SOCIALIST ACTION NEWSPAPER

Activists denounce restrictions on Chicago G8/NATO protests

2012-02-08T20:08:00.001-06:00

On Jan. 25, the Vancouver culture jammers known as Adbusters brought new attention to the need to protest the NATO/G8 summit occurring in Chicago from May 19-21. Adbusters played a large role in building the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York last fall and their call is expected to put the NATO/G8 summit meetings in Chicago on the top of the list of spring protest sites in the U.S.

Their call began: “Against the backdrop of a global uprising that is simmering in dozens of countries and thousands of cities and towns, the G8 and NATO will hold a rare simultaneous summit in Chicago this May. The world’s military and political elites, heads of state, 7,500 officials from 80 nations, and more than 2,500 journalists will be there. And so will we.”

The Adbusters’ call is just one of many initiatives underway for the summit. Occupy Chicago is also planning spring campaigns that highlight the role of the two elite international groups in creating the nightmare of war and austerity pressing down on the 99% around the globe. CANG8, the Coalition Against NATO/G8 Wars and Austerity, and UNAC (United National Antiwar Coalition) are moving ahead with the organization of a large national permitted mass action on the opening day of the summit, May 19, and a People’s Summit to build for that march on the previous weekend. The UNAC national conference to be held in Stamford, Conn., March 23-25, is planned to be a major effort to build East Coast participation in the May 19 demonstration.

CANG8 won a major victory on Jan. 12 when the city of Chicago, after a five-month period of uncertainty, granted permits for the May 19 march and rally. The permits were granted only after a series of protests that involved not only the antiwar and Occupy movements, but labor, religious, and community organizations as well. The victory was tempered by the contents of a cover letter attached to the permits, however, that said that these permits could be abrogated by the Secret Service and Homeland Security as the demonstration date nears. In addition, the Chicago city administration, in collaboration with the federal government, is clearly planning to use the NATO/G8 summit to set new national norms for restricting the right to protest through onerous ordinances, massive surveillance, and an extraordinary police and military presence.

Throughout the month of January, Chicago activists mobilized repeatedly to stop the city from passing a package of terrible restrictions on those who would organize demonstrations in the city. While there was much fanfare about Mayor Rahm Emmanuel backing away from fines of up to $1000 for a violation of one of the parade ordinances, from the requirement that any demonstrating group provide a peace marshal for every 100 protesters, and from restricting the time a parade can be in the street from two hours and 15 minutes to two hours, in the end, extremely unconstitutional ordinances have now become law.

For example, resisting arrest, an act that has been defined in Chicago as going limp, can result in a $1000 fine. Organizers are required to pre-register any sign, with its content outlined, that requires more than one person to carry. The same is true for any sound equipment. Pickets on the sidewalk can be subjected to street parade ordinances. Multiple “violations” could result in a piling up of fees that make protest simply terrifying for working people.

The ACLU is protesting plans to add huge numbers of surveillance cameras with zoom, tracking, and facial recognition to a system that is already recognized as the most expansive and integrated in the country, until there is some guarantee that they cannot be deployed without reasonable suspicion of a crime. The ordinances also allow the mayor to hire almost anyone to function as part of a police force made up of public and private groups, to interfere with peaceful protest during the summit. Since September the city police chief has been spreading fear that those protesting the summit will be “violent” and boasting of the force of 13,000 officers of the law that he would be deploying.

Coming as they do in the wake of revelations about the involvement of Homeland Security in coordinating the violent police crackdown on the Occupy Movement, the threat to use drones and other military hardware in local law enforcement, and the plan to use the militarized U.S. Coast Guard to herd a scab ship to the Port of Longview, Mayor Rob Emmanuel’s ordinances and the federal threat to shut down protest in Chicago must be addressed as one of the major challenges before the movements for social change in the U.S. They should not be seen as a Chicago aberration but as a national test of the ability of the antiwar and social justice movement to hold the space for legal protest.

The movement cannot afford to let the precedent being crafted collaboratively in Chicago and DC for the NATO G8 summit be set without a major challenge. While many militant youth believe that the fight over permits and legal protest space is passé, they underestimate the power and determination of the state. The movement cannot afford to let an opportunity go by to push back the NATO/G8 summit restrictions—a campaign that can have wide appeal among broad layers of the U.S. public.

A national ad to be printed in the Chicago Sun Times, demanding the right to protest war and austerity in May, has been initiated by UNAC and signed by hundreds of nationally prominent figures, including Noam Chomsky, Tom Hayden, Jules Lobel, Bill Quigley, Naomi Wolfe, and others (see www.unacpeace.org). It is a modest beginning to a critical national civil liberties battle that should be joined by all.

The way in which Chicago has been designated as an early battlefield in the government’s attempt to dramatically roll back civil liberties was also reaffirmed on Jan. 24, when a lawyer for the 23 Midwest antiwar and solidarity activists being threatened with indictments in a grand jury investigation of material support to “terrorism” was told that Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas has been assigned to the prosecution team. Jonas, according to Jess Sundin of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, “is famous for one of the most appalling attacks on civil and democratic rights in the past decade—the prosecution of the Holy Land Five.”

The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was once the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. Its efforts were geared towards providing humanitarian aid to help the people of Palestine and other countries. Beginning in 2001, as part of the run-up to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the government began to attempt to use the founders of this organization as part of its campaign of fear and saber rattling. The trial that resulted in the conviction and sentencing of the five defendants for periods of time ranging from 15 to 65 years included secret witnesses, the use of hearsay evidence, and the introduction of evidence that had nothing to do with the defendants in the case—such as showing a video from Palestine of protesters burning an American flag, as a means to prejudice the jury.

Jonas was the lead prosecutor then and has now been assigned to work under Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in the current attack on the Midwest antiwar and solidarity activists. It is time to rally the entire movement to reclaim Chicago as a center of working-class politics.

> The article above was written by Christine Marie, and first appeared in the February 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

ILWU Local 21 Victory!

2012-02-08T20:06:00.002-06:00

Special Note: As we go to press, the EGT conglomerate has formally recognized ILWU Local 21 as the bargaining representative for all workers at its Longview, Wash., terminal and on all vessels that load grain from that facility. Contract negotiations are underway and expected to be concluded on union-favorable terms in the next few days.

Until Jan. 23, few people in the labor and social justice movements expected anything less than a major class confrontation at the state-of-the-art $200 million grain facility at Longview, Wash. The scab complex was operated by the multi-billion-dollar Export Grain Terminal (EGT) and owned by three giant international agribusiness holding companies—Bunge Ltd. (one of the seven top grain exporters in the world), Itoche, and STX Pan Ocean.

The scene had been set for what might have erupted into a battle of the first order. That action would have been more akin to the mass labor struggles of decades past than the present spectacle of a class-collaborationist labor bureaucracy acceding to the employers’ every incursion on past contract gains won in class-struggle confrontations long ago.

On the union side stood the ranks of the small but battling Local 21 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). EGT, ignoring 70 years of ILWU jurisdiction over West Coast port jobs and its pledge to the Longview Port Commission to hire ILWU workers, instead utilized the General Contractors organization to hire some 10 to 50 workers from the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 701, in a blatant scab-herding endeavor.

On the ruling-class side, the Obama administration had authorized armed U.S. Coast Guard vessels, which operate under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security and in collaboration with the U.S. Navy, to escort a cargo ship to load hundreds of thousands of tons of grain for export to Asia. Breaching union pickets, EGT had accumulated sufficient grain via rail and truck shipments to fill this massive non-union storage facility, capable of loading a typical bulk-grain-carrying ship in 24 hours as compared to the week required at less mechanized operations.

This was the first time in 40 years that the U.S. government had authorized the use of the military in an overt strike-breaking operation. The cargo ship was also to be escorted by armed military helicopters. On the ground, police and associated military forces from throughout the region and beyond were readied to thwart any union interference.

To challenge this government-sponsored union-busting venture, Local 21 put out a broad call for ILWU and national rank-and-file union mobilizations—although it was by no means certain that sufficient forces would respond. Local 21 was also in close collaboration with the Occupy movement, including sending messages of solidarity with Occupy Oakland’s mobilizations that twice closed the Port of Oakland—once on Nov. 2 in the course of the “general strike,” and again on Dec. 12.

While no one knew the precise date that EGT would attempt to send its grain cargo ship up the Columbia River, the tension grew in mid-January as a grain ship set anchor at the coastal port city of Astoria, Ore., 30 miles from the EGT operation. Both sides saw this as a test of strength, which if successful on EGT’s part, could open the door to expanding scab operations along the entire West Coast.

It was in this context that rumors of an impending settlement began to circulate. At the initiative of Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, negotiations were opened between the ILWU and EGT on Jan. 23. A tentative agreement regarding arrests was reached that included the dismissal of most, but not all, of the charges filed against some 225 union activists and their supporters. It appears that the settlement concerning the arrests has been approved by the ranks of Local 21. Since then, all six jury trials have dismissed EGT charges against ILWU members, indicating that the Longview community has no stomach for jailing courageous union fighters and their allies. The ILWU is pressing for the dropping of all charges.

EGT has bought out the contract it signed with the General Contractors, the agency that hired the International Operating Engineers Union to scab on Local 21. At present there are no scab workers at the EGT facility—only ILWU Local 21 members. In the meantime, the grain cargo ship anchored at Astoria has left, thus eliminating the immediate threat to load grain from EGT’s terminal.

An announcement approved by the Solidarity with Longview working groups of Occupy Oakland, Occupy Portland, Occupy Longview, and Occupy Seattle reads as follows: “Supporters of the Longview workers are still planning to mobilize if needed, but are asking the caravans [organized to travel to Longview in defense of Local 21] to wait for official word on the contract negotiation outcome. If in fact the membership of ILWU Local 21 approves a contract, Occupy will mobilize in celebration of this victory for the community of Longview and workers everywhere.”

There is no doubt that some minority elements in the Occupy Movement have made excessive, if not foolish, statements that dismiss the U.S. labor movement in its entirety and see the Occupy movement, despite its absence from capitalism’s central points of production and transport, as a present alternative to the unions. This usually anarchist and substitutionist minority, who have claimed to represent the “89 percent” of unorganized workers, have good reason to be harsh critics of the present union bureaucracy. But they are entirely mistaken in any assertion that a movement lacking an organized class base at the point of production can substitute for a reinvigorated, democratic, and fighting labor movement, and especially one with an emerging class-struggle left wing aimed at the heart of the capitalist system itself.

This said, the vast numbers of these enthusiastic and dedicated Occupy activists see their fates tied to the victories of workers against the capitalist establishment and hail what they hope will be a resounding victory for the ILWU.

Class-struggle confrontations

It appears likely that Local 21’s ranks will approve a basically sound contract even if it includes some important concessions that have previously been negotiated by ILWU locals in the region. History will record this struggle as among the first critical victories registered by class-struggle fighters in decades.

EGT did not eagerly return to the bargaining table. Its intention was to break the ILWU and set a precedent for future union busting along the entire coast. As far back as the 1980s the Pacific Maritime Association reported, “We continued in 1986 to see a slow but steady progress toward an improved labor environment. Dramatic and essential reductions were accomplished in offshore labor costs. A clear reversal of a trend in longshore labor costs was accomplished in the East Coast and Gulf Coast ILA settlements, although a fragmented approach to bargaining was required to set this in motion."

EGT’s filling its new terminal to the brim was accomplished with brute force, as local and regional police and company-hired goons repeatedly breached the fighting Local 21 picket lines. In early September, Local 21, with some 250 members, and aided by ILWU locals in the region from Tacoma, Seattle, and beyond, mobilized over 1000 workers in defiance of a court injunction and entered EGT’s expansive 34-acre rail and trucking line complex to challenge the scabs and company goons head on. This ILWU mobilization had the added effect of closing down the Tacoma and Seattle ports.

