Vol. 22, No. 8
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
25 cents September 1, 1992
[Front page:
Bush and Clinton speak for the rich--It's time for a change!;
Bush threatens war: Last refuge of a scoundrel;
State budgets in crisis, workers pay]
| Make the rich pay for Calif, budget crisis............................................................... | 2 |
| S.F. mayor declares: Jail the homeless.................................................................... | 2 |
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| Oppose anti-gay bigotry! |
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| Portland march denounces anti-gay crusade; OR anti-gay rally smashed up; Baptist leaders oust tolerant churches; Catholic officials oppose gay rights.......... | 3 |
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| AIDS activists protest |
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| Republican and Democrat conventions; Amsterdam conference; stock exchange. | 3 |
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| Defend women's rights! |
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| Two paths for struggle in Milwaukee; Clinic defense in NY, Baton Rouge, Houston; Puerto Rican officials against abortion................................................... | 4 |
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| Freedom of Choice Act........................................................................................... | 7 |
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| Al Gore puts greenbacks before environment......................................................... | 6 |
| Bush & Clinton silent about Haitian tragedy........................................................... | 7 |
| Medical care for all.................................................................................................. | 7 |
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| North American Free Trade |
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| What free trade will mean for workers; Strikes in Mexico..................................... | 8 |
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| Strikes and workplace news |
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| Drywall workers defy INS; GM parts workers; Pitt, presses stopped; Detroit city workers; Connecticut; N. Mexico farm workers..................................................... | 9 |
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| No to police repression in NYC.............................................................................. | 10 |
| Columbus revisited................................................................................................. | 10 |
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| The world in struggle |
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| Millions strike in South Africa; German anti-racists oppose neo-Nazis................. | 12 |
Bush and Clinton speak for the rich
Bush threatens war: Last refuge of a scoundrel
State budgets in crisis, workers pay
The rich caused California's budget crisis -- it's time to make them pay!
San Francisco mayor declares: Fine the penniless, jail the homeless
(Taken
from the Aug. 30 "Bay Area Workers' Voice," San Francisco Bay
Area Branch, MLP.)
Oppose
anti-gay bigotry!
AIDS activists protest...
Defend women's rights!
Al Gore puts greenbacks before the environment
Democrats put Freedom of Choice Act on ice
Bush and Clinton
Deathly silence about the Haitian tragedy
Bush concludes North American Free Trade Agreement
What will free trade mean for the working class?
Solidarity with Mexican workers!
Strikes and workplace news
Justice for Jose Garcia!
Down with police repression in New York City!
Prisoners used as strike breakers
The World in Struggle
Across the country, millions of people are fed up. They are right to say that it's time for change. We've had 12 years of Reagan-Bush. Enough is enough.
What have the Republicans brought us?
* The country is in recession. Bush won't even talk about it. But the workers feel the pain every day. Over 10 million are unemployed. 40 million can't afford health insurance. The inner cities are caught in the depths of hopelessness. AIDS ravages the lives of millions. And homelessness is a national disgrace.
* Bush promised "a kinder, gentler" land, but what he's given us is ugliness and bigotry. Bush and Quayle seek their votes by bashing gays, lambasting poor blacks, and sneering at "uppity" women.
* The Republicans shout about "family values." That may be fine for those like Bush and Quayle whose families have huge values -- in stocks, bonds, and other wealth -- but it means contempt for the masses of working and poor people in this country. Under Reagan-Bush, the gap between rich and poor has grown wider.
* Bush's greatest triumph was the Gulf war. But at what cost did this victory come? It meant the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqis. And it meant drowning the U.S. in a sea of "my country, right or wrong" patriotism, spreading a sickening moral corruption as the acme of greatness.
* The Bush administration is so out of touch that it couldn't even organize a decent effort to get relief out to the victims of Hurricane Andrew.
Enough is enough, people are saying. It's time for a change. And we in the Marxist-Leninist Party agree.
But change is a fickle slogan. Anyone can use it. Why, even George Bush is saying he's for change! Get real. They've been in power for 12 years, and they have the gall to say they stand for change?
However, most people who want change and who look to the elections for hope are thinking of voting for Bill Clinton as the alternative.
But will Bill Clinton bring change?
The issue isn't that this year the Democrats have a chance to win, so let's rally behind Bill Clinton for that reason. The real question is, will Clinton bring the kind of change that the masses of working people so desperately need?
Let's take a look at the Democratic alternative.
* Clinton makes many promises about dealing with the economic crisis, but that's just electioneering. At the heart of his program is the same idea which Reagan and Bush have championed: economic progress will come by giving the wealthy capitalists more incentives, like tax breaks and handouts. And the benefits of this will supposedly trickle down to the rest of us. Well, we are still waiting for Reagan's promises to trickle down; how much longer are we willing to wait for Clinton's?
* Sure, Clinton has promised new programs on such things as health care. But he is purposely vague. What remains is the reality that we live in the era of huge budget deficits. Bottom line: we can look forward to more cutbacks. If there are any new programs, they will be paid for by cutting back elsewhere.
* At a time when the suffering of minorities is shouting out to be heard -- as the Los Angeles rebellion did -- Clinton has organized his campaign so that the concerns of blacks, Latinos, and the poor are ignored. Indeed, in his search for white, middle-class votes, Clinton is not above welfare bashing in the style which Republicans have made so popular.
* Clinton claims to be the champion of women's rights. But he's in favor of restrictions on abortion, and not too long ago, as governor of Arkansas, courted the support of anti-abortion bigots.
* In foreign policy, Clinton's trying to outdo Bush in warmongering. He's itching to launch military intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and he is supporting Bush's war threats against Iraq. Last year, he supported the shameful Gulf war.
If we want real change, Bill Clinton doesn't add up.
Why can't Bill Clinton bring the change we need?
Bill Clinton can't bring change, because he's the candidate of the Democratic Party. This is also a party of big business. Big business runs this country, and Bill Clinton is campaigning to get elected by winning the confidence of the capitalists that he will not disturb their interests -- the interests of making more money for the rich and powerful.
As long as he accepts the capitalist framework as sacred, we can't expect Clinton to offer real change. Take one example. Clinton says he's for health care for everyone, but he accepts the capitalist framework that the sacred cows of profit can't be touched. He won't make the capitalists pay. And unless Clinton is willing to take on the profits of insurance companies, of doctors, of hospitals and medical contractors, we cannot expect any serious reform of health care.
To get change, the working people must fight for it themselves
In the final analysis, whether many people end up voting for Bill Clinton as the lesser of two evils or with the hope of a little bit of improvement is not the crucial issue. The real issue is that if you really want change, if you have energy to work for change in this society, it is futile to put your efforts behind the Clinton campaign.
The cold hard fact is that for any real progress, the working people must act on their own. Act by organizing struggles to demand change. Act by building organizations of our own, organizations which can build a mass movement for change.
* If you are a worker interested in fighting the bosses' oppression and abuse, what do you do? Should you follow the union bureaucrats who tell you to give in to management, or who tell you to go out and campaign for the Democrats? No, you ought to put your energy into building workers' struggles and setting up organizations of the rank and file which can energize the workers' movement.
* If you are a person interested in defending abortion rights, what do you do? Do you leave things in the hands of the courts, the politicians, or police? Do you put your faith in the fickle promises of the Democrats, who helped confirm the Reagan-Bush Supreme Court? That's what you ought to do, according to the establishment women's organizations like NOW. We think otherwise. You'd do better by joining in the clinic defense movement and working to organize the pro-choice cause among the working class and poor.
* If you want to fight racism, do you follow the advice of the NAACP leaders and other members of the black elite who say you ought to support Clinton? No, you'd do better by helping to build a movement on the shoulders of the workers and poor.
To win change, we must throw our energies into building a mass movement for change. In the work places, in the communities, and in the schools and colleges.
What kind of movement? A movement that raises the needs of workers and other ordinary people, not one which submits to the lowered expectations offered by the Democrats. A movement that fights through mass struggle, such as protests, demonstrations, and strikes. An independent political movement, one that says to hell with all the parties of the rich.
Unrealistic? But wait. The times may be hard, but though small and scattered, you can constantly see shoots of struggle breaking out. Workers try to organize and fight back, as the dry wall workers are doing today in southern California. The victims of racist abuse and police brutality raise the banner of protest, as did the people in Los Angeles and upper Manhattan this summer. Women are coming out to confront the anti-abortion bigots, as they did all summer -- from Milwaukee to New York to Houston. These struggles show that there is opportunity to build struggles and to raise the need for a mass movement for change.
Mass struggles are the real vehicle for change. But for change to be lasting, to ensure that the clock doesn't get turned back, mass movements of the working people must grow to the point where the present capitalist system is overthrown and replaced with the rule of the workers. Only when workers end up in power, can we then reshape the whole society according to the needs of the masses and not according to the dictates of profit and greed.
[Cartoon.]
[Photo: Thousands of striking newspaper workers and their supporters shut down the Pittsburgh Press, July 27.]
George Bush is itching for a new military adventure. And the White House propaganda machine is churning out new excuses to justify bombing Iraq. Even Bill Clinton has jumped onto the war chariot.
It hasn't escaped people's attention, though, that Bush's latest threats against Iraq came at the same time as the president dropped in the polls. There can be little doubt that Bush's war cries are indeed based upon cynical, electioneering calculations.
But that's not the full story. His war threats are part of the ongoing U.S. policy to increase pressure on Iraq. And for what? Don't believe the liars in Washington when they say it's for high, moral goals.
No, this pressure is meant to force the generals in Baghdad to oust Saddam Hussein and replace him with someone who is willing to work with U.S. imperialism in the Persian Gulf region. He who follows Saddam could be just as cruel to the Iraqi people, but so long as he's friendly to Washington -- like the tyrants in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia -- that's all that counts.
How the present crisis unfolded
The latest threats against Iraq were first made in July when a standoff took place in Baghdad between Saddam Hussein's regime and UN inspectors seeking to enter the Agricultural Ministry. That crisis was defused, as Iraq and the UN reached a compromise.
Yet that compromise offended Bush -- because Baghdad won a concession from the UN that the inspection teams would no longer include personnel from any of the powers which had warred against Iraq last year.
Pouting as if he'd lost a round in an alley fight among bullies, Bush replied that he was going to use military force if another standoff were to take place. Thousands of new troops were dispatched to the Persian Gulf. There were even plans to bomb Iraq during the Republican Convention, but those plans were leaked to the press and had to be temporarily shelved.
The Pentagon says new bombing strikes would cause little "collateral damage," the nice-sounding word they have for civilian casualties. But the Gulf war showed that talk of surgical strikes is so much bunk. Thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed the last time the Pentagon bombed Iraq.
A new round of bombing Iraq will be another imperialist crime, coming in the teeth of a tight economic embargo which has meant hunger, disease, and malnutrition on a mass scale for the Iraqi people.
Bombing Iraq over a squabble about inspecting some buildings does not add up to a moral-sounding justification. So Bush has now come up with a new excuse -- one which sounds oh-so humanitarian.
This chieftain of imperialism, who slaughtered more than 100,000 Iraqis last year and who maintains the savage embargo, whose main victims are the common people, says he wants to help the oppressed Shia Muslim people (Shiites) in the south of Iraq. Thus Bush has declared a "no fly zone" over the south of Iraq and has pledged to shoot down any aircraft which fly there. The stage has been set to provoke a new confrontation.
Is Bush a friend of Saddam's victims?
But there is more than meets the eye here. The record does not show Bush as any sort of friend of the oppressed people of Iraq.
Saddam Hussein is indeed a fascist oppressor. And the Shia people of Iraq are among his victims. After the Gulf war last year, they launched an uprising seeking the destruction of the fascist regime. But they were crushed. We did not see Bush coming to their support then. No, the Bush government in fact allowed Saddam's military to crush the opposition uprisings, in both the south as well as in Kurdistan to the north.
