Workers World weekly newspaper

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Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite!

workers.org

Dec. 20, 2012

Vol. 54, No. 50

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WAR ON UNIONS

declared in Michigan 17,000 battle ‘right to work for less’ law By abayomi azikiwe Lansing, Mich.

Dec. 11 — As mounted State Police pepper-sprayed workers protesting outside, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder wasted no time today signing into law two bills that unions call “right to work for less” laws.

In a state that has historically been a bastion of organized labor, the lame-duck legislation was a declaration of war by the multimillionaire governor and a right-wing Republican legislature not only against this state’s unions but against the entire U.S. working class.

The bills were passed despite a day-long protest of more than 17,000 workers and community constituents. “The workers united will never be defeated” echoed in the Capitol Rotunda even as police dispersed protesting laborers, many of them unemployed, and other workers. A banner reading “General Strike to beat back ‘right-to-work’ ’’ attracted much interest, as did thousands of leaflets headlined: “Beat back ‘rightto-work,’ Yes, WE CAN!” The Rev. Jesse Jackson called for a one-day work stoppage and march on Washington, D.C. Snyder is hated by many workers and oppressed communities around Michigan. On Dec. 6, when the legislature first voted, hundreds of workers entered their chambers chanting “Right-to-work has got to go!” and refused to leave.

State police officers closed off the chamber entrances. When more workers and their supporters attempted to enter, police pepper-sprayed and arrested some of them. The police actions fueled anger across the state, so that thousands mobilized for the even larger show of force today.

Under the “right-to-work” legislation, employees would no longer be required to join a union where one exists or to automatically pay fees to a collective bargaining unit. The inability of unions to gather dues or service fees from all workers paychecks makes it much more difficult for them to fight for Continued on page 4

ww PhotoS: ABAYoMI AZIkIwe

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Holiday gifts and the shorter work week

By Martha Grevatt We have heard the saying,“Business and politics don’t mix.” In fact the opposite is true.

Many right-wing bills — from Michigan’s “right-towork” bill to attacks on women, lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer people, and racist “stand your ground” laws — are not even written by legislators. The actual language is provided by groups like the Koch brothers’ reactionary American Legislative Exchange Council or capitalist coalitions like the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers.

This is not new: The 1947 anti-union Taft Hartley Act, which made right-to-work laws possible, was actually written by NAM. For more than a century, groups like these have used their muscle to block progressive legislation like child labor laws.

1919 anti-worker cabal A forerunner of today’s pro-1% lobbyists was a secret organization known as the Special Conference Committee. It included representatives of General Electric, General Motors, Standard Oil and other huge corporations.

The SCC was founded in 1919, a year of a mass labor upsurge in steel, textile, mining and other industries and a five-day general strike in Seattle.

SCC Secretary Edward S. Cowdrick had been an executive at John D. Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel and Iron during the 1913 Ludlow Massacre of miners and their children. When he became leader of the SCC, he was a personal employee of Rockefeller. The shadowy group held secret meetings in Cowdrick’s office in the Manhattan headquarters of Standard Oil of New Jersey.

During this time the steady introduction of new labor-saving devices had multiplied the productivity of labor. Average hours of work per week had been falling for more than a century, in part because of the hard-fought battle for the eight-hour day. The other reason was that, after Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly line, the same amount of commodities could be produced in much less time. Workers were making more product than the capitalists could possibly sell.

Both Ford and Cowdrick believed an eight-hour day was good; after eight hours productivity declined, and without sufficient leisure time workers spent less money.

But what some unions were raising — a six-hour day with no cut in pay — was out of the question for capitalists.

That would be too big a loss of the value workers create.

Their scheme to stave off a crisis of capitalist overproduction was to get the working class, accustomed to working only for the necessary means of subsistence, to buy more things. Ford introduced the famous five-dollar-a-day wage, intended to make it possible for autoworkers to buy the vehicles they produced.

It was during the so-called Roaring Twenties that Cowdrick espoused “the economic gospel of consumption.” To counter labor’s demands for a progressively shorter work week, the advertising industry was born. At the same time credit became widely available. Manufacturing and finance capital combined

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to lure workers into a vicious cycle of working, spending and borrowing.

The 1929 stock market crash, followed by the Great Depression, proved that Cowdrick’s “gospel” offered no salvation from capitalist overproduction. Ford, who introduced the assembly line and the five-dollar wage, laid off a majority of his workers.

But Cowdrick and the SCC found plenty to keep themselves busy, spending the next decade lobbying against pro-worker legislation. The secret group managed to get all its members on a government advisory group, the Business Advisory Council. Cowdrick became secretary of the BAC’s Industrial Relations Council.

Cowdrick used the IRC to get President Franklin D. Roosevelt to withdraw support for the 1933 Thirty Hour Week Act, which was intended to reduce unemployment by spreading work around. The act failed in the House of Representatives by a few votes. The six-hour day is the only demand of the 1937 Flint sit-down strike that has never been realized.

The existence of the Special Conference Committee and its union-busting activities were brought to light during the hearings of Sen. Bob LaFollette’s Committee on Civil Rights (1936-40). These hearings exposed an illegal spy network built by corporations to undermine collective bargaining. Some of the worst offenders, such as GM, were members of Cowdrick’s lobbying consortium.

The SCC fell by the wayside long ago, but workers today are still suffering from the failure to win a six-hour day. In fact, hours of labor, which had been falling until the 1930s, have been gradually rising since the postWorld War II period.

While 30 million or more workers are unemployed or underemployed today, many full-time workers are working overtime to get by. Better-paid union workers have been caught up in the whirlpool of work, spend, borrow, work more. Paid holiday and vacation days are declining.

United Auto Workers members have had contracts foisted upon them that even undermine the eight-hour day.

Since the eight-hour day became law in 1938, the productivity of labor has grown exponentially, but instead of giving us leisure, rest and time with our loved ones, the capitalists aggressively promote a dazzling array of trinkets. Every winter we are bombarded by the message that the way to express love and appreciation is to spend all of our hard-earned dollars on expensive gifts — gifts we have less and less free time to enjoy. The workers who produce these gifts are, more often than not, low-paid wage slaves in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. The consumption of fossil fuels in the production of these commodities is a cause of worldwide calamities, from Superstorm Sandy to the melting of the polar ice caps.

The demand for a shorter week needs to be revived as part of a program of transitional demands — one that lays bare the inherently antagonistic relationship between labor and capital and resuscitates the class struggle here in the heart of world finance capital.

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this week ...

H In the U.S. War on unions declared in Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Xmas gifts and the shorter work week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 United protest wants good jobs at a fair wage . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Schools push students to for-profit prisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Community protests killer cops. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Proposal for general strike circulates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Atlanta housing activists stop foreclosure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Oppressed youth fight neo-fascist & police terror . . . . . . . . 5 Justice for Baltimore community. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 We need a moratorium on foreclosures, evictions . . . . . . . . 6 A real answer to police terror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Charlotte activists confront right-wing challenge . . . . . . . . 7 A 1931 case of legal lynching revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The racist hate crime that continues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Sandy and Katrina: What makes them different . . . . . . . . . . 9 Community award to Rosa Maria de la Torre . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Memory of Black Panther Party leaders honored . . . . . . . . . 9 ‘We will not be silenced’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 H Around the world Puerto Rico: A revolutionary comes home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Haitians demand roads, schools, water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Walmart blamed in Bangladesh fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 H Editorial Stand with Hugo Chávez & Venezuela. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Syria, Egypt & imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Revive demand for six-hour day

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H Noticias En Español Puerto de Oakland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 ONU y estado Palestino. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Workers World 55 West 17 Street New York, N.Y. 10011 Phone: 212.627.2994 E-mail: ww@workers.org Web: www.workers.org Vol. 54, No. 50 • Dec. 20, 2012 Closing date: Dec. 11, 2012 Editor: Deirdre Griswold Technical Editor: Lal Roohk Managing Editors: John Catalinotto, LeiLani Dowell, Leslie Feinberg, Kris Hamel, Monica Moorehead, Gary Wilson West Coast Editor: John Parker Contributing Editors: Abayomi Azikiwe, Greg Butterfield, Jaimeson Champion, G. Dunkel, Fred Goldstein, Teresa Gutierrez, Larry Hales, Berta Joubert-Ceci, Cheryl LaBash, Milt Neidenberg, Betsey Piette, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Gloria Rubac Technical Staff: Sue Davis, Shelley Ettinger, Bob McCubbin, Maggie Vascassenno Mundo Obrero: Carl Glenn, Teresa Gutierrez, Berta Joubert-Ceci, Donna Lazarus, Michael Martínez, Carlos Vargas Supporter Program: Sue Davis, coordinator Copyright © 2012 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of articles is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Workers World (ISSN-1070-4205) is published weekly except the first week of January by WW Publishers, 55 W. 17 St., N.Y., N.Y. 10011. Phone: 212.627.2994.

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Dec. 20, 2012

Page 3

United protest wants

Good jobs at a fair wage

By G. Dunkel New York Carpenters, car wash workers, college professors, janitors, fast food workers and many others came together Dec. 6 in Times Square to demand good jobs at fair wages. The “Grand Bargain” currently being hashed out in Washington, which will involve cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid under the threat of the so-called fiscal cliff, was also denounced.

As one speaker put it: “They bailed out the banks to the tune of $19 trillion. They’ve got enough for us!”

A speaker for the Carpenters Union, one of the many construction unions present, called for “better wages, better benefits for everybody. I used to make minimum wage and now that I’m making better, I’m standing up for those who are not making it.” Unions for all workers is what would solve the financial crisis in this country, in his opinion.

“You can’t raise a family on minimum wage,” Pamela Flood, a Burger King worker with three children, said on stage at the rally. “With food and diapers, my paycheck is gone after two days. We need a change.”

A member of the Professional Staff Congress, which represents faculty and staff at the City University of New York, felt that his union’s lack of a contract makes it easier to see the need for solidarity with fast-food workers,

who have no contract because they have no union representing them.

“Make the Road,” which describes itself as a mostly Latino/a organization based in Bushwick, Brooklyn, had a strong contingent that demanded an increase in the minimum wage. Their signs said, “$7.25 no es suficiente! $7.25 that ain’t right!” They also said that income equality is important regardless of a worker’s sexual ­orientation.

At the beginning of the rally, the large assemblage blocked 7th Avenue, a major thoroughfare in Manhattan, at the start of rush hour. The cops brought in barricades and tried to push the demonstrators back. The crowd didn’t move until a speaker said that the cops would otherwise prevent the program from happening.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union took about 150 people from the demonstration down to the Soho Car Wash, which they have organized, to demand the owner negotiate. 99 Pickets, a working group of Occupy Wall Street, took a group of people into a nearby McDonald’s to point out that the workers there need a union.

Other groups went to the Long Island Rail Road portion of Penn Station with leaflets asking the riders to pressure their congressional representatives to oppose the “Grand Bargain” and authorize support money for Sandy recovery. ww PhotoS G. Dunkel

Schools push students to for-profit prisons

By Betsey Piette While U.S. corporations seem unwilling to cut into their profits to provide living-wage jobs for millions of unemployed youth, for-profit prisons are finding new ways to jail them.

Concern has been growing over the widespread pattern of funneling students out of schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice system. The practice usually targets impoverished or otherwise disadvantaged youth, especially students of color. So-called educators employ “zero-tolerance” policies that criminalize minor infractions of school rules.

Across the U.S., reports are surfacing that this trend is accelerating.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating schools in Meridian, Miss., for their policies of calling police whenever administrators want to discipline students. Police have arrested children as young as 10 years old.

The resulting DOJ lawsuit against the district found that the arrests happen automatically. It doesn’t matter what the children do or whether their actions even warrant arrest. The police simply arrest all children referred to them through the schools.