By pulling the plug on several grain-laden rail cars, tons of grain were dumped onto the EGT terminal’s railroad tracks, while goons protecting the scab operation were “gently” moved out of the way—union style. Police and company officials later charged the union with “kidnapping” some of these paid union busters.

EGT responded soon after the September battle with a massive display of ruling-class power. They mobilized an army of cops and hired strikebreaking “protection agencies” to challenge Local 21 and its allied picketers. They arrested some 225 workers and leveled a broad array of punitive charges against the trade unionists. But these workers were doing what unions are supposed to do in such disputes—close down employer operations and defend their jobs at the point of production. Fines exceeding $300,000 were levied against Local 21 by compliant judges.

The national AFL-CIO assisted the EGT scab operation when the federation ruled that the hiring of the scab workers from the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE), as opposed to the ILWU that had jurisdiction over West Coast ports for the past 70 years, was a “jurisdictional” dispute to be resolved by “arbitration within the AFL-CIO.” The Richard Trumka-led American “Fakeration” of Labor, as the IWW used to call it long ago, bent to its higher dues-paying Building and Construction Trade Council affiliate as opposed to the smaller, 55,000 member ILWU.

Local 21 calls for working class solidarity

The ILWU’s signature solidarity credo, “An Injury To One Is An Injury to All,” was put to good use as Local 21 initiated a call to the entire labor movement and all its supporters to mobilize in Longview to challenge the planned scab operation. Local 21’s call was enthusiastically supported by AFL-CIO-affiliated Washington State county central labor councils, which called on “all able-bodied workers” and community supporters to come to the aid of Local 21.

ILWU Local 10, based in the San Francisco-Oakland area, allocated $10,000 to organize Bay Area caravans to prepare to join the Longview mobilization. The San Francisco Labor Council allocated $1500. Union locals across the country and AFL-CIO state federations, as in Wisconsin, passed resolutions condemning the government’s use of the military to break strikes. Carpenter locals in the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Council broke ranks with the Trumka leadership to condemn EGT scab herding.

A powerful new ally in the form of the broad Occupy movement joined the ILWU Local 21 cause early on. This was seen in the course of the Nov. 2 “general strike,” called by Occupy Oakland to protest the brutal police dismemberment and tear-gas and pepper-spray attack on the Frank Ogawa Plaza Occupy encampment and the police-fired canister-missile that fractured the skull of encampment activist Scott Olsen, an Iraq War veteran. In that action, 30,000 protesters closed down the Port of Oakland, with the obvious solidarity of ILWU Local 10 members, who refused to cross the Occupy “mass picket lines.”

While the ILWU’s International leadership took its distance from this port closure, it was not so passive on Dec. 12, when Occupy Oakland moved to organize a West Coast port shutdown in solidarity with Local 21. A message of appreciation from Local 21 President Dan Coffman was read out to the Oakland crowd of 6000 and widely publicized. ILWU tops in contrast, stood in direct opposition to this partially successful effort—instructing its members to cross the Occupy picket lines up and down the coast. Even here, a number of ports were closed, including Portland, where an estimated 4000-5000 mobilized.

When the Occupy Wall Street organization in New York City allocated $12,000 toward the organization of caravans to Longview and other mobilization efforts, it was clear that Local 21 had a new and important ally that was serious about mobilizing to defend labor’s cause.

The stunning reversal of EGT, embodied in its return to the bargaining table and the intervention of the Washington state governor to try to settle this dispute has no explanation other than an emerging and major change in the relationship of forces on the ground. It is one thing for a giant multi-billion-dollar conglomerate to take on a small ILWU local; it is quite another when that local successfully calls on its allies inside and outside the trade-union movement to mobilize in massive numbers to challenge the bosses and their capitalist state, that is, its police, military, courts and anti-union legislation.

Local 21 took on these powerful forces and, indirectly, perhaps, the ILWU tops as well. The latter pledged to mobilize workers in Longview, while at the same time guaranteeing the Pacific Maritime Association bosses that no other West Coast ports would be closed—a contradiction indeed!

If the ILWU bureaucracy had any real intention of challenging the union-busting effort at Longview it could not divide its forces and present a credible power at the same time. It could not promise the bosses in the massive ports of Los Angeles, San Pedro, and Oakland—and at every other port—that work would continue as usual while mobilizing in Longview at the same time. In fact, the most serious challenge that the ILWU could offer would be to mobilize the full power of ILWU’s Longshore Division to simultaneously shut down the scab operation in Longview and close down the West Coast ports.

ILWU tops bend to Taft-Hartley

While ILWU’s international president, Robert McEllrath, pledged to support the impending Longview confrontation, his statement went to great lengths to affirm its obligations under the Taft-Hartley law to refrain from interference with what that reactionary law defines as “the full flow of commerce” (see Socialist Action, January 2012, for key portions of the ILWU statement).

Taft-Hartley, historically dubbed the “Slave Labor Act” by the labor movement, was passed by Congress in 1947. It explicitly prohibits jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, and closed shops. In short, it bans labor from mobilizing in solidarity with workers under attack.

Early on in the Local 21 struggle, one could argue that McEllrath’s statement was little more than a defensive formulation aimed at officially protecting the ILWU from future lawsuits and punishment under Taft-Hartley. But it soon became clear that “protective” legal language was not the ILWU’s intention.

When Labor Solidarity Committee members of Occupy Oakland and leading activists in Local 10 traveled to Portland and Seattle to join with Local 21 rank and filers and other trade-union and Occupy leaders at public meetings to plan solidarity mobilizations for Longview, the ILWU officialdom was outraged.

In Seattle some two dozen ILWU officials, led by three Northwest ILWU presidents, physically attacked a meeting of some 200 Occupy and trade-union activists gearing up to mobilize for the then impending Longview confrontation.

The officials’ stated pretext for the disruption was that they were demanding to read aloud McEllrath’s statement, which warned against any efforts to close West Coast ports and against ILWU locals taking their lead from forces not under the control of the ILWU—a more than oblique reference to the Occupy movement. These ILWU leaders were physically escorted from the meeting but not before they had hurled a few punches and screamed vile and sexist epithets at a number of the woman who helped monitor the meeting.

Some in the solidarity and socialist movements have argued that this confrontation might have been avoided had the meeting’s leaders agreed to read and debate McEllrath’s fork-tongued statement early on rather than announcing that it would be read immediately after the meeting’s speakers had concluded their remarks. Whatever the merits of this view, they are subordinate to the fact that it was well known in advance of the meeting that the ILWU officials aimed to disrupt the Seattle solidarity event rather than engage in a fraternal exchange.

The ILWU’s top leaders judged with fear and trepidation that their most likely tepid Longview protest might have taken on a different character altogether had the Occupy forces proved capable of mobilizing forces on the scale of or exceeding the 30,000 that had closed the Port of Oakland on Nov. 2. The ILWU ranks themselves could not be other than inspired by tens of thousands of working people mobilizing on their behalf.

The dynamic set in motion by Local 21’s call for a mass mobilization, already supported by local central labor councils, other ILWU locals, and union bodies across the country—combined with the youthful ranks of the courageous Occupy movement—might well have resulted in an outcome far exceeding anything the bosses, their government, and the ILWU officialdom had anticipated.

Following the disruption in Seattle, the Seattle-based ILWU Local 19, in accord with the warning against Occupy signaled by McEllrath, passed a lengthy and angry motion denouncing the Occupy movement and breaking all relations with it, while demanding that Occupy leaders come to the union’s hall with a formal apology. Yet the same local maintained its commitment to support Local 21 when the EGT scab operation was at hand. Such is labor’s contradiction, and especially operable in the ILWU, where democratic forms exist to this day allowing the ranks to elect their officers on a yearly basis. In general, those who fail to lead in accord with the interests of the ranks are not long for top posts in ILWU locals.

Ruling class and EGT back off

The potential for such a serious challenge to the EGT/government offensive, in the context of a grinding economic crisis that has cut deep into the fabric of American life, proved to be decisive in the decision of the ruling class, the one percent, to back off in order to seek to take their pound of flesh at another place and another time. The Obama administration chose not to risk a nationally publicized spectacle of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of workers and their allies confronting a government scab-herding military operation.

The Longview events will undoubtedly teach labor and social justice activists some important lessons: First and foremost is that the labor movement—still based in critical points of manufacturing, transportation, construction, shipping, and many other decisive sectors of the capitalist system—retains the power to bring the system to a grinding halt and to win important gains, not to mention inspiring support from unexpected layers.

Equally important is the fact that the Longview battle demonstrated the absolute necessity of labor reaching out to all the oppressed and exploited—to the unemployed and youth, to the immigrant communities and oppressed nationalities. And it is essential to be on the alert for alliances with new movements that have been brought into being by virtue of a capitalist crisis for which there are no solutions other than deeper repression and incursions on working-class life.

History is replete with examples of workers finding these new allies and new forms of struggles, from the mass unemployment leagues of the 1930s and ’40s to the worker’s councils and assemblies that periodically rise up to provide new organizational forms to encompass all those who are driven to fight back in order to survive and to stand in solidarity with all others in the same situation.

The emerging Local 21 victory can only inspire even bolder and more conscious efforts. The first hard-fought victories after a long string of defeats are always among the most important and longest remembered. They serve as an example to millions that a united labor movement in alliance with all its allies can win.

> The article above was written by Jeff Mackler, and first appeared in the February 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Post Script: ILWU One-Day ‘Strikes’

From the ILWU bureaucracy’s point of view, it is one thing to employ the union’s historic contract provision that allows members, for reasons of “health and safety,” to respect third-party picket lines, as ILWU members have done for decades on issues ranging from opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars to demands to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. It is quite another to challenge the bosses and their government on an issue pertaining directly to the ILWU itself—in this case Local 21’s fight against EGT’s government-backed and AFL-CIO-abetted union-busting onslaught.

The occasional one-day ILWU strikes over the years were aimed at expressing workers’ solidarity with the oppressed and persecuted in the U.S. and around the world. But the one day’s lost pay that ILWU members usually incurred was more than offset by the great majority’s working double or even triple shifts soon afterward to more than make up for the loss.

One could honestly say that the ILWU ranks, among the most highly-paid workers in the country, were most often both honored to express their solidarity with radical political causes on the one hand and pleased to take a day off on the other, and especially so because the union faced no employer threats to invoke Taft -Hartley.

We must add here that not all ILWU one-day strikes have been conducted under the union’s “health and safety” contract provisions. The ILWU’s May Day 2008 West Coast antiwar port closure, for example, was a strike in defiance of the PMA and in the face of its threat to invoke Taft-Hartley. Today, the ILWU tops cite this anti-union law to justify their effective paralysis in the face of a major ruling-class offensive.

To the very extent that this remains the policy of the ILWU, and virtually all other unions in the country, American labor relinquishes its most powerful weapon—solidarity. No single union is capable of taking on the full force of the U.S. government. But the full utilization of the combined forces of all labor does present more than a formidable obstacle to employer/government abuse. — Jeff Mackler

Egyptians mark anniversary of uprising with new protests

2012-02-08T20:02:00.001-06:00

In early February, a number of protesters were killed and over 1500 injured, as Egyptian police attacked demonstrations that had been called to express the mounting public anger over the deaths of at least 74 people at a soccer match in Port Said.

The mainstream media at first blamed the Feb. 1 soccer stadium fight on the fans of rival teams; later it was admitted that police had watched the action without intervening, and had not searched fans for concealed weapons—indicating that they knew in advance that something was up. Many activists believe that the brawl was set up by the Egyptian military to justify their announcement several days earlier that they would retain the current emergency law.