More recently, there have been reports for months that Saddam has been using his army and air force to attack the Shia people in the south, where rebels have continued to organize. But we did not see Bush declaring a "no fly zone" then. So why now?
For two reasons.
An election-year ploy
Bush's continuing drop in the election polls is one reason. Bush thought that he would ride to victory this November on his record from the Gulf war. But the war has largely become a non-issue as the U.S. economy continues to stagnate in recession. In Bush's mind, a military adventure against Iraq would serve as a patriotic diversion from the gloomy news on the home front.
But there is more than electioneering going on here.
The other reason
Though it won the Gulf war, U.S. imperialism has all along felt that it did not get everything it wanted. True, it turned back Saddam from his bid to take over Kuwait. But it did not succeed in getting rid of Saddam. That remains the U.S. goal. But Bush wants Saddam replaced in a specific way.
He is not out to help the Shia opposition win, just as he did not want them and the Kurds to win against Saddam last year. Bush does not want a popular regime in Iraq because he fears that this would be "destabilizing," and imperialist stability is the all-important goal of U.S. policy in the Gulf. Several of Bush's allies in the region are worried today that Bush's gamble may already be too destabilizing; thus Turkey and Syria are critical of the latest U.S. policy. Turkey is especially worried because it, like Saddam, faces a rebellion among its Kurdish population.
With his latest act of humiliation against Iraq, Bush is in effect signaling the ruling Ba'ath Party leaders that keeping Saddam will only mean more and more humiliation for Iraq. Bush is using a tilt in the direction of the Shias to tell the Ba'ath generals that if they want to preserve the system in Iraq, they must oust Saddam. Once again, Bush is cynically playing with the opposition forces in Iraq.
In other words, what Bush wants in Iraq is Saddamism without Saddam, a regime from the same coterie around Saddam, which could be just as oppressive at home so long as it is friendly to U.S. interests and forswears regional ambitions.
Let us not forget. Until Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the Bush administration was a good friend of Saddam Hussein. It helped arm Saddam up until a few months before the war. It did not mind his savage massacres or the poison gassing of the Kurds. No, all that mattered was that the Iraqi regime was interested in close relations with the U.S. and it was an opponent of what was then said to be the chief "bad guy" of the region: the government of Iran. Bush seeks a return to that kind of regime.
U.S. imperialism out of the Persian Gulf!
We too would like to see the end of Saddam Hussein's regime. It has meant nothing but one disaster after another for the people of Iraq. But we would like to see its total destruction and its replacement by a government of the people. We do not believe that a coup in Baghdad and Saddam's replacement by another Ba'ath despot liberates the Iraqi people. In fact it could even end up as a tighter noose around the necks of the people, because it could get U.S. help to consolidate itself against popular demands.
Some opposition forces in Iraq feel that there can be a shortcut to freedom, through the help of U.S. military power. But they forget the harsh lessons of history. Time and again, Washington has played games with the Iraqi opposition, feigning support for them but only to turn around and betray them later.
Liberation from Ba'ath tyranny is no easy task. But the solution must come from the mobilization of the force of the people themselves. The working people of Iraq have to themselves topple the Ba'ath tyranny, with the help of the working people of the region.
The U.S. is not part of the solution, but a big part of the problem. It was none other than Bush who helped strengthen Saddam's regime not too long ago. When all is said and done, the interests of U.S. imperialism in the Gulf are not freedom and democracy, but the naked interests of imperialist control and profits. This is an oil-rich region and the U.S. wants to be the overlord here, with the support of local pro-U.S. tyrannies like the Persian Gulf monarchies. Saddam remains a thorn for Bush not because he is a tyrant, but because he won't bow and scrape before Washington and has his own ambitions to be a local bully.
In the conflicts between the big bully and the local bully, the working people have no side to support. They must build up their own side -- the side of mass movements to advance the interests and needs of the working people.
What does this mean for workers here in the U.S.?
We ought to raise our voices against Bush's latest military adventure. No more wars in the Persian Gulf for the glory of the billionaires of oil and the generals of the Pentagon!
Let the working people there settle accounts with their own oppressors. Let us here build a movement against Bush and the capitalist exploiters, a movement for our own needs, a movement to further the interests of the workers and the poor. And let us begin to take steps towards an international movement of the workers against all the exploiters and tyrants.
[Photo.]
Recovery? Where is it? The economic crisis is bringing ruin across the country. California, long one of the richest states, has not escaped its grip. It is now paying its debts with IOUs instead of money, something not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930's. (See article inside.) With a whopping projected deficit of $10.7 billion, the politicians can't decide on a budget. The huge tax shift onto the poor in the 1980's, added to a broken-down economy, has meant disaster.
And California is simply the latest of a string of states facing deficits and cutbacks each year as budget time rolls around. Whether the national economic news is a bit better or worse, the crisis of the states continues to grow.
Bush and Clinton are twiddling their thumbs before this crisis. Bush says the solution is not to pay even a penny for the schools and welfare of the workers and the poor. When he promises some relief, it is financed by taking it away from other relief programs. Meanwhile Clinton promises that a bit of national investment in infrastructure, financed by smoke and mirrors, will trickle down to the poor.
Budget crisis dwarfs proposals
Meanwhile the California budget crisis shows how impossible it is to bail out a boat with a teaspoon.
When Los Angeles burned over the acquittal of the racist police who beat Rodney King, the federal government offered some relief. This was mainly loans. But the present California cutbacks in education alone, for a single year, will be larger than the total emergency relief to Los Angeles. The total cutbacks in California, for a single year, will dwarf the emergency aid 10 or 20 times over. And these cutbacks will continue year after year, while the emergency aid is a one-shot affair.
When Bush and Clinton talk about the workers who will lose their jobs in the coming years and need retraining, they haggle over programs amounting to one or two or three billion a year, spread over the entire country. The present cutbacks in California alone will dwarf the entire sum to be devoted to retraining, assuming Congress and the White House do pass any bill at all. And one has to add in the cutbacks in 49 other states and Puerto Rico.
When Bush and Clinton talk about reforming welfare, they talk about new programs to help the poor find jobs or get training, and not just cutting budgets. But it is a fraud. The federal government has pushed more and more expenses off on the states; the states push them off on the cities and counties; and all these levels of government are cutting social expenditures right and left. Welfare reform ends up meaning one thing only: starve the poor.
Making the poor pay
Underneath the talk about social programs and values the truth is that the poor are being made to pay over and over again for the budget deficit. Bush says cut the taxes more on the rich yet again. Clinton says the rich shall pay a wee bit more which will still leave them far better off than before the Reagan tax cuts. And, Clinton adds, the corporations should get tax cuts and incentives. The unstated conclusion: let the poor bear the major burden of debt reduction.
Look at California. Republican Governor Wilson and the Democratic-con- trolled state House and Senate are trying to balance the budget on the backs of the working masses and the poverty-stricken. They disagree only how much. Wilson would cut the health and welfare budget 15% while the Democrats propose a 10% cut. The main sticking point is how deeply to slash the public schools. Neither proposes improving the public schools, which have been starved for funds for years on end.
And both Wilson and the Democrats say they won't raise taxes to cover the deficit. Of course, there is a crushing burden from fees, taxes, and especially from low wages, on the ordinary working people. But what about higher taxes on the rich? Keeping the status quo means cementing in place the big shift of the cost of government onto the poor, which has been going on for years under Reagan and Bush. In California, the tax shift away from the rich goes back to Proposition 13 in 1978. The rich got more tax breaks in 1987. In 1991, there was a big sales tax hike that hit the poorest the hardest. Tax relief for the rich has been paid for by cuts in programs needed by the working masses and has helped fuel the state deficit.
Don't wait for "recovery," fight for your rights!
The system is so screwed up, the deficits are so big, that "recovery" will not stop the cutbacks, even if it comes. Besides, in these times when unemployment and homelessness are on the rise, what is needed are not cuts in social programs but expanding them.
But the Democrats and Republicans, those loyal mouthpieces of the capitalists, will never satisfy these demands. What is needed is for the workers and the poor to organize. It is time to present the capitalists with some long-overdue bills.
But a system that can't even provide schools, housing, and welfare is a system that must be replaced. The system of capitalist production is in crisis. Bad years bring despair, and good years bring overproduction, and hence bad years. There will be no escape from this cycle until production for the profit of the few is replaced by the socialist system of production, planned by all, and for the benefit of all.
California has been running without a budget for two months. While the politicians squabble over what to do about the state's $11 billion deficit, the workers and poor are feeling the heat.
Payments for many health and welfare services for the elderly and the disabled have been cut off. State workers are being paid with IOU's that most banks no longer accept. And every day of the impasse computes into a bigger tax burden on the working people to pay off the state debts, as interest rates climb with California's sinking bond rating. The workers and poor are paying dearly for the politician's budget stalemate.
California has been running without a budget for two months. While the politicians squabble over what to do about the state's $11 billion deficit, the workers and poor are feeling the heat.
Payments for many health and welfare services for the elderly and the disabled have been cut off. State workers are being paid with IOU's that most banks no longer accept. And every day of the impasse computes into a bigger tax burden on the working people to pay off the state debts, as interest rates climb with California's sinking bond rating. The workers and poor are paying dearly for the politician's budget stalemate.
A crisis of capitalism
What's behind California's budget woes?
First, there is the recession. Unemployment is near 9% by official count. Cushioned by its electronics and aerospace industries, California had once been able to soften the blows of layoffs and closings suffered in other industrial states. No longer. The overproduction crisis of capitalism is hitting California hard -- not just in the older manufacturing and processing industries, but also in the hi-tech sectors.
The electronics industry has grown too productive, producing too efficiently, and too much. To keep up their profits, the computer and other firms are firing tens of thousands of workers and closing plants. The electronic miracle of the 80's has led to the calamity of the 90's.
Then there is aerospace and other military industries. Too much is said about the end of the Cold War, because the Pentagon is still spending almost $300 billion a year on every conceivable means of killing people. But it seems that there is overkill even in the overkill business. The 80's witnessed the most expensive program of weapons stockpiling in history. Some three trillion dollars later, the Pentagon's wish list of jets, missiles, tanks and war ships has been filled and filled again. Defense industries are slowing down, pushing California into a slump.
Changes in the tax structure have turned the recession into a fiscal disaster. First, there was Proposition 13, which mainly cut the taxes of the corporate and wealthy property owners. Then came a series of Reagan-style "tax cuts," which meant big income tax cuts for the rich, including the big cut in 1987.
With the property and incomes of the wealthy being placed off limits, the politicians have set themselves to squeezing the poor. The state government in Sacramento has come up with hikes in the sales tax, with user fees, and other burdens on those who can least afford it. For many smaller property owners, any savings from Proposition 13 have been eaten up by these new fees and taxes.
Now we see the net result: the rich pig out on tax cuts; the workers and poor are squeezed and squeezed again; and the state budget lands $11 billion in the red. But the rich make out on the deficit, too. After all, it's the big investors who haul in the hundreds of millions in tax free interest on the bonds to pay off the state debt.
No more cutbacks!
During the 80's, the wealthiest fifth of California's families saw their incomes grow by 15%. The poorest one fifth had their real incomes cut by 8%. (San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 28) Yet, Governor Wilson and the legislature are determined to solve the budget crisis on the backs of the poor.
A new round of local sales taxes are in the works. And a huge round of cutbacks in education, health care and other essential services. The disabled, the elderly, the poorest and most victimized will suffer the most. The impasse is over who will suffer how much.
The biggest sticking point is public education. Governor Wilson wants to cut $1.4 billion. The Democratic leaders want to cut $800 million. Either way, disastrous cuts are in the works. At the community colleges, students are bracing for a proposed ten-fold hike in fees that could push tens of thousands out of school.
Make the rich pay!
The Democrats and Republicans both say "there is no money." Sure. As long as they refuse to make the wealthy pay taxes, there will be no money.
