a year when the people hate politicians as never before! Other organizations, like the Pro-Choice Network of Buffalo, actually called on people to stay away from the clinics.
Such organizations call on all women, but are led by those who want to join the establishment.' And the price of entering the establishment is showing that you can keep your subordinates in line. The NOW leaders can sure talk a good game about the miseries of working women and the poor. But they don't organize strikes, but more businesses. They don't talk of making this the yearof fighting the cutbacks on the poor, but the year of going to the Democratic National Convention. They are interested in increasing the influence of a handful of privileged women, and they want the masses of working women and the poor to sit on their hands and applaud.
No, we need more action by activists connected to the people. It is mass clinic defense that defeated Operation Rescue in Buffalo. It is mass action at the workplace that will shake up the employers who are happily cutting back wages, health insurance, and working conditions. It is mass action in the community that will raise the status of poor women. And not just action, but organizations. Workers, minorities and poor must learn to get organized apart from the establishment organizations. We must build durable organizations for the sake of struggle. We must take the defense of our own rights into our own hands.
No one will liberate you, you must take the struggle for freedom into your own hands. That is the lesson of Buffalo.
[Photo: Pro-choice activists link arms against anti-abortion bullies]
In the biggest labor stoppages in post-war Germany, hundreds of thousands of public sector workers launched strikes during the last days of April. Mass transit came to a halt in many cities, creating huge traffic jams on the roads as commuters took to cars. A backlog of mail and packages has piled up, as postal workers have stayed away from work. And garbage is piling up on the streets due to sanitation workers' strikes.
The unions are demanding a 9.5% pay increase to make up for inflation and tax increases. However the conservative government of Chancellor Kohl insists that pay increases have to stay under 5%. He has even refused to accept a mediator's proposal of 5.4% wage increases plus $300 more in vacation pay. The unions would have settled for this, but reverted to 9.5% when Kohl refused.
Some other sections of German workers had already broken through the 5% cap. Earlier this year, steelworkers were awarded a 6.7% increase, and bank workers received a 6.4% hike. The German ruling class is now trying to make the public sector workers a test case for holding the line on wages.
Behind the hard line of the government is the question of who will pay the costs for German unification. West German capitalism swallowed up the state-capitalist order in what used to be East Germany, and Kohl tried to swamp the German people with nationalist excitement. But what Kohl didn't tell the masses is that unification would mean austerity and new taxes in the west, and huge layoffs and plant closings in the east. This spring's strike wave shows that German workers are resisting this burden.
Strikes spread
On Saturday, April 26, unions representing 2.8 million public workers voted to strike for the first time since 1974. Some other unions had already voted to strike. For example, postal workers walked out at more than 30 post offices.
On Monday, the wider walkouts began.
The main target of the first day was public transport. The large network of buses, subways and commuter rail ground to a halt in western Berlin, Stuttgart, Hanover and dozens of other cities. Some 35,000 transit workers took part in this one-day action.
The same day, garbage workers in the state of Hesse refused to pick up trash. Dock workers in Hamburg stayed off work.
The next day, 57,000 employees in North Rhine-Westphalia, the country's most populous state, joined the strike. Half of them were transit workers. As well, telephone workers in some areas and more postal workers joined the widening strike. In Frankfurt, the banking capital of Germany, garbage piled up in the streets.
On Wednesday, local commuter transit in Frankfurt also joined in the strike. There were traffic jams of up to six miles, as commuters took to the roads to get to work. Hospital laundry and food service workers in many major cities also walked out.
Theater workers struck in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. While some of the transit strikes had been scaled back, hospital and garbage workers continued their stay-away, and postal workers were poised to spread their strike to central sorting offices in Hamburg and Frankfurt.
During the second week of strike action, still other sections of workers are expected to join in. Meanwhile, some private sector workers have also begun to go out on strike. On April 29, metalworkers began a round of warning strikes. Some 200,000 of them carried out a job action in the northern shipyards and in the auto plants of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where Stuttgart is located.
The workers' actions are putting a great deal of pressure on the Kohl government. So far the authorities are still talking tough. Kohl says the federal government won't budge, and he has told provincial leaders to hold the line as well.
But how long can they maintain this obstinacy in the face of three million workers? The working class is showing the enormous power it holds by being able to disrupt normal life in large parts of the country. If the labor union bureaucrats don't cave in prematurely, the workers may well make Kohl eat his words.
The verdict in the Rodney King beating case shocked and outraged people across the United States. As Los Angeles erupted, angry demonstrators took to the streets. From big cities like San Francisco and New York to small towns like Muskegon, Michigan, protesters voiced their anger at racist justice in the U.S.
In their coverage of the protests nationwide, the news media have heavily focused on incidents in various places where some white people were set upon. But such incidents were in fact few and far between. The big business news media did not want to focus on the political actions organized against racism, and they didn't find it worth their while to talk to the youth who were walking out from their schools across the country. No, they wanted to give the false impression of an incipient race war in the making. But in fact, most of the angry demonstrations targeted the government. And, though largely black, many of the protests included people of all races.
As we go to press, demonstrations are still continuing and more are planned. From scattered news reports and our own Party sources, The Workers' Advocate has compiled this report:
San Francisco Bay Area
Within hours of the verdict, demonstrators erupted in rage across the Bay Area. Hundreds marched across the Bay Bridge from the University of California at Berkeley. They blocked traffic for more than two hours. Other protesters blocked Interstate 280.
Later in the evening, 1,000 protesters converged on the State Building, then marched through downtown. They overturned cars and broke store windows. A demonstrator told a reporter, "Yeah, it's gotten out of hand, But society has gotten out of hand."
The mayor declared a state of emergency and ordered a curfew. And nearly 2,000 people were arrested the first two days after the verdict.
Protests also took place in Oakland and San Jose.
Atlanta
Shortly after the verdict, there was an angry protest downtown.
The next day, students at the Atlanta University Center organized a demonstration. When they tried to march downtown, police blocked their way and attacked them with clubs and tear gas. Protesters threw rocks on police, and a police car was set ablaze.
Nearly 400 people were arrested.
Seattle
The first night, 50 people overturned cars, threw rocks, and broke windows downtown.
Late the next afternoon, protesters blocked traffic on the city's main freeway. Later in the evening, 200 youths threw rocks and bottles at a police precinct. They shouted, "It's payback time!"
115 arrests were reported.
New York
On Thursday, students held rallies at most college campuses, and high school students walked out of five schools. Half of the 3,000 students at Erasmus High in Brooklyn walked out.
On Friday, there were more school walkouts. All morning, groups of high school students demonstrated in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Large groups gathered on the steps of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. Demonstrators marched across Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. There were also more rallies on campuses, including 1,000 at Columbia.
In the evening, a spirited crowd of 2,000 protesters wove through downtown Manhattan from Times Square to Tompkins Square Park. Along the way, they ran through Madison Square Garden. Police arrested about 60 people.
On Saturday, 500 people marched through lower Manhattan.
Just outside New York City, 300 students walked out of New Rochelle High School and demonstrated in front of City Hall.
Elsewhere: the West
National Guardsmen were called out in Las Vegas to suppress angry protesters. They had burned a state parole and probation office.
The East
Protesters in Philadelphia chanted, "The red! The white! The black and blue! If it can happen to Rodney King, it can happen to you!"
In Boston, there were rallies on college campuses Thursday afternoon. 300 people marched, shouting "No justice, no peace!" The next morning, 500 students walked out of Madison Park High School. In the evening, 500 people attended a rally at Grove Hall.
In Amherst, Mass., students at the University of Massachusetts took over an administration office to protest institutionalized racism.
In Buffalo, several hundred college students marched into City Hall and demanded the mayor denounce the verdict.
75 students refused to go to class in a high school in Odenton, Maryland.
The Midwest
In Chicago, there were lunch time demonstrations downtown each day. 200 people rallied on Friday. High school students in Oak Park walked out the same day too, and they marched to police headquarters.
In Detroit, 100 people rallied outside the Federal Building. One activist who spoke there reported that earlier that day he had been arrested for simply walking around downtown with a picket sign denouncing the Rodney King verdict.
Elsewhere in Michigan, students carried out protest marches in Ann Arbor and Lansing. Ann Arbor demonstrators declared their solidarity with the rebelling masses of L.A. High school students walked out in Muskegon.
Protesters rallied in downtown Cleveland. A racist drove by several times with a swastika, but people chased him. Police reportedly arrested him.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana, demonstrators marched through downtown.
In Madison, Wisconsin, the windshields of 34 police cars were shattered.
100 students at Central Missouri State University overturned several cars and broke windows in Warrensburg, Mo.
The South
High school demonstrations were reported in Tennessee and Texas.
In Birmingham, Ala., protesters set fires.
In Tampa, 200 youths threw rocks and bottles at police. High school students demonstrated in front of a police station in north Miami. The Miami city commission imposed an indefinite suspension on the choke-hold which police use to subdue people they arrest. Black people have been angry at this practice for years.
[Photo: Anti-racists rally against the verdict at the Federal Building in Detroit.]
[Photo: Protesting in downtown Chicago.]
[Photo: 300 University of Michigan students march against the verdict in Ann Arbor.]
The news media never tires of reshowing the videos of a white truck driver being beaten during the first hour of rioting in L.A., or the tears of a Korean over his burning store, or of poor blacks left homeless when fires spread to their apartment house. By this, the news media tries to create the impression that the fighting in L.A: was just senseless violence randomly directed against anyone who was not black or, at most, the acts of hoodlums tearing down their own neighborhood.