Once within the juvenile court system, these youth may be incarcerated for days without a hearing and denied basic constitutional rights. The DOJ found that Meridian’s long-time systemic abuse punishes students “so arbitrarily and severely as to shock the conscience.” (Colorlines.com, Nov. 26) Attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center started to investigate Meridian in 2008 when reports surfaced of “horrific abuse” of youth in detention centers.

They found that 67 percent of the youth warehoused there came from the Meridian school system.

The young people had been denied access to lawyers. Many did not know what they were arrested for. All the students who were jailed or expelled for minor infractions were youth of color. Meridian’s population is 61 percent African American.

What infractions warranted calling the police? In eighth grade Cedrico Green was put on probation for getting into a fight. After that any minor infraction — if he were a few minutes late or broke the school dress code — landed him back in the juvenile detention center. Green estimates “maybe 30” times.

The DOJ lawsuit found that students were incarcerated for “dress code infractions such as wearing the wrong color socks or undershirt, or for having shirts untucked; tardiness; flatulence in class; using vulgar language; yelling at teachers; and going to the bathroom or leaving the classroom without permission.” (huffingtonpost.com, Oct. 25) Policy benefits for-profit prisons On Oct. 31, Corrections Corporation of America, the largest for-profit prison/immigrant detention center operator in the U.S., was invited to participate in a lockdown and drug sweep of Vista Grande High School in the town of Casa Grande, Ariz.

Students were lined up against walls and locked in the school, while teams of

police using drug-sniffing dogs searched classrooms and student lockers. While unwarranted search for drugs has become routine in many U.S. schools, this was the first raid in which for-profit prison agents participated. Two CCA canine units were involved.

Vista Grande High School Principal Tim Hamilton admitted he was unaware of any particular drug use at the school.

His desire was to send a “message to kids.” The raid resulted in the arrest of three students for alleged possession of minor amounts of marijuana. (PRWatch. org, Nov. 27) In 2011, CCA grossed $1.7 billion from its operations that include more than 92,000 prison and immigrant detention “beds” in 20 states. Most of the revenue for warehousing prisoners and immigrant detainees came from per-diem, per-prisoner rate contracts with local, state and federal governments.

School-to-prison pipeline targets students of color Since the 1970s, rates of school discipline — suspensions, expulsions and

even arrests — have doubled. Current education policies give school administrators carte blanche to decide which students they will educate and which ones they will remove. More often than not the students who are not chosen end up in the juvenile prison system.

Students of color are most often the target of these arbitrary disciplinary disparities. African-American students are nearly three times and Latino/a students nearly one-and-a-half times as likely to be suspended as white students. (naacpldf. org/case/school-prison-pipeline) Students of color tend to receive harsher punishments than white students for engaging in the same conduct. Segregated schools where students of color predominate are the most likely to use push-out policies and employ the harshest disciplinary policies.

Schools should be places where children go to be educated, not to be fasttracked into an increasingly for-profit prison system. Our youth need education not incarceration, and we all need a system that puts people’s needs before profits.

Community protests killer cops Philadelphia community activists organized by Free the Streets marched on Dec. 7 from 61st and Market streets, near where Derrick “Browny” Flynn was killed by Philadelphia police, to the 19th Police District, where friends and family demanded to know why he was killed last Nov. 11. Several speakers, including Browny’s cousin, Shanise Jackson, and Building People’s Power community resident, Patrice Parmstead, spoke in outrage that nine “police clergy” [local ordained ministers who work with the police] chose to line up in front of the precinct’s doors, defending the terror of the police instead of the human rights of the community’s residents.

Report and photo by Joe Piette

Page 4

Dec. 20, 2012

workers.org

Michigan

Proposal for general strike circulates

By David Sole Detroit Only hours after the Michigan Legislature voted in favor of a union busting “right to work” law on Dec. 6, a “Committee to Beat Back ‘Right to Work’” started circulating an appeal to the major labor organizations in the state to consider a general strike.

Citing the need for “decisive action,” the leaflet quotes the United Auto Workers Constitution, Article 50, Section 8, which authorizes the International Executive Board to call a general strike “in case of great emergency, when the existence of the International Union is in-

volved, together with the economic and social standing of our membership … for the purpose of preserving and perpetuating the rights and living standards of the general membership.” Article 50 requires a referendum vote of the union membership before such an action is taken.

The committee also calls upon the Michigan state AFL-CIO to “urge every affiliate to initiate discussions and hold referendums to authorize a general strike.” Realizing that education and careful preparation must precede this unprecedented action, the leaflet calls for discussion “with every worker at every work place.”

The leaflet points out that “we can be

sure that the entire crowd of Wall Street bankers and corporate bosses, including GM, Ford, Chrysler and the billionaire Koch brothers, are behind the push to break us … after years of concessions.”

They need to see that labor “can bring everything to a standstill.”

The committee also reminds union workers that the only road to success includes bringing in all workers and community organizations. This means “unorganized, retired, young, immigrant … church leaders, people of color, women, the LGBTQ community, the education community, foreclosure victims, the unemployed, Occupy Wall Street movement … and all others who are under attack.…

Demands must be shaped to make the largest majority of the people of the state understand that we are fighting for everyone.”

The appeal ends with the suggestion that labor and community groups convene a huge assembly of the people that can “represent the 99%” and have the clear authority to organize a general strike to roll back the right-wing attacks.

In a state where local and state politicians only represent the 1%, an assembly of the 99% will have commanding authority!

For more information, go to Facebook group — Committee to Beat Back “Right to Work,” email BeatBackRTW@gmail. com or call 313-680-5508.

War on unions declared in Michigan 17,000 battle ‘right to work for less’ law Continued from page 1 rights, benefits and social projects that all workers in the shop — paying or not — will have.

One of the largest unions in the automotive industry, United Auto Workers Local 600 in Dearborn, Mich., conducted civil disobedience training on Dec. 8.

These sessions were also attended by the Michigan Nurses Association and drew support from the Service Employees union; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and other worker organizations.

Dawn Kettinger, of the Michigan Nurses Association, said, “We’ll be out there [Dec. 11] for all workers and all people who care about Michigan.” Some workers will place duct tape over their mouths as a symbol of the legislation’s impact.

“That’s what the right-to-work bills will do if passed — they will silence workers,” Kettinger said. (Detroit News, Dec. 9) Leading up to the Dec. 11 protest at the Capitol, other demonstrations were held in various parts of the state. On Dec. 9, SEIU led actions outside Oakland Mall, an upscale shopping area just north of Detroit in Troy, Mich.

Ilana Alazzeh, a member of a statewide coalition called We Are Michigan, said, “Our politicians are being influenced by

corporate lobbyists and are weakening our families and suppressing our voices by pitting us against each other.” The group sang parodies of holiday songs.

(Detroit News, Dec. 10) The real impact of ‘right-to-work’ With Gov. Snyder signing the bills, Michigan became the 24th state in the U.S. to be governed by right-to-work laws.

Although Snyder has repeatedly told the corporate media that the legislation will create jobs in one of the states most impacted by the economic crisis, the facts say otherwise.

In general workers in right-to-work states have lower salaries and far fewer benefits. Poverty rates are higher in these states, while unemployment and underemployment remain significant. (Economic Policy Institute, February 2011) In a Feb. 6 American Prospect article, Abby Rapoport cites a study by Gordon Lafer and Sylvia Allegretto of the Economic Policy Institute. “There’s no evidence that right-to-work laws have any positive impact on employment or bringing back manufacturing jobs,” writes Rapoport.

“While 23 states have right-to-work legislation, Lafer says that to adequately judge the law’s impact in today’s economy, you have to look at states that passed the law

after the United States embraced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and free trade in general.” Only two states, Oklahoma and Indiana, have passed rightto-work legislation since 2001.

Rapoport continues, “Rather than increasing job opportunities, the state saw companies relocate out of Oklahoma. In high-tech industries and those service industries ‘dependent on consumer spending in the local economy’ the laws appear to have actually damaged growth. At the end of the decade, 50,000 fewer Oklahoma residents had jobs in manufacturing. Perhaps most damning, Lafer and Allegretto could find no evidence that the legislation had a positive impact on employment rates.”

Part of larger economic package The attempt to impose right-to-work legislation in Michigan is part and parcel of a broader strategy aimed at busting unions and reducing salaries and employee benefits. On a national level, negotiations surrounding the so-called “fiscal cliff” are actually designed to slash social programs and to further reduce federal funding for public sector projects.

During the lame-duck session in Michigan, other bills on the table included women’s health care restrictions, efforts and to further break up public school dis-

tricts around the state and increase the number of charter schools through an Educational Achievement Authority.

Under the guise that it will boost investment and create jobs, another bill under consideration would eliminate property taxes that businesses pay. These revenues are needed by local communities to maintain basic public services including transportation, lighting and education.

An emergency manager law is set for an overhaul after Public Act 4, popularly known as the “dictator law,” was voted down in the Nov. 6 elections. This law would strip all authority from local governments and school districts in order to accelerate the payment of debt service to financial institutions. The law, now being carried out under the resurrected Public Act 72, is largely implemented in majority African-American municipalities.

These attacks on the working class and the nationally oppressed are taking place throughout the country and indeed around the globe. The world capitalist crisis is driving the ruling classes to make even greater cuts in the real wages and social benefits of the workers in their futile attempts to maintain a dying system of exploitation and repression.

Cheryl LaBash contributed to this article.

Atlanta housing activists stop foreclosure

By Dianne Mathiowetz Atlanta Dec. 10 — Housing justice activists ratcheted up the struggle against foreclosures, evictions and homelessness by reclaiming a boarded-up, bank-owned property in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Atlanta on Dec. 6. Similar actions were held in cities across the U.S. on the same day.

In front of TV cameras, dozens of people moved Reneka Wheeler and Michelene Meusa and their two children, Dillon and Jahla, into the bright pink house.

Since the middle of the summer, the two women, both of whom had been laid-off from their jobs and were forced to move out of their rental townhouse, had been shuttling from shelter to shelter. Not recognized as a family, they had been split apart.

With the aid of Occupy Our Homes Atlanta, they decided to take action. They focused on the catastrophe created by

banking and housing policies that have wreaked havoc on millions of people in the United States. They explained that by taking back homes illegally grabbed from families and restoring them to their rightful purpose — sheltering people — the two hoped they could force a discussion of homelessness.

Occupy Our Homes Atlanta has declared that there are seven vacant houses for every homeless person in this country.

The Pittsburgh community lies in the southwest side of Atlanta, off Interstate 75. Once a thriving African-American neighborhood of working people, its streets are lined with boarded-up houses, decrepit or burned-out hulls of buildings and overgrown vacant lots. This devastation is the result of decades of growing unemployment, urban development, social service cutbacks, deceptive mortgage practices, absentee landlords and speculative builders. Home values have fallen 84 percent in the last few years, and some 50 percent of the housing stock is empty.

House brought back to life One of those houses is 1043 Windsor St., a foreclosed house held by M&T Bank. Before Dec. 6, its overgrown yard and boarded-up windows contributed to the decaying appearance of the neighborhood. Now the grass is mowed and flowers planted, the lights are on, and a family of four is warm and together. Neighboring churches and people from across the city are furnishing the house, bringing food and 24-hour support.

Atlanta police are keeping a constant presence. The bank has not yet, as of this writing, made a complaint. Thus the cops have not yet attempted to evict Wheeler and Meusa.

An online petition demands M&T Bank turn the property over to the community, specifically to Higher Ground Empowerment Center. Occupy Our Homes Atlanta saved this century-old Black church in another economically depressed neighborhood from foreclosure last January. Its pastor has become a leading voice in the

fight against foreclosures and evictions.