The politicians agree that the cuts should come down on the working people. Sure. As long as interest, dividends and other capitalist profit-taking are held sacred, cuts in health care, education and the other essentials of life for millions are inevitable.
We need to break out of this pro-capitalist framework. Capitalism has caused the crisis, and the rich should pay for it.
We need health care, education, jobs and housing. NO MORE CUTBACKS! To pay for it, TAX THE RICH!
We need to build up solidarity among all the workers and poor. We need protests and mass actions against the cutbacks. We need to build up a revolutionary movement that can challenge the capitalist status quo, and MAKE THE RICH PAY!
(Based on an article in the Aug. 30 "Bay Area Workers Voice," paper of the San Francisco Bay Area Branch, MLP.)
[Photo: Rally in Sacramento denounces the politicians.]
Mayor Frank Jordan has come up with a new idea for the homeless in San Francisco: put them in jail and slap them with heavy fines. Really!
In conjunction with an anti-panhandling campaign waged by the city businessmen, Jordan has recently drafted legislation aimed at "aggressive soliciting." He has proposed that an "anti-begging ordinance" be placed on the November ballot. People convicted under this ordinance face fines up to $500 and six months in jail.
Imagine that! Trying to squeeze $500 fines out of panhandlers. Or better, six months in prison. With the money spent on prosecutions and jail cells, they could put the homeless up in the Hilton.
The war against the poor by the rich and their politicians is being escalated on every front.
Portland march denounces anti-gay crusade
For the past two years the right-wing coalition "Oregon Citizens Alliance" (OCA) has been organizing a "No Special Rights" campaign against homosexuals. Among other things, it is calling for an amendment to the Oregon constitution that would ban any laws prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals. The amendment also calls for teaching children homophobia in the schools -- labeling homosexuality as perverse behavior and equating it with pedophilia, sadism and masochism.
Last spring the OCA succeeded in passing an anti-gay initiative in Springfield, Oregon. Despite protests by the Librarians Association, it has demanded a review of the books in the public libraries there to censor any that promotes what they consider to be "abnormal behaviors."
10,000 people marched into the streets of Portland, Oregon June 20 to denounce this right-wing crusade. The Portland Gay Pride March culminated a two-week-long march from Springfield.
Operation Rescue anti-gay rally smashed up
About 150 protesters confronted a handful of right-wing bigots in New York City on June 27.
Operation Rescue (OR) tried to hold an anti-gay rally. For years OR has been attacking women's rights to safe and legal abortions and blockading clinics. Recently it announced it is expanding its right-wing campaign to include a crusade against gay men and lesbians.
The counter-demonstrators ran the OR bigots out of Sheridan Square -- the site of the Stonewall gay rights rebellions 23 years ago. OR was forced to retreat into a nearby subway.
Officials of the Southern Baptist church are also clamping down on any tolerance for homosexuality.
This spring the majority of people in the congregations of two North Carolina churches voted to show openness towards homosexuals. One ordained a declared homosexual. And the other performed a marriage ceremony for two gay men.
The Southern Baptist hierarchy went into fits. At its convention on June 10, the two churches were ousted. Although Southern Baptists are supposed to allow congregational autonomy, they amended their constitution to bar any churches that "affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior."
Church officials also invited Vice President Dan Quayle to address the convention. He spoke denouncing homosexual marriages as "wrong" and declaring "The preferred lifestyle is the traditional family."
The church talks in the name of universal brotherhood and spiritual values. But they are never far from bashing other people over the head in the name of God. It is not the church, but the class-conscious workers who fight for a better life and against bigotry, who stand for truly human values. Let all workers unite, despite religious differences, whether gay or straight, to fight for a world free from starvation, bigotry and exploitation.
The Catholic hierarchy is stepping up its call for bigotry against lesbians and gay men.
In June, the Vatican sent a directive to U.S. bishops urging them to lobby against proposed laws that would bar discrimination against gays and lesbians. The document was drawn up by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church's dogma police.
It argued that "There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account." It said, "for example, in the consignment of children to adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers and coaches, and in military recruitment."
The document also specifically opposed laws that might "confer equivalent family status on homosexual unions...in respect to public housing or by entitling the homosexual partner to the privileges of employment which might include 'family' participation in the health benefits given to employees..."
The Vatican has joined the right-wing crusade for "traditional family values" and in its name is here justifying discrimination against homosexuals in employment, work benefits, housing, and so forth.
This disgusting bigotry does not have support among the masses of Catholics. One indication of this was the Gallup Poll in May which showed that 78% of U.S. Catholics support equal rights in employment for homosexuals, up from 58% in 1978. The more tolerant sentiment among the masses has even led a few bishops to drop their opposition to at least some of the weaker laws being drafted against discrimination against homosexuals.
The Vatican's call to support discrimination is meant to counter this trend. Indeed, shortly before this directive was sent out, the Vatican asked Detroit Archbishop Adam Maida to investigate Catholic groups that promote equality for gay men and lesbians to see if they are leading Catholics astray from the church's condemnation of homosexual behavior.
The Vatican wants to clamp down on gay rights advocates within the Catholic church and to bolster the entire right-wing offensive for "traditional family values" in the U.S.
Some 2,000 people marched on the Republican Convention August 17. Led by AIDS activists, the protesters burned President George Bush in effigy and denounced the gay-bashing and right-wing "family values" crusade of the Republicans. Mounted police dispersed the march, clubbing several demonstrators as they chanted "We're here! We're queer! We're not gonna go!" AIDS activists also disrupted President Bush's address to the Republican National Committee and also a speech by Jerry Falwell to another event.
Some 15-20,000 people demanded that more be done to deal with the AIDS epidemic and help its victims outside the Democratic Party Convention in New York July 14. This was the largest demonstration held during the convention. It marched from Columbus Circle to Times Square and held a rally in the sweltering heat.
Leaders of the rally invited New York Mayor David Dinkins and Jesse Jackson to address the AIDS protesters. But many of the activists opposed putting Democrats on the platform. Boos and catcalls rang out against Dinkins' speech and placards declared "We die -- Dinkins does nothing." Other signs also denounced the Democrats' presidential candidate, saying "Hey Bill, can you domore than just TALK about AIDS?"
The International AIDS Conference began on July 19 with a demonstration demanding "Open all borders!" The U.S. government was one of the main targets of the march. The conference was originally to be held in Boston. But restrictions of the U.S. government barring people with HIV infection from entering the country forced the conference to move to Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
The Pacific Stock Exchange was disrupted July 10 by AIDS activists. Protesters snuck onto the trading floor, threw leaflets, shouted slogans, and let loose a banner, which rose above the floor attached to balloons, declaring "Save babies! Sell Abbott!" The protesters came under attack by security guards and left the floor to join a picket line outside.
The protest targeted Abbott Labs, one of the largest sellers of baby formula in the U.S.. Last year it stopped its research into a promising drug which might reduce the risk of babies getting HIV infection from their mothers. Instead of pursuing this research, Abbott Labs started charging to supply the drug to an existing government-sponsored clinical trial.
[Photo: AIDS activists march in Times Sq. during the Democratic Party Convention.]
Since mid-June, pro-choice activists have been fighting to keep the clinics of Milwaukee open. They are facing off with the "Missionaries to the Preborn" and other right-wing fanatics intent on blockading the clinics and harassing women trying to enter. The human walls of activists have kept the anti-abortion forces at bay. Time and again anti-abortion goon squads have stormed the clinics only to be repelled by lines of clinic defenders.
But there have been problems, too. The pro-establishment leaders of the National Organization for Women (NOW), National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and Planned Parenthood dominate the Milwaukee Clinic Protection Coalition (MCPC). They have been trying to impose a policy of relying on the police and legal maneuvers. The MCPC will usually organize for people to come to the clinics, but they tell activists not to confront the antiabortion bullies and not even to shout slogans. As a result, while the clinics have generally been kept open, the anti-abortion bullies have not been demoralized or driven away.
August 8: What does leaving things to the police mean?
MCPC policy led to fiasco on August 8. It was a day of a huge turnout on both sides. The anti-abortion crusaders had swelled to between one and two thousand. But some 1,500 pro-choice activists also turned out. There were enough pro-choice activists to have several hundred clinic defenders at each of the four clinics, and that should have been enough to keep them all open. Such forces had proved adequate to keep the clinics open in previous clinic defenses in Milwaukee.
Yet the anti-abortion bullies were able to swarm over the Brown Deer clinic and close it off for several hours. Why? The leaders of the MCPC kept activists away from the clinic. This was not some over: sight. The MCPC knew as early as the night before that "pro-life" goon squads were assembling at the Brown Deer clinic, camping out in the parking lot, and preparing to attack it the next day. Yet the MCPC phone hotline told people that only three clinics would be defended, and to stay away from Brown Deer. Even in the morning, when several hundred anti-abortion goons were blockading the clinic, the MCPC hotline continued to announce: "The police will handle it. If you go there, you will be arrested."
Of course, the MCPC had the experience of the week before to judge from. The Early Word is a newsletter published by Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin specifically for the clinic defenders, and it is the unofficial mouthpiece of the MCPC. Its issue of August 8 described the events of August 1 as follows: "The antis moved most of their forces to... Brown Deer last Saturday and, without clinic protectors present, were able to overwhelm the police. Approximately 104 arrests were made before the situation was brought back under control." But still the MCPC said to leave it to the police once again on August 8.
As a result, it was not until after 8:00 a.m. that sizable numbers of pro-choice activists started arriving from the other clinics and began eventually to salvage the situation. The abortion rights supporters cut through the ranks of the "pro-life" thugs and cleared out a space near the front gate and in the back of the clinic. And they turned back a group of anti-abortion zealots who, dragging their kids with them, tried to regain the back of the clinic.
Confrontation succeeds
So thanks to the presence of the clinic defenders, the tide began to turn. When there were only a handful of clinic defenders on hand early in the morning, the cops singled out some pro-choice activists, arresting 16. But with the massive presence of pro-choice forces, the cops felt compelled to back off and started arresting the clinic blockaders, eventually busting over 500. (The local prosecutor, however, simply sends them on their way with hardly a tap on the wrist.) The clinic did open, and several patients made their appointments, but several others had to reschedule.
The clinic defenders at Brown Deer went beyond the MCPC's rules. They pushed through lines of anti-abortion nuts. Many shouted slogans at the antiabortion nuts and ridiculed them. But it was precisely this confrontation that saved the situation.
Clinic defense or "non-confrontation"?
As a result of the events of August 8, the MCPC leaders had to start covering all the clinics. But they continued to oppose "confrontation." Issues of the Early Word distributed a week later on August 15 stated that "The Coalition is now reorganizing to shift its focus to a 'long-haul' rather than a short-term response to the threats at the clinic." And then again it says that "There's been some talk about taking a more 'confrontative' approach at the clinics.... we ask that that not happen." Indeed the Early Word claims that this "plays directly into the hands of the antis. They want confrontation at the clinics." Why, you see, the anti-abortion crusaders must love being stopped in their tracks, kept away from the clinics, covered with ridicule, and shamed.
Need it be mentioned that the anti-abortion bullies only want a certain type of confrontation? They want the right to outnumber and confront women patients and medical staff one by one. They can't handle it when clinic defenders come out, keep them away from the clinics, and denounce them.
Let the activists decide!
Moreover, the MCPC leaders have no respect for the ordinary people who have come out every week in Milwaukee, enduring lack of sleep and sickly preaching by brain-dead bigots. Instead MCPC leaders have kicked activists off the clinic defense lines, slandered groups they disagree with, and acted as a "slogan police" to keep activists from denouncing the anti-abortion bullies.
But these activists are the ones who have carried the weight of the struggle against the anti-abortion bullies. No wonder they are the ones who are upset by the policy of giving in to the antiabortion fanatics. Whatever views they begin with, the experience at the clinics leads many activists to support a policy of active resistance to the anti-abortion bigots.