To be sure there has been pointless violence of some people flailing around in their quite justified outrage at the acquittal of brutal, racist policemen. But this is not the whole story, or even the main story, of the fighting in L.A.
What the news media is obscuring is that there was a definite target of the mass outrage -- the police, the city government, and the news media itself -- and that those involved in the biggest confrontations included not only black people but also Mexicans, other Latinos, Asians, and white people. Far from random race violence, the importance of the street fighting in L.A. was that it showed the spontaneous emergence of united protests of poor and working people of different races against the government.
Protests target the police and city government
As soon as the verdict came in, protesters began to descend on the Parker Center police headquarters in downtown L.A. Chanting "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!," hundreds of African-Americans, Mexicans, Asians and white protesters rallied at the building. More protesters showed up. The anger mounted. "No justice, no peace!", they shouted.
Eventually, the masses rushed the doors of the headquarters and tried to break in. The police struck out at them viciously, but were barely able to repulse the attack. It was only when he became frightened by this assault on the police headquarters that Chief Daryl Gates ordered the full-scale mobilization of all the police forces in the city.
Gates sought to smash the demonstration at the Parker Center, later saying it was "demeaning to me." But the protesters marched on to City Hall a block away.
The city government, headed by Mayor Bradley, had backed and condoned years of racist police brutality against the masses. Even with the exposure of the King beating, Bradley and other politicians had vacillated about getting rid of Chief Gates and continued to back police-state measures such as the cordoning off of a Latino neighborhood in the guise of a "war on drugs." The masses began to take their wrath out on the government buildings.
Hundreds again fought police at City Hall. They tried to break into it. Rocks and bottles were thrown. Windows were smashed. A flare was tossed into the lobby, igniting bulletin boards. Five- hundred pound planters with 20-foot trees were overturned. Bushes were set on fire.
The protesters were turned away by police, but they continued to storm through downtown. News racks were overturned and set ablaze for blocks around. Windows were smashed at a state office building and state courts building. And the street fighting raged on into the night.
March on home base of acquitted cops
Meanwhile, protesters massed at the Foothill Division headquarters, the home base for the four cops who had been acquitted in the beating of Rodney King.
Scores of demonstrators started at the spot where King was beaten March 3 a year ago in this integrated working class suburb. They marched on to the police station where they joined over 200 other protesters.
The cops had been celebrating the verdict. But seeing the growing protest they quickly barricaded themselves inside the station. A large police bus was driven up on the sidewalk to block the front door and the parking lot was barricaded with police cars. Riot gear was pulled out and shotguns loaded.
The protesters began to move by barricades to march on the building. They hollered catcalls at the police and began hurling rocks and bottles. The police formed ranks and charged the crowd. Shots rang out and the crowd scattered. Eventually, the police drove demonstrators 100 yards away from the station, but they kept up their loud protest for many hours.
News media takes its lumps
The masses were also outraged at the biased and, all too frequently, racist coverage by the establishment news media. And they targeted it for protest.
The Los Angeles Times building, in downtown L.A., was attacked by the masses on four separate occasions on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. All the windows on the ground floor were broken. And around it, two cars were overturned, a bus was toppled and other vehicles torched.
There were also several instances where the masses attacked news reporters. Although the media has tried to portray this as attacks on "whites" or senseless violence, frequently the masses had a definite purpose.
In one case, for example, a crowd marched against the police as they were trying to arrest a black man. Armed with clubs and rocks, the masses chanted "Cops gonna die tonight!" The police were forced to retreat before the angry mob. A news reporter was shooting pictures of the scene. Protesters confronted him demanding he turn over his film. When he refused he was hit with a two-by-four and his film was liberated.
More police repression
It was against such protests as these -- directed squarely at the police, the city government and the establishment news media -- that the police, national guard, and army was mobilized. Their vicious repression has left dozens dead and over 5,200 arrested.
Again the news media has tried to portray the loss of life to be the result of random shooting by ordinary people. But from very incomplete reports, officials have admitted that over a third of the deaths came from the police viciously shooting down people, especially the black protesters. And many more of the deaths are officially attributed to people being "caught in the crossfire" when police fired on the masses.
The brutal beating of Rodney King is being followed by an even more vicious assault on the poor and working people of L.A. Establishment reports should fool no one. The problem in L.A. is not the masses but the racist police and the government that has set them on the masses.
The verdict caught every one by surprise. But it probably should not have.
After all, the situation was stacked for the police. The trial was moved to a virtually segregated white enclave where some 4,000 cops and their families live. Blacks were excluded from the jury. And half of the jury that was selected made openly pro-police statements before the trial began.
What is more, the reasons given to acquit the cops are the same racist ideas that Bush, and much of the Democrats with him, have been trying to shove down our throats for years. Take a look at some of the justifications given for this verdict.
He "was on drugs"
One of the jurors said the police were justified because King "looked like he was on PCP." It did not matter that medical examiners proved conclusively that King was not on drugs. It only mattered that the police "thought" he was on drugs.
But then why is it right to beat silly a man who's on drugs? This is just the repressive logic of Bush's whole "war on drugs." We should not try to help someone trapped in drug abuse. We should not provide treatment, or jobs, or fight to eliminate the poverty that is the breeding ground for drug abuse. Oh no, just hit 'em and jail 'em, that's Bush's solution to the epidemic of drug abuse in this country. And what's good enough for Bush is good enough for the LAPD.
He "refused to submit to the law"
A juror also claimed the police were right because King was "aggressive" and "controlled the situation" because he "refused to submit to the law." This is, of course, just the well-known cop trick of blaming their victims for "resisting arrest." The fact that King was on the ground, flat on his back or flat on his face, did not matter. Apparently simply trying to avoid kicks and baton blows is "aggressive" behavior.
Of course with this logic "submitting to the law" means submitting to a brutal beating, to a savage injustice. But didn't Bush just tell us that if we want to live in a "civilization" we must abide by the "rule of law." We shouldn't protest. We shouldn't resist injustice. And apparently we should not even try to avoid a racist beating. That may be civilization for the rich and powerful, but for the rest of us it means a living hell.
King, not the police, put on trial
The fact is that it was King, not the police, who was put on trial.
One of the cops' lawyers declared that the role of the police force is protecting society from "the likes of Rodney King." The jury wasn't supposed to decide if the police were brutal or not, but only whether they picked the right target for their brutality.
King was black. He "looked like" he was on drugs. He "aggressively" avoided a beating. He apparently met the profile for being the right target and therefore deserved any treatment he was given.
No racism?
A juror also claimed there was no racism involved. It did not matter that one cop was yelling racist epithets while he beat King. It did not matter that the police were making racist remarks over the police radios before and after the beating. It only mattered that two other black men who were riding in the car were not beaten.
But how many black men have to be brutalized before you can say it's racist?
Obviously we are confronted here with prejudice. But this isn't simply a matter of a few hand-picked jurors in Simi Valley. It is the prejudice that has been fostered throughout the country by the powers-that-be. "We're not racist," the say. Oh no, but they believe most black people are just drug addicts, or criminals, or welfare cheats, or homeless bums, or, oh my god, hoodlums who tear up the streets in protest. "Civilization" must be defended from the poor and oppressed. And so the racist torturers dressed in blue are acquitted, not only in L.A. but in New York and Miami and New Jersey and Chicago.
But the poor and oppressed are rising and they say, "No justice, no peace!"
The verdict acquitting the Los Angeles cops who beat Rodney King was also greeted with anger by anti-racists in Europe. It was a shock to activists there, though not a total surprise since European police also use brutal methods against blacks and other minorities, especially immigrants.
Several of the May Day demonstrations in Germany declared their outrage with the L.A. verdict. Some banners read, "Congratulations to L.A." A major theme of these protests was a call to end the violent attacks against foreigners in Germany.
In London, activists in the borough of Newham condemned the verdict. Here, a middle-aged black grocer and his son were beaten by police last November. But justice is racist in Britain, too. The blacks ended up being charged with assault themselves! They are currently on trial. On March 28th, 3,000 people demonstrated in their support.
Activists in France have also been confronting racism and police brutality. A crowd rioted outside a courthouse in the Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Sec two weeks ago after a policeman was acquitted of manslaughter in the shooting death of a teenage suspect.
President Bush says people should give up their street protests and trust in the American justice system. Why, he claimed the Justice Department had tried some 100 cases of police brutality nationwide in the last several years and we should just give them time. But even if the Justice Department did that much, it hardly even begins to touch the mammoth police brutality that has descended on the black ghettos, the Latino barrios and other communities.
In Los Angeles, for example, the outrages go well beyond the torture of Rodney King. Last year, anti-racist activists put together a list of the names of 250 people who had been brutalized or murdered by the LAPD in the last decade. Many of these cases were never investigated, and activists say they are sure there are other cases they were unable to find out about. But even the cases that were investigated tell a terrible story. According to the District Attorney's office, 54 LAPD officers were investigated for the use of excessive force between 1986 and 1990. Criminal charges were filed in only one of these cases, and that was where a cop had assaulted a police sergeant. What has the Justice Department done about all the other cops who have been simply let off the hook?
Or look at Chicago. In 1990 alone there were 2,500 formal complaints against the police. And, after a good deal of popular protest, officials recently admitted that over a 13 year period there were at least 50 cases in which blacks and Latinos had suffered from beatings, electro-shocks, suffocation and other forms of torture at one Chicago police station. Only now are some of the cops involved even facing disciplinary hearings.