Occupy Our Homes Atlanta celebrated another victory after a year-long struggle to save the Pittman family home from foreclosure. The family matriarch, Eloise Pittman, was the victim of an unscrupulous subprime mortgage from Chase Bank, which foreclosed on her as she was dying from cancer in November 2011.

Her 21-year-old granddaughter, Carmen, led her family through a year of full-scale occupation, with tents in the front- and backyards, numerous demonstrations and marches, national call-in days to Chase, and Carmen’s own arrest at a bank takeover.

Chase has now relinquished the property, and it is again safely in the hands of the Pittmans. On Saturday, Dec. 8, a victory celebration was held where the hated eviction notice was burned.

For more information on other anti-foreclosure fights being waged in Atlanta and to sign the petition to M&T Bank, see Occupy Our Homes Atlanta.

workers.org

Dec. 20, 2012

Page 5

CeCe McDonald & Anoka students tear white hood off ‘bullying’

Oppressed youth fight neo-fascist & police terror Corporate media are complicit in war on youths

By Leslie Feinberg Big-business media have reported that an alarming number of white LGBTQ/+ children and teenagers in the U.S. are ending their own lives because they can’t endure another day of harassment and threats due to the rise in violent bullying in schools and on the streets.

The coverage sometimes includes heartfelt appeals from older generations to younger ones to “hang on” because “it gets better.”

History has proved again and again, however, that the mere passage of time — in and of itself — does not usher in progress.

The dominant media obscure where the bullying is coming from, and why the rate of child/youth suicides is so startling.

The news propaganda poses the question of “bullying” as an abstract, relative and unknowable truth.

The truth is, bullies are those who target the oppressed and exploited. And it’s not just youths who are being bullied. All generations of those oppressed and exploited are up against reactionary bullying.

Anoka: LGBTQ/+ high school youths under attack Nine youth — students in the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Anoka, Minn. — have ended their own lives in less than two years, Rolling Stone reported in an online article dated Feb. 2. (rollingstone.com) Dan Reidenberg, a child psychiatrist and the executive director of the Minnesota-based Suicide Awareness Voices of Education, declared the Anoka-Hennepin School District the site of a “suicide cluster.” He suggested that suicidal thoughts might be contagious, like a virus.

But Rolling Stone journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely pointed to the political climate and economic conditions in the town.

The old logging company town is “in an area where just 20 percent of adults have college educations, the recession hit hard and foreclosures and unemployment have become the norm.”

The town is in reactionary Rep. Michele Bachmann’s [R-Minn.] home district. Erdely wrote that town evangelicals have created an extremely hostile environment for LGBTQ/+ youths — and those perceived to be.

Of the students who ended their lives: “Four of the nine dead were either gay or perceived as such by other kids, and were reportedly bullied.” This means that youths, whose tormentors claimed they would burn for eternity, chose to die rather than live through another day of torture.

Erdely stated, “In 1993, Bachmann, a proponent of school prayer and creationism, co-founded the New Heights charter school in the town of Stillwater, only to flee the board amid an outcry that the school was promoting a religious curriculum. Bachmann also is affiliated with the ultra-right Minnesota Family Council, headlining a fundraiser for them last spring alongside Newt Gingrich.” “[T]he Anoka-Hennepin school district finds itself in the spotlight,” Erdely continued, “not only for the sheer number of suicides but because it is accused of having contributed to the death toll by cultivating an extreme anti-gay climate.”

“LGBTQ students don’t feel safe at school,” Anoka Middle School for the Arts teacher Jefferson Fietek reported.

“They’re made to feel ashamed of who they are. They’re bullied. And there’s no one to stand up for them, because teachers are afraid of being fired.”

LGBTQ/+ youths organize, struggle, win support LGBTQ/+ students in the Anoka-Hennepin School District are organizing in resistance, with support from other students and other generations, including parents, teachers and activists.

Rolling Stone concluded that LGBTQ/+ youths “are fighting back.”

For example, five students have filed a lawsuit against the Anoka-Hennepin School District “alleging the school district’s policies on gays are not only discriminatory, but also foster an environment of unchecked anti-gay bullying.”

Rolling Stone reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights have filed the lawsuit on the youths’ behalf. “The Department of Justice has begun a civil rights investigation as well.”

Anoka officials bill the town as the “Halloween capital of the world.” At this year’s Halloween Parade, some 30 youths were denied their right to march. They had planned to march together as a contingent for Justin’s Gift — “an Anoka-based nonprofit that seeks to provide safe activities” for LGBTQ/+ youths. (justinsgift.org) Officials claimed that “there were already too many walking entrants in the parade,” reports minnpost.com.

Erdely interviewed 19 youths who met for the first Gay Straight Alliance meeting of the school year at Anoka Middle School for the Arts.

The youths described what the GSA has meant in their lives. One explained: “It’s a place of freedom, where I can just be myself.”

A child with an asymmetrical haircut spoke in a soft voice before breaking down in tears: “What this GSA means to me, is: In sixth grade my, my only friend here, committed suicide. She was the one who reached out to me. I joined the GSA ‘cause I wanted to be just like her. I wanted to be nice and — loved.”

bullies are uniformed, armed and carry the key to her cell.

The St. Cloud prison warden reportedly locked down all prisoners on Sept. 14, and posted armed SWAT teams at every entrance, to block a group of supporters who had traveled in a motorcycle caravan to visit McDonald.

McDonald wrote an organizing message from her prison cell on Nov. 20 honoring the lives lost to anti-trans murders.

“We need to not only celebrate for Trans Day of Remembrance, but also become self-aware and ready to put an end to our community being the focus of violence.

“We need for our mission to promote racial, social, and economic justice for trans youth, with freedom to self-define gender identity and expression. It won’t be long before I’m out and I want to be involved with all those who are willing to step up and get ready for a revolution, and it will not be televised!”

Deputizing armed neo-fascists, corporate cops

Bullies — alone or in groups — are cowards. They attack when they think the relationship of forces is in their favor.

When they instigate violence against an oppressed person, the bullies are confident that bigger bullies — the forces of violence that help keep the 1% in class rule, including police, courts and media — are behind them.

It’s not which class or group the bullies come from that defines them as fascists.

It’s which class their ideology and actions serve.

Klan and Nazis, neo-fascists and their militia, corporate police and mercenaries — all these bullies are being emboldened and bankrolled by billionaires as the economic crisis deepens for oppressed people/s and the working class.

Fascist ideology attempts to whip up divisive blame toward people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ/+ people, youth, women, the disabled and ill, workers and unemployed — in order to divert attention from the economic and social crimes of capitalism.

The director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association, Bryan Fischer, has repeatedly issued a public call for a terrorist network to abduct children from their same-sex parents.

CeCe McDonald: still under siege, Adding deep racist insult to injury, still resisting Fischer calls this organized kidnapping CeCe McDonald, a young Black (trans) an “Underground Railroad” — the means woman and community youth organizer, by which African peoples self-emancipatis resisting ongoing hate crimes — first by ed from white-supremacist enslavement.

Unarmed youth of color are being neo-fascists on the streets of South Minnelynched in cities across the U.S. — Oscar apolis and then by those who carry badges.

Grant, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, McDonald and her friends were violently Ramarley Graham — by armed vigilantes assaulted in the street in South Minneapoand police, who hide behind the claim of lis on June 5, 2011, by a group of neo-fas“self-defense.” cists who defined themselves by shouting Oppressed youths in the U.S. are conwhite-supremacist Klan language, anfronted by apartheid passbook laws and ti-LGBTQ/+ and anti-woman slurs. violent attack

by Immigration and CusOne of the attackers smashed a glass toms Enforcement (ICE) agents, and are mug into McDonald’s face, cutting her stopped, frisked and brutalized by police. deeply. Another of the neo-fascists — who Police, armed white supremacist vigibore a swastika tattoo — died of a stab lante groups and other neo-fascist bullies wound from the struggle that ensued. enforce unofficial curfews for oppressed Supportcece.wordpress.com reports that “the only person arrested that night youths — as well as official ones.

Vigilantes and mercenaries are being was CeCe.” increasingly hired, armed and “deputized” McDonald has been punished by poby the banks and corporations directly, for lice, jailers, prosecutor, judge and prisprivate armies and prisons for profit. on guards ever since. She is currently in Corporate cops took part in a police a prison cell in St. Cloud, Minn., where raid on students at Vista Grande High sadistic, white-supremacist, neo-fascist

Part 2 School in Casa Grande, Ariz., on Oct. 31. The “deputized” mercenaries were hired by the “Corrections” Corporation of America — the largest syndicate in the profit-driven prison system.

CCA receives taxpayer dollars for each prisoner. “That means, for each prisoner, CCA makes a profit,” Mint Press News reported. (mintpress.net, Nov. 29) “In 2011, CCA made $1.76 billion.

When locking people up is a main source of revenue, the motives behind arrests, charges and incarcerations are questioned. With many prisons across the nation becoming privatized, their actions are being watched with a close eye, especially when they involve students in public schools.”

Youth of color and working-class youth are caught between re-enslavement in racist mass incarceration in the prison-industrial complex, or the economic draft into the military-industrial complex — where they are ordered to kill or be killed. Students face indentured servitude to crushing debt.

Frederick Douglass: ‘Without struggle, there is no progress!’

Youths are at the front-line barricades, leading struggles today that are shaping tomorrow — from Cairo, Egypt, to Portau-Prince, Haiti; from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Montreal; from Oakland, Calif., to Baltimore.

A clear view of these struggles would inspire hope for many oppressed youths that the fight for change is already being waged, with youths in the leadership.

Youths need jobs; live-able wages; affordable education, health care and housing; recreation and transportation.

Oppressed youths have a right to walk together in the streets without curfew; the right to meet, to make music and other art in public; to organize in collective defense.

Anti-slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass summed up this historic truth: “Without struggle, there is no progress.”

Douglass, enslaved as a laborer in Maryland, had attempted to escape repeatedly. As punishment for teaching other enslaved African laborers to read, Douglass was sent to be whipped by a paid “slave-breaker.”

Douglass fought back and beat the “slave-breaker” to the ground. He successfully emancipated himself from slavery in 1838, with collective help from the Abolitionist Underground Railroad.

He was 20 years old.

When he was almost 40 years old, Douglass elaborated on the lessons of his own life and centuries of struggles for social/economic justice with these powerful words: “Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. …

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation … want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”

Douglass concluded, “This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

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Dec. 20, 2012

workers.org

WORKERS WORLD PARTY CONFERENCE

Justice for Baltimore community Then we had demonstrators from East Baltimore that were fighting for jobs. ... The victims of police brutality are also the people who are having their utilities shut off, having their recreation centers closed down.

Excerpts from a talk given by the Rev. C.D. Witherspoon, from Baltimore, at the Workers World Party Nov. 17-18 conference in New York.

See video at youtube.com/wwpvideo

As president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Baltimore Chapter founded by Dr. Martin Luther King, I am so excited to be here today and stand in arms with you. I believe this is the vision Dr. King had for the entire world.

Police brutality is a vicious and brutal attack on Black, Brown and poor people alike. It is an attack at the hands of a very vicious, capitalistic, materialistic system that is not only innately void and ill-equipped with the human integrity and pride to be able to stand up for issues concerning humanity, but it is also an indictment upon our system as a whole.

It is an indictment upon its inability to provide for health care; it is an indictment on its inability to provide adequate and sufficient housing; and it is an indictment upon each of us if we fail to take a stand to do what every single people have done around the world. And that is to stand up to own its citizenship rights and to take our communities back.