Comrades from our party have participated in the clinic defense side-by-side with other activists. The Chicago Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party issued an "Open Letter to Pro-Choice Activists in Milwaukee" on August 14. It discussed the experience of clinic defense at Brown Deer. It opposed the wet blanket that has been put on the militants and called on them to decide themselves what has to be done, and to organize a stronger movement with or without the MCPC. It also suggested that they reach out to Chicago and Madison, where pro-choice militants have been snubbed by MCPC, for fear that they would not follow MCPC rules.
Indeed, MCPCs policy of non-confrontation has undermined the ranks of the clinic defenders. Slogans, songs, denouncing the anti-abortion bullies, create a lively atmosphere. They encourage discussion and thought among the activists, increase their knowledge of the issues, and give them initiative and verve, as well as shaming the bigots. On the other hand, the hours of silent vigil, and of simply turning the other cheek to the taunts of the religious bigots, are exhausting.
Some activists think that the pro-establishment figures fight for choice in one way, while the activists fight in another. But the MCPC leaders don't recognize such a common effort. One example. Though well connected with lawyers, the MCPC refused to send any to get the pro-choice people arrested at Brown Deer on August 8 out of jail or check on how they were being treated. At a meeting two days later, activists cheered the suggestion to set up legal defense for those arrested, but MCPC leaders would have none of it.
Why do such things happen? It is not just a matter of how militant the tactics are, but of who we are trying to organize, of who we are appealing to. The non- confrontational tactics reflect the interests of those in the pro-choice movement who aspire to become part of the capitalist establishment. They do not want to do anything to upset the ruling class which they hope to join. But we think that the movement must work hardest to mobilize working women and men. The poor and working class have the most at stake with abortion rights. Activists should aim at drawing working people and the poor into clinic defense and abortion rights activities. The struggle of the working people isn't respectable in the eyes of the rich. But it's the working people who will stand up to defend their rights, their lives, and their futures.
August 15
The next big test was the following Saturday, August 15. Under pressure from the rank-and-file clinic defenders, the MCPC had announced they would defend all the clinics that day.
The religious bigots again concentrated their forces at the Brown Deer clinic. But this time about 300 clinic defenders were in place to greet them when they arrived. Even though there were about 800 anti-abortion bullies on hand, they did not attempt a blockade. When "pro-life" zealots approached the pro-choice lines, they faced denunciations and pro-choice slogans.
Confront the anti-abortion bullies
The experience in Milwaukee confirms again that you only have the rights you fight for. The cops won't do it. The courts won't do it. The idea that you can defend abortion rights without confrontation is just a pipe-dream. There must be a resolute struggle for abortion rights. Fight for women's rights! Build a mass movement to smash the right-wing offensive!
In mid-July, 5,000 activists stepped forward to defend the city's abortion clinics against Operation Rescue. OR had boasted that it would stage big actions at the time of the Democratic convention and shut down the clinics.
But OR could only muster about 20 people at a few clinics. OR was overwhelmed, and access to clinics was never threatened.
The supporters of women's rights not only secured the clinics, but pursued the anti-abortion bullies wherever they went. When OR met at St. John's Church to plot against the clinics, there were two counter demonstrations across the street. During a Catholic mass attended by OR's bigots, a protester slipped through police lines to ask for a prayer for all the women butchered in back-alley abortions.
At another OR meeting at St. Agnes Church, 20 pro-choice women turned the tables on the clinic blockaders by blockading the church entrance. When OR tried to rough up the pro-choice demonstrators, dozens more activists joined the pro-choice blockade. OR was kept out of the church for about an hour before the police dispersed the pro-choice action.
OR ended up reduced to stunts and vandalism. One handed a supposed fetus to Clinton. Some others entered a clinic by pretending to be patients, and then destroyed some medical equipment.
[Photo: Activists defend New York City's Eastern Women's Clinic, July 15.]
Operation Rescue tried to shut down the Delta Women's Clinic in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in early July. The city's bishop, Stanley Ott, came out to bless their ranks and spur them on to violence. Despite the bishop's help, OR failed again to find somewhere, anywhere, where their presence would paralyze people with fear.
Many defenders of women's rights came out to support abortion rights. For most of the week, they were greatly outnumbered by the "pro-life" mob. But the clinic defenders held their ground, and OR marched around outside without charging the clinic. Not until Thursday, July 9 did OR, along with its like-minded brethren, the Lambs of Christ, launch an assault. No one got by the clinic defenders, however. It was the same story on Friday as the numbers of clinic defenders began to grow. Both days, clinic patients made their scheduled appointments. One patient said: "I didn't know what to expect, what I was getting into. But I was not going to let it stop me.
They don't know what I'm going through."
Saturday, the anti-abortion forces numbered 1,500 or so. But the pro-choice forces had swelled to 1,000. OR's attempt to storm the clinic failed miserably. The anti-abortionists also tried to surround cars entering the clinic grounds. But in the end, all the patients made it to the clinic.
The city had erected a fence around the clinic, which helped hold back OR. Nevertheless, the authorities were halfhearted. OR's anti-abortion fanatics were repeatedly able to push through police lines, although they couldn't get through the human chains of clinic defenders. The police would usually look on impassively when anti-abortion crusaders plowed into clinic defenders or harassed patients, but they sought to bully clinic defenders. The police apparently defended the fence, though, and a number of anti-abortion crusaders were eventually arrested. But the police took care to arrest a few clinic defenders as well.
In mid-August the orgy of bigotry and women-bashing called the Republican National Convention took place in Houston, Texas. Inside the hall right- wing preachers and politicians like Pat Robertson and Dan Quayle fed single mothers to the lions, while the Republican platform called for a constitutional amendment to equate abortion with murder. But outside the convention pro-choice activists continued their successful defense of Houston clinics.
Anticipating the Republican orgy, Operation Rescue and the Lambs of Christ had thought they would at last find a congenial atmosphere. They scheduled clinic blockades for the weeks proceeding and during the convention.
But the anti-women crusaders were outnumbered at the clinics two to one by the pro-choice people during the week of clinic defense that started on Monday, August 10 and extended to the convention's opening. The first serious clash occurred on Friday the 14th. OR rushed the doors of the A to Z Clinic, but was turned back by clinic defenders.
Then on Monday, August 17, some anti-woman zealots forced their way past pro-choice activists and briefly sat down at the front door of the West Loop Clinic. The cops then moved in to separate the two sides, thus protecting OR's position at the door. However, according to the Associated Press, Patricia Ireland, president of NOW, asked the police not to arrest OR or remove them from the clinic door. (AP, Aug. 17) She said "We don't think it's necessary to let them have their headline grabbing arrests. Let them sit back there until they rot." She rationalized that no abortions were scheduled at the clinic that day anyway. It's clear that the activists cannot rely on either the police or Patricia Ireland, but must stop OR themselves.
But fortunately the Houston activists hadn't left OR alone. And so Reverend Tucci, executive director of Operation Rescue, lamented that "the bigger the cities, the harder it is to get them to respond. Houston is no different. Some people just aren't interested." (AP, Aug. 16)
[Photo: Pro-choice forces defend a clinic during the Republican Convention.]
The Puerto Rican Secretary of Health, Jose Soler Zapata, is on the rampage against abortion rights. He boasts of reducing the number of abortion clinics on the island from 47 in 1986 to seven at present. He is shutting down clinics right and left on the pretense of alleged violations of the health codes. But Jose Soler makes no bones about his real motive of religious extremism, stating that "as a Catholic, abortion does not exist for me."
Meanwhile, the Puerto Rican Senate passed a law banning abortion after the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Whether the law will go into effect is doubtful. It probably violates even the recent ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Pennsylvania case which allows various restrictions on abortion. But if all the clinics are closed down, abortion rights will be a dead letter in Puerto Rico anyway.
When Bill Clinton chose Senator Al Gore from Tennessee as his running mate, Gore was promoted as the environmental champion on the Democratic Party ticket.
This was meant to balance Bill Clinton's liabilities on the environmental front. Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, had been exposed as soft on the grossly polluting poultry and timber interests in that state. But the Democrats declared after their convention, Al Gore is solid green. In fact, Al Gore is said to be so green that the Clinton campaign has made statements distancing itself from Gore's environmental proposals as too green for the Democratic Party to adopt wholesale.
Is Gore really such an environmental champion? True, Gore has made a career out of speaking out on issues such as air pollution and toxic waste, but his actual record shows that when push comes to shove, Gore puts corporate and military interests before the environment. This is especially the case when issues relating to Tennessee have come up before Congress; but it is not limited to such questions. An article in Business Week (August 24) revealed some of the not-so- pretty stands in Gore's environmental record.
* Gore strongly backed the now-defunct Clinch River breeder reactor in Tennessee.
Nuclear plants are a hazard to both employees and nearby residents. At present, they are designed, built and run without adequate safety precautions. And there is still no method for disposing of the highly radioactive plutonium product or for mothballing the plants when they become too decrepit and contaminated to operate.
* Showing that he has no regrets over supporting that project, Gore is now advocating that production of nuclear warhead triggers be set up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
This operation was performed for decades at the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats facility near Denver, Colorado. As a result, Rocky Flats is one of the most contaminated, dangerous sites in the entire country. At Rocky Flats, leaks and accidents involving radioactive and toxic materials have been the rule, not the exception. The plant is threatening the water supply in the Denver area. Even the federal government now admits that this facility, which has been the target of many mass protests and investigations, is unsafe. The Senate Armed Services Committee, of which Gore is a member, shut the facility in 1989 for safety violations. But now Gore wants to transfer the "benefits" of Rocky Flats to his home state.
* On toxic waste, Gore fought -- unsuccessfully -- for an amendment to the Superfund law (covering toxic waste cleanup) which would have let the polluting corporations pay less for the cleanup of their own waste.
* Last year Gore voted against a Senate measure which would have protected federal lands from being bought up cheaply by mining companies.
Workers need jobs and a healthy, safe environment
So it turns out that "green" Senator Gore actually has a record of promoting the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests at the expense of looking after public health and workers' safety, or preserving natural resources. This is actually no great surprise, because Gore has cultivated a record as a "moderate" Democrat, and he is an avid warmonger. He was one of the early supporters of Bush's war against Iraq.
Gore justifies the weaknesses in his environmental record in the name of "creating jobs." This is the standard excuse used by the capitalists and their politicians to back dangerous or unpopular projects.
But just because it is used many times does not make this argument true.
Action against pollution and in favor of environmental needs does mean cutting into corporate profit margins. But this does not necessarily mean cutting jobs. It is not necessary to wreak havoc on the environment, endanger public health or build weapons of mass destruction. Other, less damaging undertakings can also provide jobs.
What is more, while workers need jobs, we also need job safety, job security, communities fit for human habitation, and resources we can use. We don't want to have to give up our health, drink poison, live on a toxic waste dump, or suffer food shortages from fish kills and agricultural ruin. Nor do we want to be laid off from industrial disasters or boom-and-bust mining and logging practices. And most of us don't want to base our livelihoods on enterprises which depend on war and destruction either.
None of these vital demands are easily won, because they cut into corporate profits and our rulers' militaristic drives. But if we are to live with security and hope, we have to organize in favor of such aims. We cannot look to big business politicians like Gore and Clinton. We must build our own movement -- against destructive enterprises and practices, and for measures to protect our environment and lives.
In June, Democrat George Mitchell, the Senate majority leader, announced that he would finally bring the Freedom of Choice Act to the floor of the Senate for a vote. This bill has been advertised as preserving abortion rights, and countering Supreme Court attempts to chip away at Roe v. Wade. In reality, the bill authorizes the states to make a number of restrictions on abortions.
And now the Democrats are saying they don't think it is a good time to bring the bill to a vote after all. The author of the House version of the bill, liberal Don Edwards of California, thinks it likely that the bill won't be brought to a vote in the House until "a few weeks after Clinton is elected." (New York Times, Aug. 7) So this bill, which in one form or another has been around since 1990, is still going nowhere.