As protests escalate, a coalition that includes student groups and unions has called a nationwide strike for Feb. 11—the date that Mubarak was toppled one year ago.

On Jan. 25, hundreds of thousands marked the anniversary of Egypt’s uprising with rallies demanding the continuation of the revolution, starting with the immediate end of the military regime headed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). Many participants said the crowds in Cairo and other cities were bigger than demonstrations of a year ago.

In contrast to the protesters’ demands, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won the most seats in the newly-elected parliament, chose to mark the day with a “celebration” of the alleged progress made in the past year, drawing the wrath of most protesters.

In the days since Jan. 25, left organizations have continued to mobilize in Tahrir Square, especially at the new focal point, the state TV station Maspero. Journalists inside are challenging government domination of the station, which has meant that many Egyptians, especially in rural areas or small towns, have yet to see coverage of many of the regime’s atrocities. Another response to this lack of information has been the “Askar Kazboon” or “Military Liars” campaign, whereby activists tour the country with videos of the crimes committed by the regime’s army, police and hired thugs.

Workers are also coming to the Maspero building to bring forth their own grievances, reminding us once again of the truth of Rosa Luxemburg’s point in “The Mass Strike” about the mutual reinforcement of political and economic struggles in a period of upsurge. Following on the huge strike wave of last fall, workers continue to build new independent unions and to raise such demands as a minimum and maximum wage (the latter directed at corrupt, overpaid managers and executives) and the right to permanent status on the job.

Pro-capitalist Muslim Brotherhood

Revolutionaries in Egypt point to those struggles as evidence of the possibility to unite the fight in the squares and the workplace. This possibility is in fact an urgent requirement, given the openly pro-capitalist orientation of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood has given voluminous testimony, in interviews with the media and in meetings with potential investors and their governments’ representatives, to their faith in the “free market.” This even extends to pledging support for the previous regime’s Qualifying Industrial Zones agreements between Egypt, the U.S., and Israel, in which Egypt’s exports get access to the U.S. market as long as a certain percentage of a good’s value originates in Israel.

More evidence of the Brotherhood’s fealty to the idol of Mammon was laid out in Avi Asher-Schapiro’s Salon article, “The GOP Brotherhood of Egypt: Demonized in the U.S. as radical terrorists, Egypt’s Islamists are actually led by free-market businessmen.” He reported that “while Western alarmists often depict Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as a shadowy organization with terrorist ties, the Brotherhood’s ideology actually has more in common with America’s Republican Party than with al-Qaida.

“Few Americans know it but the Brotherhood is a free-market party led by wealthy businessmen whose economic agenda embraces privatization and foreign investment while spurning labor unions and the redistribution of wealth. ... Like the Republicans in the U.S., the financial interests of the party’s leadership of businessmen and professionals diverge sharply from those of its poor, socially conservative followers.”

He then detailed the business interests and political beliefs of several Brotherhood millionaires. Asher-Schapiro reports on meetings between Brotherhood leaders and European investment bankers in which the former reassured investors “that the new government shares their goals.” And he quotes a Reuters interview with Hassan Malek, a textile mogul and Brotherhood financier, in which Malek said the Brothers “want to attract as much foreign investment as possible … and this needs a big role for the private sector.” Malek heads the group’s “Egyptian Business and Investment Association,” a coalition of leading Brotherhood businessmen working to promote private investment.

Malek even praised the economic policies of the Mubarak regime. “We can benefit from previous economic decisions. There have been correct ones in the past. … Rachid Mohamed Rachid [Mubarak’s minister of trade] understood very well how to attract foreign investment.”

“What Malek failed to mention,” said Asher-Schapiro, is that Rachid fled to Dubai after the ouster of Mubarak and has since been convicted in absentia of squandering public funds and embezzlement.” Furthermore, “Rachid worked to privatize Egyptian industries, reduce taxes and subsidies, and defang unions.

This economic model, adopted at the urging of the IMF and international financial institutions, delivered strong economic growth—nearly 6 percent a year from 2004 to 2009—but also generated inequality. The gains were concentrated in the hands of Egypt’s economic elite, while millions of working-class Egyptians saw their wages stagnate, as rising food prices pushed many to the brink.”

The Salon piece reminds readers of the Brotherhood’s hostility to trade unions. “The Brothers have been against wildcat strikes and all significant labor actions,” says Zeinab Abdul-Magd, an Egyptian academic and leftist activist. “The Brothers just don’t relate to workers.”

Asher-Schapiro ends his piece by citing the rising unemployment, debt and deficit, and diminishing currency reserves used by Western capital as supposed proof of the need for austerity—and, confronted with this crisis, the regime’s turnabout from its previous rejection of an offered IMF loan to its pleas to the IMF in January for the loans.

Meanwhile, Obama is doing his part to keep the regime on the neoliberal path, offering an “emergency plan,” which the independent Egyptian journal Al-Masry Al-Youm reported centers on doubling U.S. investments by encouraging Egypt’s rulers to offer “incentives” (read tax breaks for foreign capital).

The need for ongoing solidarity

The consensus between the Brotherhood, the military, and the Egyptian ruling class over the need for a continuation of pro-capital economic policies is the background to the Brotherhood’s support for SCAF’s timetable for relinquishing only some of its powers, and even those not until after it helps shape the writing of a new constitution and election rules for choosing a new president.

The Brotherhood knows that only a strong military and police can hope to maintain a level of repression sufficient to hold back the rising tide of worker militancy and mass mobilization on behalf of genuine freedom and social justice. On Jan. 25 and in the days since this has meant repeated confrontations in the streets and squares between the Brotherhood and the masses demanding that SCAF step down.

On Jan. 21 there were rallies in solidarity with the revolution in dozens of cities around the world. That date was chosen to send a message to the regime that their threats of violence against protesters on the anniversary had not gone unnoticed and that revolution supporters were ready to mobilize against future attacks. (The regime had been spreading rumors about “foreign agents” planning trouble on the Jan. 25, a clear indication of plans to attack activists. But on the 25th itself the crowds were far too massive for SCAF to take any action.)

On Jan. 22 and Jan. 25 the main Egypt support group in New York, the Ad Hoc Coalition to Defend the Egyptian Revolution, held standing-room-only teach-ins on the economic, social, and political roots of the revolution and its prospects. The coalition is collaborating with Occupy Wall Street working groups on campaigns against U.S. provision of military aid and tear gas and other weapons exports to the regime, as well as efforts to publicize cases of repression by the regime. For information on continued solidarity efforts: defendegyptianrevolution.org.

> The article above was written by Andrew Pollack, and first appeared in the February 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

UNAC conference, March 23-25: ‘Challenge the wars of the 1%’

2012-02-08T20:00:00.002-06:00

A Conference to Challenge the Wars of the 1% Against the 99% at Home and Abroad—this banner heads the call for the United National Antiwar Coalition Conference, which will be held in Stamford, CT, on March 23-25.

Addressing this theme will be international guest speakers that include Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the wife of the former Honduran president ousted by a U.S.-backed coup and the just named presidential candidate of the new party of the Honduran resistance known as Libertad y refundación; Fignole St. Cyr of the Haitian Autonomous Workers Confederation; and Andrew Murray, a member of the British Trades Union Congress Executive Council, a leader of the Nov. 30 general strike over pensions, and the head of the UK Stop the Wars Coalition from 2002-2011.

On hand to help draw the links between the potential of the Occupy Movement and the fight against U.S. wars and austerity will be Clarence Thomas, a longshoreman from Oakland, Calif., who helped to lead the campaigns in defense of the Longview ILWU strikers against the union-busting company EGT, and Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran and occupier whose injury by the Oakland police alerted the nation to the connections between the wars at home and abroad.

The war at home on the Black community will be addressed at a major lunch-time plenary panel headlined by Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report, Dr. Khalilah Brown-Dean of Quinnipiac College, Pam Africa, and the hip-hop scholar-agitator Jared Ball. Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid of the Muslim Peace Coalition, Monami Maulik of Desis Rising Up and Moving, James Yee, who once served as a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo, and Cyrus McCormick of the New York City chapter of the Council of American Islamic Relations will help orient attendees to the centrality of the fight against Islamophobia, preemptive prosecution, and indefinite detention.

In short, the new political possibilities and new challenges opened by the autumn explosion of the Occupy Movement, the mass protests against austerity occurring worldwide, and the U.S. government’s drive toward new and deepening military interventions in Iran, Africa, and East Asia have shaped the politics and organization of the conference dramatically. Unlike previous national antiwar conferences that focused more exclusively on the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the UNAC conference is necessarily organized around providing education and space for analysis of the new geographic scope of imperialism’s increasingly desperate belligerence.

The opening session on Friday night, entitled “Shifting Strategies of Empire: Analyzing the Military and Economic Plans of the 1%,” will allow experts and activists such as Col. Ann Wright, David Swanson, BAYAN leader Bernadette Ellorin, Abayomi Azikiwe of the Pan-Africa Newswire, Kazem Azim of Solidarity Iran, Adaner Usmani of the Labor Party of Pakistan, Jeff Mackler, and others to explain the manner in which the U.S. threats against Iran and Syria are linked to the so-called “Return to Asia” and the step up of operations on the African continent.

The major Palestinian leaders Lamis Deek of Al Awda NYC and Andrew Dalack of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network will be on hand to discuss the relationship between Israel’s dramatic new war moves inside Palestine and those they are threatening on Iran. A major plenary panel on Sunday will facilitate a discussion among leading environmentalist Bill McKibben, well-known radical economist Richard Wolff, and Marxist scholar of globalization Vijay Prashad on the theme of the “Global Economic Crisis, Warming, and War.”

The remainder of the conference will be taken up with plenary sessions in which attendees will consider and modify a draft Action Plan for united national antiwar activities for the coming months and over 40 educational workshops. At the center of the Action Plan is a proposal for a mobilization for a May 19 permitted march in Chicago in response to the NATO/G8 summit being hosted there. Representatives of the umbrella coalition organizing May 19, called CANG8 or the Coalition Against NATO/G8 Wars and Poverty Agenda, will be on hand to motivate national involvement. The Action Plan, which is available at www.unacpeace.org, is now being circulated nationally, and proposed amendments and counterposed resolutions are being accepted for the gathering’s consideration.

The selection of workshops available to attendees spans the entire gamut of themes relevant to building mass actions against Washington’s war moves. Titles manifesting the geographical breadth of the educational presentations include, “Defeating AFRICOM & NATO: Building Solidarity with Africa,” “Egypt: Will the People Rule?” “Resource Wars in South Asia,” “U.S. Geopolitical Strategy and Intervention in the Asia-Pacific Region,” “Rethinking Pakistan: People’s Struggle and the War on Terror,” and “Negotiating Peace in Colombia.”

Other threads will deal with the new weapons and related military strategies of the U.S. and NATO. These include “Confronting Robotic (Drone) Warfare,” “U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe and the Campaign for Withdrawal,” and “Prisons: the New Torture Machine.”

Some of the most innovative panels bring together the fights of immigrant workers and social justice activists globally. These include two workshops organized by Desis Rising Up and Moving: “Border Militarization/Migrant Workers Rising Globally” and “From Egypt to New York City: “Anti-Radicalization” Laws, Surveillance, the War on Terror Industrial Complex.” The theme of building solidarity between the Occupy Movement, the labor movement, and antiwar initiatives is interwoven throughout the workshop sessions.

Those interested in attending the conference and organizing others to attend will find registration, housing, and transportation information online at www.unacpeace.org. UNAC is attempting to raise scholarship funds and will gratefully accept donations for the registration and housing of students and the unemployed. Information about how to submit amendments and resolutions will be found on this website as well.