It is critical for us to understand we have a task at hand. Brothers and sisters from North Carolina walked 41 miles with us the beginning of this year to Washington, D.C., despite being threatened with not being served because of our alliance with brothers and sisters in the Occupy

timore without knowing what was about to happen on his way to his granddaughter’s birthday party. He was hoisted up into the air by “knockers” — a specialized police unit that ww Photo: BRenDA RYAn is grafting terror across this C.D. Witherspoon entire country — we all have movement. We locked arms because this these type of units in our communities. fight is going to be won with our ability to This police unit launched him up into the come together. air, slammed him down on his head and What we have attempted to do in Balti- killed him almost instantly, in the presmore is to build a People’s Assembly — an ence of his mother, in the presence of his alternative to the power structure that has 2-year-old grandchild. proven time and time again not to give a We have a situation in a relationship damn about working-class and hardwork- with David Kim over in West Baltimore. ing people. What we have attempted to do A disabled man, partially paralyzed, who is to get down into the communities. That was shot by the police. The police officer required us to roll up our sleeves, to get sat in his cruiser and shot four times out past our perceptions, our misgivings, to into the general public endangering the check our egos at the door, and to begin to entire city at that particular time with no start addressing the needs of the people. regard to the community.

We became exposed to different issues.

Then we had demonstrators from East The beating to death of Brother Anthony Baltimore that were fighting for jobs.

Anderson — a gentleman who was just This proves to you that the victims of powalking in his neighborhood in East Bal- lice brutality are also the people who are

We need a moratorium on foreclosures, evictions Excerpts from a talk given by Mike Shane, from the Detroit branch of Workers World Party, at the WWP Nov. 17-18 conference in New York. See video at youtube.com/wwpvideo Millions of families have lost their homes over the past six years. This foreclosure crisis is spurring the growth of a militant movement across the U.S. and the globe. This week in Spain, a moratorium on evictions was won in the midst of a general strike sweeping across Europe.

And here in the U.S., the growing movement against foreclosures and evictions is coordinating nationally, raising political demands and winning victories.

It is uniting around the idea that housing is a human right.

A year ago, the Occupy Wall Street movement launched a national day of action in almost a dozen cities, including Detroit, joining with families and groups in the fight to save homes. The Occupy movement has truly energized and spurred the emergence of a national movement that is increasingly anti-capitalist, direct-action oriented and against the banks.

Detroit is 143 square miles in area, a little smaller than the Gaza strip, with an estimated 40 square miles of open area today. In the recent crisis, Detroit was hit with somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 foreclosures, due, in large part to the banks’ racist subprime lending practices. The banks targeted African-American and Latino/a communities with the most expensive, lowest quality, but highly profitable subprime loans, which are almost impossible to pay off. In the last census, Detroit lost a quarter million resi-

dents, largely due to foreclosures.

In March, the Moratorium NOW! Coalition, in which the party plays a major role, organized a national conference to fight for a moratorium. Over 130 activists from a dozen cities attended. Action proposals included organizing for the march on the Democratic National Convention to demand that President Obama use his executive authority to impose a national moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.

In early August, housing rights groups, including Moratorium NOW!, held a national meeting in Minneapolis, organized

by Occupy Homes. A major concern at the meeting was the increasing role of the government sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in foreclosures and evictions. Fannie and Freddie were taken over by the federal government in 2008, in order to prevent the complete collapse of the U.S. banking industry.

Since then, almost $200 billion of taxpayers’ money has been given to these entities, in order to reimburse the banksters for any and all losses.

The Minneapolis meeting called for regional and national actions against Freddie and Fannie in September. These demonstrations represented the movement’s qualitative leap forward. In addition to demands to stop all foreclosures and evictions and for a principal reduction, the movement is now demanding “a people’s takeover of the people’s bank,” a reference to the government control of Fannie and Freddie. The demonstrations also demanded that the empty, foreclosed homes be returned to the evicted families or to their communities. We need to pay

Mike Shane

having their utilities shut off, having their recreation centers closed down. This is all about capitalism. These people took to the street to challenge. They challenge the promise of the provision of jobs that was made to them.

And when they challenged it, the system responded, it attacked, it brutalized and arrested those demonstrators. One was beaten severely, kicked, stomped and maced. And as a result of what they did was they bogged him down with a whole bunch of charges to deter him from moving forward with addressing the issues.

What we did was to apply months and months and months worth of pressure to the system and those charges were dropped. We sent a message that when you brutalize people, we shall not be moved as a community.

I want to encourage you to maintain the fight because, when Anthony Anderson was killed in the presence of his mother, his grandchild and his entire community, the police lied about what happened.

They said he swallowed drugs. But the autopsy report that we demanded — “in 48 hours” but they delivered it in 28 because we knew our rights and we were going to demand and file a Freedom of Information Act request — and it said there was a homicide. We need to start doing that, knowing our rights, following through with that and demanding justice for our community.

Detroit lost $118 million in property taxes on bank-owned properties that the banks refused to pay. So what we have done is tie the municipal debt to the foreclosure crisis.

ww Photo: BRenDA RYAn

attention to this development.

In Detroit, since the rise of Occupy, we are in a much broader coalition, known as Occupy Detroit Eviction Defense, that also includes union activists and neighborhood groups. In the past year, we have stopped around a dozen evictions through grassroots mobilizations that included packing the courtroom, demonstrations at banks and homes, and daily vigils to guard homes under threat of eviction.

More and more families are coming to Eviction Defense meetings to fight for their homes. We are almost beyond our capacity to do home defenses one at a time. This problem is not unique to Detroit. This is happening in other cities, as well.

This calls for a national mass struggle for an immediate moratorium on foreclosures and evictions, in combination with a general reduction in mortgage principals to current market values. We need to do what the workers in Spain just accomplished this week. And we need to make this a part

of the People’s Power Assemblies.

Detroit is also facing severe austerity measures, caused by the foreclosure crisis, due in part to an unprecedented decline in property tax receipts. Just last year alone, Detroit lost $118 million in property taxes on bank-owned properties that the banks refused to pay. So what we have done is tie the municipal debt to the foreclosure crisis.

Last spring, we held a demonstration against Bank of America, calling for a moratorium on foreclosures and municipal debt payments. It was probably the first of its kind in this country during this crisis. Over 80 persons participated, and to our pleasant surprise, the chants turned from a demand for a moratorium on debt payments to a demand to cancel the debt!

This is a sign of things to come.

Fight for a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions, and public debt payments!

Make the banks pay!

Build the People’s Power Assemblies!

workers.org

Dec. 20, 2012

Page 7

BUILDING PEOPLE’S POWER: FIGHTBACK & SOLIDARITY

A real answer to police terror Excerpts from a talk given by Sharon Black, a national Workers World Party organizer and representative of the Baltimore People’s Assembly, at the WWP Nov. 17-18 conference in New York. See video at youtube.com/wwpvideo.

Baltimore, like Gaza, is an occupied city. I’m not asserting that the people of Baltimore are suffering the same kind of brutal terror that the Palestinians are resisting at this very moment.

The comparison between the two is the systematic use of racism, violence and humiliation used to control and subdue an oppressed people. In Baltimore this includes the dehumanizing use of illegal strip searches of women in the street, the handcuffing of children, the kidnapping of Black youth and of course the brutal killings by police that Rev. C. D. Witherspoon described so well.

The fact is that police terror is capitalism’s answer to their economic crisis.

Rather than provide jobs, education or health care, the system has resorted to mass incarceration, terror and jails. Its first target is oppressed youth — but police repression has spilled over to the Occupy movement and to the workers and poor as a whole.

This is why the Baltimore People’s Assembly has called for getting the police out of our communities, for jailing killer police, for community control and much more.

I want to end with three points:

‘The Baltimore People’s Assembly is planning to commemorate the Poor People’s Campaign by marching from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., later in May.’

Baltimore needs your help. We do not want to fight our battles alone and isolated. Police terror, mass incarceration, racism and all of the other ism’s of capitalism are national problems from Oakland to Baltimore.

In this light, we want to invite you to participate in the Dec. 15 National Peo- Sharon Black ple’s Power Assembly in Baltimore. Come to this assembly not only so that we can fight as one but also to strategize the next steps in the People’s Power movement.

Second, I wanted to raise what my colleague, brother and comrade, Reverend Witherspoon, could speak more knowledgeably on is that this coming year marks a major milestone in civil rights history. It is the 50th anniversary of the Poor People’s Campaign and the August Jobs and Freedom march and many other significant events for the civil rights movement.

Let’s claim this year, the 50th anniversary, as part of our struggle: unite the most oppressed with those who are fight-

ployed?

We have no perfect way of predicting this. What we do know is that the workers have the power to shut the system down and that the People’s Power Assemblies can play a very important role in encouraging that development.

Like the European Occupy movement and other Occupies, the Occupy Wall Street Movement has proven helpful in giving a boost to the trade union and workers’ movement; albeit, it has been from the outside of it. ww Photo: BRenDA RYAn We are not narrow or sectarian, nor are we seeking to ing for jobs, workers’ rights, immigrant control every PPA. That would be detrirights, student rights and push the strug- mental to the movement.

But we need to be deadly serious in gle forward to it’s logical conclusion. Let’s link the struggle against racism with the contributing to pushing, nurturing and birthing the People’s Power Assemblies. fight against capitalism.

We need to ultimately look forward to The Baltimore People’s Assembly is planning to commemorate the Poor Peo- the formation of an international revople’s Campaign by marching from Balti- lutionary council that could grow out of such a movement, whose goal will be to more to Washington, D.C., later in May. The last point has directly to do with plan coordinate and execute a global inthe People’s Power Assemblies. We do surrection that will sweep away capitalnot know what crisis will occur or exactly ism and save the planet.

Power to the People! how resistance will develop. Will it be rePower to the Workers! sistance to austerity or police repression?

Power to the Oppressed!

Will the point of resistance be on the job or will it be in the streets with the unem-

Activists in N.C. confront right-wing challenge Excerpts from a talk given by Yen Alcala, Occupy Charlotte activist, at the Workers World Party Nov. 17-18 conference in New York. See video at youtube.com/wwpvideo.

national convention with the DNC in September… We have been there!

In the face of these powerful forces, we have stood strong with solidarity and we have won great victories.

I speak to you today about some of the momentous actions, coalition building and manifestations of people’s power that have come to fruition in Charlotte over the past year. We the people have made tremendous strides in mounting strong defenses and raising potent opposition to some of the gravest, most oppressive and despicably destructive forces we the people face.

Whether it has been neo-Nazi/KKK groups descending on our city promoting discrimination and hate, the corporate criminals known as Bank of America holding their annual shareholder meetings, the pro 1% anti-democratic mechanism for corporate control over legislation known as the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC holding their spring summit, dirty Duke Energy price-gouging people already teetering on the edge of their own fiscal cliff with further proposed rate hikes to fund further dirty energy exploitation, homophobic and hateful state legislation with Amendment 1, battling oppressive abusive infringements on civil liberties by the City Council with targeted anti-Occupy ordinances, standing with city workers in their fight for dignity and for a basic bill of workers’ rights, standing for and with our undocumented and immigrant brothers and sisters for dignity against depraved inhumane discrimination, or when one of the corporate political duopolies descending on our city for their

The lesson

The entire capitalist system is collapsing upon itself. The lesson for Charlotte, Chicago, D.C., Detroit, Oakland, NYC, should be that we need a robust reinvigoration of People’s Power Movements in preparation for things to come.

Not North American capitalism, not European capitalism, but the entire capitalist system is faltering and collapsing upon itself. This is not just an economic bubble bursting or the annihilation of a market. This is a full blown capitalist crisis — the inevitable annihilation of a self-destructing system — the implications and the unavoidable outcomes and consequences of which are the lesson we need to heed as we move forward.