Would the bill really save Roe v. Wade?
The Freedom of Choice Act has been widely hailed by NOW, NARAL and others in the pro-establishment wing of the women's movement. But the bill explicitly allows states to refuse to use their funds to help poor women pay for abortions. It also specifically allows parental consent restrictions which force a minor seeking abortion to get permission of her parents, creating potentially tragic situations for young women who would have to face tyrannical or dysfunctional families.
As well, the bill would allow each state to define when fetal viability exists and to ban abortions after that point. And it permits states to restrict abortions under the pretense of regulating their safety. (See article on page 4 on the closing of health clinics under this pretense in Puerto Rico.) Perhaps the bill should be renamed the "Freedom to Restrict Abortion Act." In essence, it is similar in spirit to the June 29 Supreme Court decision which chipped away at abortion rights bit by bit while forbidding states to ban abortion outright.
An election ploy
The explicit restrictions on abortion rights were added to an earlier version in return for Senator Mitchell agreeing to bring the bill to the Senate floor.
Everyone knew the act had no chance to become law because Bush would veto it. But forcing Bush to veto the bill in an election year, perhaps right before the Republican convention, was supposed to expose Bush and help elect Democrats. The pro-establishment women's groups shamefully consented to limiting abortion rights for the sake of the Democratic election campaign.
But now Don Edwards and other liberal Democrats are afraid that the bill cannot even be brought to the floor without further restrictions on abortion being added by amendment. The Democrats cannot even rally their own ranks to support a halfhearted bill. The plot to embarrass Bush has turned into an embarrassment for the liberal Democrats.
Clinton, Gore, and the "unborn"
Waffling on women's rights is nothing new for the Democrats. Take, for instance, Clinton's and Gore's stands of the past. As governor of Arkansas, Clinton wrote to the Arkansas Right to Life organization stating that "I am opposed to abortion and to government funding of abortions....I do support the concept of the proposed Arkansas Constitutional Amendment 65 and agree with its stated purpose." (Letter from Clinton to Earlene Wallace, Sept. 26, 1986) And what was Amendment 65? It not only banned using state funds to pay for abortions but defined fetuses as "unborn children." This talk of "unborn children" is the way the anti-abortion groups try to provide a legal basis for banning abortion as the murder of the "unborn." Amendment 65 did not become law, but it provided the basis for Amendment 68 which passed in 1988 and ended state funding of abortion for indigent women.
And Gore? As a senator he backed the Hyde Amendment banning federally- financed abortions for poor women. In a letter written in 1987, Gore stated he had "consistently opposed federal funding" for abortion, which he considered "arguably the taking of a human life." (Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1992) He also tried to amend the 1984 Civil Rights Act so that it would call a fetus from the time of conception a "person."
Nowadays Clinton and Gore want to promote themselves as pro-choice, although personally opposed to abortion. Gore, for example, now says he could support government funding for abortions for poor women if it were part of a comprehensive national health care system. But their history is that they are willing to barter abortion rights for votes.
Who'll really defend abortion rights?
Despite the dreadful record of Clinton, Gore, and Congress, NOW and other bourgeois-led groups continue to place their hopes with the establishment politicians. They call this election "the year of the woman." Never mind that while they dance with the politicians, abortion rights are becoming a thing of the past.
If there are still to be abortion rights, it is up to the millions of working and poor people to take matters into their own hands. The movement for women's rights must not trim its demands to help elect establishment politicians, but mobilize the pro-choice masses against the establishment.
As the election campaign unfolds, we have seen George Bush boasting of his expertise in foreign policy and making new threats of military action against Iraq. We have also seen Bill Clinton claiming he will provide new leadership in foreign affairs.
But there is one shameful piece of U.S. foreign policy that neither Bush nor Clinton seem willing to speak about. That is the tragedy of Haiti and the Haitian boat people.
Last fall, a military coup in Haiti overthrew the elected civilian government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Since then, a reign of terror has been imposed on the poverty-stricken masses in Haiti. Since the coup last year, some 37,000 people have taken to small boats to escape persecution. Of these, 27,000 have been intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard and returned to the island.
Several times advocates on behalf of Haitian refugees have gone to court seeking to change Bush's order. But each time, Bush's Justice Department has defended the policy, and the courts have upheld the White House.
Bush says these people are in no danger of political repression. But anyone with eyes in Haiti says just the opposite. Even prominent lawyers and businessmen who support ousted President Aristide are frequently found dead, so one can imagine how "safe" it is for ordinary poor laborers.
At the end of August, a new report on human rights in Haiti was issued by Amnesty International. It said that repression has increased dramatically since the spring. At least 20 civilians were killed last month alone. Meanwhile, those arrested by the army on any pretext are forced to pay for their food, pay for a cell, even pay to avoid torture.
As for Haiti itself, the Bush administration publicly says that it wants the restoration of Aristide. But that is largely for show. In reality, Washington has been coming to terms with the generals in power and is today developing cozy ties with the new Prime Minister Marc Bazin. Bazin, who fronts for the military, is a former official of the imperialist World Bank and an old friend of the U.S. government.
This is George Bush's policy towards Haiti and the boat people, and it is a racist outrage. Haitians are forced back into the hands of their torturers simply because they are black and poor.
And where is Bill Clinton? We have not seen him say one word about the terrible plight of the Haitians. We have not seen him say that he would grant political refuge to the Haitian boat people. What kind of alternative is this?
No more waffling from Bush and Clinton!
Health care is a crying need. Tens of millions are uninsured. Millions more face the loss of their insurance coverage in the 90's -- through layoffs, or employers dropping health plans, or through skyrocketing premiums that can no longer be afforded. And tens of millions of people have inadequate plans that hardly cover a thing.
Meanwhile new occupational diseases are ravaging millions of workers. Old diseases thought conquered and long dead are making a comeback, such as TB. New epidemics like AIDS are receiving only halfhearted attention. Public health measures are deteriorating: even simple and effective precautions like vaccination of school children is now spotty.
Nothing shows better the insanity of the capitalist system than that this, happens while as much as one-eighth of the American economy is devoted to health care. What a disproportion between the gigantic profits of the health industry and the more and more inadequate service it provides! What a sadistic system when large numbers of hospital workers themselves do not have any medical coverage.
Two different health crises
The health care crisis is a different crisis for different people. It is a matter of lack of coverage and of inadequate care for the workers. But for the corporations, it is a matter of paying too much for health benefits for the workers. They have been solving this crisis by cutting coverage and forcing the workers to fend for themselves.
And what are the politicians saying about it? Bush and Clinton are saying little. They promise to take care of the matter, while letting things slide.
More of the same
Bush and the Republicans want to keep the old private system of medicine. What's wrong, they ask? Aren't the profits still flowing?
And how do Bush's followers intend to extend health coverage as health premiums skyrocket? Why, some newspapers suggest, leave off coverage of the most important items -- like drug and alcohol abuse, long-term care, catastrophic care, etc. Let the workers pay for the expensive items or do without. Let health insurance cover aspirins and bandaids, and then every employer will be able to provide it for every worker.
Vague promises
Clinton and the Democrats are interested in some reforms, and in extending coverage to more people. But they don't want to spend any money on it: they insist that their pet schemes will ensure such savings that there will be money galore. Clinton, for example, says that his plan will only cover more and more people as these savings increase. But what if the promised savings never materialize? And they won't if Clinton keeps his promises to the monied interests. Then the uninsured will always be with us.
Either way, Bush or Clinton, the ruling class is moving towards the open advocacy of a two-tier system: everything for the rich, and let the workers fend for themselves. This will solve the health care crisis of the corporations, but it will do nothing about the crisis of the workers and the poor.
A full, universal and national system
Stop! The workers must demand something else. We need a full, universal and national plan, cutting out the profiteers.
It must be full. It must include the most important things, including expenses for drug and alcohol abuse, for repetitive stress and occupational diseases, for dental care, for both prenatal care and abortion.
It must be universal. Everyone must be covered. This is important not only for justice, but also to provide preventative care and eliminate epidemics.
It must be national. It should be uniform across the country, not a crazy patchwork that varies state by state. And it must not be rationed by economic class. It must be paid for by the general revenues of the government, financed by levies on the corporations and the rich.
It must cut out the profiteers. There is no need to have a multiplicity of insurance companies whose administrative work absorbs a large part of medical expenses. A universal and national system eliminates much unnecessary paperwork and expenses and concentrates attention on actual treatment. And medicine must not be oriented to keeping doctors in the top 1% of wealthy families, nor in providing cushy positions for bureaucrats, but towards providing care.
A medical bill of rights
We need a bill of rights for the patients. It must guarantee treatment, no matter what one's occupation or amount of money. It must guarantee the right to full information about one's condition and the possible treatments, without which the right to decide on treatment is a cruel mockery. It must guarantee that the doctor is not caught in a conflict of interest -- supposedly treating the worker but working under the orders of the employer.
And there must be a bill of rights for the medical workers. This is necessary both because medical workers are a large part of the workforce, but also in order to ensure quality attention to the patients. When the orderlies, nurses, etc. are overworked and underpaid, they cannot deliver quality care.
Realism
These are not unrealistic demands. From Canada to Western Europe, many countries already achieve more of this than the United States. In many of them, people don't worry about being ruined if they have to go to a hospital for an operation. And the network of general preventative care is often strikingly better than in the U.S.
None of these countries cut out the profiteers, just curbed them a bit. Thus, they are still patchwork plans, based on reconciling different monied interests, and so they are caught up in the financial woes facing all the Western countries. But they have still provided far better and more extensive coverage than here.
We will only get better care if the workers join together to demand an end to the shameful system of two-tier medicine in the U.S. Bush and Clinton are nothing but defenders of the rotten status quo in the U.S. which makes health care a scandal.
For a truly human medicine
A universal system of national health care will be a dramatic improvement for all workers and the poor. It will not be the best system, though. A truly human system of health care must not just be universal, but must also eliminate the system of elitism that sets doctors apart from medical workers and from their patients. It must be integrated with the workplace and help determine the pace of work and safety conditions in order to eliminate the epidemics of occupational disease. It must rely on conscious participation of the people, and not on building bureaucracies.
All this can only be achieved by eliminating medicine for profit and replacing it with medicine for health. This can only be done in a system of workers' socialism, where the economy as a whole is run by the working masses in their own interest. It will never be accomplished in a system based on a ruling class of wealthy owners.
But a universal system of health care will be a start. Every step towards such a system will improve our health and that of our families. Unless we want to be racked by epidemics and disease, we must demand that the politicians cease their excuses, accept health as the right of all workers in this country, and tax the corporations and the rich to fund it. Let us demand health care as a human right of all workers in this country!
President George Bush announced on August 12 that the U.S., Mexico and Canada had reached a new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). If the agreement is ratified by the legislatures in the three countries, it will go into effect in 1994.
What's the significance of this agreement for the working class? The final wording, which is still being worked out, won't be released until September or October. So it is impossible to make a detailed analysis of the trade pact. But the general direction is clear.
This is an agreement to help the big capitalists become more competitive at the expense of the working masses in all three countries.
Free trade competition -- for lower pay
When Bush announced the new agreement he emphasized that, "The cold war is over. The principal challenge now facing the United States is to compete in a rapidly changing, expanding global marketplace."
U.S. imperialism is worried that it is losing in the world economic contest with Japan and the European Community. It hopes the NAFTA will help the big monopolies become more competitive by making it easier for them to exploit low-paid workers in Mexico.
Right now Mexican manufacturing workers average only about $2.03 an hour. This is a lot less than the $13.85 an hour average in the U.S. And it undercuts production in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan where manufacturing pay averages about $4.10 an hour. Under the Free Trade Agreement it will be easier for U.S. monopolies to shift production to Mexico. At the same time, special protectionist measures in the NAFTA, such as "domestic content" rules, make it more difficult for the Japanese or European or South Korean capitalists to also shift production to Mexico and get the benefits of free trade. With a favored position with respect to the lower-paid workers in Mexico, the giant U.S. multinationals believe they can beat out the foreign multinationals.