> The article above was written by Christine Marie, and first appeared in the February 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

What sort of third party do we need?

2012-02-08T19:58:00.001-06:00

The past year or so has seen a dramatic shift in the U.S. class struggle. The mass movement in Wisconsin against the union busting agenda of tea-party Republican Scott Walker, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement that spread across the U.S., and the ILWU fight to protect their union rights at Longview, Wash., and elsewhere on the West Coast all show the potential for a working-class fightback against the anti-worker agenda of both the Democrats and Republicans.

Working people are increasingly receptive to calls for a new third party as an alternative to business as usual. But what sort of party do we need?

As of this writing, the GOP field has narrowed to four candidates, who each seem eager to outdo the others in reactionary, racist, anti-union, and anti-women rhetoric. They promise draconian measures ranging from Ron Paul’s “open season” on union organizers, to Gingrich’s promise to put Black eight-year-olds to word as school janitors to “teach them the value of work” and to repeal child labor laws, to Romney’s professed love of firing people and Santorum’s support for a national “right-to-work” law.

The Democrats will certainly point to the reactionary nature of the GOP, and Obama will likely take a slight left turn in his speeches. For instance, in his State of the Union address (SOTU) last month, Obama used populist rhetoric about taxing the rich, creating jobs, and defending the middle class. This is in contrast to the SOTU he gave last year, in which he signaled his willingness to compromise with GOP budget cutters, saying, “We will move forward together or not at all.” But this year’s SOTU also contained nationalistic attacks on China—the biggest trading partner of the U.S.—as well as promises to defend Israel and a pledge to “take no options off the table to” stop Iran from achieving nuclear weapons.

Obama’s real record in office

It is astonishing to read in the lead editorial of The Nation (Feb. 13) the statement that Obama’s State of the Union address was “suffused with the spirit of Occupy Wall Street.” A glance at Obama’s record in office should put to rest any suggestion that the U.S. chief executive is one of the “99 percent.”

In 2008, Obama ran on the slogans of “Hope” and “Change.” But instead of “Change,” we see business as usual in the White House. The president has pursued a pro-corporate agenda with bailouts for banks. Obama’s so-called jobs bill features tax cuts and “incentives” for business and the rich. He has supervised massive cuts in social programs. He has attacked civil liberties—continuing the scandalous Guantanamo concentration camp—extended the PATRIOT Act, and signed into law the NDAA, which guts the right to habeas corpus and allows for the detention of U.S. citizens without trial.

Obama campaigned as a “peace” candidate, but has continued the war policies of the previous administration. He has supported the continued dispossession of the Palestinian people, played a leading role in the imperialist attack on Libya, and has pursued a policy of war and sanctions towards Iran.

In 2008, Obama campaigned as a pro-union politician, promising to sign into law the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would have made union organizing easier. Instead, we have seen a bipartisan attack on collective bargaining, and brutal attacks on the Occupy movement in different cities—mostly by Democratic mayors and coordinated with federal authorities. Obama promised health-care reform, but instead we were given a health-care “deform” that was a massive bailout of private insurers.

The Democrats have a history of co-opting social movements and channeling them into the service of a reactionary social agenda. This was demonstrated a year ago, when the Democrats and the AFL-CIO bureaucracy diverted the movement in Wisconsin, which had occupied the state capitol, into more “respectable” forms of protest like electoral politics and petitioning. The result was the loss of the momentum the movement had achieved.

More recently, the Occupy movement was courted by Democratic Party-supporting organizations like MoveOn.org and by some union tops as a way of bringing the movement’s energy under the wing of the Democrats. Democrats clearly see the opportunity to create a “tea party” of the left as an adjunct of their campaigns. So far, the majority of the movement has resisted the temptation to ally themselves with either of the two major parties of the 1 percent.

An alternative needed—but what kind?

A lot of activists and progressive people rightly point to the need for an alternative to the two capitalist parties, but what kind of party do we need? Many are responsive to the Green Party or to independent candidate Rocky Anderson. Anderson, the candidate of the newly formed Justice Party, is a former Democrat and two-term mayor of Salt Lake City. The Greens have yet to choose a candidate.

What matters most, when we consider the Greens, or a candidate like Anderson, is the role of political program. Anderson’s campaign, for instance, offers a variety of financial and economic reforms but not the type of fundamental change that must be enacted to address the economic crisis. He focuses on tax cuts and incentives to businesses who “hire U.S. workers and disincentives to those that don’t; splitting up too big to fail banks; and he opposes hiring ex-financial executives as advisors to the president on economic policy.”

Tax policy and breaking up big banks ultimately are not the solutions. The banks and financial institutions will still exert control over the economy and politics. Socialists argue instead for the nationalization of the banks and the Fortune 500 under workers’ control. Capitalism is the problem, and trying to make it better, or more humane, is fruitless.

Anderson’s campaign statement promises an end to the wars of the Bush-Obama administrations, support for universal health care (while laying out no specifics), support for the environment, and for LGBT rights and gay marriage. He says little, however, about the massive assault on civil liberties under Obama, including the NDAA and crack-downs on the occupy movement.

The Green platform is superior to Anderson’s in many ways. It offers a number of reforms, many of which are radical sounding. However, the Green platform does not advocate doing away with capitalism but rather proposes to “reduce the economic and political power of large corporations, end corporate personhood and re-design corporations to serve our society, democracy and the environment.” At the same time, it would change “the legal design of corporations so that they generate profits, but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, public health, workers, or the communities in which the corporation operates.”

This sort of thinking is contradictory. Corporate power and the drive for maximum profits are at the center of the capitalist system. The reforms that the Greens propose are impossible because capitalists would never adhere to them. Exploitation of the environment, human rights, public health, workers, or communities is endemic to the capitalist private-profit system.

Workers need their own party

Socialists argue against support for electoral campaigns that do not have a base in the organized struggles of the working class and oppressed people. We believe it is a mistake to sow illusions in reformist candidates, or to downplay putting forward a clear working-class program in order to find a short cut for obtaining votes. Rocky Anderson, the Greens, and similar electoral campaigns—like that of Ralph Nader before them—will result in no lasting mass working-class organization and little in the way of fundamental change.

That is why socialists call for a labor party in the United States, based in the unions. This isn’t an abstraction, but a reflection of the real needs and interests of the working class. Class independence and the ability to fight and speak in our own name are fundamental tasks for working people. The working class is the one force in society with the potential strength and economic power to fundamentally change society.

More than 25 million working-class people remain either underemployed or unemployed, with no action from Washington to solve the problem. Spending on infrastructure projects would benefit some sectors of the economy, but what is really needed is a massive public works jobs program to put the unemployed back to work at good union wages. Millions could be put to work in a matter of weeks—improving infrastructure, weatherizing homes and public buildings, cleaning and protecting the environment, providing needed social services and education.

Without class independence, we are forced to depend on the goodwill of politicians who answer to Wall Street. A workers party, or labor party, will emerge from mass struggles to defend the interests and living standards of the working class, protect the environment, and stand behind all oppressed people—Blacks, women, immigrants, LGBT people, etc.—who are fighting for their rights.

Such a party would not have to be a bureaucratic, pro-capitalist party like the Social Democratic Parties of Europe. Nor would it be a party that merely puts forward candidates in the electoral arena. The labor party that we see on the horizon, having come out of a renewed upsurge in the U.S. class struggle, would remain first and foremost a mass-action party—organizing people who are fighting back in their workplaces and in the streets.

> The article above was written by John Leslie, and first appeared in the February 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

For a Revolutionary Black History Month

2012-02-08T19:56:00.004-06:00

As we once again approach February, the papers and TV stations will feature programming that shows more Black faces than usual. Some will show movies, some documentaries and some will feature history in celebration of Black History Month.

Undoubtedly, Martin Luther King Jr.’s epic “March on Washington” speech will be samples, its grainy, black and white videotape the very symbol of a bygone era, and it’s key catchphrase, “Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”—a haunting and ironic mockery of the real state of most of Black America. One tape that invariably will not be shown is one of the final press conferences of the nation’s first (and perhaps only) Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, aged and ill, yet with the presence of mind to announce, “I’m still not free.”

For millions of Black Americans, this Black History Month, while perhaps rich in symbol, comes amidst the greatest loss of collective assets in our history, crippling joblessness, haunting home foreclosures, public schools that perform more mis-education than education, rabid police terrorism, and perhaps the highest Black incarceration rates in U.S. history, and all that entails.

That we have Black History Month at all is due to the Black Freedom Movements of the ’60s, and the dogged persistence of Black historian Carter G. Woodson, who began his efforts with Negro History Week, back in the 1920s! Yet, it begins, as do all struggles for progress, with the Movement. If Black mothers and grandmothers, and later Black schoolchildren, didn’t follow King, we wouldn’t know his name, except perhaps as an historical footnote. For, without followers, there is no movement—and thus no progress.

The late, great Marxist revolutionary historian, C.L.R. James, in his finest work, “Black Jacobins,” a history of the Haitian Revolution, illustrates how the leadership, including Gen. Toussaint L’Ouverture, tried repeatedly to betray the Revolution, on to face two immovable forces—the racist recalcitrance of the French government of Napoleon (who wanted to restore slavery), and the militancy of the Black soldiers, who pushed onward to Revolution.

The point? People make history, by mass movements, often ones which go faster and further than the leaders want. And masses make and sustain revolutions—often against “leaders” whose every instinct is to betray them.

In a forward to one of the many editions of Black Jacobins, James reminds us, “... that it was the slaves who had made the Revolution. Many of the slave leaders to the end were unable to read or write” (James, xvi). But they sure knew how to fight.

Africans, by the tens of thousands, broke their chains, and though penniless, hungry, and scarred by the ravages of bondage, found weapons and the will to fight for freedom against the defenders of slavery: France, Britain, and Spain. They beat them all, because their hunger for freedom was greater than anything. ANYTHING.

And by so doing they changed world history. They shattered French dreams of an American Empire; and enabled the U.S. to double in size after its purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon. They also did what no “slave” army had ever done in modern or ancient history. They defeated an empire. That is Revolutionary Black History—and it deserves to be remembered during Black History Month. © MAJ 2012

> The article above was written by Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Mumia freed from solitary

2012-02-08T19:55:00.001-06:00

It took a petition with 5000 signatures, gathered in a few days, to the Philadelphia District Attorney and prison officials to compel the warden at SCI Mahanoy to release Mumia Abu-Jamal from his “worse than death row” solidarity-confinement “hole.” The excuse? Mumia refused to cut off his dreadlocks! While on death row at SCI Greene, Mumia waged the same fight for seven years until his jailors relented. As of Jan. 27 Mumia has been in the General Prison Population.

On Jan. 30, he had his first visit with his wife Wadiya—the first time in 27 years that he was allowed to touch another human being. Here’s Mumia’s message to the freedom movement, sent via Wadiya: “My dear friends, brothers and sisters—I want to thank you for your real hard work and support. I am no longer on death row, no longer in the hole, I’m in population. This is only part one and I thank you all for the work you’ve done. But the struggle is for freedom! From Mumia and Wadiya, Ona Move. Long Live John Africa!”

Write Mumia at: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335 SCI Mahanoy 301, Morea Road, Frackville, PA 17932.

A visit with Mumia Abu-Jamal

2012-02-08T19:54:00.001-06:00

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters:

Heidi Boghosian [executive director, National Lawyers Guild] and I [Johanna Fernandez, Educators for Mumia] just returned from a very moving visit with Mumia. We visited yesterday, Thursday, Feb. 2. This was Mumia’s second contact visit in over 30 years, since his transfer to General Population last Friday, Jan. 27. His first contact visit was with his wife, Wadiya, on Monday, Jan. 30.