The fact is that, all across the country, police departments systematically condone police brutality. And frequently the brutal cops are actually promoted. Recently the Gannett New Service studied 100 major civil lawsuits against police brutality in 22 states. In each of them the victims received compensation of $100,000 or more. The study showed that only eight of the 100 cops found guilty of brutality were disciplined. Meanwhile, at least 17 others got promoted in their departments and another two left for higher-ranking jobs in other police departments.
The exoneration of the cops who beat Rodney King was no isolated example. Police brutality is widespread, it is encouraged by the police departments, and it is condoned and covered up by the district attorneys, city governments, and federal institutions. This brutality won't be stopped by sitting on our hands and praying the Justice Department might do something. On no, we must go into the streets and build a militant mass movement to fight back.
The verdict acquitting the policemen who beat Rodney King was by no means unique. Take a look at some other recent examples of the "rule of law" around the USA:
TEANECK, N.J. On April 10, 1990 black teenager Philip Pannell was murdered by Officer Gary Spath. An all-white jury acquitted the cop this February.
MIAMI, FLA. In December 1988, a Puerto Rican man Leonardo Mercado was beaten to death while under police questioning in his apartment. Last December six Miami cops were acquitted of civil rights violations charges.
NEW YORK CITY. On August 23, 1989, Yusuf Hawkins was murdered by a white racist mob in Bensonhurst. The trigger-man was convicted of murder, but others have been let off by the courts.
MINNESOTA. Last October, 200 people marched on the Governor's mansion demanding justice for victims of police brutality. Governor Rudy Perpich refused to even come out to receive the petitions.
NEW ORLEANS, LA. Last August, cops pulled Cory Horton out of a rented van, threw him on the ground, and shot him in the head. The city has kept the four cops on the payroll and assigned two of them to investigate Horton's murder.
Many other examples can be cited from these and other cities. But these few confirm that police brutality is standard operating procedure, approved by the racist justice system.
Nearly 2,500 workers came out May 2 to show solidarity with the strike against the Kroger supermarket chain in Michigan. Chanting "they say cutback, we say fightback!" they picketed a Kroger's in the Detroit suburb of Madison Heights. Auto workers, steel workers, newspaper workers (who are also facing a contract battle), and others joined the picketing. The strikers ridiculed Kroger's hiring of scabs. One sign read, "Kroger special today: Scabs, buy one, get one free!"
About 7,800 meat cutters, grocery clerks and cashiers have been on strike since April 13. Since the picket lines went up, the strikers have received solid support from former Kroger customers. During the usually heavily shopped Easter week, the Kroger stores were virtually empty. Numbers of Kroger customers have joined the picket lines to support the strike.
Kroger, like most supermarket chains, is trying to cut costs down to the level of nonunion warehouse clubs and general merchandisers. To save money, Kroger wants to slash their workers' benefits including reducing personal days, allowing fewer full-time workers, and getting more work done by outside vendors.
But workers have been losing wages and hours for years. According to a University of Michigan study, if inflation is taken into account wages of supermarket workers nationally have fallen 30% just since 1981. The workers are demanding wage increases to match those at Farmer Jack (another large grocery chain in Michigan). And they are also demanding that more part-timers be allowed to become full-time workers.
Kroger has full-page newspaper ads calling for replacement workers. They have also slashed prices on certain items to lure customers back (for example, ham at 99 cents a pound). But still their produce is rotting and meat and milk products are reaching their expiration dates.
[Photo.]
For five months thousands of workers waged a bitter strike against Caterpillar, Inc. Mass picket lines, huge solidarity rallies and a militant determination marked the strike.
When Caterpillar demanded that workers return to their jobs or it would begin hiring scabs on April 6, thousands of strikers came out to man the picket lines. In Decatur, Illinois, over 2,000 strikers lined the quarter mile leading to the main gate of the Caterpillar plant. As the shift whistle blew the workers cheered. Few had crossed the picket line. And the crowd broke into a chant, "Hell no, we won't go!" In Peoria, Illinois, hundreds of workers and supporters massed at the plant entrance. There too, only a small number of workers crossed the picket line.
As well another 1,800 workers joined the struggle from four plants that had been working. A total of 12,600 workers were now on strike and apparently determined to win.
But a week later, the UAW leadership suddenly called off the strike and ordered the workers back to the job under a dirty concessions contract that had been previously rejected.
The UAW leaders have tried to put a good face on their betrayal. They say it is just a temporary retreat in order to regroup and push ahead lawsuits Against Caterpillar and federal legislation barring the permanent replacement of strikers. But the fact is that this is a terrible setback -- not only for the Caterpillar workers but, also, for the whole workers' movement.
Although negotiations for a new contract are continuing, Caterpillar has broken the pattern agreement for the industry, is imposing separate contracts on individual plants, and is grabbing a whole slew of wage and work-rule take-backs.
What is more, Caterpillar has shown that the threat of hiring scabs is enough to bring the powerful UAW to its knees. A precedent has been set that will be used by the auto billionaires and other monopolies. The Wall Street Journal reports a GM executive chuckling, "We're quietly cheering for Caterpillar."
The UAW leaders whine that they really had no choice since federal laws allowing the permanent replacement of strikers have stacked the deck against the workers. They see no alternative but to lobby for a new law. While it is true that the law favors the bosses, it is also true that the workers have never been able to advance their struggle by submitting to unjust laws. If you don't fight on the picket line to block scabs and shut down the plants, how can you ever expect to have the power to change unjust laws?
But the UAW bureaucrats would never think of defying the law. They are respectable labor statesmen who sit on the labor-management boards and hobnob with the capitalist politicians. They are more concerned to save their own respectable positions than to save the jobs and livelihood of the rank and file. For over a decade they have been preaching that workers have to grant concessions to help their companies become "competitive" against the threat of cheap Japanese, and Mexican, and Korean labor. Instead of uniting with workers in other countries against the capitalist blood suckers they have united with the U.S. monopolies against the foreign workers.
Following this strategy, hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs, take-back contracts have become the norm, and the workers' movement has been all but decimated.
This situation will not be turned around by lobbying Congress or electing a pro-business Democrat like Clinton. It can only be changed by organizing the rank and file for struggle, by defying the unjust laws, by building solidarity between the workers in the different industries and in different countries. But not a step can be made in this direction as long as the workers are still tied to the union bureaucrats.
The collapse of the Caterpillar strike is a major setback. But it has also exposed the UAW bureaucrats and aroused the anger of the workers in many industries against them. If this helps the rank and file to begin to organize independently, then this defeat may yet open the way to building a new workers' movement based on the principles of class struggle.
On May 1, some 200 workers picketed the Transit Authority headquarters in Brooklyn, New York. The picket was called to denounce the fact that transit workers have been without a contract. It became a rally to denounce a new proposal for contract take backs that was announced just two days before by the TA and Sonny Hall, the head of the Transport Workers Union.
The new proposal retains a series of take backs that the workers had overwhelmingly rejected just a month ago. It includes the same medical cuts and co-payments, workers comp reductions, and lower pay for new hires and suspended workers as the rejected proposal. Wage increases have been juggled around and may actually be worse then the last proposal. Even the TA is gloating that the new pact will not cost them a penny more.
The Marxist-Leninist Party put out a leaflet denouncing the new proposal in detail and calling for workers to build up the movement that had led to the defeat of the last contract. The leaflet also called on transit workers to join the protests against the racist verdict that acquitted four cops who had beaten Rodney King.
The following report is based on eyewitness accounts from supporters of the Marxist-Leninist Party who helped defend the clinics in Buffalo, New York from the anti-abortion bullies of Operation Rescue (OR). It covers the first week of activity, April 20-26. It is not comprehensive, but a sketch illustrating the activity and moods of the activists on the front lines of the clinic defense movement.
Four clinics are involved. The three in Buffalo itself are within walking distance of each other, and they are located on Main Street, on High Street, and on Linwood. The other clinic is in suburban Amherst.
Actually the first big pro-choice action took place on April 11 as some 2,000 demonstrators marched through Buffalo. On Sunday, April 19, a local anti-abortion leader, Reverend Paul made a scene by walking into the midst of 200 pro-choice activists practicing clinic defense at the Main Street clinic. He was expelled by several activists who denounced him and "escorted" him across the street. Our account begins on the next day.
Monday: Day One of clinic defense
OR had proclaimed that Monday, April 20 would see its first show of force. Anticipating OR action, pro-choice activists began arriving at the clinics as early as 4:00 a.m. The largest gathering was at Main Street with about 250 clinic defenders. The clinic floodlights provided the only light early that morning as the activists practiced forming human walls in front of the door to fend off OR assaults. A major section of the group was composed of women and men new to the struggle. There was an anxious atmosphere among them -- they weren't quite sure what to expect. But they drew inspiration from their numbers and delighted in seeing how effective they were in repelling practice attempts to break their defense lines.
But the expected OR attack never materialized. By mid-morning only a handful of anti-abortion zealots stood on the other side of the street chanting prayers. The pro-choice throng chanted long and loud in response. They condemned the bigotry of the "pro-life" movement, shouting "Right-to-life, your name's a lie, you don't care if women die!" and "Racist, sexist, anti-gay, born-again bigots, go away!" They chanted "Hey, hey, ho, ho -- Operation Rescue's got to go!" And they mocked OR, yelling, "Pray, you'll need it, your cause will be defeated!"
Things got hot when OR leader Keith Tucci tried to grandstand in front of the pro-choice forces. A number of activists "got in his face" until the police escorted him to safety. About 9:00 a.m., a lone OR crusader attempted to crash the clinic defense lines, and was easily repelled. Then the cops led him away. With things well in hand, some activists left Main Street to go to the suburban church where OR forces were still gathering.