And while exploiting the low Mexican wages, the big multinationals also hope to use the threat of shifting production to Mexico to help drive down the higher pay and benefits of workers in the U.S. and Canada.
Of course these trends have already been underway for a number of years. The Free Trade Agreement will simply expand on them somewhat while locking in the changes that have been developing in Mexico.
Under pressure from U.S. imperialism, and in the hopes of climbing out of a decade of economic crises, the Mexican government has been carrying out wide-scale privatization, opening the country to more U.S. investments, and implementing an austerity drive against the working masses. The NAFTA builds on those changes and makes it harder for some future Mexican government to back away from the greater economic dependence on the U.S. As well, Bush hopes to use this agreement as a model to spread these changes to the rest of Latin America and to help protect this traditional sphere of influence of U.S. imperialism from the other imperialists.
Simply put, the Free Trade Agreement is a way for the filthy rich capitalists to profit off the lower-paid workers in Mexico and off of driving down the standard of living in the U.S. and Canada.
"Fair trade" protectionism won't help the workers
But if free trade means greater exploitation of the workers, it should not be thought that protectionism offers any alternative.
The AFL-CIO bureaucracy is campaigning against the Free Trade Agreement on protectionist grounds. They call for steps to prevent jobs from running off to Mexico and measures to force American monopolies to invest in the U.S. instead. They say we need "fair trade" instead of "free trade."
All of this sounds like a way to save U.S. jobs, but it is not. Such protectionist re-industrialization schemes also end up eliminating jobs, in this case through greater use of technology and speedup. Meanwhile, the calls against runaway jobs simply build chauvinist resentment of Mexican workers and helps the capitalists, pit U.S. workers against their Mexican brothers and sisters.
The capitalists are using two basic ways of improving their competitive edge to protect profits -- shifting jobs to lower-wage areas on the one hand and investing in high tech automation on the other hand. In both cases, they are eliminating jobs and cutting other labor costs.
The Free Trade Agreement highlights ongoing processes in the U.S. and world economy that have been and will continue to devastate more and more sections of the U.S. working class. These developments are going to continue, with or without the NAFTA. To think that defeating or delaying the trade pact could protect the livelihood of U.S. workers is nothing more than dreaming of days already gone by.
International solidarity is the alternative
The issue for the workers is neither free trade nor fair trade, but to build international solidarity of the workers against the capitalists.
Our own capitalist bosses are directly exploiting the Mexican workers and backing up their exploitation by the Mexican capitalists. The more that Mexican workers' struggles are successful the more they weaken our bosses and help our own fight for jobs and a decent livelihood.
Today Mexican workers are fighting for jobs, higher pay, safety and environmental protection. We in the U.S. must give every support to the Mexican strikes and other mass struggles.
At the same time, we should demand that the U.S. bankers abrogate their share of Mexico's roughly $76 billion foreign debt. This debt has been a major lever for U.S. imperialism to keep Mexico economically dependent and its working people impoverished.
And we must also stand up for full rights for the immigrant Mexican workers here in the U.S. who are being hounded by the INS and kept especially oppressed by the capitalists.
International solidarity is a powerful weapon of the working class. Of course, it is frequently upset by the competition imposed by the capitalists. But it is also constantly renewed as workers become aware of the common problems and the common enemies that they face. And it will ultimately be cemented in a revolution that puts the whole competitive system of capitalism in its grave and opens up a new world of workers' cooperation.
Today the capitalists of the U.S., Canada and Mexico are forging new agreements to help them drive down the workers. It is time for the workers to forge a common struggle against them.
A Mexican federal panel ruled August 17 that Volkswagen has the right to nullify its contract and fire all 16,000 workers at its plant in Puebla. Volkswagen, which has locked workers out since July 26, immediately announced that it will graciously rehire most workers. It wants to fire only the dissidents who led a five-day strike against them.
At the end of June, the workers struck against Volkswagen's take-back demands and for higher pay. The leaders of the local CTM union (the union affiliated with the PRI party of Mexico's president Salinas) called off the strike after 35 hours, cheering about a 20% pay increase to $15 a day. The union hacks forgot about the workers' demand for a 35% pay increase and a 25% benefit increase. (Over the last ten years, auto workers in Mexico have lost about 42% of their buying power.) The hacks also failed to mention they had agreed to a speedup and job eliminating system of Japanese-style team work groups. And they did not bother to let the workers vote on the contract.
The rank and file was outraged. Around 10,000 workers signed petitions demanding the ouster of Gasper Bueno, the union head, and the election of a new executive committee. On July 21, the dissidents launched a wildcat strike that shut the plant for five days.
Volkswagen responded by announcing it was closing the plant, perhaps permanently, and threatening to fire all the workers. The strikers then went to Mexico City to demand new elections from the Secretary of Labor. On August 7, about 9,500 dissident workers rallied at Cuauhtemoc Stadium. The official union leadership could only mobilize 1,500 workers for a march downtown. Nevertheless, the government panel backed them in its ruling for Volkswagen. The company said it would only rehire most workers if the old union leaders were retained.
These are the forces the Mexican workers face -- giant foreign corporations who are supported both by the Mexican government and the CTM union leaders. Despite the forces arrayed against them, Mexican workers are standing up and striving to forge a movement independent of the sellouts.
As textile workers reached the 29th day of their strike, the Association of Textile and Cotton Producers broke off negotiations. The combination of Mexican and foreign textile bosses threatened to pull their plants out of the country because "in Mexico there is no labor stability."
The bosses offered a 10% raise. But the workers continued to demand a 15% hike and benefit improvements.
Workers for Hoover-Mexicana rallied in early August in Mexico City. The workers demanded the reinstatement of more than 30 workers who had been fired. The U.S.-owned company had fired them when they asked for the distribution of profit-sharing money that was owed them by the company.
Scores of former workers for the PEMEX oil company are camped out in Mexico City's central plaza. They are protesting massive layoffs carried out by the state-owned company as part of President Salinas' modernization and privatization drive.
Since 1987 PEMEX has slashed some 66,000 jobs. It has shut down or cut back inefficient refineries and sold off peripheral operations. In some cases, workers laid off by PEMEX have been hired to do the same job by private subcontractors, but now at non-union pay. Many of the workers are still without jobs.
President Salinas has claimed that the new Free Trade Agreement "will mean more employment and better pay for Mexicans." But he does not mention the hundreds of thousands of workers who have lost their jobs in the privatization drive that laid the basis for the trade pact. More than 5 million people, some 15% of the labor force, are still unemployed, and some 14 million are underemployed. Salinas also fails to mention the jobs that will be lost as many Mexican companies are driven under in the free trade competition with the giant multinationals and the number of peasants who will be thrown off the land as it is opened to more intensive capitalist exploitation.
The Free Trade Agreement may benefit some Mexicans -- the bigger capitalists and perhaps some sections of professionals and technicians. But for the masses of workers the free trade agreement means continued unemployment and low-wage slavery to the multinational exploiters.
[Graphic.]
Over 1,000 drywall construction workers have been waging a fierce strike in southern California since June 1. Using mass picketing to shut down construction sites, confronting police, and defying deportations, the workers have shut down much of the operations of 14 construction companies that operate from the Mexican border up to the north of Los Angeles.
Over the last ten years, the construction companies have driven the carpenters' union out of drywalling, eliminated benefits and slashed pay from a piecework rate of about 10 cents down to about 4 cents for cutting and installing each square foot of sheetrock. The dry-wallers, now mostly Mexican immigrants, make only about $300 for a 60-hour week and, even then, are frequently cheated out of pay. The strikers are demanding the restoration of pay, medical benefits, a pension plan, and recognition of a new union that is being organized by the drywallers.
On July 2, the strikers entered a construction site in Mission Viejo, convinced six non-strikers to leave, and shut down the operation. Orange County police stormed in and arrested about 150 of the strikers, charging them with trespassing and "kidnapping." When it became clear that the non-strikers had joined the strike, the kidnapping charges were dropped. But more than half of those arrested were turned over to the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service). Some 38 have been deported and another 20 or so face deportation hearings. A few others still face charges including assault and battery.
Despite this repression, the strikers have not been intimidated. Each day their mass pickets move from one site to the next, most often shutting them down as more workers join the strike.
Strikers have been arrested at a series of sites. Another major confrontation took place on July 23. Over 100 strikers picketed a construction site in Hollywood with signs saying things like "We want work, not food stamps." Subcontractors and private security guards pulled guns on the strikers. When the workers refused to leave, the police stormed up and began beatings and arrests. The strikers marched away, onto the Hollywood Freeway. Eventually the police grabbed and arrested 68 of them.
On July 28, over 600 people protested arrests of strikers outside the LAPD headquarters. Strikers were joined by other workers, including janitors who have been fighting for contracts and union rights in Los Angeles.
[Photo: Striking drywall workers march in Southern California.]
2,300 GM workers went on strike August 27 at the parts plant in Lords- town, Ohio. The shortages caused by the strike forced the closing of GM's Saturn plant and threatened production at seven other assembly plants.
The Lordstown workers are fighting against GM's job cutting program. GM has announced it will cut 74,000 jobs in North America by 1995. This includes the closing of a tool-and-die shop in Lordstown which would eliminate 240 jobs. The strikers are protesting those job cuts. They are also fighting speed up, outsourcing of work, and poor air quality.
In Pittsburgh, on July 27 and 28, workers fought and won a major battle against the union busting tactics of the Pittsburgh Press Co.
Delivery drivers have been on strike since May to oppose plans to eliminate 450 of the 605 delivery jobs. As soon as the strike began, Pittsburgh Press shut down operations and locked out 1,300 workers from 10 other unions. But the company began hiring scabs and decided to try to begin publication of both the Pittsburgh Press and the Post-Gazette.
As word spread that the presses were going to roll, workers started massing at the front gates of the company during the evening of July 26. By 11:00 p.m. more than 6,000 workers blocked the street in front of the Pittsburgh Press Co. Workers marched around the building chanting, "Scabs go home!" and "Stop the Press!"
The all-night vigil culminated in mass action as the giant presses began to roll at 5:00 a.m. The crowd blocked the driveway of the building. Police in complete riot gear and hired security thugs attempted to move the boisterous crowd back, but to no avail. As the cops arrested people in the front line, other workers quickly took their places. The cops gave up against the unending wave of protesters. Not one delivery truck was able to drive out of the lot all day.
For the next 48 hours, striking drivers were joined on the picket line by other paper workers, steelworkers, carpenters, construction workers, miners, hospital workers, bus drivers, city and county workers, telephone workers, teachers and students of all ages and nationalities. They blocked the four lane two-block long Boulevard of the Allies to "stop the Press."
After two days of battle, the Pittsburgh Press Co. announced it was giving up trying to publish the scab papers. That evening, over 5,000 workers joined a candlelight vigil at the site to celebrate the victory.
The struggle at Pittsburgh Press Co. is far from over, as the company is still refusing the workers' demands. But the workers have won the latest round with united mass action.
On July 22, about 100 workers joined a noon-time rally outside the Department of Transportation (DOT) headquarters to protest Mayor Coleman Young's threats to cut wages and layoff thousands of workers.
A week later, scores of EMS technicians demonstrated in front of the City- County building against the mayor.
And the 6,000 AFSCME members rejected the mayor's contract demands by a three-to-one margin, despite its recommendation by the union's leaders. City workers are fed up with the take-back offensive.
The mayor has given the city's 16,500 unionized employees an ultimatum -- take a 10% pay cut or face mass layoffs and the privatization of city services. The city council already unilaterally cut the pay of non-union employees by 8%. And after AFSCME members turned down the mayor's demands, he laid off 125 workers. He also declared the city will lay off the 200 emergency medical service technicians (EMS) and 1,000 clerical workers and replace them with private contractors. Over the long run, the mayor said he plans to layoff 3,000 workers.