Unlike our previous visits to Death Row at SCI Greene and to solitary confinement at SCI Mahanoy, our visit yesterday took place in a large visitor’s area, amidst numerous circles of families and spouses who were visiting other inmates. Compared to the intense and focused conversations we had had with Mumia in a small, isolated visiting cell on Death Row, behind sterile plexiglass, this exchange was more relaxed and informal and more unpredictably interactive with the people around us ... it was more human.

There were so many scenes of affection around us, of children jumping on top of and pulling at their fathers, of entire families talking intimately around small tables, of couples sitting and quietly holding each other, and of girlfriends and wives stealing a forbidden kiss from the men they were there to visit (kisses are only allowed at the start and at the end of visits). These scenes were touching and beautiful, and markedly different from the images of prisoners presented to us by those in power. Our collective work could benefit greatly from these humane, intimate images.

When we entered, we immediately saw Mumia standing across the room. We walked toward each other and he hugged both of us simultaneously. We were both stunned that he would embrace us so warmly and share his personal space so generously after so many years in isolation.

He looked young, and we told him as much. He responded, “Black don’t crack!” We laughed.

He talked to us about the newness of every step he has taken since his release to general population a week ago. So much of what we take for granted daily is new to him, from the microwave in the visiting room to the tremor he felt when, for the first time in 30 years, he kissed his wife. As he said in his own words, “The only thing more drastically different than what I’m experiencing now would be freedom.” He also noted that everyone in the room was watching him.

The experience of breaking bread with our friend and comrade was emotional. It was wonderful to be able to talk and share grilled cheese sandwiches, apple danishes, cookies and hot chocolate from the visiting room vending machines.

One of the highlights of the visit came with the opportunity to take a photo. This was one of the first such opportunities for Mumia in decades, and we had a ball! Primping the hair, making sure that we didn’t have food in our teeth, and nervously getting ready for the big photo moment was such a laugh! And Mumia was openly tickled by every second of it.

When the time came to leave, we all hugged and were promptly instructed to line up against the wall and walk out with the other visitors. As we were exiting the prison, one sister pulled us aside and told us that she couldn’t stop singing Kelly Clarkson’s line, “some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this.”

She shared that she and her parents had followed Mumia’s case since 1981 and that she was overjoyed that Mumia was alive and in general population despite Pennsylvania’s bloodthirsty pursuit of his execution.

We told her that on April 24 we were going to launch the fight that would win Mumia’s release: that on that day we were going to Occupy the Justice Department in Washington DC. She told us that because she recently survived cancer she now believed in possibility, and that since Mumia was now in general population she could see how we could win. She sent us off with the line from Laverne and Shirley’s theme song—”never heard the word impossible!”—gave us her number, and asked us to sign her up for the fight.

We’re still taking it all in. The journey has been humbling and humanizing, and we are re-energized and re-inspired!!

In the words of City Lights editor Greg Ruggiero: “Long Term Goal: End Mass Incarceration. Short Term Goal: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!” — Johanna Fernandez

Occupy debates the call for a May 1 general strike

2012-02-08T19:52:00.002-06:00

At least 15 sites of the Occupy Movement have endorsed a call for actions on May Day 2012, including a general strike, initiated by Occupy LA (OLA). The debate within New York’s Occupy Wall Street (OWS) over whether to endorse the call is illustrative of the ideological differences within the movement, as well as the possibility for unity in action despite such differences.

In this sense the debate overlaps simultaneous discussions on the West Coast about the relative roles of Occupy sites and unions, of differences between union officials and rank-and-file, and of the centrality of labor as opposed to an undifferentiated “99%”.

In December, the Direct Action working group, the body that considers and endorses action proposals for OWS, set up an exploratory committee to consider the call. On Jan. 28 the committee came to consensus, with no “blocks” or even “stand asides,” on the following language:

“May Day 2012: Occupy Wall Street stands in solidarity with the calls for a day without the 99%, a general strike and more!! On May Day, wherever you are, we are calling for: No Work, No School, No Housework, No Shopping, No Banking. TAKE THE STREETS!!!!!”

In forwarding this resolution to the planning group’s list after its passage, one of the co-facilitators of the process said, “We reached consensus on language for May Day that respects diversity of tactics, the different needs of various communities and the autonomy of individuals, while not putting us at odds with occupations across the country.” This is an accurate reflection of the discussions leading to the final language, and a testament to the desire for unity, despite wildly varying interpretations of what a general strike is, whether and how it would be possible, and of the possible repercussions for participants.

The phrase “a day without the 99%” is in the OWS call as a nod to the concerns of the OWS Labor Outreach Committee and its Immigrant Worker Justice Working Group (IWJWG). Both of these groups pointed out that many workers are legally barred from striking or fear victimization by la migra for doing so. LOC and IWJWG activists also pointed out that a general strike can’t just be called, that historically such strikes occur as part of a broader organic process of mobilization and radicalization of working people.

Desire for unity

While the overwhelming majority of the OWS May 1st committee still believe a general strike is possible, it agreed to insertion of the “day without the 99%” phrase—including its placement before the general strike phrase, as a recognition of the seriousness of those concerns, and as a display of the deep-seated desire for unity. This reflected a desire manifested throughout the four-hour-long meeting, culminating a weeks-long process, which reached consensus on the call.

Those differences even include what exactly a general strike is, with the LOC and IWJWG referring to its traditional meaning of a workplace-based action, while the anarchist-influenced majority conceiving of it as a more general nonparticipation in any economic aspect of the system.

The final agreement is something of a mish-mash: a call for a universal stay-away from work, combined with a list of actions for those who can’t. And in that it reflects the original OLA call in the diversity of tactics recommended, with an explicit acknowledgment in the OLA call that anti-labor legislation and other intimidating factors might lessen the response by both organized and unorganized workers to a strike call.

LOC and IWJWG activists pointed out that general strikes typically break out as broader responses to specific battles in a context of overall class-wide dissatisfaction, and they argued for building May Day actions as the culmination of support for already ongoing struggles, such as the many contract and organizing campaigns going on in New York in a wide variety of industries. They further argued that such pre-May Day activities present an opportunity to talk to those in struggle about the need for class-wide action.

There are three basic tendencies in the OWS May Day planning group, whose meetings range from 60 to 100 in size: (1) hard-core anarchists who are openly and insultingly dismissive of unions (and who don’t differentiate between union officials and rank and file, believing unions themselves are inherently creatures of capital); (2) mainstream anarchists, whose ideology is predominant in OWS, and who take seriously their insistence on finding ways to work with those they disagree with; (3) the LOC and IWJWG, most of whom are socialists and activists for union reform and militancy.

During discussions about what we wanted to see happen on May Day, both groups of anarchists said they hoped for a complete shutdown of the city, or “shutting down capitalism,” by “widespread disruption” such as blocking bridges and roads. Some even advocated picketing workplaces to force workers not to go to work, as opposed to encouraging them to strike. This, of course, is an ironically patronizing and substitutionist approach for a movement that prides itself on fostering the autonomy and self-determination of all the oppressed.

Are unions still relevant to the struggle?

The anarchists also claimed that a general strike could no longer be conceived of as primarily workplace-based, and that “strikes” against payments of rent, mortgages, student loans, credit card debt, etc. were just as important as job walkouts. Arguments for such a conception of a general strike were motivated by claims that unions are now irrelevant, ignoring the historical fact that the percentage of labor organized has always sunk to tiny fractions of the workforce in periods of ruling-class offensive—but has mushroomed quickly and massively in periods of struggle.

The anarchists also claim that the labor process itself and the extraction of profits from work is no longer a defining feature of our system. This again ignores history, as do similar theories about “the end of labor” or “the post-industrial society” every time capitalism appears to have achieved stability—theories which are quickly swept away by the same upsurges which swell the ranks of organized labor.

These ideological differences appeared to be leading OWS to a split over what to do on May Day. At the Jan. 28 meeting, one of the hard-core anarchists made a motion that we divide into two working groups, with those wanting to issue a general strike call going their way and those arguing for other actions going theirs.

Fortunately, one of the mainstream anarchists, a key leader of OWS, then put forward an amendment stating that we would “stand in solidarity with” the call by Occupy LA for a general strike, but also, “in recognition of the needs of organized and unorganized labor,” we would call for a day without the 99% (meaning that the 99% would do whatever they could on that day, including activities on the job, during lunch, or before or after work, but not necessarily striking). And it was pointed out that “stand in solidarity with” obligates no one in New York City to actually participate in or even agitate for a general strike.

Amazingly, the hard-core anarchist who put forward the original motion accepted the new one as friendly, and throughout the rest of the meeting she and her ideological comrades worked hard to maintain that unity. When consensus was reached, a huge cheer filled the room. Now we move to implementation.

Work leading up to May Day will also be an opportunity for LOC and IWJWG to bring forward demands articulating working-class concerns, which will surely include calls for jobs for all, immigrant rights, increased publicly-funded health care and education, revocation of anti-labor laws such as Taylor and Taft-Hartley, etc. Such demands and others around war, repression, women’s rights, and so on were in the original call from OLA.

OLA’s suggestions for participation on May Day for those who can’t explicitly strike include requests that workers call in sick, take a holiday or personal day, join activities after work such as marches, block parties, rallies, and so on. Similarly, in New York an LOC activist drafted a list of possible activities for those unable to strike: “In the workplace, workers can decide on what grievance to act on. … Pay? Benefits? Physical conditions? Lack of breaks? Theft of tips? ...

“Environmental issues, mortgage issues, schooling issues, policing issues, gender issues, discrimination issues, health-care issues. … Unions can offer communications, logistical support, meeting places, the infrastructure for wider cooperation and coordination. … Walk off the job for the day, or sit in for the day. ... Call in sick. Slow down. ...”

LOC and IWJWG activists will now be engaged in intensive discussions with workers in struggle about how actions leading up to and on May Day can further their cause (including by continuing LOC’s longstanding practice of encouraging mutual solidarity among those in struggle). Another key task facing New York labor and immigrant activists will be using the new May Day momentum provided by the Occupy phenomenon to build on the fragile unity between longstanding May Day coalitions in New York—e.g., the one based in immigrant worker groups that holds an annual rally in Union Square, and the one started by liberal union officials who traditionally gather in Foley Square. Last year they agreed for the first time that those rallying in Union Square would march to Foley for a joint event ending the day. This year joint efforts involving both coalitions and OWS can lead to a bigger and more politically powerful set of actions.

The LOC activist who listed possible at-work actions for May Day concluded by reminding us that through such activities “what we develop is the sense of collective power, communication, and cooperation that would make a general strike possible.”

That developing awareness is key to the possibilities inherent in the May Day call, which, however self-contradictory it may appear on the surface, presents an opportunity for new momentum for both the Occupy and labor movements, as well as a mutual reinforcement of the best elements of both.

The Occupy movement was not at its inception based on organizations rooted in particular workplaces or even neighborhoods. Community-based assemblies subsequently were organized, especially after evictions from citywide camps. And labor committees of Occupy sites have been seeking to sink their roots in particular workplaces and unions. Activities building for May Day can further this essential process of grounding the Occupy movement in workplaces and neighborhoods, and fostering the most militant elements in each while building broad united fronts.

As another leading LOC activist put it in an e-mail exchange: “The alliance between the militant, direct action of OWS (which LOC is committed to), which put us on the map, and the resources, and mass, mainstream constituency of labor, which gave us legitimacy and support of the 99%, is the key to power for OWS, and we have to work hard to preserve this alliance…

“The distrust of unions has a genuine basis; there is bureaucracy and lack of militancy or inclusiveness, and needs the push and support of OWS to move forward. LOC is trying to reform the labor movement, so that it will use direct action and represent the 99%, but to do so we have to be both inside and outside the unions. … For the first time, I expect to see a general strike in my lifetime. OWS has changed everything.”