It was the same at the Linwood clinic. Over 100 pro-choice defenders shouted down about a dozen "pro-lifers." At the High Street clinic, the morning was rather uneventful.
Monday morning was a harbinger of what was to come. Though OR would bring hundreds of their supporters to the clinics later in the week, it was already apparent that the presence of clinic defenders was disrupting OR's plans. The pro-choice activists were ready and willing to do battle. And the boastful threats of the loud-mouthed "holy hordes" to shut down the clinics were fizzling.
As well, there were already signs that the clinic defenders weren't going to abide by guidelines issued by the leaders of Buffalo United for Choice (BUC) against confrontational tactics. These guidelines, issued out of respect for establishment pro-choice organizations and figures, such as the National Organization of Women (NOW) and the lawyers, tended to go by the wayside as soon as the clinic defenders got a stomach full of OR. The ban on "shouting at and arguing with members of Operation Rescue," for example, was routinely violated. This militancy preserved the spirits of the clinic defenders, and allowed them to continue the struggle hour after hour, in good weather or bad.
Successful on Monday morning, the clinic defenders didn't let up the pressure. On Monday night, the "kick-off rally" for Operation Rescue in suburban Williamsville was picketed by 75 angry pro-choice demonstrators.
Tuesday: the battle begins in earnest
There was tension in the air as clinic defenders gathered on Tuesday morning. The night before, OR had attracted over 800 people to their "kick-off rally." Where would they strike? How many would attack? Rumors were everywhere.
As it turned out, Main Street saw one of the main OR strikes, as 150 Bible-thumpers faced off with 250 clinic defenders. The two sides were separated by the six lanes of traffic. The police erected barricades on both sides of the street, but they allowed several OR goons to cross the street and stand in front of the defense lines. Every time OR got near the pro-choice forces a bunch of people would rush over, and denounce and mock them until they retreated. OR was intimidated. They couldn't do much more than mumble their prayers across the street.
A large OR force also hit High Street. But the clinic was well defended by pro-choice militants who kept them at bay. Unable to dent our ranks, the antiabortion leaders were reduced to stunts, and sought to grab some media attention. The notorious Reverend Schenck paraded what he alleged was an aborted fetus in front of the clinic defenders. (A medical examiner later determined the fetus was not medically aborted but stillborn, aborted by God, so to speak.) Activists tried to get at Schenck and in the process the fetus was knocked from his hands. The cops hauled Schenck off on charges related to the fetus.
OR also set up a picket of about 60 people on the sidewalk in front of the Linwood clinic and its pro-choice defense wall. They temporarily outnumbered the clinic defenders, but reinforcements soon arrived from Main Street, including MLP supporters who sought to get slogans going. "Who'll defend the clinics? We will, we will!" was popular. Activists also infiltrated the ranks of the OR picket with pro-choice placards and slogans, and pro-choice people held placards between OR's picket and the street. In short, OR was surrounded. Eventually the cops took OR across the street, out of harm's way.
This was the first big test, and the clinic defenders passed with flying colors.
Wednesday morning: OR fails in Amherst
Getting nowhere in Buffalo, OR struck in Amherst on Wednesday. They sent some shock troops to get arrested outside the Amherst medical offices. But they tried to keep the pro-choice forces away from Amherst by making a big show at the Main Street clinic, and then gradually transferring these forces to Amherst. But the clinic defenders responded in kind as contingents raced from the three Buffalo clinics to Amherst.
The police ordered the pro-choice forces in Amherst to confine themselves to a small area, and announced that anyone who entered the street would be arrested. They even arrested five media people. Yet they allowed OR to cross over the street (as long as they didn't lie down in it) to the pro-choice area. These OR raiders were repelled by angry activists, who also managed to infiltrate some of their own back across the street among OR's ranks.
OR continued to send people to lie in the street and get arrested; over 150 eventually got busted. The cops also led away a pro-choice patient escort for no apparent reason, and hassled other pro-choice people, but mass resistance held the police back. And some pro- choice activists shouted "OR gets to stay, pro-choice escorts taken away!" and "Get the sheep out of the street!"
A number of media people were disrespectful to the patients and disrupted their escorts. They had no respect for the privacy of patients, despite the threat of OR harassment against them.
The clinic remained open all day.
At the home of Mayor Griffin
Wednesday night, activists rallied outside the home of Buffalo Mayor Jimmy Griffin, who had personally invited OR to invade the city. The rally was also a fitting response to OR, which doesn't just target clinics but also targets individuals at their homes. Earlier in the day OR had paraded, with banners and flyers, saying this doctor "kills children," around the Amherst neighborhood of a doctor who does abortions.
Pro-choice protesters began gathering in the street at 6:30 p.m. in front of Griffin's home in a segregated section of south Buffalo. Liberal-oriented pro-choice leaders boycotted the event, but nonetheless it attracted 150-200 activists.
Opposing the rally was a motley crew of OR thugs, and a considerable number of Griffin supporters from the area, about 100 altogether. Even here, in Griffin's backyard, a number of residents stood with the pro-choice demonstrators. Another resident told us that he knew the Griffin supporters as worthless "flies" whose main fun was hanging out in the park and getting drunk.
The Griffin-lovers hurled abuse at the supporters of abortion rights. And they yelled "faggot" at anyone they imagined was gay. The pro-choice crowd wouldn't back down and chanted "Racist, sexist, anti-gay, born-again bigots, go away!" The anti-Griffin slogans intensified as Griffin displayed an "abortion kills children" placard in his front window.
The pro-choice demonstrators refused to leave until Griffin came out of his house and accepted a petition from them condemning his stand. Then the demonstrators began to leave. But pro-Griffin goons continued to threaten them. The two sides faced off across Abbott Street, a block from Griffin's home. Suddenly a "pro-life" goon ran across several lanes of traffic and punched a pro-choice demonstrator, breaking his jaw, before others could come to his rescue. The police witnessed the whole thing but never arrested the attacker. This made an impression on activists that lasted for the rest of the week, undercutting the view that "the police are our friends."
Thursday: OR defeated at High Street
Thursday's big battle occurred at the High Street clinic. When word hit Main Street that OR was gathering at High, about 50 people left for that clinic. As they left, MLP supporters organized them into a marching, slogan-shouting contingent. The cops tried to stop the contingent from joining the activists lined up in front of the High Street clinic, but were forced to back down. And the arrival of these reinforcements was greeted with cheers.
OR made several attempts to crack the clinic defense lines. In the front of the building, OR rushed from across the street. They got by the police, but not the clinic defenders. OR attackers then gave up and just laid down in the street. The cops didn't arrest them, but just helped them back to their side.
Things were more heated on the side of the building. Some OR attackers tried to rush past defense lines, scale a wall, and enter the clinic parking lot. Pro-choice militants captured them and hurled them back. One OR thug was flattened by an activist running into him at full speed.
The strong defense knocked the wind out of OR's sails; there were no more rushes that day. The clinic defenders remained on the alert, but the atmosphere was far from grim. OR leader Keith Tucci tried to grab the TV spotlight by climbing a catwalk to the top of a building across the street. "Jump, jump, you'll have a place in heaven!" yelled the clinic defenders. For the next two hours chants rang out hailing OR's defeat and ridiculing their religious bigotry.
Meanwhile there was time for discussion. One young woman told an MLP supporter how she went to High Street for an abortion last year and was harassed by OR. Today she was back to stand up for women's rights, and she had brought her younger brother too. The talk ranged from the best tactics to fend off OR rushes, to the struggle against the Persian Gulf war, and how anti-people atrocities are inbred in the capitalist system.
Friday: OR in disarray
After the first four days of what activists dubbed "Operation Fiasco," the antiabortion bullies couldn't mount any serious assaults on Friday. Their only big activity was at Main Street, where over 70 OR zombies were arrested for blocking a locked side entrance while patients freely entered through the front.
At one point Keith Tucci, surrounded by police, got within a couple of feet of clinic defense lines. An MLP supporter tried to get slogans going against him.
But the activists around him were trying to implement BUC guidelines against shouting at OR people, and they balked. The MLP supporter respected their wishes. But within five minutes, several of them had changed their minds and were shouting fierce slogans against Tucci. Once again the logic of the situation prevailed over the guidelines to avoid confrontation.
All through the week, clinic defenders would point out various anti-abortion bigwigs for ridicule. This time, an MLP supporter from Detroit pointed out that the notorious Lynn Mills, an OR leader from Michigan, was hovering nearby, and a chant broke out against her. Mills, who likes to embarrass patients and doctors by violating their privacy, was crestfallen, and scurried across the street.
Saturday: reinforcements
Everyone knew the weekend would mean reinforcements for both sides. Would the clinic defenders have sufficient forces to stave off OR? Yes! The battle scenes? High Street and Main Street.
The morning was cold and rainy. Many activists were exhausted but more determined than ever. "We're tired, we're cranky, we don't like the mayor!" The pro-choice reinforcements, who had been following the battle on TV for a week, were anxious to get into the fray.
The pro-choice contingent at Main was double or triple its usual size of 250. OR's forces were up, but not as much. Once again OR was reduced to trying to cause a disruption at the locked side door. A group of OR zealots crawled past police and laid down there.