These assaults against the workers are all the worse for the collaboration of the union leaders. The measures Young is carrying out are proposals from the "21st Century Committee" which is co-chaired by former UAW president Douglas Fraser. Meanwhile, AFSCME leaders recommended that workers accept the proposed cuts, and are still holding the workers back from striking.
But the rank-and-file workers are fed up with sacrificing for the rich. The Democrats claim they are different from the fat cat Republicans. But just like Bush, Mayor Young has helped the rich to loot the treasury for years, giving them handouts and tax abatements galore. Meanwhile, the workers and the poor have suffered one take-back after another.
Enough is enough. We need more mass pickets like those of the DOT and EMS workers. We must unite all the workers for a determined struggle to make the rich pay for the crisis they've caused.
Over 1,000 private-sector mental health workers in Connecticut walked out of seven agencies July 8. They demand pay parity with the state mental health workers.
Some 500 strikers picketed the Department of Mental Retardation the first day. The next day, over 1,000 strikers marched to the state capitol and held roving blockades on Capitol Avenue. At one point, the demonstrators shut down a major highway ramp adjacent to the Capitol Building.
Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker called for a 30-day cooling-off period. Six of the seven struck agencies returned to the negotiating table as their employees returned to work under the conditions of the expired contract. However, one agency, Oak Hill, refused to participate. Instead, Oak Hill locked out its workers and advertised for scabs.
Oak Hill workers have held militant marches against board members. In one incident, 200 workers marched into the office building of two of the board members who hid behind barricaded doors.
New Mexico state police and Doha Ana county sheriffs deputies brutally maced striking chili pickers July 30. Some 500 workers were picketing the Anderson farm near Las Cruces, New Mexico. Police attacked to break up the strike. Twenty-nine strikers were treated for injuries.
For some time, the chili pickers have been trying to renegotiate their contract with Anderson. They are paid by the number of chili buckets they have picked. Last year's contract provided for a minimum wage of more than one dollar per bucket, guaranteed drinking water, bathrooms for field workers, and a system of arbitration. This year, Anderson offered only 85 cents per bucket with no negotiations.
Anderson is the first farm hiring pickers this season, and whatever is agreed to there will set the precedent for how much pickers will be paid throughout the region. The strikers are determined to win.
Four days of street fighting against the police broke out in early July in an 80- block area of upper Manhattan in New York City. Some 3,000 police were called out to suppress the masses. At least 125 people were arrested. Many were brutally beaten. And Dagoberto Pichardo was killed when police threw him from a rooftop after chasing him from his apartment for allegedly dropping bottles on police from the windows. July marked the fourth month in a row of major outbursts of mass struggle against racist police terror following the acquittal of the police torturers of Rodney King in Los Angeles. The following article appeared in the July 10 "New York Workers' Voice," paper of the MLP-New York Branch.
Mass outrage has erupted in Washington Heights at the police murder of Jose Garcia. Thousands of residents of the largely Dominican community of Washington Heights and Inwood have taken to the streets to protest the fatal shooting of Garcia. Mass marches and demonstrations have filled the streets with angry cries against police brutality. A cop was burned in effigy last Wednesday and shouts of "Killer Cops" and "Justice" have resounded in the crowded neighborhoods. Rallies have taken place in front of the 34th precinct to denounce the police, and people have repeatedly clashed with the cops, deployed in record numbers in the area, spraying police in riot gear with bottles and rocks.
The "war on drugs" is a war on the poor
The residents of Washington Heights are angry because the police have been conducting a war on this immigrant community for years in the name of "the war on drugs." The murder of Jose Garcia, shot in the back by NYPD cop Michael O'Keefe, was "business as usual" for the 34th precinct cops, who behave like an army of occupation in the community. O'Keefe himself was part of the notorious "Loco Motion" patrol, accused by residents of drug trade, and assaults, theft and savage beatings against the local youth.
For the police, anyone standing at the doorsteps of a residential building is a lookout, and any youth on a street corner is a drug dealer. This supposedly gives the cops the right to terrorize the community with arbitrary searches, beatings and break-ins into family apartments.
But the people of Washington Heights are themselves victims of the drug trade. Washington Heights is a working class community, with large numbers of people in low paying jobs, with a high level of unemployment, and inadequate housing. The last thing the ordinary residents of this community want is for the drug trade to flourish in their neighborhoods.
And yet, the only thing this so-called "war on drugs" has brought the people of Washington Heights is a reign of terror by the police. It certainly hasn't made any dent on the drug trade. After years of the "war on drugs," Washington Heights is still drug-ridden.
The government has no solutions to the problems of the workers and poor
More police, more force, and more jails have not solved the drug problem. Dinkins expanded the police force and made the "war on drugs" a centerpiece of his administration's policy. But the social issues underlying drugs are not being addressed.
Poverty is on the rise. The conditions of life for people in the inner cities are deplorable. The youth, especially the minority youth, have very little hope ahead of them.
And while the working and poor people are persecuted, the big-time criminals are hardly ever brought to justice. Oliver North organized flights to ferry drugs for the Medellin Cartel in exchange for weapon deliveries to the Nicaraguan contras, and he is a "hero." The S&L bankers, Wall Street junk bond kings, and other rich sharks have made off with billions of other people's money, but they are given slaps on the wrist, if anything at all. Employers can kill and maim people on the job, but they are never put in jail. The crusade against crime is a farce! The real aim of the "war on drugs" is to terrorize the disenchanted poor and prevent them from rising against the wealthy capitalists.
The working people are fed up
The outpouring of anger at the murder of Jose Garcia is evidence that the minority residents of northern Manhattan are fed up with racist police brutality.
But soon after disturbances broke out in the streets of Washington Heights, Mayor Dinkins rushed to the studio of a Spanish-language television station to broadcast an appeal for calm and to preach faith in the system.
"It is very important to understand there will be a very thorough investigation of the matter and to find out precisely what happened," Dinkins said. Cardinal O'Connor, Councilman Guillermo Linares, and other so-called community "leaders" were also at hand to advise restraint.
But all the chatter about "thorough investigations," and of punishing the guilty cops, of tinkering with the police department, have been heard before.
Jose Garcia was not the first victim of the racist police. New York has seen innumerable cases of police murders, beatings and savage attacks against minorities and the poor. In fact, racist brutality is a national epidemic.
Last April a wave of mass outrage swept the country at the acquittal of four racist cops in the brutal beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. And everywhere the masses rose the cry was 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.
This system cannot be fixed up. Racism and police brutality are 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 business is on the upswing. Racism is a poison the capitalists spread to split the workers along race lines and undermine the building up of a class-wide movement against the rich ruling class.
Get organized!
For the masses, justice can only be won by turning this system upside down. We must target the rich 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 driver's 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 up a new order where the masses are in control and where a socialist economy buries all exploitation and racism. Let us organize, independent of the capitalist parties and "respectable" leaders, and build up a systematic movement against racism, against police brutality, and against the whole capitalist system that has produced these outrages!
[Photo: Angry residents of Washington Heights denounce racist New York police.]
The establishment of contact between Europe and the Americas was a major event in world history. But under capitalism, every advance goes hand in hand with mass suffering and oppression. Technical improvement, for example, results in unemployment. And the voyages of Christopher Columbus to America resulted in the mass enslavement and decimation of the local peoples. It was a major holocaust whose repercussions are still felt today in the miserable conditions facing indigenous peoples of North and South America.
The ruling circles are celebrating the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyages. But many people have protested the arrogance of talking of the "discovery" of a continent already inhabited by developed civilizations. There are also protests against the racism which still saturates Western capitalist society. Several demonstrations have taken place in the past year.
New York
On July 4th, 300 demonstrators denounced the visit to New York of replicas of the Nina, the and the Santa Maria, the ships that brought Columbus to America. They marched from City Hall to Battery Park, where a celebration of Columbus was taking place.
Another event is scheduled at the UN for October 12.
A lighthouse of darkness
Meanwhile, hunger stalks the Dominican Republic, but the government is instead spending millions on a fancy lighthouse to celebrate the arrival of Columbus. Bear in mind that Columbus took part in the total extermination of the native population of the Dominican Republic; the original tribes that lived there were completely wiped out. Mind you, Columbus was impressed by their gentleness and humanity, but he also wanted slaves.
A reader wrote in to us that "The Balaguer regime is building this multimillion dollar lighthouse, while unemployment reaches over 40% (including... those who lost their jobs a long time ago or have no hope of finding a job at all and make a living working long hours every day selling bananas, vegetables, shining shoes along the streets, etc.)." (Workers' Advocate Supplement, July 25)
This project was built in the midst of mass protest, as hundreds of families lost their homes, which were torn down to make for broad avenues to lead to the lighthouse.
How did Balaguer deal with the poverty of the shantytowns near his prestige project, the lighthouse? He is building a wall along the way so that tourists can visit the lighthouse without having to see the poor neighborhoods. This "wall of shame" is a symbol of the capitalist system: "prosperity" for the few, while the poverty-stricken majority are hidden away.
[Photos: Lavish monument to Columbus adjoins desperately poor shantytown in the Dominican Republic.]
What does privatization of city jails mean? Well, if the private jail in Louisville, Kentucky tells you anything, it means more scabs against workers' strikes.
Workers at the Fischer Packing Company in Louisville have been on strike for 10 weeks. On July 13, hundreds of strikers and their supporters confronted about 100 scabs who tried to enter the plant. The scabs were hired from Labor World USA, a temporary employment agency. But it turns out that at least 30 of the scabs were inmates from a local private jail. Workers throughout the city were outraged.
[Graphic.]
[Photo: Blacks march against the police in Kogiso, South Africa, July 21.]
Millions of black people went on strike in South Africa for two days on August 3 and 4. They were protesting the De Klerk government's complicity in racist massacres and demanding an interim government which would include black representatives.
During the strike, urban areas throughout the country were turned into ghost towns, as workers refused to show 8 up for work. Industrial production came to a stop nearly everywhere.
The strike was followed by a third day of demonstrations in major cities. Some 100,000 marched in the capital, Pretoria. There was also a march of 50,000 in Cape Town and smaller demonstrations in Port Elizabeth, Durban, and Pietermaritzburg.
The strikes and demonstrations showed, once again, the black people's ability to bring the South African economy to a halt, and their desire for equality and freedom.
But the strike was toned down
The actions were organized by the African National Congress (ANC) and its trade union allies. Nelson Mandela and the other ANC leaders began to think about striking after the ANC withdrew from negotiations with the government in June, accusing De Klerk of refusing to budge on any issues of substance. They were also impelled to call large actions after the Boipatong massacre of June 17, when 42 people in an ANC-affiliated township were murdered. The hand of South Africa's security forces was seen in that massacre.
The thorough sweeping away of the racist system in South Africa would require a revolutionary struggle. Even the reforms that have come to South Africa so far only took place because of the huge mass upsurge of the mid-80's. After that upsurge was repressed, however, the racist establishment in South Africa realized -- both due to the mass upheaval and international isolation -- that it could no longer maintain the racist system as of old. It decided to begin talks with the anti-apartheid opposition for a reformist deal, one which would allow blacks a share of political power but which would still keep the levers of economic power in the hands of the white elite.
But even as De Klerk began these negotiations he also sought to gain the biggest advantages for the white minority. Racist elements within the security forces fomented black-on-black violence in order to weaken the ANC, and De Klerk refused to take any action, much less even acknowledge government complicity. De Klerk dragged his feet in the talks, refusing to make serious concessions.
When talks broke off, the ANC leaders spoke loudly about mass action. And they spoke of an extended strike to force De Klerk from power. But the ANC leaders are reformists, not revolutionaries. They do believe in mass actions, but only if they are straitjacketed. They see mass actions simply as a means of putting pressure on De Klerk for concessions, but not as the centerpiece of a policy of developing revolutionary struggle.