Not only in Charlotte, North Carolina, or here in New York City, but across this nation and planet — the signs are everywhere — the continued deep recession; sustained sky-high permanent un- and underemployment; ever rising poverty; crumbling infrastructure and social services; permanent wars; bankrupt cities, counties, states and governments; our impending fiscal cliff; the possibility of sequestrations; the continuation of QE3 or quantitative easing — should make us all uneasy as austerity and further peril is coming our way. Just as it has in Europe.

It is coming here. It’s coming to our backyard very soon. We need only to look to Greece, Spain, Portugal, France and on and on. Just this week millions have taken to the streets in protest, strikes and general strikes unified and unprecedented in number and scope across the entirety of the European Union.

Yen Alcala Yen

Alcala Yen Alcala

ww Photo: BRenDA RYAn

That is what we need to be preparing for. That is what we need to be learning from. That is what we need to be gearing up for. This is the greatest lesson. We need to be getting prepared.

The same dangerous policies and practices that haven’t worked over there are on their way here. It’s the same broken, ignorant logic that says that in order to fix this global and national capitalist crisis, created by them, they must take more from the people who have already been left on the brink of disastrous catastrophe.

It is their insatiable self-indulgence, and the toxic greed that is embedded within their free market system, that has them bound, not to fix but to further perpetuate the downward spiral of the capitalist crisis.

This means we have a great responsibility and opportunity before us in the near future. No one knows how rapidly this will occur, but it is coming. The question is: when will millions upon millions out of desperation and sheer frustration be ready to take to the street? When will masses of the people, who may have never been engaged or involved before, be ready to take action?

What infrastructure will be available for them? What options will be available for them?

Look to the last comparable capitalist crisis — the Great Depression. When facing the possibility of great austerity, the people came together and fought in solidarity. The people mounted the greatest surge in union membership and workers’ rights protections in our history, where masses of people were able to put real pressure on [President Franklin Delano Roosevelt], forcing him to create social protections and security with the passing of the Social Security Act, unemployment insurance and public works that put over 12.5 million people to work. All by making the 1% pay their fair share.

I will close by saying that the lesson for Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, D.C., NYC, the message to us all should be that we need a robust reinvigoration of People’s Power Movements everywhere in preparation for the things to come, which is why we have been working hard to establish a People’s Power Assembly in Charlotte. [We] plan on continuing that work in our city and hope to see a network of people power in action.

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Dec. 20, 2012

workers.org

‘Scottsboro Boys’

A 1931 case of legal lynching revisited

By Dolores Cox New York The documentary film, “The Central Park 5,” is showing in theatres here even as a federal civil rights lawsuit regarding the case proceeds against the city of New York and its police department. One is reminded of the case of “the Scottsboro Boys.” In both instances, innocent Black teenagers were falsely accused, convicted and imprisoned for raping a white woman, without any physical evidence proving their guilt.

The Central Park 5 served between 7 to 13 years in prison for the 1989 crime. In 2002, they were exonerated after the actual serial rapist confessed and his DNA matched that of the attacker. However, the Five, now in their thirties, are still awaiting justice and reparations.

Nothing apparently has been learned from the past. The case of “the Scottsboro Boys” was recognized as a horrific travesty of justice; one that many assumed could never happen again. But U.S. history continues to be replete with similar cases. Both the Scottsboro and Central Park 5 stories are powerful reminders of what can happen when the justice system is manipulated, the truth is ignored and racism dominates.

Scottsboro case In the Deep South of the 1930s, Blacks were declared guilty until proven innocent. Black lives didn’t count for much.

Self-serving groundless accusations were allowed to change forever the lives of both the Scottsboro and the Central Park teens, who merely found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Scottsboro youth were tried, convicted and imprisoned on death row, despite an abundance of evidence proving their innocence. No other case ever resulted in as many trials, convictions, reversals of decisions and retrials.

For nearly two decades, the youth struggled for justice. Their civil rights case was a story of racism, injustice and bigotry played out in the rigidly segregat-

ed South. They became victims of a racist legal system, spending the balance of their teen years into adulthood in jail paying for a crime they never committed,which is also the case of the Central Park 5.

On March 25, 1931, the nine African-American teenage males, ages 12 to 18, were falsely accused of gang raping at gunpoint two young white women aboard a Southern Railroad “hobo” freight train.

Haywood Patterson, Roy Wright, Andy Wright, Charlie Weems, Clarence Norris, Ozzie Powell, Willie Roberson, Olen Montgomery and Eugene Williams were among many men, Black and white, who were riding the train in search of jobs.

The two female accusers, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, were mill workers from Huntsville, Ala. A racial fight had broken out on the train, causing the motorman to wire ahead to the next station, where an armed mob of white men was waiting. The teens were arrested and taken to a jail in Scottsboro, Ala., a small, rural town. That night a lynch mob of several hundred surrounded the jail. The teens became known as “the Scottsboro Boys.”

All but three of the youth denied raping or having even seen the two young women on the train. The three who confessed did so after repeated beatings and threats.

Similarly, the Central Park teens suffered up to 30 straight hours of questioning and coerced confessions.

Trials of the Scottsboro youth began just 12 days after their arrest. But local newspapers had already tried and convicted them, with calls for the death penalty, just as in the Central Park 5 case.

The young women’s stories were implausible and contradictory, with no ev-

idence supporting their accusations of being gang raped. Incompetent attorneys were assigned to represent the youth and offered no closing arguments. The young men were found guilty of rape and received the death penalty.

Because rape of white women, particularly in the South, was a volatile issue and remains so throughout the country, the NAACP did not readily come forth.

But the Communist Party did, and zealously took on the case. The Party’s International Labor Defense (ILD) attorneys described the case against the “Boys” as “a murderous frame-up.”

Samuel Leibowitz, a famous New York criminal attorney, and Joseph Brodsky of the ILD took the case. Leibowitz made a motion to crush the indictments and declare a mistrial on the grounds that Blacks were systematically excluded from jury rolls and that verdicts were based on racial prejudice. In 1933, a judge set aside the verdicts and ordered a new trial. The new jury also quickly returned a guilty verdict and sentenced them to death.

Between their first and second trials, the teens spent two years on death row in a deplorable Alabama prison. They saw inmates being carried off to a death chamber near their cell and could hear the sound of the electrocutions. One of Haywood Patterson’s jobs was to carry out the bodies of electrocuted inmates.

The U.S. Federal Supreme Court ruled on appeal that the right of the defendants under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause to competent legal counsel had been denied, and the convictions were overturned. Again, new trials were ordered.

One of the accusers, Ruby Bates, later recanted her story, admitting that both

women had lied. She became a leading Communist Party ILD spokesperson at Scottsboro rallies, where she begged forgiveness and pleaded for justice for the “Boys.”

Leibowitz appealed the death penalty to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1935 reversed the convictions of Clarence Norris and Haywood Patterson. New trials were again ordered.

The convictions of Eugene Williams and Ozzie Powell were overturned in a landmark decision stating they should not have been tried as adults.

In 1937, the fourth and last trial of Haywood Patterson again resulted in a conviction for rape, but this time he was sentenced to 75 years. It was the first time in Alabama’s history that a Black man convicted of raping a white woman had not been sentenced to death.

Eventually, all death sentences were set aside and lengthy prison terms imposed, varying up to 99 years. Four of “the Scottsboro Boys” were exonerated, two because they were only 12 and 13 years old at the time of their conviction and had already served sufficient time.

Haywood Patterson managed to escape from prison in 1948. While a fugitive, he co-wrote his autobiography, “Scottsboro Boy: The Story That America Wanted to Forget.”

In 1979, Clarence Norris’ co-written autobiography, “The Last of the Scottsboro Boys,” was published. All have since died.

None ever received an apology or financial restitution from the state of Alabama — much like the situation of the Central Park 5 to date.

Read the entire article on workers.org.

‘The Central Park Five’

The racist hate crime that continues

By Sue Davis

award-winner Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon, chronicles how this A racist hate crime of sensational pro- crime was systematically contrived and exportions has been allowed to fester since ecuted in a virulently racist, legal lynching 1989. It must be addressed and the vic- by the capitalist state and the corporate tims properly compensated. However, media. Not only were there 28 other rapes justice is still being denied 23 years later. in New York City during the same week, alIn 1989, then Mayor Ed Koch referred most all of them of Black and Latina womto the near-death beating and en, but only one, that of a Black Movie rape of a young white woman woman in Brooklyn, received review . even a mention in the press. jogger in Central Park as “the crime of the century.” The police departThe movie shows, beyond a shadow of ment, the district attorney’s office and the a doubt, how the youth were tortured — media all fell into racist lockstep, demon- during many hours of interrogation while izing a so-called “wolf pack” of five Black being deprived of food and sleep — into and Latino teens on a “wilding” spree as confessing to a crime they did not comthe ones responsible. mit, based on promises that if they impliWhile that attack was horrific — it’s a cated the others they could go home. miracle the woman survived and was able In the film, New York Times columnist to move on with her life — the crime that Jim Dwyer admits that journalists did not continues to this day is the one perpetrat- do their job. Why didn’t they question the ed on the five innocent young men of col- fact that none of the so-called confessions or who had the misfortune to be in Cen- locates the scene or time of the attack? tral Park on the evening of April 19, 1989. Why weren’t the stories of the attack conA new, critically acclaimed documen- sistent? Why didn’t DNA evidence cortary, “The Central Park Five,” created by roborate their guilt? The only coincidence

.

was that all the confessions implicated the other four by name. You can hear the cops constantly repeating the names during the interrogations.

Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana Jr. and Korey Wise were railroaded to prison for seven to 13 years in a racist frenzy, their young lives, and those of their families, irrevocably shattered.

In 2002, Matias Reyes, a rapist and murderer sentenced to life in prison, finally confessed and his DNA was identified on the woman’s clothes.

Even though the youths’ convictions were vacated on Dec. 19, 2002, no one in city government has apologized for this injustice. However, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s comments in his Dec. 5, 2002, motion to vacate point out “troubling discrepancies” in the youths’ coerced confessions.

Seeking justice and reparations, Richardson, Santana and McCray filed a civil suit against the city in 2003 for “malicious prosecution, racial discrimination and

emotional distress.” However, the state, ever since using devious manipulations to delay the case, subpoenaed in September the outtakes from and original interviews and research for the documentary. The filmmakers have refused to comply, determined not to be bullied by the state.

Dolores Cox, a civil rights activist who has been following the suit, told Workers World after viewing the film, “As a Black person living my entire life in the U.S., a country built on Black and Native holocausts fueled by capitalism, I’ve witnessed and personally experienced the continuing violence and terrorism directed toward people of color here. I live in a country that loves to hate. Pathological racism has been built into not just its criminal justice system, but into every other system and institution to ensure its permanence.”

By throwing a spotlight on the hate crime that continues, the film is a cry for justice that must be heard.

Davis and other WWP women activists participated in the Committee to Defend the Central Park 5 in 1989-90.

workers.org

Dec. 20, 2012

Page 9

Sandy and Katrina:

What makes them different

By Johnnie Stevens New York city

natural barriers or even clear out drains.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently said, “Superstorm Hurricane Sandy caused more property damage and affected a greater number of people than Katrina.” The Nov. 26 New York Daily News took his remarks even further in an article entitled “In push for $42B in federal aid, New York pols say Hurricane Sandy worse than Katrina.”

Cuomo’s remarks about hurricanes Sandy and Katrina constitute a new level of racism in the “Empire State” by completely leaving out the human cost of each crisis.

More than 1,800 people died in Hurricane Katrina and the resulting floods. One million people were displaced — indeed, forcibly removed — from the Gulf Coast in 2005. Some 93 percent of those who had to go to shelters were African American.

National Guard, police and Blackwater agents put many people on buses at gunpoint. Families were separated, placed on buses with different destinations, spread over 46 states. (See Loyola University Professor Bill Quigley’s slide presentation on “Katrina, Racism and Catholic Social Teaching” at tinyurl.com/dywonfh.)