Some clinic defenders tried to get at the OR raiders to drive them off, but the cops kept the pro-choice forces away. Meanwhile, marshals following BUC guidelines also restrained these clinic defenders by ordering them to link arms and form a passive line nearby instead. This was at a time when pro-choice forces were large enough to drive away OR and hold off the cops. Still some MLP supporters and other clinic defenders went into the side street and blocked another 17 OR people from getting to the side door. These OR knelt in the street, but the cops did not bust them. Instead the police were more interested in attacking clinic defenders. A cop hit a pro-choice woman twice in the face, then arrested her. Meanwhile another activist hounding a "pro-life" leader named Jewett was arrested. This contrasted with the kid-glove treatment the police gave to the OR blockaders: they let the OR people waltz up to the side door, and they took an hour and a half to arrest 15 of them.
The outrageous police behavior had its effect. Even one of the BUC marshals joked, "I'm ready for the revolution now."
The activists also protected the privacy of women entering the clinics from the media, and they blocked camera crews.
At High Street a big pro-choice presence prevented OR from doing much. There were no serious OR charges, but at every opportunity activists shouted down OR. "You have the courts, we have the streets," "Operation Failure," and other slogans rang out. A man calling himself "Reverend Choice" kept the pro-choice throng entertained with his non-stop mocking of OR fanatics across the street.
At about 10:30 a.m. the BUC marshals announced that all the patients at High Street were in, and the clinic defenders would be holding a victory rally at Main Street. The activists began to disperse, and the remaining OR Bible-thumpers left too. MLP supporters unfurled a banner saying "Defend the clinics! Fight for women's rights!" and called on those leaving to march in a contingent up to Main. A group marched up to the Main Street clinic chanting slogans. The arrival of the High Street defenders was greeted at Main Street with a festival of slogan- shouting and mockery of OR. The entire block was filled with defenders of women's rights. The media put the number at 1,500 for pro-choice and 500 for OR. It was a triumphant moment for the clinic defense movement.
Across the street, OR could only look on somberly.
[Photos.]
During the first week, April 20-26, the clinic defense movement kept Operation Rescue (OR) from shutting down Buffalo clinics. In the second week, April 27 to May 2, OR didn't recover. The number of clinic defenders was down from the first week, as many who had come to Buffalo for the first week had to return home. But the pro-choice forces kept up a spirited opposition to OR, whose numbers were also down and who continued to falter. By the end of the second week OR announced that it was going to leave Buffalo altogether.
Tuesday: it's a mistake to rely on the police
The most serious OR clinic raid on April 28 took place on High St. The anti-abortion forces arrived earlier than usual and grouped in front of the building. But a force of about 50 pro-choice activists took control of the stairs leading up to the clinic's front doors.
Some leaders of Buffalo United for Choice (BUC) then agreed to turn over the stairs to the police, and the activists were ordered away. This proved to be a mistake, and it gave OR the opportunity to charge the clinic. An outer line of clinic defenders tried to turn them back but a number of OR made it through into the parking lot between the front entrance and the front sidewalk. The cops allowed OR to mill around the parking lot and instead set upon clinic defenders trying to clear them out. Five pro-choice people were roughed up and arrested by the cops. Finally the police began to make arrests of the anti-abortion thugs, gently hauling off 73 of them.
The clinic remained open, and OR was unable to do much of anything at the other clinics.
Wednesday: OR suspends activities
By now the anti-abortion forces were openly in crisis. On Wednesday they announced a two-day suspension of their activities. Local "pro-life" leader Karen Prior-Swallow moaned to the press that "our strength has been drained." OR stayed away from the clinics that day and the next. And OR leaders suggested that they might fold up tent on Saturday. (Originally OR boasted of a four-week invasion.)
There were reports that the local OR people wanted out soon. Other OR leaders talked of moving on to other cities. Meanwhile five OR leaders were ordered arrested for violating an injunction prohibiting getting within 15 feet of clinic entrances.
Friday: back in Amherst
On Friday, OR resumed their hijinks, getting another 100 of their ranks arrested at the suburban Amherst clinic. The police also arrested four clinic defenders. But the clinic stayed open, and the defenders shouted at OR: "All the clinics are open, and your mind is closed!"
Saturday: the last gasp?
On Saturday OR moved back to downtown Buffalo. Some blocked the rear entrance, while others harassed the front. 65 were arrested. Clinic defenders demonstrated against OR.
OR announced that this was its last day in Buffalo, and its leaders would depart by Sunday. But clinic defenders have pledged to remain vigilant, just to make sure that OR doesn't change its mind. As a number of clinic defenders proclaimed to OR during the last two weeks, "You'll remember Buffalo!"
[Photos: Upper left: Reinforcements to the clinic defense lines in Buffalo arrive by car. Upper right: Activists link arms against OR at the Main St. clinic. Lower left: Clinic defenders denounce an OR bully. Lower right: After defending the High St. clinic, activists marched to Womenservices on Main St., Saturday, April 25.]
Buffalo has been a thrilling victory for the pro-choice defenders. Operation Rescue came, fizzled, and then ran out of Buffalo. Not the mayor, not the church, not the finger-wagging of the news media against clinic defenders as "extremists," nothing could save Operation Rescue (OR) from defeat.
Why couldn't OR run roughshod in Buffalo and make it into another Wichita, as they had promised? One reason was a different response from pro-choice forces. This time OR couldn't go to a clinic without being confronted; it couldn't even stay home without being confronted, with pro-choice demonstrations denouncing OR or going to denounce OR's friend Mayor Griffin.
This response was not an accident. In the weeks and months preceding OR's April invasion of Buffalo, different views had come forward. Some organizations had advocated a repeat of the disastrous Wichita tactics -- relying on the police and avoiding confrontation with OR. Others advocated mass confrontation against OR. And some organizations tried to stay in the middle, organizing clinic defense but advocating it could be done without confrontation.
Let's look at some of these organizations, and what they advocated.
The Pro-Choice Network wanted another try at Wichita tactics
The Pro-choice Network (PCN) wanted to leave everything to the police. It staked everything on an injunction against OR that had been obtained in the courts. It advocated that no one should go to the clinics, especially for the first 48 hours. It held that, if no one went to defend the clinics, then it would be clear to the courts and sympathetic politicians that OR was responsible for breaking the injunction, and they would see to it that the injunction was enforced.
In line with this, when lawyers from PCN went to the University of Buffalo to denounce OR prior to its coming to town, they actually told students to stay away from the clinics. They also went to pro-choice meetings and suggested to them that anyone who went to the clinic might be arrested, as the injunction might be enforced against clinic defenders as well as anti-abortion fanatics.
Can you imagine what would have happened if clinic defenders had stayed away? It would have been Wichita all over again.
Even on April 21 the Pro-Choice Network took out a big two-page ad in the Buffalo News. Presumably it would be taken by people to be against Operation Rescue, and perhaps that is how it was taken by many of those who endorsed it. But it actually doesn't mention OR, and instead denounces "outsiders, unlawfully dividing our community." This was a cold welcome indeed to the many ardent defenders of choice who came to Buffalo from around the country.
Furthermore, the ad didn't call for women's rights, but for "a community based on mutual respect and lawfulness." This reflected PCN's view that the police would enforce the law, and that no one should come to defend the clinics. Whatever others took it to be, anyone who had heard PCN's lawyers knew that PCN intended it as a slap in the face at clinic defenders as well as OR. And what can a call to obey the law mean to the millions of women who live in states where abortion is all but illegal?
NOW thinks campaign contributions, are more important
The National Organization for Women (NOW) was one of the leaders of the giant April 5 demonstration that took place just two weeks before OR was to arrive in Buffalo. And yet NOW did next to nothing to mobilize support for defense against OR. NOW was too busy promoting a few women politicians. And NOW President Patricia Ireland sent out mailings soliciting funds to run women candidates of the Democratic or Republican party; she calls this "making 1992 the year of the woman candidate." But she didn't appeal for people to go to Buffalo or coin any exciting slogan for it.
However, when the pro-choice activists are excited to go to the clinics, and even NOW members are chomping at the bit, the NOW local leadership will go to the clinics. But it advocates that there should be no confrontation and it tries to organize buffer forces to keep the activists under control. This is what it did in Buffalo.
And the NOW leadership sees nothing wrong with taking credit for the struggle. At the last minute Patricia Ireland moved a national meeting of the NOW board from Tampa, Florida to Buffalo, New York. And she went to a clinic defense briefly to make a statement. But to what aim? Did she call for more initiative from the rank-and-file defenders of women rights? Did she call for taking the energy of this struggle to the clinics and workplaces and communities all across this land? Nah. She stated that "The bottom line for us in '92 has to be electoral." (The Buffalo News) She wanted to orient the activists to the Democratic National Convention, and said that it would be "a wonderful opportunity for us to communicate that George Bush is anti-abortion and that he favors Operation Rescue."
That about sums it up. Clinic defense is a diversion for NOW. If they have to, their leaders will go there to keep their members happy and to cool things down. But their aim is to channel them back to the Democratic National Convention or other establishment activities.
Buffalo United for Choice
Buffalo United for Choice (BUC) was somewhat different from the above groups. Among the people and groups who gathered under its umbrella, were many who wanted to show up at the clinics. And BUC systematically organized people to show up day after day.
Yet BUC tried to follow the line of non-confrontation with OR. The dominant view among its leaders was to combine clinic defense with guidelines in the spirit of NOW and PCN. For example, it called for a ban on "shouting at and arguing with members of Operation Rescue."
