First Published: Revolutionary Worker, SF Bay Area-Salinas Valley Edition, Vol. 4, No. 8, January 20-February 3, 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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(WPS)–On New Year’s Day, Chinatown rallies called for the purpose of hailing the “normalization” of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China were interrupted by revolutionaries shouting “Long Live Mao Tsetung!” In San Francisco and New York, the Revolutionary Communist Party and supporters seized the opportunity to expose the fact that the only thing being “celebrated” at these rallies was that Teng Hsiao-ping & Co. have sold socialism down the river in China and auctioned off the Chinese people as cannon-fodder for the U.S. imperialist bloc as world war looms ever closer on the horizon.
In San Francisco, a coalition called the Committee to Celebrate Normalization of U.S.-China Relations held their rally in the main Chinatown square, clutching American and Chinese flags. They were met by a crowd of right-wing Kuomintang students from Taiwan who tore down the banner celebrating normalization and torched it in the street. Separating the two groups were hundreds of bewildered-looking cops, undoubtedly wondering which reactionaries they were supposed to protect.
Suddenly from the top of Everybody’s Bookstore, a revolutionary bookstore bordering the square, chants of “Long Live Mao Tsetung!” rang out from a giant loudspeaker and a huge portrait of Mao Tsetung was unfurled across the front of the building.
As TV cameras swung toward the bookstore, people turned to listen intently as speakers agitated in Chinese and English about the reactionary nature of the U.S.-China alliance. In a pathetic attempt to recapture the attention of the crowd, the normalization committee started playing the Star Spangled Banner. But chants of “Normalization Means Capitulation, Normalization Means War Preparation!” and “Hua, Teng, KMT, Lick the Boots of the Bourgeoisie!” drowned out this reactionary display.
This time the cops had no doubts about what they were supposed to do. They flanked the bookstore and ordered people to turn off the loudspeaker.
But the loudspeaker was to come on over and over again that afternoon as many came over to get the Party’s leaflet. The response from ordinary people on the street was very receptive.
Throughout the day, people sold the Worker and spoke on street corners exposing the counter-revolutionary stand of both the Kuomintang and the pro-Teng forces. When the Taiwan demonstrators chanted “Whip the Corpse of Mao Tsetung” people shouted back in their faces, “Mao Whipped the Ass of the KMT!”
In NY the “celebration,” called by some Chinese businessmen and by the US-China Peoples Friendship Association was as reactionary as the current regime in China itself. It featured a parade with a feudalistic, canopied float bearing pictures of Jimmy Carter and Hua Kuo-feng and was lined with hundreds of American flags, the hated symbol of U.S. imperialist aggression and exploitation around the world. The only purpose of such nauseating flag-waving was to whip up support for the bourgeoisie in the U.S. and China and for U.S. war moves.
RCP members and friends walked into the crowd and raised a gigantic banner with a picture of Mao Tsetung and the words, “Mao Tsetung, Greatest Revolutionary of Our Time.” A rally official pointed in alarm exclaiming, “They’re communists!”–exposing the real sentiments of the rally’s organizers. The rally’s security thugs tried to move in–that is, until the uniformed pigs told them, “Let us handle this.”
But many honest people were excited to hear what communists had to say about China and flocked to listen, buying many copies of the Worker as well as copies of the RCP book Revolution and Counter-Revolution which details the revisionist coup in China and the overthrow of Mao’s revolutionary line after his death. Several people expressed interest in the upcoming demonstration against Teng Hsiao-ping when he comes to the U.S. this month. Both the New York and San Francisco actions were just a taste of what this traitor faces when he comes in person to kneel in submission before his new imperialist masters.