An estimated 100,000 people have not been able to make their way back to the Gulf area. Those who did return have lost homes and property due to bank and landlord takeovers.

Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers, which put billions of tax dollars in corporate pockets, were full of cancer-causing formaldehyde. Millions of dollars of food was locked in Red Cross warehouses and never distributed to Katrina survivors.

What Cuomo left out in comparing Sandy to Katrina was condemnation of the capitalist system, which puts profits before people. This is why crews were ordered to light up Wall Street within two days of the flooding, while residents in lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island were left without electricity or services for weeks.

Although there have been abundant warnings about the dangers from aging infrastructure, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers neglected to repair the Gulf levees and New York State neglected to prepare for serious flooding, strengthen

Residents of public housing should be warned about what happened after Katrina: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Housing Authority of New Orleans destroyed five housing projects once the residents were evacuated, displacing more people from structures that were sound. Is this in store for tenants in Red Hook, Far Rockaway, Staten Island and Chelsea?

According to Rosa Maria de la Torre of the Chelsea Coalition on Housing, “This is a very dangerous time. HUD Secretary Donovan invited two groups to discuss plans for moving displaced people to vacant apartments: the misnamed Rent Stabilization Association — a landlord lobby — and the New York Real Estate Board.

These talks completely exclude tenants’ rights groups and Legal Aid lawyers, who are worried that the nature of the leases could result in rent deregulation and the long-term loss of affordable housing.”

Cuomo issued an executive order to dismiss the contractual standards for school bus drivers and vehicles in the post-Sandy period (governor.ny.gov/executiveorder/65). Similarly, after Hurricane Katrina the New Orleans teachers’ union was decertified, and 69 percent of public schools were taken over by charter corporations, all with government help.

In both disasters, the most reliable source of support for survivors has been the solidarity shown by tens of thousands of regular people, often members of community, church, union, Occupy, or other mass organizations. Whether opening up their homes, donating clothing and cash, providing health screenings, or going door to door to give out water, they applied people power when the government failed to protect us.

Of course, there should be full government funding for the reconstruction of New York State and New Jersey. What’s needed now is a guarantee of people power: Namely, that the same community organizations, labor unions, tenant groups and others which have shown genuine leadership be included in planning how to solve the problems and rebuild to prevent future problems.

Warning to public housing residents

Those most affected by Hurricane Sandy have the strongest will to ensure that workers who perform cleanup tasks have protective gear and real training that can lead them to permanent jobs with union benefits, as opposed to getting a few months’ pay but becoming ill for the rest of their lives.

Johnnie Stevens is a co-founder of the New York Solidarity Coalition with Katrina/Rita Survivors. He has compiled 100 hours of video interviews, much of them from September 2005, with Katrina survivors in Louisiana, Texas and New York State.

Community Award to

ROSA MARIA DE LA TORRE

Photo MIChelle Del GueRCIo

Rosa Maria de la Torre, program coordinator of the Chelsea Housing Group at Hudson Guild in New York City since 1998, received the Dororthy Epstein Community Service Award at a Hudson Guild dinner on Dec. 6. In addition to working on many local tenant initiatives, this community activist is a founding organizer of

Community-Labor United for Postal Jobs and Services — along with Johnnie Stevens pictured wearing glasses — which mobilized to stop the threatened closure of a Chelsea post office. De la Torre (holding plaque) with her son, Pablo (second row right), and activist friends.

— Sue Davis

Memory of Black Panther Party leaders honored

For Ramarley Graham

‘We will not be silenced’

By Sue Davis New York city “We will not be silent and we will not be silenced!” was the theme of the Dec. 8 dinner in honor of Ramarley Graham, held in the packed to overflowing Service Employees 1199 auditorium in New York City.

The 18-year-old African American was ruthlessly gunned down in the bathroom of his Bronx home by a NYC cop on Feb. 2.

Ever since, Graham’s parents, Constance Malcolm, a member of SEIU 1199, and Franclot Graham, and their friends and neighbors in their outraged community have fought tirelessly for justice for their son. Only after seven months of marches to and rallies at the local precinct was Officer Richard Haste indicted on first- and second-degree manslaughter on Sept. 13. A member of a street narcotics team that illegally entered the Graham home, Haste claimed he shot the youth

because he thought Graham had a gun — though none was found.

Since then, four other innocent people of color have been gunned down by the New York Police Department: Shantel Davis while driving on June 15; Reynaldo Cuevas fleeing a robbery at the bodega where he worked on Sept. 7; Mohamed Bah for “acting strangely” in his home on Sept. 25; and Noel Polanco after being pulled over on a Queens highway on Oct. 4.

Aware that their son’s murder was part of a pattern of police terror throughout the U.S., Malcolm and Graham devoted the dinner to a call for “justice for Ramarley Graham and all victims of police abuse” and invited 11 families in the New York area to talk about their loved ones and their struggle to win justice.

“We must make Mayor Bloomberg, Police Chief Kelly and the entire NYPD accountable for all the deaths that are unContinued on page 1o

Community gathers to remember Chairman Fred Hampton Sr.

By Patricia Linarez chicago On the 43rd anniversary of the cop massacre of Black Panther Party leaders Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. and Defense Captain Mark Clark, more than 100 people gathered at 2337 West Chairman Fred Hampton Way in Monroe, where a cop death squad carried out the targeted assassination on Dec. 4, 1969.

Hampton was born on Aug. 30, 1948, in Chicago and grew up in Maywood, Ill. As a teenager he organized demonstrations and later became one of the leaders of the Black Panther Party.

In his short life he helped oppressed people when he set up the Free Breakfast Program for children. He also tried to keep the peace between some Chicago street gangs and built alliances with revolutionary organizations and other nationalities.

International Revolutionary Day was observed by revolutionary people led by Chairman Fred Hampton Jr., of the Pris-

ww Photo: eRIC StRuCh

oners of Conscience Committee/Black Panther Party Cubs, and Comrade Mother Akua Njerim, who relived the tragedy of losing one great revolutionary who not only died fighting for the people’s rights but lived for the revolution. He left us with the courage to follow our beliefs.

The Freedom Home Academy joined the tribute. Many of the youths between 8 and 13 years expressed solidarity with people’s struggle.

Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. gave a message to the new generation. On his facebook page, he pointed out that the cops had picked that very day, Dec. 4, to honor the son of one of the cops who slaughtered Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. He noted that while some “have forgotten [the date], it is continuously made clear that the system has not.”

Workers World Party gave a solidarity message to the gathering. Let us not forget this BPP leader’s contributions to revolutionary history and let us not forget how he died.

Page 10

Dec. 20, 2012

workers.org

editorials

Stand with Hugo Chávez & Venezuela Hugo Chávez’s extraordinary career

as military rebel, people’s hero and agent of deep social change in Venezuela, as well as a leader of the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America, has inspired the world while putting fear in the hearts of the imperialists.

His announcement that his cancer has returned despite many efforts by Cuba’s stellar medical teams to cure him has shocked and saddened progressives everywhere, especially the masses in Latin America who have looked to the Bolivarian Revolution as a path to both independence from imperialism and to regional integration of their efforts for development with social justice.

It is the masses of people who in the long run make history. Comrade Chávez knows this so well. For 14 years he has been the people’s tribune, their courageous leader, who stood with them against the oligarchy and was in turn rescued by them from the hands of the U.S.-backed coup plotters. He has

initiated an extensive dialogue with the people on how to bring about socialism in the 21st century. Now he has bravely told the people that they need to prepare for a possible transition of leadership if he becomes incapacitated by his illness.

His designated successor is Vice President Nicolás Maduro, a former labor unionist and minister of foreign affairs.

This distressing situation is a development that Washington will try to take advantage of and escalate its ongoing plan to destabilize the revolutionary process in Venezuela. The day before Chávez flew to Cuba for more treatment, tens of thousands of Venezuelans assembled in downtown Caracas on Dec. 9 to wish him well and display their solidarity in the face of uncertainty and grief.

It is urgent that revolutionaries and all progressives firmly come together in support of the Bolivarian Revolution as the Venezuelan people work their way through these difficult days.

BEGIN THE NEW YEAR RIGHT!

Build Workers World!

You’ve read about many important events in these pages in 2012:  The national uprising against racist vigilante terror that followed the murder of Trayvon Martin

 The successful Chicago teachers’ strike  Unprecedented coast-to-coast

organizing among low-wage workers

 The beginnings of a People’s Power Assembly movement

We’re looking forward to reporting on much more in 2013.

But we can’t do it alone.

We’re now faced with having to move our office because the landlord would double the rent when our lease ends. Moving imposes a heavy burden on our organizational and financial resources.

At the same time, we’ve upgraded our website, workers.org, so that we can bring you more current reporting on the most pressing issues affecting the global working class and the oppressed, as well as the Marxist-Leninist analysis you’ve come to rely on.

We keep costs down by depending on a volunteer staff of editors, writers, photographers, copyeditors, proofreaders and mailers. But the cost of each issue keeps going up, especially when we opt for four-color printing.

Many other left organizations have given up producing a printed newspaper.

But we get a lot of feedback from workers and oppressed people who say that having an actual paper that reports on their struggles is indispensable — and they are getting it out in the union halls and the communities and to their friends. Others who rely on receiving our printed paper are the many thinking, class-conscious people locked behind the bars of this oppressive system who otherwise would be cut off from any source of the truth.

Please help keep us going. Contribute to Workers World because you care about the struggle to end capitalism, with all its injustice and inequality. Give because you care about WW’s future and because you want to build a workers’ world.

I enclose:  $75 supporter  $100 sponsor  $300 sustainer I enclose every month:  $6 supporter  $10 sponsor  $25 sustainer  I can’t join now, here is a donation of $____  Contact me about putting WW in my will.

Fill out the Supporter Program form and send it with your check made out to Workers World 55 W. 17th St., 5th Fl., N Y, NY 10011. Include your address, email and phone number.

For Ramarley Graham

‘We will not be silenced’ Continued from page 9 just,” said Malcolm.

“We are fighting not just for Ramarley, but for all kids who were killed. We have to stand together.” Graham added, “Ramarley’s call is against violence. We’re here with all the families to continue the fight for justice for all.”

Among the speakers, each describing the heartbreaking loss they have suffered

and their determination to keep struggling, were Kenneth Chamberlain Jr., who recounted his continuing fight to have the cops indicted who shot his ailing father on Nov. 19, 2011; and Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five, who continues to fight for reparations after a wrongful conviction in 1990 and exoneration in 2002.

Each speaker received a plaque from Malcolm and a standing ovation.

Syria, Egypt & imperialism

I

f you’re reading this editorial, you probably don’t believe that when cops invade poor Black or Latino/a neighborhoods, they do it to protect the innocent and the elderly. You probably don’t believe that the governor of Michigan is attacking unions in order to protect workers from paying dues.

And you’re absolutely right. These elements are working on behalf of a handful of big bankers and corporate owners who are out to hamstring the working class and all poor and oppressed people.

Extend that to foreign policy. No one should believe that the U.S. and its NATO allies bomb a country to protect democracy or extend human rights. Or that CIA-operated drones are protecting us from terrorists.

NATO governments use a powerful propaganda machine to falsely present themselves as the guardians of civilization. They are really the sheriffs and cops protecting private property of that same small group of billionaires on a worldwide scale, while they impose “austerity” on workers at home. On the international arena, these are the old colonial overlords grouped behind dominant U.S. imperialism. They hold the lion’s share of military and financial power and a near monopoly on media. They use it to exploit labor and extract wealth around the world.