So a number of BUC leaders and marshals tried to keep things quiet. They tried at first to drown out militant slogans with the PCN-style slogan "Violence, violence -- we say no, got no place in Buffalo." And one of its spokeswomen, who was in local NOW, went to the press to make a sectarian denunciation of a group in the militant wing of the clinic defenders: "People who come with political agendas of their own, other than ours, they are part of the problem. They are not helping our cause, so they must be helping Operation Rescue." (BuffaloNews, April 22)
In practice, however, the course of the struggle kept exceeding the bounds of BUC's guidelines. The mass of clinic defenders became more active as they faced OR, and as they saw the antics of the police too. Even many BUC marshals would get carried away at times by the logic of the situation, and join in with the slogans or confrontations against OR. But BUC didn't change its basic view.
NWROC
The National Women's Rights Organizing Coalition (NWROC), which is led by the'*Revolutionary Workers' League (RWL), is different from the other organizations we have discussed. NWROC, and the activists it mobilized around itself, acted as part of the militant wing of the clinic defenders.
At the same time, NWROC's policy is oriented toward getting NOW and other big reformist groupings to do something. When such groups come to some agreement with NWROC, it has shown itself willing to tone things down. In Detroit, for example, NWROC's tactics at clinics have often depended on whether NOW was present, and their plans for demonstrations might center on what they thought they could get NOW to do. Indeed, Karen Sundberg, a local NOW leader who had issued a written statement denouncing militancy, had been ushered into the first NWROC conference in 1990.
Similarly, when NWROC talks about the working class, or calls for a "workers' party," it wants them based on the unions led by the reformist labor bureaucracy. This is what is referred to diplomatically as "labor" or "the organizations of struggle of the workers." When it talks about linking up with the minorities and other oppressed groups, here it has its eyes on the big reformist groupings. In the name of the "united front," it centers its activities on coming to terms with the reformists.
At the same time, NWROC (and RWL) has a problem with strident sectarianism. It has trouble gauging the sentiment of the masses, and its desire to bully and impose its full line on every action or "united front" in which it has influence leads to constant friction. In Buffalo, it ludicrously tried to claim credit for the whole thing.
Build an independent trend
The views of PCN, NOW, and similar groups are not an accident. They follow from the orientation of these groups' leaders towards getting a place in the establishment. And only an orientation towards a different class force, towards the workers, minorities and activists, can provide a solid basis for building a militant movement, which can repeat the successes of Buffalo.
In Buffalo, there was a sizable left section of the clinic defense movement. Our Party threw itself into the struggle against OR in Buffalo and encouraged the activists to engage in mass clinic defense and confrontation with OR. A number of other organizations also took part in the left, including NWROC, ACT-UP, etc. The existence of this left wing helped galvanize the clinic defenders as a whole. However, as we have seen, much of this left also believed, in one way or another, in putting its hopes in NOW, or other big reformist groupings.
Our Party agitated among the clinic defenders as a whole for the building of an independent trend. And with our May Day march, we called for bringing pro-choice agitation to the masses of workers and poor. The rank-and-file activists need the confidence and enthusiasm that it is them, and the working masses, who can stand up to build something new, something separate from NOW, from the corrupt trade union leadership, and from the other establishment groups. And when we stand together to build such an independent trend, we shall have more victories like Buffalo.
[Photo.]
On the afternoon of April 26, the Marxist-Leninist Party organized a May Day march through the streets of Buffalo. It came right in the midst of the struggle to defend women's rights against the holy bullies of Operation Rescue. This was entirely appropriate. May Day is a time when workers around the world proclaim their desire to fight against exploitation and oppression. It is a day which, from its birth in the struggle for the eight-hour day, has always been connected with the ongoing struggles facing the working class. The MLP held this march a week early to dramatize the close connection between the class struggle and the defense of women's rights.
The route of the march was designed to bring the pro-choice movement directly to the working people. It began in Prospect Park with over 70 participants. Red banners waved in the breeze as the march entered a poor working class community with a large Spanish-speaking population. Slogans in English and Spanish not only supported abortion rights but also other needs of working class and poor families such as child care, health care and good education. The march denounced the Republicans and Democrats and declared, "Don't vote for the millionaires! Take to the streets!" As well, a leaflet was distributed along the march route explaining what was behind the attack on abortion rights and why workers should join the struggle.
Although rainy weather kept many people indoors, the march was greeted time and again by people waving from their porches and windows. Some called out their approval. A couple of pro-choice activists saluted the march with raised fists as they followed it in their car. And, along the way, several people joined the march.
It culminated in a rally at Lafayette Park. After short speeches by the comrades of the MLP, two other pro-choice activists spoke on the need to stand up for women's rights.
Which class will support struggle?
A few hours later, a May Day meeting was held with speeches, songs, and discussion about women's rights and the cause of socialist revolution.
One speech contrasted the successful struggle in Buffalo to the experience in Wichita. It showed that the liberal establishment, far from welcoming the successes of the clinic defenders, has started a new campaign against them. And it declared that, if we are not to pin our hopes on the courts and politicians and other parts of the establishment, where then do we look? It is the ordinary workers and youth, women and men. It is going directly among the working people with the pro-choice message, and building a powerful working women's movement.
OR is only one spearhead of the anti-women backlash. To fight this backlash, we need a movement against low wages, the lack of day care, the sweatshop conditions, the attacks on welfare mothers, and the overall oppression of working women.
For a new society!
The second speech further linked the anti-woman backlash to the interests of the ruling class. It showed that every step women take toward equality and liberation comes into conflict with the interests of wealth and capital. And so, legal equality is not enough for the liberation of women, and their full participation in all aspects of human society, political, economic, social and cultural. It is necessary to eliminate capitalist society with its use of women as cheap labor. And it is necessary to eliminate the situation where the family is the economic unit of society, where the livelihood and status of children and adults is dependent on the separate fortunes and social relationships of each individual family. Thus the struggle for women's liberation must lead to the building of a revolutionary movement that can usher in a new system, socialism.
And the speech reviewed the experience of the Bolshevik revolution. It showed what revolution meant for women. And it showed the period when the fight for liberation of women was given up, was also the period when the fight for socialism was given up, and state capitalism was built up instead.
The anti-abortion movement has a broader target than just stopping abortion. From Bush to Operation Rescue, it is also chopping away at birth control.
A holy war on contraceptives
Writing in the OR NationalRegister, Randall Terry puts it as follows: "At its core, birth control is anti-child. And I am not only speaking about abortifacients such as the pill or I.U.D., but any drug or device that prevents us from having children. When we use birth control we are saying, 'No, I do not want children.' "
For Randall Terry, the millions upon millions of couples and women who love and sacrifice for their children are really "anti-child," because they used a condom or the pill to time their children. That's typical of how the "pro-life" movement turns words on their head, hating existing life and beating up doctors and patients in the name of "life." For Randall Terry, sex itself is suspect and "anti-child" and akin to "child-killing" unless it is redeemed by pregnancy and childbirth.
Indeed, if you followed Terry's line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, virginity or abstinence should also be condemned as anti-child and baby-killing because they prevent childbirth. Women should stay barefoot and pregnant.
Terry says Christians should have as many children as possible. As to their timing? He knows only one method: "In an age of Christianity when we constantly talk about faith, trusting God, God supplying our needs, etc., why can't we simply trust God for how many children we have?"
Naturally most working people, whether religious or not, know that Terry's ranting against family planning is sheer bunk. Terry himself is forced to admit that, even among believers bludgeoned into mouthing anti-abortion phrases, "in their hearts they sympathize with why some women have abortions," to say nothing of using that instrument of the devil, birth control. And as the clinic defenders of Buffalo showed, more and more people don't just sympathize with the right to abortion, but are taking steps to defend it.
Bush administration censors birth control information
But, the reader may think, only religious fanatics like Terry could oppose birth control. The "kinder and gentler" conservatives like the Bush administration surely would protect a woman's right to birth control.
Don't count on it.
This April the Bush administration censored birth control information from a health guidebook sent to federal employees. Parents enrolled in the Blue Cross & Blue Shield federal employee insurance program receive the book Taking Care of Your Child free. But this year Bush's officials at the Office of Personnel Management tore out seven pages dealing with condoms, diaphragms and birth control methods before sending the book out.
Thus not only has the Bush administration issued a gag order on mentioning abortion at federally-funded health clinics, it has censored birth control information as well.
[Photos:Top: The Marxist-Leninist Party contingent marches in Washington, D.C. on April 5. More than 500,000 people turned out to support abortion rights. Bottom: A week earlier, 30,000 people marched in San Francisco to defend choice.]
250 defenders of abortion rights defended Her Clinic in downtown Los Angeles on April 18 against 125 religious bigots from Operation Rescue (OR). This was one of three clinics under attack. At Her Clinic, the pro-choice activists stretched out in front of the clinic entrance in lines that were often two to three people deep. OR's Bible- thumpers harassed several patients and blocked them for a few minutes, but pro-choice activists escorted the patients past OR to the clinic. Meanwhile the activists shouted slogans, "OR, your name's a lie, you don't care if women die," and mocked the religious extremists, "They wouldn't call you a flock if they didn't think you're sheep."
Many police were on hand, some on horseback. When they saw spirited lines of pro-choice activists, they roped off the streets. They didn't help the clinic however, and sat on their hands when Bible-thumpers harassed a few patients. Finally, the police acted -- to arrest a clinic defender. An OR thug pushed against the lines of clinic defenders, and was pushed back. He then complained to the police.
The activists discussed the role of the police and the offensive of the rich against women's rights. There was a good deal of wishful thinking about the possibility of voting in pro-choice candidates who would change things. At the same time, many activists took leaflets and Workers' Advocates from the friends of the Marxist-Leninist Party, and there was keen interest in the leaflet in support of a mass action against budget cutbacks planned for May 9.