So, as they drew closer to the strike deadline of August 3, ANC leaders scaled back the strike and turned it into a largely symbolic act -- an exercise to let off steam rather than as part of a serious struggle to force De Klerk to go.
Why, in preparing for their strike, the ANC leaders even carried out negotiations with the big, white capitalists. The capitalists are anxious to secure a political settlement that provides some stability to the economy and gives them a chance to recover from the three-year-old recession. They offered to hold a joint shutdown of the economy with the ANC to get negotiations restarted. The two sides were not able to agree on a common set of demands, but no doubt these negotiations helped push the ANC into further moderating their plans.
Despite the ANC's scaling back of the strike, its size showed again the enthusiasm of South Africa's black population for ending racist oppression. And many displayed enthusiasm for mass action. Many demonstrators carried homemade signs appealing for militancy. In some areas young militants insisted on marching against police stations to confront the forces of apartheid, even though ANC local leaders tried to dissuade them. Poor laborers who could barely afford to miss a day's work were among the most enthusiastic supporters of the strike, their main criticism of it being that it was too short. Better-off sections of blacks also supported the strike, though their support was reported to be more lukewarm.
World capitalism worried about the crisis
One part of the reason De Klerk launched the negotiations a couple of years back was that imperialism, in Europe and the U.S., decided that if a revolution were to be avoided, the racist system in South Africa had to be reformed. The capitalists in Europe and the U.S., who had long propped up apartheid, had investments in South Africa which were being affected by continued political instability. So some limited economic sanctions were imposed. Though most of these sanctions have been lifted, the fact that a political solution has not been reached between the government and the ANC has meant that little new investment and loans have been made to South Africa.
The recent breakdown of talks has made world capitalism nervous. And the ANC -- in the face of De Klerk's stubbornness -- has renewed its appeals to imperialism to use its influence on the South African government.
In mid-July ANC leaders got the UN to debate the issue of South Africa in the Security Council. There they explained how De Klerk has been holding back from serious negotiating. De Klerk had been proposing a new government structure with strong powers for regional governments, so that white enclaves will retain power while black enclaves remain poor. Also, De Klerk insisted that amendments to the constitution require 70% approval, making it difficult for the black representatives to push through reforms.
In the UN debate, the imperialist powers, without criticizing the apartheid masters, expressed concern about the deterioration of the situation in South Africa. Bush's representative played dumb, saying he didn't know if any of the accusations of the ANC were correct. Bush has been one of the closest friends of the De Klerk government.
In the end, the UN decided to send a team of observers. UN envoy Cyrus Vance -- a former U.S. Secretary of State -- arrived the third week of July in time to witness some sharp confrontations between protesters and police. Vance also held talks with the major political forces.
At the conclusion of his visit, Vance issued a report calling on De Klerk to issue a general amnesty for those arrested in the anti-apartheid struggle, and to investigate the security forces.
De Klerk makes some concessions
De Klerk immediately accepted the idea of a general amnesty but interpreted this to also cover white policemen convicted of torturing and killing prisoners. This was justly opposed by the ANC as equating those who fought against racist tyranny with the criminals who defended that tyranny.
On the proposal to investigate security forces, De Klerk held back for a month, but finally at the end of August announced a shake-up of the security forces. Under this plan many of the older racist generals will be retired, there will be a general investigation of the forces, and discrimination inside the security forces will supposedly be stopped. (Sixty percent of the police are black, but in the past they have not been allowed promotion to higher positions.) This is just a reshuffling of the same security forces which oppress the black people.
This does not mean that De Klerk has now enthusiastically embraced reforms. He continues to drag his feet, and meanwhile the killings continue. In late August, an important informant about killings by white security forces was murdered on his farm. This white man, a former security officer himself, had implicated a number of higher-ranking officers in plans to massacre blacks and anti-apartheid activists.
But even the limited concessions De Klerk has promised came only because of the mass struggle. It showed again that a few months of demonstrations and strikes led to more gains than two years of smiling and fawning between Mandela and De Klerk.
Talks expected to resume
But the ANC has had its show of force, and they're now impatient to get back to the negotiating table and reach an agreement with De Klerk. No new plans have been announced in the mass action campaign to force De Klerk out.
With pressure from the UN and other capitalist outfits like the European Community and the Commonwealth of Nations, it looks like negotiations will be starting again soon. But even if they do come to agreement on a new government structure, the recent crisis has shown that while changes are coming to South Africa, they will not be coming through handshakes and smiles but through a series of clashes between the contending forces.
Night after night for a whole week, hundreds of neo-Nazis and racist skinheads attacked a hostel for immigrants in the Baltic town of Rostock in the eastern part of Germany. The image of swastika-waving fanatics throwing firebombs against a defenseless minority recalled the worst images of Germany's shameful past.
Yet Germany isn't just a country where racist hoodlums rampage. It is also a country where anti-racist activists oppose the neo-Nazi revival. On Saturday, August 29th, 10,000 people marched in Rostock. The crowd of leftists, local residents, foreigners, and others rallied outside the refugee shelter where the riots had taken place the previous week. Many of the demonstrators came from Berlin, Hamburg, Kiel and Bremen.
One banner read "Youth Against Racism in Europe" with a red fist smashing a swastika, while others read "Never again Hitler" and "Nazis out!" As the demonstrators marched, they chanted "Foreigners stay. Kick out the Nazis. Never again Auschwitz." Some racists stood on the sidewalk and gave Hitler salutes -- behind the protection of a wall of 3,000 police.
The racist riots in Rostock were a signal to neo-Nazis across Germany to launch a new round of violence against foreigners. The ZDF television network reported that racist attacks had spread to at least 10 other cities. In most of these places, the racists attempted to attack refugee centers like the one in Rostock. However, in several cities leftist activists organized resistance to the Nazis. Clashes between leftists and racists took place in the eastern town of Stendal and in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam.
The politics behind the neo-Nazi attacks
The Rostock riots reflect a resurgence of right-wing terrorism in Germany. In August the Interior Ministry reported that violent attacks by these forces rose from 270 in 1990 to 1,483 the next year.
There have been neo-Nazis in Germany for a long time. Why are they growing now? The main reason is that the leaders of the neo-Nazis see an opportunity in the economic depression that has swept eastern Germany since West Germany swallowed up the east acouple of years ago.
Some 40% of the east German work force is unemployed or in government- funded jobs and training programs. The old social and economic order in the east has been shattered. When unification took place, the West German capitalist leaders made promises of wealth and abundance for all, but reality has proved disappointing. The well-off and privileged people from the old state capitalist order have done well, but the masses haven't. Many ordinary people, especially youth, feel a strong sense of alienation not just from the system, but also from an anti-capitalist alternative which they associate with the old fake socialist regime in East Germany.
Enter the organized neo-Nazis. They find in this alienation a golden opportunity to spread their poison. And they focus on the most readily available scapegoats to blame for the mass disenchantment: foreigners.
The establishment is racist too
And this is where they coincide with the German ruling establishment. Yes, a lot of refugees are allowed into Germany, which has had relatively liberal laws of political asylum. But the refugees have been allowed in because the German capitalists have found them to be a useful source of cheap labor. And once in, the capitalists see in the refugee situation an opportunity to promote racist divisions among the people. Though German officials may wring their hands at the neo-Nazi riots against foreigners, the scapegoating of refugees is something which helps them keep people's minds off struggle against the roots of unemployment and misery: the capitalist system.
In its turn, the German establishment uses the rise of anti-foreigner violence to call for new measures against immigrants.
The Christian Democrats, the ruling party, are directly pushing curbs on foreign refugees. The Social Democrats, the main opposition party, says Germany should continue to allow refugees in, but they should be segregated into special "collection centers." This policy would only continue the isolation of foreigners, setting them up for attack. Meanwhile, even the Greens, a middle class party focused on environmental concerns, are pushing for quotas on refugees.
The turn to the right among the opposition politicians undermines the fight against the neo-Nazi revival. Many anti-racist activists are under the influence of the reformist parties. But to develop the fight against racism, there has to be a break from the reformists. After all, how can you effectively fight the Nazis when the reformist leaders propose caving in to the racists' reasoning and demands on foreigners?
Resistance to the neo-Nazis means first of all standing up against the anti-foreigner scapegoating, whether that comes from the ultra-right or the politicians. It also means organizing active resistance to defend immigrants from violent attacks. But above all, an effective fight requires building a political movent against racism and fascism. This must include a fight directly among the disenchanted masses to win them away from the poison spread by the fascists, and channeling mass anger away from scapegoats and towards struggle against the capitalist profit system.
Transport and mail service were paralyzed in Guatemala in mid-July by strikes of public workers. Government hospital workers were also on strike. During the strike workers took to the streets of Guatemala City and disrupted traffic into and through the capital. The government sent in troops to suppress the mass actions, but the workers vowed to continue their efforts. They are demanding a pay raise of 80%, but the government is offering a raise of only 22%.
By late July the Nicaraguan government headed by President Violeta Chamorro appeared to be going into another crisis.
Thousands of university students have been taking to the streets to demand increased government financing for their studies. And a transport strike snarled movement in the capital area. At least five people were injured when strikers clashed with police. Also, gun battles have broken out in front of the presidential palace between army veterans and riot police, leaving 11 wounded. The army veterans were among 5,000 laid off from the army July 16. The veterans are demanding unemployment pay and farmland.
In this crisis the Sandinista leaders are continuing their policy of mildly criticizing Chamorro's economic policies, while at the same time promoting that there is no alternative to her administration.
Massive demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro the last week of August denounced the kickback and bid-rigging scheme engineered by top aides of President Fernando Collor. Following the demonstrations there were moves in the Brazilian parliament to impeach Collor, and it appears that bourgeois politicking in Brazil will be thrown into a tizzy for some time to come.
Underlying the outraged at Collor's corruption is disappointment at the continuing economic crisis in Brazil. Collor came into office as the so-called independent millionaire, above corruption, who coulcb clean up the mess in Brasilia. But the economy continues to be mired in stagflation. And the revelation of Collor's corruption shows that being rich is no guarantee that a bourgeois politician is above bribery.
Public transport workers in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, went on strike in mid-July. It was a crisis for the administration of the Union of Democratic Forces, the party established in Bulgaria to push through conversion to private capitalism. The trade union center, Podkrepa, helped establish the UDF but is now appalled by its anti-worker austerity policies.
Foreign students in Moscow, Russia protested a racist police murder in late July. Gideon Chimusoro of Zimbabwe was killed by police who said they were breaking up a disturbance among students of Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. But the policemen's idea of breaking up a disturbance among black African students was to pull their guns and shoot one of the students.
After the shooting other students went into the streets and began rioting, overturning cars, breaking windows and throwing firebombs. This went on for hours until the police intervened with force.
The next day 100 students held a memorial rally for Chimusoro. During the rally they began to block a street but were immediately attacked by helmeted riot police. The students fought back with rocks and bottles in a short battle.
Lumumba University, named after an African anti-colonial leader, was established by the Soviet Union in the 1960's as a training ground for young intellectuals from the Third World. It was maintained by the Soviet government as an important propaganda tool during the days of the Cold War, but even then there was racism in the system of fake socialism. Today it has become nothing but a burden to the Russian government. Students have held protests this year complaining that their stipends have been cut back to such an extent they cannot even afford to return to their home countries. Now the Russian government'snegative attitude to the students has degenerated into racist police attacks.
In June there were anti-government demonstrations in several major cities of Iran, including Tehran. The demonstrations of workers and poor people protested the growing impoverishment of the masses, and in particular President Rafsanjani's policy of razing the shantytowns that have sprung up all around the country. The shantytowns are occupied by the unemployed poor.
In some cities the demonstrations became violent. In Mashad, rampaging protesters torched government buildings, banks and vehicles.
In response, Rafsanjani ordered a crackdown. Eight leaders of the protests were hanged, and Rafsanjani organized parades and demonstrations of fundamentalist militias.