Two years ago a popular revolt erupted against repressive regimes in Tunisia and Egypt and spread elsewhere in North Africa and Southwest Asia. Washington and its European allies moved quickly to stop any truly popular governments from replacing their old puppets. Then they moved to exploit any instability to remove existing governments that had some independence and sovereignty.

Using their massive propaganda machines overtime, they lie incessantly.

They change their story from day to day.

They depend on their media monopoly to sell their aggression as “humanitarian” or “defensive.”

To cut through these lies, it is best to start from the knowledge that the European and North American ruling classes only intervene for strategic goals or to seize resources. Whatever the character of a particular country or leader, NATO intervention will only make life worse for the vast majority of the people involved.

The same class also makes life worse for the workers at home.

In Libya, for example, NATO bombed and destroyed a stable sovereign government. They murdered Moammar Gadhafi and left chaos, except in areas of the country where they can extract oil. And they spread the turmoil to Mali.

U.S., no friend to Egypt, ready to intervene in Syria In Egypt, the U.S. is acting as if it is a defender of democracy. The truth is that

the U.S. supported the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship for 30 years, built its ties with the Egyptian army — that is, with its top officers — and the Pentagon still has the tightest connections with that military. The Barack Obama administration has also worked with current Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who is with the Muslim Brotherhood, to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza after the Israeli military slaughter of civilians and fighters had stiffened the resolve of the Palestinian people to resist. U.S. agencies are all over Egypt, keeping ties to the pro-capitalist elements in opposition to Morsi and the generals.

Egypt’s workers and poor need food, shelter and security. They need a government that works for their interests. The vast majority of Egypt’s 83 million people feel strong solidarity with Palestine.

Washington’s goal is to assure that Egypt has a pro-capitalist regime that maintains its treaties with Israel, so that Israel can turn all its guns on the Palestinians, the Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, and threaten Syria and Iran. Keeping the Egyptian masses hemmed in by a Pentagon-dependent military is central to U.S. imperialist policy in the region.

The most likely place for a new, open military intervention, however, is against Syria. The Qatari Emirate and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have been financing and arming the reactionary Syrian opposition. NATO-member Turkey gives them a safe haven on the Syrian border and protects the route to bring them arms.

British Special Forces train them. A German spy ship supplies intelligence. Many of their troops come from al-Qaida-like forces in other countries.

It’s hard to present these monarch-backed killers as “democrats,” so U.S. strategists are trotting out the same “weapons of mass destruction” argument to defame Syria that they used falsely against Iraq.

Even U.S. Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell and no friend of Damascus, felt compelled to expose this pretext. He told how the “intelligence community” lied to him and Powell about Iraqi weapons and said, in an interview Dec. 8 with the Russian Times, “I would be highly skeptical of any of the intelligence rendered by the $140-billion-plus U.S. intelligence community as to weapons of mass destruction in the possession of another country.

Period.”

That a military person like Wilkerson would speak so frankly shows how blatant U.S. government lies are. No one should believe Washington’s lies, just as we wouldn’t believe the cops are our friends or Michigan’s governor wants to help that state’s workers. Period.

U.S. out of Egypt. Hands off Syria.

Perhaps the speaker who moved the crowd the most was Nicole Bell, whose husband-to-be Sean Bell was murdered only hours before the wedding on Nov. 25, 2006. Also a member of 1199, Bell recounted how Malcolm called to ask how she was doing. “You deserve an award for all you do for all of us,” said Bell, which brought the crowd to its feet for a standing ovation.

“Our struggle has to go beyond rallies and programs like this,” said Bell. “We have to hold everyone accountable. Let’s take this and build something that lasts

forever. Enough is enough. We need real change. We need to stand together and get this done.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, Dr. Cornel West, City Councilmember Jumaane Williams, Assemblymember Carl Heastie and Minister Hafeez Muhammad of Mosque No. 7 also lent their voices to the call for justice.

Attorney Royce Russell asked the audience to pack the Bronx Criminal Courthouse on Dec. 11 during a hearing for Haste and then gather afterwards at the family home for a protest. For more information, visit Ramarleyscall.org.

workers.org

Dec. 20, 2012

Page 11

Puerto Rico

A revolutionary comes home

By Berta Joubert-Ceci Avelino González Claudio came home.

His relatives and supporters, including other ex-political prisoners, warmly greeted his arrival at San Juan airport by singing the Puerto Rican Revolutionary anthem.

González Claudio finally arrived Dec. 6, freed from one of the U.S. federal correctional facilities where he had spent the last four years. He is to live in a halfway house for three months and then complete the rest of his seven-year sentence on parole.

Despite some physical frailty from the Parkinson’s disease that afflicts him, González Claudio looked happy and

pleased to be reunited with his loved ones. A condition for his exiting prison is that he make no public political statements, but his broad smile and raised fist were expressive enough.

González Claudio was apprehended in Puerto Rico in 2008 after living clandestinely for 23 years. In 1985, when several Macheteros were arrested, González Claudio was charged in absentia with the planning and robbery of $7 million from a Wells Fargo armored truck. This involved a famous heist by the political-military group Ejército Popular Boricua-Macheteros (Popular Boricua Army-Machete Wiel­ders) in West Hartford, Conn., in 1983.

While in jail, González Claudio was

Haitians demand roads, schools, water

By G. Dunkel Mass protests, with barricades of burning tires, kept Construtora OAS, a Brazilian construction company, from moving its equipment out of Jérémie, Haiti, for four days at the end of November. This small city in the southwestern part of the country is still so riled up that schools were closed until the second week of December.

Jérémie, renowned for its poetry, art and architecture, doesn’t have a good road connecting to the rest of Haïti. OAS was tasked with building 42 miles of road connecting it to the southern city of Aux Cayes, but the company claimed it hadn’t been paid and so was pulling out. The Inter-American Development Bank and the Canadian government financed the $95 million project.

The people of Jérémie blamed the Haitian government, so they came out into the streets en masse to block OAS from moving its equipment until construction was restarted. The protests intensified after Haïti’s national SWAT team, the Corps for Intervention and Maintenance of Order, arrived on Nov. 29.

The press says one of the protesters, a young boy named Hilder Victor, was killed by gunfire. However, activists say more deaths occurred, and that about a

dozen people had gunshot injuries.

“President Martelly lied to the population of the Grand Anse,” one protester told Haïti-Liberté. “He promised to build an airport, a power plant, schools, supply the city of Jérémie with drinking water, among other things. We have not received anything after more than a year and a half. Today, we have rebelled against the lies, the disrespect for the people of the city of poets, the lung of the country. And they sent Minustah troops and a CIMO force to shoot at us and bombard us with tear gas. Even children were not spared.

We’re not afraid of these forces. We are organizing to give them a response with our own means.” (Dec. 9) Jérémie, and the department surrounding it called Grand Anse, are isolated and were spared from the direct devastation of the 2010 earthquake and recent hurricanes. This relatively prosperous area had given Martelly a lot of support. It even elected senators who were in his party.

However, the complete unwillingness and incapacity of Martelly’s government to do anything at all for the people led to this uprising. It has become clearer that the only reason why Martelly’s government survives is the presence of Minustah, the United Nations military force in Haïti. Minustah is the U.N.’s cover for U.S. and French imperialist control.

subjected to the rude and inhuman treatment that the capitalist state reserves for all revolutionaries who dare to confront this criminal system. He faced solitary confinement, restricted family visits and denial of health care. Because the prison refused to provide adequate care and medication for what was eventually diagnosed as Parkinson’s disease, he underwent severe physical deterioration. Even talking is a difficult task for him.

To obtain release, he admitted guilt to the charges of conspiracy in the Wells Fargo robbery. In exchange, the U.S. government accepted the fact that the money from the robbery was destined to aid the struggle for Puerto Rican independence and not for individual gain of those Macheteros involved.

Los Macheteros is a Marxist-Leninist organization started in the late 1970s to fight for independence of the island, but independence with social and political justice for the masses. Though a relatively small organization, it was able to deal several blows to the U.S. military and cor-

Walmart blamed in Bangladesh fire

People protesting the horrific factory fire that last month killed at least 112 garment workers in Bangladesh held a rally Dec. 6 in the center of a South Asian com-

Mundo Obrero

Trabajadores/as cierran Puerto de Oakland Continua de página 12 obligados/as a realizar el trabajo, incluso detrás de un piquete. Cada piquete debe ser respetado como si fuera nuestro”.

Thomas siguió diciendo que: “Lo que falta hoy es ese tipo de solidaridad sindical.

Los intereses que representa el puerto son los de las compañías navieras, sus clientes, las empresas de estibadores y el capital, no a los/as trabajadores/as en mi opinión.

De lo que no se habla es del impacto de la huelga de la SEIU Seccional 1021 en las empresas navieras, en Walmart y en otros minoristas globales, en contraste con el enfoque de que los camioneros independientes pierdan un día de salario”.

Luego citó a Frederick Douglass: “No

hay progreso sin lucha”.

Thomas resumió: “El ILWU tiene una historia viva. Estamos enseñando a nuestros/as miembros más jóvenes cómo contribuir a ese rico legado histórico, aprendiendo las lecciones de unidad de la clase obrera”.

Pendiente bloqueo o huelga de granos Un contrato de granos importante con los/as trabajadores/as del ILWU en el noroeste del Pacífico se termina el 28 de noviembre después de meses de negociaciones. Los empleadores están exigiendo un acuerdo con muchas concesiones, como el que forzaron a los/as trabajadores/as del ILWU en Longview, Wash-

porations — as the Wells Fargo robbery shows.

The organization is on the FBI and U.S. State Department’s lists of “terrorist” organizations, and its members have been persecuted, jailed and even assassinated.

Its Secretary General, Commander Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, was cruelly murdered in 2005 by FBI agents sent to the island solely for this targeted assassination.

U.S. imperialism might be making war on several fronts at the same time, but this does not prevent it from repressing its oldest colony, Puerto Rico, and preventing its people from living in a sovereign nation. Washington still keeps the Puerto Rican independence movement under close watch and continually harasses pro-independence activists.

There are still two independence fighters in U.S. jails — Avelino’s brother, Norberto González Claudio, who was imprisoned in 2010, and Oscar López Rivera, who has already spent more than 31 years in U.S. dungeons for struggling for the independence of his homeland.

ington, en enero pasado. “Las empresas que operan los terminales de grano del noroeste del Pacífico”, dijo Thomas, “han presentado su ‘última, mejor y final oferta’”. Es una que los/as trabajadores del ILWU están reacios a aceptar.

Los/as miembros del ILWU Seccional 8 en Portland ya están organizándose para estar en los piquetes. Los/as activistas de Ocupar Portland y Seattle se están preparando para apoyar a los/as trabajadores/ as si ILWU sale en huelga o les cierran.

Cómo esta lucha se desarrollará será significativo para los estibadores y otros/as trabajadores/as, dada la historia militante del ILWU y de las concesiones extremas que exigen las compañías de granos.

munity in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, N.Y. Speakers focused on the responsibility of giant retailers like U.S. megacorporation Walmart and European firms like Carrefour for squeezing workers’ wages in Bangladesh and promoting unsafe conditions in factories there. Some reported that Walmart management had specifically decided not to promote safety measures because they would increase costs and thus trim the firm’s enormous profits, which came to $15.7 billion in 2011.

The group Desis Rising Up and Moving called the rally. DRUM was founded in 2000 to build the power of South Asian low-wage immigrant workers, youth and families in New York City to win economic and educational justice, and civil and immigrant rights. Vamos Unidos, a group of Latino/a street vendors, as well as the May 1 Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights and other progressive groups supported the action, as did local City Council member Daniel Drom.

Workers World Party members distributed WW newspaper.

— Report & photo

by John Catalinotto

H

Correspondencia sobre artículos en Workers World/Mundo Obrero pueden ser enviadas a: WW-MundoObrero@workers.org

¡Proletarios y oprimidos de todos los paises unios!