[Photo.]
2,000 people marched in the rain and gathered at a rally on Saturday, April 11 in Buffalo. This was a warning to the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue that it would get tit-for-tat when it tried to shut down clinics in Buffalo later that month. The rally was attended by pro- choice activists from Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Detroit, and Canada as well as from Buffalo. Even one of OR crusader Randall Terry's aunts was there; she is pro-choice and addressed the demonstration.
Despite the incessant rain, spirits were high. Slogans rang out during the march, led in large part by activists from Toronto, Canada and by comrades of the Marxist-Leninist Party.
The speakers and groups at the rally had different views on how to deal with Operation Rescue, and a number of discussions broke out. There were those who wanted to rely on the police and courts. And there were those who believed that it would be up to the masses to stop OR by confronting it in front of the clinics and elsewhere in Buffalo. The MLP comrades, for example, unfurled a banner at the rally proclaiming "Defend the Clinics, Confront Operation Rescue!" and "Fight for Women's Rights!" 300 copies of Workers' Advocate were distributed, with a lead article discussing the experience of clinic defense in Wichita and calling for mass defense of the clinics.
The demonstration thrilled many participants. Its success was one sign of the fiasco that OR would suffer in Buffalo two weeks later.
Communities along the Rio Grande River, on both sides of the Mexico-Texas border, are being threatened with plans for toxic and radioactive waste dumps. These dumps would pollute their water.
The good news is that, although none of the dumps has yet been built, a joint U.S.-Mexican environmental movement has sprung up to block all of them. In late March, hundreds of American and Mexican residents held protests at various border-crossing points.
The Rio Grande River and aquifers running under the border area could be contaminated by the proposed dump sites just south of El Paso in southwestern Texas. The drinking water and entire water supply of many Texas and Mexican The towns are at risk.
Several dumps are being planned:
* Texas has been looking for a site to place low-level radioactive waste. Environmental groups consider the newest proposed site to be unsafe since it's on geologically unstable ground, next to a floodplain. The state's previous proposed site was also opposed, and blocked, by the residents of El Paso.
* A hazardous waste dump is planned near Dryden by Chemical Waste Management, Inc., a subsidiary of the U.S. garbage company, Waste Management, Inc.
* A private low-level radioactive waste site is scheduled near Spofford.
[Photo: Protest in Del Rio, Texas against the plan for three toxic waste dumps along the Texas/Mexico border.]
This April, people in Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego, won their struggle against a hazardous waste incinerator, due to open in August. The burner in the fast-growing city was to be operated by Chemical Waste Management, Inc. to burn cancer-causing PCB's, which were banned by the U.S. EPA in the '70s. The burner's license was revoked because, as a Mexican Ecology Department spokesman put it, "It didn't comply with the requirements, and furthermore, the populace was protesting plenty against this plant."
The environmental struggle of the U.S. and Mexican masses along the border deserves support from people across the U.S. It is typical of the corporations and government agencies to try to dump and burn dangerous materials in regions inhabited by poor and oppressed nationality people, figuring that they don't matter and won't be able to stop it. And this toxic dumping is only the tip of the iceberg of pollution along the border.
Under the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement, more U.S. and other multinational corporations will be given wider rein to locate just across the border. In addition to the miserable wages, a big incentive for the capitalists to locate there is freedom from the stronger health, safety and environmental regulations that exist in the U.S. or Canada.
The U.S. companies already operating across the border, the maquiladoras, have a filthy 25-year history of drowning the border towns in toxic chemicals and waste. Impoverished Mexican laborers have borne the brunt of this poisoning.
Last spring, for example, there was a scandal in the Rio Grande/Gulf towns of Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico. Within a year the two neighboring towns produced 23 babies without brains. This is a very high rate of anencephaly.
The cause is obvious. Matamoros is basically one big open toxic sewer. It is polluted by over 80 U.S.-owned, unregulated factories, including three GM parts plants. It is plagued by constant chemical leaks, explosions and hazardous waste dumping. The exact source of the birth defects has not been pinpointed, though. The investigation by U.S. Centers for Disease Control is just a cover-up. Its officials claim they have NO evidence linking the fetal problems to pollution.
Maquiladora poisoning is on the rise. A serious bi-national mass movement is needed to put a stop to it, as well as to clean up the damage already done. The U.S. and Mexican workers need to unite in struggle against the capitalists for higher wages, health care and a safe environment.
Late on the night of April 5, President Alberto Fujimori of Peru announced on TV that he was suspending the constitution, dissolving Congress and arresting Congressional leaders. Strict press censorship was imposed. Fujimori's justification? He said that he wanted to reform a corrupt judiciary and an uncooperative legislature. He accused legislators of being lazy and blocking his plans to lift the government out of bankruptcy. He also accused them of failing to pass laws to punish drug money laundering, to crack down on corruption, and to lift bank secrecy.
The chieftains of the armed forces and police put their backing behind Fujimori. Truckloads of troops and armored cars surrounded government facilities, and tanks surrounded the Congressional building and the Supreme Court. Soldiers were ordered to arrest leaders of opposition parties including an attempt to capture Alan Garcia of the APRA party; Garcia was president before Fujimori's 1990 election.
The next day some legislators tried to hold an assembly to denounce the coup, but it was broken up by troops with tear gas.
The Congressional politicians, including the social-democratic APRA and the Christian Democrats, denounced the coup and urged opposition to Fujimori.
Undoubtedly, the politicians and judges in Peru are corrupt, but so is the state bureaucracy and military. Fujimori's real aim isn't to weed out corruption; he wants to pursue his right-wing economic and repressive policies without the complications of parliamentary rule. In particular, his coup was aimed at giving the police and military a freer hand against workers' strikes and the armed revolutionary movement. Even before the coup, he had allowed the military to impose its direct rule in over two-thirds of the country.
The military backed up Fujimori because they want a freer hand in battling the insurgency of Sendero Luminoso, the armed Maoist peasant movement which has made headway in Peru. The generals have been chafing from criticisms of human rights groups about the massacre of villagers suspected of supporting Sendero. The military ruled Peru from 1968 to 1980, and behind the parliamentary system, they have retained the key strongholds of power in the country. As the war has escalated and the economic crisis worsened, the military has become more and more upset that constitutional rule provided too much room for opposition and criticism. At the same time, they weren't quite ready for an outright military coup, fearing international isolation. Fujimori's coup has provided the perfect formula for them.
Fujimori is gambling that Peruvians are so fed up with economic chaos and corruption that they will be willing to support desperate measures. But he may well be in for a surprise. More people are bound to take up revolutionary struggle against the dictatorship.
Bush: criticism and advice
Immediately after the coup there was much speculation about the role of the United States.
President Bush has been pushing for stronger U.S. support for Peru, both to battle Sendero and to fight the drug war. Peru is by far the world's major producer of coca leaf, the major ingredient in cocaine. Last year Bush got Congress to approve a new aid package for Peru, and the U.S. military presence has increased since then.
The coup took place at the same time that a U.S. Undersecretary of State, Bernard Aronson, was arriving in Lima to consult with Fujimori. This fueled speculation that the U.S. was directly involved in the coup. But after hearing of the coup Aronson canceled his meeting with Fujimori and returned to Washington. Meanwhile, Bush issued statements condemning the coup and within a couple days suspended almost all aid to Peru.
Although there is no evidence that the U.S. directly aided the coup, the U.S. government is sympathetic to Fujimori's situation and wants to wait and see if Fujimori's gamble works. Bush was careful not to condemn Fujimori too harshly, and led the OAS (Organization of American States) away from consideration of sanctions. The U.S. policy is to do nothing to severely undermine the Peruvian military, the main establishment institution. At the same time Bush would like to see a civilian, elected face for the military, and he is advising Fujimori to follow through on his plans for a plebiscite to "legitimize" the coup.
Squabbles among the oppressors
There is one more point of contention between the U.S. and the Peruvian military which could influence how things develop. This involves a disagreement over the conduct of the drug war.
While Washington supports the war against Sendero, it is also interested to see the Peruvian military take some action against the cocaine trade. Of course, there is a great deal of hypocrisy about the U.S. crusade against drugs. The CIA has often worked together with drug-runners, when it served U.S. imperialist interests. For example, it helped Colombian drug runners bring drugs into the U.S. in exchange for them carrying arms to the Nicaraguan contras. But where it does not contradict other interests, the U.S. government does carry out a heavy-handed, and often anti-people, type of campaign against drug operations abroad.
Often this is done by putting pressure on foreign governments to simply carry out military operations against growers of coca, marijuana, opium, etc. But Fujimori has disagreed with Washington about simply using military methods against coca growers. He has noted that economic desperation drives peasants to grow coca, and unless the economic condition of the peasants is addressed, military methods won't go anywhere.
The Peruvian military, meanwhile, finds Fujimori's stand a useful screen. They could care less about fighting drugs; their corrupt ties with the drug traders are well known in the country. However, they want U.S. backing for the counterinsurgency war, and are willing to get it with lip service to the drug war.
Nevertheless, the contradiction between the U.S. and Peruvian governments periodically comes out into the open. The military has not been happy with the suspension of U.S. aid, and the shooting down of a U.S. drug enforcement plane by the Peruvian air force in April may well have been their response to U.S. policy.
In the final analysis, this is a squabble among the oppressors of the Peruvian people. When the Peruvian state becomes more threatened by the revolutionary challenge, U.S. imperialism will resume its military and economic backing for the bloody military. You can count on that.