> The article above was written by Andrew Pollack, and first appeared in the February 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Austerity tightens in Greece

2012-02-08T19:50:00.001-06:00

Parallels between ancient Greece and current Greece are not lacking in recent times, and the “Greek tragedy” has been served up in all journalistic sauces. In the country that invented democracy to put an end to debt slavery, the European bourgeoisie imposes its reactionary approach: even if the institution of slavery is not (yet) re-established, the poverty into which the Greek people have been plunged at a growing speed greatly resembles a modern slavery.

Every day, 2400 new workers are thrown into unemployment, which has officially reached 17.7% (12.4% a year ago), with 21.5 % of women affected and 35.3% of youth. Fifty percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than one year.

Paul Tomsen—the best known personality of the troika (IMF, EU and ECB), today de facto in charge of the country’s affairs—says on the one hand that the imposition over the last six months of the fiscal burden on a part of the population which can no longer pay is an error, and on the other demands two measures: the suspension of collective agreements (to impose flexibility and the alignment of wages with productivity) and the closure of a certain number of public enterprises (which in his view have ceased to fulfill the function for which they were created). Obviously, no question of asking the people for a democratic opinion on the utility of these enterprises!

The mobilizations by sector or enterprise are numerous and sometimes allow partial victories over the employer or the state. Numerous strikes have taken place in transport, a strike has broken out against the neoliberal university reform, and the taxis are on strike against the “opening” (to the big companies) of the profession and so on.

One of the most significant struggles currently concerns the audiovisual and press sector (newspapers, television, radio, magazines, and internet). Massive layoffs, brutal pay cuts have affected every company in the sector. Tens of thousands of workers are no longer paid or not paid on time, with most companies paying wages months late.

The television channel “Alter” has not paid its 700 employees for a year, and the big Athens newspaper Eleyfhterotypia stopped paying its 840 employees this summer.

However, there is resistance to this daily violence in the workplaces. After months of working for free, the workers at “Alter” decided to occupy the head office of the television and turn it into a center of solidarity (collecting food to organize their own survival) and beginning to broadcast programs (rudimentary for the moment), which have become a center of popularization of the struggle of several sectors and factories. Similar projects are now being discussed by the workers at Eleftherotypia.

The most emblematic struggle currently is at the steel factory of Halivourgia in Aspropyrgos, in the Athenian suburbs, against lay-offs and wage cuts. This struggle is led by workers linked to the pro-KKE union current PAME and is characterized not only by its combativity, but also by the very broad support it has received, including union and political support. For example, the intervention of our comrade Yannis Felekis, historic leader of the Greek section of the Fourth International, OKDE-Spartakos, was warmly received by the strikers!

> This is adapted from an article by Tassos Anastassiadis and Adreas Sartzekis on the Fourth International website: www.internationalviewpoint.org.

Protests demand: No war and no sanctions against Iran!

2012-02-08T19:48:00.001-06:00

On Feb. 4, activists demanding “No Sanctions, Assassinations, Interventions! No War Against Iran!” held emergency demonstrations in at least 70 U.S. cities and towns. There were actions from Huntsville, Ala., to Amarillo, Texas, and from Buffalo, N.Y. to Racine, Wis.

Other cities held demonstrations in the days immediately preceding or following the national day of local protest against the devastating sanctions, covert operations, and threats of overt military action against the oil rich regional powerhouse of Iran. The U.S. demonstrations were echoed by actions in Vancouver, Canada; Shannon Air Base in Ireland; Dacca, the capital city of Bangladesh; Calcutta, India; and Oslo, Norway.

The emergency actions came together on short notice as the result of a national Jan. 17 phone conference that formed an ad hoc group to publicize the call. The organizations that initiated or endorsed the call included the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), the International Action Center (IAC), World Can’t Wait, Solidarity with Iran, Peace of the Action, ANSWER Coalition, American Iranian Friendship Committee, the Campaign Against Sanctions & Military Intervention in Iran (CASMI), WESPAC Foundation, Antiwar.com, Come Home America.us, St. Pete for Peace, Women Against Military Madness (WAMM), Defenders for Freedom, Justice, and Equality of Virginia, Peace Action Maine, Occupy Myrtle Beach, Minnesota Peace Action Coalition, and the Twin Cities Peace Campaign.

Opposition to the growing U.S./UN/NATO and Israeli threats of direct and open military action against Iran will also be a central theme of the March 23-25 United National Antiwar Coalition Conference in Stamford, Conn. Iranian activists from the diaspora who hold many different political perspectives on Iranian politics but who all oppose intervention will lead at least three workshops and participate in plenary panels.

They include Mansoureh Tajik, an expert in sustainable development; Kazem Azim, a leader of the Taxi Workers Alliance and Solidarity Iran; Margaret Sarfehjooy of the Women Against Military Madness; and Manijeh Nasrabadi, a writer and member of the Raha Iranian Feminist Collective. For more information on the conference, visit www.unacpeace.org.

Jan. 16 statement by the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) on the assassination of Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan and the growing threat of war against Iran:

Another Iranian scientist has been assassinated in Iran by a car bombing. This is the fifth Iranian scientist targeted in Iran during the past two years. This is a dangerous escalation of the covert activities conducted by the CIA and Israeli intelligence and their domestic spies in Iran against the government and people of Iran.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, “I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.” However, both the Israeli and the U.S. governments have admitted to covert activity in Iran. Irrespective of the actors, the assassination of law-abiding scientists living and working in Iran is a reprehensible act that should be condemned by all.

The fact is that the governments of the U.S. and Israel have declared Iran to be their enemy and have publicly stated that they will use all means possible, up to and including military attack, to stop the production of nuclear energy in Iran and to change the government of Iran. To this end, they have admitted to:

1) Using hacking to disrupt nuclear energy facilities in Iran.

2) Conducting covert operations in Iran.

3) Deploying spy drones to Iran.

4) Imposing draconian sanctions and embargo against Iranian oil exports, banking and trade.

5) Deploying U.S. nuclear super carrier battle groups with destroyers and nuclear submarines to the Persian Gulf.

6) Threatening Iran with military attack.

7) Planning to hold in January the largest-ever joint military exercises with Israel.

The assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists falls within the covert activities in disrupting nuclear energy production in Iran. In addition, it works to create an atmosphere of fear among other Iranian scientists who want to work in their field of study. This is similar to the right-wing assassinations of physicians in the U.S. who perform the procedure of abortion, which is legal in the U.S. The terrorists who kill scientists aim to make it difficult for the Iranian nuclear energy industry to find scientists who would work there. However, the people of Iran have repeatedly stated their resolve to defend their right to nuclear energy.

Considering that Hillary Clinton threatened Iran with military attack, it is disingenuous for her to state that the U.S. denies involvement in any act of violence within Iran. A military attack on Iran, especially an attack on Iran’s nuclear energy facilities, would produce results similar to a nuclear attack (U.S. Concerned Scientists report). It would be the most violent act against the people of Iran, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

All the actions listed above, sanctioned by the U.S. government, are intended to weaken the Iranian government and economy, create an atmosphere of fear and dissatisfaction among the people, increase unrest, and decrease trust, all in the service of making it easier for a military attack on Iran. Of course, so far these actions have only strengthened the Iranian people’s resolve to protect their country against Imperialism. Similar U.S. actions are aimed at any government which fails to submit to the U.S. corporate domination. This disobedience or defiance by Iran is its real “crime.”

It is extremely important that all international and especially U.S. antiwar and progressive organizations condemn these acts of assassination of innocent citizens as well as all forms of violent and aggressive actions by U.S. and Israel.

1) Condemn the assassination of Iranian scientists.

2) End all sanctions against Iran.

3) End covert activities inside Iran.

4) End all war threats against Iran.

“No war, No Sanctions, No Internal Intervention in Iran!”

An earlier and more comprehensive statement by UNAC on the threat of war against Iran can be seen at www.unacpeace.org under “UNAC Statements.”

NY Transit Workers Under Attack

2012-02-08T19:46:00.002-06:00

NEW YORK—The contract between Transport Workers Union Local 100, representing 34,000 subway and bus workers, and the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), expired at midnight Jan. 15. The MTA is demanding a contract with three years of no raises, increased healthcare costs and other big concessions.

The MTA’s demands are an attempt to make working people pay for a crisis of the profit system and its Wall Street crooks. As the union with the power to shut down the financial capital of the world, Local 100’s contract fight impacts struggles far beyond New York City.

Speaking to a crowd of several hundred Local 100 workers and supporters at an evening contract rally on Jan. 15, union President John Samuelsen ended his speech by declaring, “We’re not eating three zeros. We’re not going to let Governor Cuomo and the head of the MTA say that they’re balancing their budget on the backs of Local 100 members. I’ll tell [them] that we’ll fight them for a month, we’ll fight them for two months, we’ll fight them until they relent and give us a fair contract.”

Samuelsen’s speech was interrupted several times by chants of “Shut it down!” But even so, the contract expired without visible effect. There had been three contract rallies of modest size; the largest had about 1000. For now, Local 100 will be working under the old contract. Local 100 had struck the MTA in 1966, 1980, and again in 2005, the latter a failed 2½-day strike that demoralized workers.

The MTA says raises are to be “net zero,” paid for by massive union concessions. Added are $6000 in costs per year per member for health care, the use of part-time workers in buses, and reducing jobs and safety with One Person Train Operation—that is, computerized train operation.

Public workers across the U.S. are under attack by Democratic and Republican administrations. Trillions have been slashed from public services. Lost are half a million public sector jobs since the recession. In 2010, over 900 Local 100 members were laid off due to a so-called budget deficit. Most have returned, except for 150 at the start of 2012.

Untouched were skyrocketing MTA debts to banks and wealthy buyers of MTA-issued bonds, who receive hundreds of millions per year in tax-free income. In 2011, the MTA paid over $2 billion from its $12.6 billion budget to banks and MTA bond owners.

Billions worth of MTA bonds are sold to make-up for funding cuts at the federal, state and city level. There is a $9 billion shortfall in construction funding, mainly on over-budget “mega-projects” to be funded by more billions in MTA bond sales. Socialists say, “Cancel the debt to banks and bond holders! Fund mass transit, not war!”

The key strategy of the boss class is to pit transit workers against riders—that is, pit working people against each other—while making the entire working class pay for the crimes of Wall Street crooks. In 2010 alone, there were unprecedented service cuts and a fare hike. Transit workers were portrayed as the prime culprit.

Governor Cuomo recently appointed Joe Lhota to head the MTA. During the 1980s Lhota was a top official in the law-and-order administration of Mayor Rudy Guiliani. In 1999 Giuliani imposed a court injunction on Local 100 against striking, which included a $1 million-a-day fine and/or jail for the union, including fines for talking about striking. The injunctions were based on New York State’s notorious Taylor Law, which forbids strikes by public workers. Democrats and Republicans passed the Taylor Law in the wake of Local 100’s successful strike in 1966, which secured greatly improved pensions.

Last year, a three-zeros contract with increased employee medical costs and 2% raises in the last two years was rammed down the throats of state workers in the large Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) and Public Employees Federation (PEF). Cuomo’s bullying included threats to layoff 4500 workers. PEF members rejected the rotten deal after a “vote-no” effort, but finally ratified it after a fear campaign by Cuomo and union bureaucrats.