Organismo mundial reconoce al estado Palestino Por David Sole El 29 de noviembre, la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas votó a favor del reconocimiento de Palestina como un “Estado observador no miembro” con 138 votos a favor, nueve en contra y 41 abstenciones. Esta votación ha cambiado el anterior estado político de Palestina como “entidad” y sucedió en el 65 aniversario de la Resolución 181 de la ONU de 1947, que dividió a Palestina en un estado judío y uno árabe.

Este apoyo abrumador a nivel mundial se ha desarrollado en reconocimiento a la indomable determinación del pueblo palestino de oponer resistencia a su destrucción por un Israel sionista durante décadas. Los/as palestinos/as, que suman 4,3 millones en la Ribera Occidental y Gaza, tuvieron grandes celebraciones en las calles luego del voto.

Estados Unidos—el respaldo financiero y militar de Israel—reprochó este acontecimiento. La portavoz del Departamento de Estado, Victoria Nuland, amenazó con cortar la ayuda económica de EE.UU. que ahora da a Palestina. La embajadora de EE.UU. ante la ONU, Susan Rice, afirmó que “sólo... las negociaciones directas entre los interesados” eran útiles, ignorando el fracaso de décadas de conversaciones entre los/as palestinos/as e Israel. (Usun. state.gov, Nov. 29) Los votos en contra de Palestina fueron: EE.UU., Israel, Canadá, la República Checa (la única nación europea que votó en contra), Panamá, las Islas Marshall, los Estados Federados de Micronesia, Nauru y Palaos. Los últimos cuatro son ex colonias en el Océano Pacífico y sus poblaciones varían entre 108.000 (Micronesia) a 9.378 (Palaos). El aislamiento de Israel se definió fuertemente por esta votación.

El periódico The Guardian informó el 30 de noviembre que “los funcionarios israelíes quedaron impactados por la magnitud del apoyo europeo” para Palestina.

La continua expansión de asentamientos por Israel en los territorios ocupados en clara violación del derecho internacional, le ha costado el apoyo público.

Antes de la votación, el canciller israelí Avigdon Lieberman rabiosamente arremetió en contra del sufragio, amenazando con derrocar al presidente de la Autoridad Palestina Mahmoud Abbas. Este ataque pudo haber contribuido a los votos a favor de Palestina.

El primer ministro israelí Benjamin Netanyahu ordenó la construcción de miles de nuevas viviendas para colonos sionistas en la Ribera Occidental y Jerusalén del Este, en represalia por la votación de la ONU. Israel también amenazó con cortar la transferencia de los impuestos que recauda para la Autoridad Palestina. Estas acciones sólo fomentarán más la ira del mundo y socavarán el apoyo al estado colonial de Israel.

La acción de la ONU sucedió luego de terminar ocho días de bombardeos contra Gaza por el ejército israelí que mató a 176 palestinos/as e hirió a más de 1.000, en su mayoría civiles. El gobierno electo de Gaza, Hamas, quien tiene fuertes diferencias con la menos militante dirigencia palestina de la Ribera Occidental encabezada por el presidente Abbas, elogió la votación de la ONU y añadió que la diplomacia sólo funciona en conjunción con la lucha armada.

Continúan los ataques contra Gaza Los ataques contra Gaza han continuado aún después del cese al fuego acordado el 21 de noviembre. El Centro Palestino para los Derechos Humanos documentó ataques israelíes contra barcos pesqueros palestinos frente a la costa de Gaza. Entre

el 21 y el 28 de noviembre, Israel disparó contra seis embarcaciones, destruyéndolas o dañándolas, confiscándolas todas y arrestando a 15 palestinos.

El día antes de la votación, los colonos judíos cerca de Belén inundaron las huertas de tres aldeas palestinas con las aguas residuales liberadas desde terrenos contiguos situados a más altura. Los cultivos de aceitunas, uvas y almendras quedaron dañados severamente. (Palestine News Network, 29 de noviembre) El imperialismo estadounidense orque­ stó la creación del estado israelita entre los años 1947 y 1948 en respuesta al creciente nacionalismo entre los pueblos árabes del Medio Oriente colonizado. El objetivo de Washington era crear un régimen clientelista flexible, armado, financiado y dependiente de los EE.UU. en una zona de enorme riqueza petrolera.

Hoy en día, las Naciones Unidas tienen 193 estados miembros, pero el voto en 1947 sobre la Resolución 181 fue sólo de 33 a 13. La mayoría de las naciones de África y del Medio Oriente, así como en otras áreas, aún no habían alcanzado su independencia de los amos coloniales. Aun así, para obtener la mayoría de dos terceras partes necesaria en 1947, EE.UU. tuvo que aplicar una gran presión, amenazas e incluso sobornos, como se documenta en muchas fuentes. (Véase por ejemplo, el libro de Alfred M. Lilienthal, “La Conexión Sionista”.)

Los objetivos imperialistas de Washington no han cambiado en los 65 años transcurridos desde 1947. Las ganancias petroleras de la región todavía llenan las arcas de los bancos de Wall Street. Estados Unidos ha maniobrado después de la independencia de las naciones árabes con la misma combinación de presiones, amenazas y sobornos. Agreguemos a esto las operaciones encubiertas de la CIA, los

golpes de estado, las intervenciones militares directas y la guerra, todo para asegurar el flujo constante de ganancias.

Sin embargo, las décadas de penetración imperialista no han creado seguridad para los capitalistas estadounidenses.

El levantamiento que comenzó en Túnez en diciembre del 2010 se ha extendido por toda la región, derrocando a varios regímenes opresores y amenazando a muchos más títeres de Estados Unidos, mientras que los imperialistas han intensificado su intervención para tratar de sacar provecho de la inestabilidad.

En Libia, los imperialistas derrocaron al gobierno de Moamar Gadafi, produciendo caos y destrucción. La guerra de Estados Unidos contra Siria y los ataques contra Irán también amenazan con generar una guerra más amplia. Las invasiones militares anteriores en Irak y Afganistán no han conseguido estabilidad.

Esto explica el continuo apoyo y directiva de EE.UU. a las facciones más reaccionarias y militaristas del gobierno sionista de Israel. Sólo Israel ha demostrado ser un puesto militar confiable para el imperialismo estadounidense, un “portaaviones insumergible”, como Alexander Haig, secretario del estado del presidente Ronald Reagan, una vez lo describió.

Es seguro que el pueblo palestino seguirá luchando por su derecho a la libre determinación en la Palestina ocupada y que los pueblos en todo el Oriente Medio seguirán luchando por liberarse de la opresión económica y política estadounidense. El látigo de la reacción siempre genera resistencia. Los pueblos de la región pueden ser ayudados por el pueblo estadounidense al construir un movimiento en contra del apoyo de EE.UU. a las políticas israelitas de racismo, represión y apartheid contra los/as palestinos/as.

Trabajadores/as cierran Puerto de Oakland Por Terry Kay

‘Estamos decididos/as a obtener un contrato justo’ Oakland, California —¡“Piquete es para no cruzar”! gritaban los/as trabajadores/ as en huelga del sindicato de Empleados de Servicio (SEIU) Seccional 1021 y sus partidarios de la comunidad, mientras mantenían un piquete en las siete terminales del Puerto de Oakland el 20 de noviembre. Los/as trabajadores/as habían dejado las labores por un conflicto con el puerto sobre políticas laborales injustas.

Después de 16 meses de negociaciones, más de 220 electricistas, trabajadores/as de oficina, personal de seguridad y conserjes del sindicato SEIU decidieron que ya habían aguantado bastante y exigieron que los comisionados del puerto negociaran con ellos/as de buena fe. El puerto estaba presionando para lograr un contrato con concesiones.

Millie Cleveland, organizadora de SEIU 1021 en el puerto, dice “[los/as] trabajadores/as de SEIU se niegan a retroceder, a devolver lo que ya hemos ganado. Los/ as trabajadores/as quieren mantenerse a flote y recibir lo ajustado a la inflación. Una vez más los/as trabajadores/as tuvieron que negar su labor para hacer que los empleadores entiendan que estamos determi-

nados a conseguir un contrato justo”.

Ella habló sobre cómo “la huelga fue significativa porque con el apoyo de la Unión Internacional de Estibadores y Trabajadores de Almacenes (International Longshore and Warehouse Union), ellos/as pudieron cerrar todos los siete terminales”.

Los piquetes estuvieron reforzados por partidarios de la comunidad, incluyendo un número considerable de Ocupar Oakland. Otros/as partidarios/as de la comunidad eran la Coalición por Justicia por Alan Blueford, Ocupar San Francisco y el Comité de Solidaridad con los /as Trabajadores/as de Transporte. Estos números adicionales fueron significativos. Los piquetes tenían que ser considerables para que los árbitros declararan un riesgo para la salud y la seguridad, lo que a su vez permitió a los/as trabajadores/as del ILWU recibir su pago a pesar de no haber cruzado el piquete y no haber entrado a trabajar.

Es importante señalar que SEIU 1021 acabó de aprobar una resolución de la Coalición por Justicia por Alan Blueford exigiendo que el policía Miguel Masso sea despedido y enjuiciado por el asesinato de Blueford, un joven negro asesinado en mayo pasado. La Coalición Blueford, incluyendo a Adam Blueford, el padre del asesinado joven de 18 años de edad, estaba en el piquete en solidaridad y recipro-

cidad. Eso es lo que es la solidaridad.

La huelga también se extendió al aeropuerto de Oakland pero los piquetes no trataron de impedir que los/as pasajeros/ as viajaran.

El paro fue planeado para que durara 24 horas, cerrando también el turno de la tarde. Sin embargo, cuando los comisionados del puerto vieron la solidaridad entre la SEIU, ILWU y la comunidad, pidieron al alcalde de Oakland, Jean Quan, que interviniera para reanudar las negociaciones. Después de regresar a las negociaciones el 23 de noviembre, la miembro de SEIU, Cleveland, dijo que están “tratando de negociar y abordar algunos conceptos pero están todavía muy distantes, y regresarán a las negociaciones el lunes”. Señaló que el comité de huelga continúa sus reuniones. ¿Por qué deben ser respetados los piquetes?

Workers World /Mundo Obrero preguntó a Clarence Thomas, ILWU Seccional 10, el por qué los estibadores arriesgaron un día de salario por no cruzar los piquetes de SEIU. Él le dijo a este reportero que todas las Secciones 10, 34 y 91, que representan a los estibadores, a los/ as empleados/as de oficina y a los jefes respectivamente, se negaron a cruzar las

líneas. Thomas explicó la firme historia del ILWU de no cruzar los piquetes. En los años recientes eso ha incluido un piquete de la comunidad para protestar la matanza de la gente que traía suministros humanitarios a Gaza y los dos cierres del puerto en 2011 por Ocupar Oakland.

Thomas explicó que el ILWU “es una de las organizaciones más democráticas y militantes, la cual entiende la importancia de la unidad de clase. . . Estuvimos muy conscientes de la situación de SEIU y que están sin un contrato. La huelga fue decisión suya. No permitimos que la santidad de un contrato sea utilizada como un subterfugio para socavar la unidad de los/as trabajadores/as”.

Thomas citó los diez Principios Rectores del ILWU. Dijo que el cuarto punto, “para ayudar a cualquier trabajador/a en peligro”, debe ser “una guía diaria en la vida de todos los sindicatos y sus miembros individuales. La solidaridad sindical significa exactamente eso. Los sindicatos tienen que aceptar el hecho de que la solidaridad sindical está por encima de todo lo demás, y aún de la llamada santidad del contrato. No podemos adoptar por nosotros mismos las políticas de los dirigentes sindicales que insisten en que por tener un contrato, sus miembros están Continua a página 11