Deepening crisis in Latin America
Within the past few months there have been coups in Haiti and Peru and an attempted coup in Venezuela. The president of Bolivia is making veiled threats about following in Fujimori's footsteps.
This indicates that the "democratization of Latin America" of the 1980's may well be succumbing to the strains of economic reality. U.S. leaders and imperialist financial institutions held out the promise that with policies of free trade, cutbacks, and privatization, Latin American economies could be stabilized and would usher in a golden era of democracy and social peace.
But capitalism doesn't work that way. True, some of the better-off sections have done better than ever. But the toiling masses of Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, etc. have been pushed into ever more extreme poverty. Millions of slum dwellers in Lima actually have no income, no livelihood at all, and live on the edge of starvation. Government leaders, tied in with the drug barons, have no interest in improving the lot of the masses. They live the life of Riley while the masses suffer from cholera brought on by the lack of simple sewage systems.
The poor of Latin America do not have much to hope for under capitalism and imperialism. They need a revolutionary alternative, leading ultimately to the workers taking power and building a new socialist society based on meeting the needs of the vast majority.
[Photo: Graffiti in Lima: Down with the Fujimora dictatorship!]
[Graphic.]
The world's biggest powers are again ganging up against a small country. This time the target is Libya. On April 15, sanctions voted by the United Nations Security Council went into force against that North African country. Further sanctions -- such as a trade embargo -- are being held in reserve. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has repeatedly stated that it does not rule out the possibility of military action against Libya. This spring's sanctions may end up as the first steps towards another U.S.-led imperialist war in the Middle East.
To that threat, we say NO! Hands off Libya!
The U.S. and British governments are the ringleaders of the current campaign. Ostensibly, it is about Libya handing over two of its officials who Washington and London claim were responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988. But there is more than meets the eye in this crusade.
Libyan attempts at compromise rejected
The Libyan government has denied the accusations against its citizens. It has pointed out that the U.S.-British demands have no legal basis, since Libya has no extradition treaty with these countries. Meanwhile, it has also tried to defuse the crisis by seeking a compromise. Qaddafi's regime has offered to try the two individuals in a Libyan court or even to turn over the accused to the Arab League so that they can be tried in a third country. But every one of its offers has been contemptuously rejected by the U.S. and Britain.
But what is more, the Anglo-American case against Libya over the Lockerbie bombing is particularly suspect.
Who was behind the Lockerbie bombing?
The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was indeed a heinous act, which killed hundreds of innocent people. But there have been many theories about the cause of this bombing.
At various times, fingers have been pointed by investigators at terrorists linked to the Syrian or Iranian governments. Indeed, many people even within the capitalist establishment were surprised that when indictments were handed down, Libya was named as the culprit. But this most likely had to do with the shifting sands of geo-politics. By this time, the U.S. government was developing good relations with Syria, cemented during the war against Iraq.
Even a major big business magazine like Time has renewed doubts that Libya was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. In a front page story in its April 27 edition, Time suggests that elements linked to Syria were behind the incident. The magazine claims that a Syrian drug dealer, who had ties with Syrian intelligence and was also part of Oliver North's covert network, may have helped plant the bomb, and that the real targets behind the bombing may have been intelligence agents working for the CIA.
We do not intend to go into the details of this story; for that, we refer readers to the Time article. And we are not in a position to judge whether this theory is correct. But they do show that even in mainstream bourgeois circles there exists doubt about Libya's alleged role in the Pan Am bombing.
What about U.S. terrorism?
But truth has never had anything to do with Washington's campaign against Libya. In 1986, Reagan ordered military strikes against Libya, killing hundreds of innocent people, including Qaddafi's infant daughter. This was supposed to be retaliation for Libya's supposed role in the bombing of a disco in West Berlin where U.S. servicemen had been killed. But it has subsequently come out that Libya was not responsible for this bombing at all. Washington knew that, but it still went ahead and bombed Libya.
Was that not an act of international terrorism? Has the U.S. ever offered to hand over Reagan to be tried in Libya for this savage act?
Both Washington's spurning of Libya's attempts to reach a compromise over the current crisis and the doubts about its responsibility in the Lockerbie affair would seem.to suggest that the current campaign against Libya is not about Pan Am Flight 103 at all. Something else is at stake here.
What's at stake?
For one thing, it is about the right of the U.S. to punish a country which won't bow and scrape as the imperialists want it to. Qaddafi's bourgeois nationalist government has in the past had various conflicts with the U.S. and Britain, but in recent years it has become much more accommodating. For example, it did not oppose the U.S. in the war against Iraq. Still, in George Bush's "new world order," every government in the world has to accede to the U.S. big stick.
Indeed, the UN sanctions resolution indicates that even if Libya complied with the demand on the two accused individuals, that would not satisfy the big powers. Besides handing over the two men, it also requires Qaddafi to prove by "concrete actions" that he has abandoned international terrorism. And who determines this? None other than the big powers who lord over the UN Security Council with their veto powers. It is no secret that London wants Libya to turn over intelligence on the Irish Republican Army with which Libya had had ties in the past.
Moreover, Libya is another test case for the U.S. to use the United Nations as a cover for its imperialist gangsterism. Until recently, the UN could not be used this way because of opposition from the Soviet Union or China. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and given that the Russian and Chinese economies have become dependent on U.S. capital, Moscow and Beijing are no longer in a position to block U.S. aims. Washington has no hesitation in committing imperialist aggression under its own name, but it prefers to have the cover of wider "legitimacy"; the UN banner offers that, as the Persian Gulf war showed last year.
No end to U.S. hypocrisy
Bush speaks loudly about the "rule of international law," but the anti-Libya campaign shows again that Washington reserves for itself the right to make global laws. The entire campaign reeks of unbridled hypocrisy.
Israel, for example, has wantonly violated many a UN resolution, but no action has ever been taken against it. After all, it is an ally of the United States. The U.S. CIA has been involved in many a terrorist incident abroad, but Washington is not about to send its intelligence personnel or agents to face prosecution abroad.
A case in point is John Hull, who was a Costa Rica-based agent for the CIA-backed contra war against Nicaragua. Costa Rica has cases pending against him and has been seeking his extradition on charges of premeditated homicide, drug and arms trafficking. But although Costa Rica is a U.S. ally, the Bush administration has ignored these requests.
The U.S. crusade against Libya is another act of imperialist gangsterism. It holds the potential of new military adventures in the Middle East. Washington has succeeded in cowing down most of the other governments in the world to go along with its campaign by donning the banner of the United Nations. If Washington's military adventurism is to be stopped, it will require opposition from the masses of people -- here in the U.S. and in other countries. A mass movement against imperialism remains the necessity of the times. Down with U.S. imperialism, world gangster and marauder!
[Photo: Demonstration in Minneapolis denounces US war threats against Libya.]
On April 28th, 14,000 telephone workers agreed to end a strike that had cut links between Colombia and the rest of the world for a week.
The workers had struck to protest the government's plan to sell the government-run Telecom to private investors. Among other things, the workers were worried that privatization would cut jobs and deprive rural Colombia of phone service.
When the strike began, workers sabotaged the system by erasing computer programs and numbing transmission cables with flour. This cut off all long distance service, although communication within cities remained intact.
The phone workers received solidarity from other working people. Port and oil workers, and peasants, staged work stoppages in sympathy.
In the agreement to end the strike, the government said it would modify its privatization plan for Telecom.
Doctors, nurses, and ambulance workers from Smolensk to Siberia have been protesting over miserly salaries, unsanitary workplaces and dated equipment.
On Friday, April 24, they picketed Russian government headquarters. In some areas, strikes have already taken place. A full-scale strike has been threatened for May 10.
The medical employees' actions have been sparked by the rise in the cost of living and cutbacks in health spending.
Police fired on workers' demonstrations in Kathmandu on April 6, killing 22 and wounding at least 50 others. Later, an overnight curfew was declared.
The workers were on the streets to enforce a general strike protesting soaring prices and government corruption. The laboring people are angry that nothing has changed for them since a popular upsurge forced the monarchy to allow an elected government a year ago.
Two days later, 13,000 people marched through the city and burned effigies of the Interior Minister who heads up the police.
Tens of thousands of government workers marched in Montreal and Quebec City on April 12. Largely made up of hospital and provincial government workers, the demonstrators were angry at the Quebec government's decision to impose a wage freeze until June 1994.
Further protests were also in the works, including a May Day march in Montreal, Canada.
Twice in mid-April, workers in Lebanon walked out in general strikes. They successfully brought life to a standstill in Beirut and other major cities.
Thousands of Muslim and Christian workers marched in demonstrations protesting inflation and the corrupt government of Omar Karami. They chanted, "We are hungry, we are ill, we need money for food and medicine."
On April 3rd, 80,000 nurses went on strike across the country. Over 700 hospitals and clinics were affected in the action which lasted up to nine hours in some areas. Before this strike, nurses held a number of vigorous demonstrations.
The nurses say they have "forgotten how to smile," because they have few holidays and have to work too many night shifts. They are demanding higher wages, an increase in the number of nurses, the reduction of night shifts, and a five-day workweek.
More strikes were planned for other days in April.
Meanwhile, 60,000 private rail workers tied up Tokyo and Osaka in a strike on March 27. Unfortunately, the union leaders caved in and called off the strike after six hours, accepting the same wage package that the rank and file had protested against.
[Photo: 5,000 nurses demonstrate in Tokyo to demand improved working conditions.]