Thus far, Samuelsen has rejected calls to knuckle under to the CSEA and PEF model. Actually, Local 100 salaries already trail workers who serve mostly better-off riders on the MTA suburban lines. Local 100 pay is also less than virtually all other urban mass transit systems. The last two Local 100 contracts were imposed by an arbitrator’s ruling, always a bad deal for unions, cutting short militant action and allowing bureaucrats to duck responsibility.

In years past the slogan “No contract, no work” was a guiding, although seldom observed, principle. Not so in 2012. Also absent is the “no givebacks” demand, another staple of Local 100 contract fights. The “no givebacks” demand was not presented at the start of negotiations in November nor mentioned at December’s yearly mass meeting. Deflecting criticism, the union’s website briefly listed “no givebacks,” but added “no unreasonable givebacks.”

Lastly, a “strike authorization vote” was not taken at December’s meeting. In reality, the important vote merely gives permission to the Executive Board to call a strike, which it seldom does. No such vote sends the MTA a clear signal. Samuelsen has publicly refused to rule out striking. But when questioned, he insists that the Executive Board “has not discussed it,” diminishing the strike threat.

In fact, the current leadership took no position at all on the course of the 2005 strike. Today, thousands remain in “bad standing” for non-payment of dues after automatic union dues collection (dues check-off) was removed by a Democratic Party judge for Taylor Law violations in 2005.

In January, 20 Albany “pro-labor” Democrats called on the MTA to “bargain fairly” and negotiate a “decent contract.” None of these fakers told the press that they actually embraced and would fight for TWU demands.

Last fall, Local 100 initiated two large rallies in support of Occupy Wall Street, attracting up to 20,000 working-class fighters, although mostly not behind union banners. The rallies were historic. Unfortunately, that momentum has not been sustained. Yet, mass action is what the union movement desperately needs, both on the job and off.

Union leaders, tied to the Democratic Party, are quite comfortable with borrowing OWS phrases but unwilling to adopt the bold, confrontational tactics of OWS. Unions must flip the script on Wall Street and the 1%. Labor must shut it down to win!

> The article above was written by Marty Goodman, and first appeared in the February 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Indiana passes anti-union ‘right to work’ law

2012-02-08T19:45:00.001-06:00

In the latest attack on workers’ rights by state government, Indiana became the 23rd “right to work” state when Gov. Mitch Daniels signed the anti-union law on Feb. 1.

Thousands of trade unionists and Occupy activists marched outside of the state capitol to denounce the reactionary bill. For weeks the same forces have been rallying in even larger numbers outside the statehouse. Occupiers and union members from throughout the state have mobilized.

The misnamed “right to work” law in reality gives workers the “right” to work for lower wages. These laws make dues payment voluntary even if workers are protected by a union contract. While dues are voluntary, unions are still legally required to service non-members. (Closed shops are illegal in the United States under the Taft-Hartley law; however in the 27 other states non-members must pay a service fee to the union.)

Right to work laws are intended to deplete union treasuries while creating divisions in the workforce between members and non-members. The result is that in the states that have “right to work laws,” workers make an average of $1500 less per year.

Indiana is just the latest example of the bosses’ war against workers’ rights, coming on the heels of massive struggles in Wisconsin and Ohio. In all three states the attacks on unions have been met by a huge outpouring of support for organized labor.

In Indiana protesters continuously marched outside the state capitol. As in Wisconsin, Democratic Senators held up a vote by leaving the state and preventing a quorum. To the disappointment of many activists, however, the Democrats returned after Republicans proposed fines of $1000 a day. Apparently for the Democrats, solidarity has its limits!

While the Indiana AFL-CIO supported the rallies in Indianapolis, many activists complained that they did not put their full resources into mobilization and instead focused on lobbying, unsuccessfully, a small group of Republican Senators to oppose the bill.

Activists are now organizing a series of events in Indianapolis under the banner of “Occupy the Super Bowl.” They intend to use the event to draw attention to the right to work laws through informational pickets and other actions.

The NFL Players Union, which has gone on record against right to work, has pledged its support and some NFL players are planning to participate. Some Occupy activists have called for occupations of parks and other direct actions.

While it appears the battle in Indiana is lost for the moment on “right to work,” the resistance to it, as in Wisconsin and Ohio, shows that while organized labor might be weakened, it still has the potential to mobilize mass numbers and to attract broad support among working people when it stands up and fights back.

> The article above was written by David Bernt, and first appeared in the February 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

‘People’s State of the State’ protests Wisconsin mining bill

2012-02-08T19:44:00.001-06:00

MADISON—On Jan. 25, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker gave his State of the State address, in which he touted fake “job creation” and balancing the budget on the backs of state workers, who took a more than 8% pay and benefit cut and lost their collective bargaining rights.

Earlier in the day, an independent “People’s State of the State” was held in the capitol, in which anyone could testify and which was broadcast live over the internet. Some spoke passionately about what the austerity measures have meant for working people here. One speaker testified that her child’s classroom aide needed food stamps and lost health insurance for her family when the premiums increased, while another said that her son opted out of going to college because he was afraid of accruing student loan debt that he wouldn’t be able to repay.

That evening, over 400 people gathered on the steps outside the capitol to protest a bill that would gut the state’s environmental standards to facilitate an open-pit iron mine in northern Wisconsin. The rally was endorsed by 20 organizations and featured a number of speakers, including environmentalists, pro-labor groups, and tribal elders from the Bad River Band of Ojibwe, whose Indian reservation is downstream of the proposed mine.

The State Assembly took up the mining bill the following day. Two busloads of Ojibwe people, including many youth, traveled over 250 miles from Bad River to Madison, greeting legislators as they came into the Assembly chambers with anti-mine banners and asking some point-blank, “Are you going to kill me?” The tribe has characterized the mine as a life-or-death issue for them, as its runoff could pollute their water source and damage wild rice beds that they rely on for food and income. One Ojibwe drummer was cited by the cops with “disorderly conduct” for drumming a traditional song in the capitol rotunda.

A public speak-out on the mining bill was held throughout the day and live webcasted. Before the vote, the Assembly gallery was cleared of spectators when several broke administrative rules by holding signs and taking photos. A crowd of the 50 or so who were ejected chanted outside of the chamber as the bill was passed 59-36. The legislation now must go through the Senate, where more opposition to some provisions is expected. Senate Republicans support the bill as is, while Democrats have said they want to tweak the bill to encourage “responsible mining” of the Penokees—an oxymoron according to Ojibwe tribes and their allies.

Meanwhile, unions and their allies are gearing up for a week of protests in mid-February marking the first anniversary of the Wisconsin uprising. One year ago, hundreds of thousands took to the streets here, and the state capitol was occupied for 17 days and nights, in a heroic attempt to defend the rights of public workers to collectively bargain with the state that inspired working people around the world and the ongoing Occupy movement. A large turnout is expected on Feb. 11 and the following days for planned marches and rallies. Stay tuned!

> The article above was written by Carl Sack, and first appeared in the February 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Bay Area forums to hear author of book on Kevin Cooper

2012-02-08T19:42:00.003-06:00

A coalition of social justice activists in the San Francisco Bay Area has organized a Feb. 5-12 book tour for J. Patrick O’Connor, the author of “Scapegoat: The Chino Hills Murders and the framing of Kevin Cooper.” O’Connor’s new book provides a detailed analysis of Cooper’s case and exposes the broken criminal “justice” system in the United States.

Kevin Cooper has been on death row at San Quentin for over 25 years, falsely convicted of the murders of a California family and their house guest in 1985. “Scapegoat” demonstrates how the San Bernardino district attorney’s office framed Cooper for the murders, and how the court system has failed him at almost every turn in his long appeal process. If it were not for a court-ordered moratorium on executions in California over the lethal injection controversy, Cooper—with no appeals remaining—would have been executed by now. It is expected the moratorium will be lifted in late 2012.

J. Patrick O’Connor has been the editor and publisher of Crime Magazine since 1998. He was a reporter and bureau manager for United Press International, editor of Cincinnati Magazine, and an associate editor of TV Guide. He is the author of “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” which was published by Lawrence Hill Books in 2008.

Tour sponsors include the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, and many other groups.

Public forums with O’Connor and other prison activists will include Laney College in Oakland, 7 p.m., Wed., Feb. 8; UC Berkeley, 7 p.m., Fri., Feb. 10; and San Jose Peace & Justice Center, 2 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 12. For information on these and other meetings, contact: jmackler@lmi.net.

Letter from Lynne Stewart

2012-02-08T19:41:00.001-06:00

An appeal of Lynne Stewart’s lengthened sentence is set for 8 a.m., Feb. 29, at the federal courthouse at New York’s Foley Square. There will be an all-night rally for Lynne in the square, starting at 7 p.m. Information: (917) 853-9759.

After the disaster in July 2010, when Judge Koeltl, following the directives of the Second Circuit increased my sentence from 28 months to 10 years, our righteous indignation fueled this appeal. The government’s argument will center on my testimony at trial and the alleged perjury. All of those facts were before the court at the time of the 28-month sentence and were not the basis then of a double-digit sentence.

Our brief attacks the increased sentence on two different fronts—one on a doctrine of “substantive unreasonableness,” meaning it’s just too much of an increase, five fold—given the circumstances. Secondly, we argued that the only “new” information before the judge were my statements after my first sentence in October of 2008 and remarks I made on the courthouse steps before I surrendered to prison. We contend strongly that this is protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution, and cannot be used to increase or as a basis for sentencing. (Even if they hate it !!!)

The same group of three judges that heard and decided the original appeal will also hear the arguments on the 29th. The government is not asking for more time; they are satisfied with their pound of flesh but it is not likely that this court will take any action that will help me. The times are askew for prisoners and their lawsuits. (The brief is available at my website, www.lynnestewart.org.)

The lawyers that argued in July of 2010 will be on board, with the addition of Herald Price Fahringer, an eminent attorney in the First Amendment field (the win in the Larry Flynt Hustler case in the U.S. Supreme Court was his. He was also in the line of fire (no injuries) when the shooting took place.) He will enthusiastically present our case. I will not be present—not unusual once imprisoned. But my spirit will be there to inspire!!!

Of course, my case has always been government firing warning shots to lawyers, that a vigorous defense, of certain clients, if not conforming to government specifications, will be punished severely. This chill effect in these days that we are confronted with grand jury investigations and dismantling of Occupations is not something we should contemplate with anything less than alarm. I have just finished David Gilbert’s book (“Love Struggle”) and the intercession of lawyers when there are arrests of designated enemies of the “state” are the only meaningful protection available.

A large outpouring of support in Foley Square and Tom Paine Park and in the courtroom will signal to these arbiters of “justice” that attention must be paid, the 99% are watching them with suspicion and tallying up the roads not taken.

Review of "Le Havre"

2012-02-08T19:39:00.003-06:00

“Le Havre,” written and directed by Aki Kaurasmaki, in French with English subtitles.

An older man, Marcel, with the telling last name of Marx (Andre Wilms), shines shoes outside the bus terminal in the port town of Le Havre. He gets few takers and goes home to his dog, Laika, and much younger, but plain, wife, Arletty (Kati Outinen). He takes the dog for a walk while she fixes dinner, and heads for the neighborhood pub. The camera stays on Arletty, chopping onions. A look of pain crosses her face; her hand moves to her chest.

They are the shabby poor, barely able to keep the tin roofs of their slapped together wooden homes over their head. A meal consists of cheese, bread (often stolen), and a glass of wine, occasionally a stew. On the way to the pub, shopkeepers along the way hassle Marcel about money he owes them, say he’s a thief. The simple life there is belied by an air of suspicion.

The overall mood of the film is depressing, but many of the characters the actors portray are quite heart warming.

People are stopped by authorities at random and asked for IDs. An Asian regular at the pub, named Chang (Quac Dung Nguyen), confesses to Marcel that he himself is an illegal—Vietnamese—with fake Chinese papers. Things heat up when a watchman at a shipping yard suspects that people have been smuggled in from Africa in a container.

Cops are called; an armored strike force shows up. When the container is opened people stare out blankly. A young, teenage boy, wearing jeans and a sweater, dashes out. A cop raises his assault rifle but is stopped by Detective Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), in long dark overcoat and slouch hat. “He’s only a boy,” he says. Headlines and TV news reports about the immigrants lead to fear of an al Queda connection. Authorities ask if they are terrorists.

Eating his lunch in the harbor one day, Marcel sees the boy hiding hip deep in the water under a pier. With one look, an understanding is reached. From then on, while his wife is in the hospital, dying of an unstated fatal disease, Marcel helps the boy, Idrissa (Blondin Miguel). In a roundabout way involving a visit to an immigration detention center, where he lies about his relationship to the detainee (“I’m the family albino”), Marcel is told that Idrissa’s grandfather lives near Calais, in a camp with other migrants on a beach called “The Jungle.”

Calais is currently home to around 1000 migrants—about 800 Afghans—who want to get to the UK and avoid the strict immigration controls at the port. French authorities destroyed their camp in a dawn raid in 2009 (the film was made in 2011). Some inhabitants were imprisoned at the Centre de Rétention of Coquelles; others were taken to detention centers all over France before being released. They then try to make the long journey back to Calais on foot while French authorities threaten to repatriate them to Afghanistan.

A nosy neighbor rats on the boy. The shopkeepers—now sympathetic since Marcel is about to become a widower, along with palpable contempt for the authorities—hide Idrissa during Marcel’s absence. After a long bus ride to Calais, a taxi drops him at the immigrants’ beach camp. Idrissas’s stately, robed, grandfather, Mahmat Saleh (Umban U’kset), gives him the name and address of the boy’s mother, a legal resident, living in London.

With Inspector Monet constantly on their heels, the film begins to feel like “Les Miserables” or “The Fugitive,” with Monet as Javert or Samuel Girard respectively. Eventually, Idrissa is stowed away in the hold of a fishing vessel. Marcel had arranged a charity concert, headed by real-life rocker, Little Bob (Robert Piazza), a strange, small man with a white, birds’ nest hairdo, to raise the fee for the boat owner to take Idrissa across the Channel to England, where he’ll find his mother.

Although the film deals with the themes of injustice, poverty, and the systematic oppression waged against immigrants, its message is never heavy handed. Hopefully, many in the audience will come away from “Le Havre” with increased sympathy for immigrants, and more understanding of their plight.

> The article above was written by Gaetana Caldwell-Smith, and first appeared in the February 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Northern Lights (news & views from Canada)

2012-02-08T19:37:00.002-06:00

Ontario workers rally against concessions and lock-out

Some 10,000 people, according to the Toronto Star, converged at London’s Victoria Park, two hours west of Toronto, on Jan. 21 to participate in the rally sponsored by the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) against the lockout of 500 workers.

The London workers are members of the Canadian Auto Workers Union at the Electro-Motive Canada plant (recently acquired by Caterpillar Inc.).

The lockout was imposed after the union refused to negotiate the outrageous concessions demanded by the company, including a 50% reduction in wages, and savage cuts in benefits.

The company is threatening to move the work to the United States and to close the plant. The rally heard from a number of speakers, including OFL President Sid Ryan, NDP federal Leader Nicole Turmel, and the mayor of London.

Unfortunately, more than half the crowd could not hear the speakers because the OFL—once again—failed to mount an adequate sound system.

Following the rally a large number of the demonstrators travelled to the plant, a few kilometers away, where they joined the CAW picket line.

Socialist Action members carried a banner that read, “Nationalize Auto, Steel and the Banks—Under Workers’ Control! Make Capital Pay for the Crisis.”

After the rally, NDP Socialist Caucus activist and unionist John Orrett told this reporter, “In his speech Ryan said the OFL believes in a different model of capitalism, but of course they never spell this out. For them it is just capitalism with a happy face. They never admit that there is no such thing.”

> The article above was written by John Wilson.

Defection to Liberals highlights dilemma for NDP

While NDP officials go to great pains to prevent leftists from becoming NDP candidates at election time, they’d do better to spend more time screening the right wingers in their ranks. A case in point is Lise St-Denis, who was elected NDP MP in the Quebec riding of St-Maurice-Champlain and who crossed the line to join the federal Liberals on Jan. 10. She was one of 58 NDP rookies to win a seat in Quebec last May 2. Why the sudden decision to bolt, after St-Denis spent a decade volunteering for the party?

The 71-year-old MP said she did not feel “at ease” in a party that wanted to put an end to the Canadian Forces mission in Libya, that called for abolition of the Senate, and that rejected any private-sector involvement in building a new bridge in Montreal. She stressed that the NDP had lost its “drawing card” in Quebec with the death of Jack Layton.

But could St-Denis be as flaky as that? Could she have been unaware of basic NDP policies when she ran last Spring? Or was it a case of the party brass being unaware, or worse, unconcerned about her “ease” with perpetuation of the status quo—including the non-elected “Upper Chamber,” imperialist interventions in the Arab countries, and private-public partnerships that undermine workers and squander public funds?

NDP MP Guy Caron, who chairs the party’s Quebec caucus, was correct to say, “Changing political affiliation is a blatant lack of respect for democracy. If the Liberals think that this is what the voters of her riding want, we challenge them to run Ms. St-Denis in a by-election.” But there is another point to this incident. And it’s not just that the NDP was unprepared politically for the “orange wave” breakthrough—a victim of its own success, so to speak.

The point is that the party leadership recruits candidates in its own image. At its core, that image is increasingly associated with opportunism, lack of principles, and shallowness. Party bureaucrats and party electoral campaigns project accommodation to the capitalist system and its vaunted institutions. They foster illusions in Ottawa’s foreign policy, covering up the reality of military intervention at the service of corporate power and profit.

And the party elite’s longstanding subordination of the aspirations of oppressed nations to the vice-grip of the bourgeois state makes it completely unsurprising that the NDP attracts liberal federalists in Quebec like St-Denis, who after surviving the shock of her election as MP, discovered that she is more at “ease” in the Liberal Party caucus. The only good thing about this incident is that there will be one less advocate of merger with the Liberal Party inside the NDP federal caucus.

Until her departure, St-Denis was a strong supporter of Thomas Mulcair’s bid for NDP Leader. What does Mulcair think about his erstwhile fan’s act of treachery? And what say the other candidates for NDP Leader? The silence is deafening. What we see here is fundamentally a problem of class perspective. For what class programme does the NDP fight?

The ambiguity of the NDP’s stance underscores the need for NDP political education in the spirit of working-class independence from the system of exploitation, and from its state apparatus. So, when the NDP Socialist Caucus argues that, in order to survive, the NDP must turn sharply to the left, clearly it is no exaggeration.

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Harper warns against environmental ‘radicals’

The Conservative Stephen Harper government has revealed its mean streak once again. In an open letter released on Jan. 9, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver lashed out at environmental organizations, branding them as “radicals” who “use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest.”

The letter came on the eve of regulatory hearings into the development of the $5.5 billion Northern Gateway pipeline project, which would see oil flow from the Alberta tar sands to the British Columbia coast, where it would be poured into supertankers bound for Asia and elsewhere. It is one of two proposed tar sands pipelines, the other being the Keystone XL pipeline to Texas, which was dealt a major setback in January when U.S. President Barak Obama rejected (for now) its proposed route through a sensitive ecosystem in Nebraska.

As with Keystone XL, the Northern Gateway poses a serious risk to the environment. The pipeline would pass over the Rocky Mountains and cross 1000 rivers and streams in some of Canada’s most pristine natural sites. It would also cut through 65 First Nations communities, 61 of which have declared their opposition to the project.

It is therefore not surprising that 4300 people have asked to participate in the regulatory review to draw attention to the pipeline’s threats. However, according to the Conservatives, a “radical ideological agenda” is at play, aided by “jet-setting celebrities,” which aims to “delay a project to the point it becomes economically unviable.”

This argument is a mix of misinformation, hysteria, and blatant hypocrisy, which has become Harper’s standard formula in attacking opponents. Undoubtedly, certain Canadian environmental groups do receive support from abroad—it is only normal that they would work with other groups who share their concern for protecting the planet. But the real threat is the corporate money that is being poured into the dirty business of extracting the tar sands. According to the Globe and Mail, such money is “welcome” in Harper’s Canada, even when it comes from disreputable anti-worker regimes such as China’s.

In the midst of the manufactured hysteria, it bears noting that, according to Environmental Defence, all of the environmental organizations intervening in the review are based in Canada, and 79 per cent of those registered to speak are B.C. residents. On the other hand, 10 of the 16 intervening oil companies have foreign-based headquarters.

Harper’s demonization of respected environmental organizations is a disgraceful tactic, deployed to ensure that the even more disgraceful business of extracting tar-sands oil continues unabated. Socialists demand a halt to tar-sands extraction, and call for strong resistance to Harper’s belligerence against civil society groups, whose advocacy work represents an important expression of the exercise of democratic rights.

> The article above was written by Eric Kupka.

Act Now to Get Mumia Out of Solitary Confinement!

2012-01-22T17:42:00.000-06:00

Mumia Abu-Jamal is being held in Administrative Custody (“The Hole” or Solitary Confinement) at SCI Mahanoy, Frackville, PA. Mumia’s death sentence has been dropped, and though he is supposed to be in General Population, he has been held in Solitary Confinement – shackled whenever he’s out side his cell (even to the shower), glaring lights 24/7, no regular phone calls, restrictive visits, inadequate commissary, no access to his materials and denied his typewriter.

SIGN THE PETITION TO TRANSFER MUMIA TO GENERAL POPULATION BY CLICKING HERE NOW!
Write, call, and email the following people and demand that Mumia be moved to general population and that these torture units be shut down!

1) John Wetzel, Secretary
Department of Corrections
2520 Lisburn Road,
P.O. Box 598
Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598
717) 975-4928
Email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov

2) John Kerestes,
Superintendent
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
(570) 773-2158
fax 570-783-2008

3)Seth Williams, DA
Three South Penn Square
Philadelphia, PA 19107-3499
(215) 686-8000
Email: DA_Central@phila.gov

MAILING ADDRESS FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL:

Mumia Abu-Jamal, #AM8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932

A World Without Wall Street

2012-01-15T14:20:00.006-06:00

The title of this note is from today's "It's the Economy" feature by Adam Davidson in the print version of the Sunday Times magazine.

In the online version that title is replaced with the less provocative "What Does Wall Street Do For You?" --a title which is actually more accurate, as Davidson's main contention is that we CAN'T do without Wall Street because of what it does for us.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/magazine/what-does-wall-street-do-for-you.html?_r=1&ref=magazine)

Davidson ends his column by admitting that there is no way regulation can rein in Wall Street's crimes and excesses, yet he still believes its virtues outweigh its vices.

Certainly with a government run by and for the ruling class, he's right on the limits of regulation. But that's another, and less fundamental point.

For Davidson mentions in passing one function of capital -- in fact it's central function -- which if analyzed correctly shows that we can and MUST do without Wall Street.

Davidson notes the role of Wall Street in what we Marxists call the sphere of circulation, i.e. as a channel to redistribute money from those that have it to those that don't. Davidson portrays this as benefiting the middle class and even the poor who otherwise couldn't make purchases they need and want. Naturally he says nothing about the role of expanded credit in propping up a system that would otherwise have long ago fallen from the weight of its falling profit rates and the resulting collapse of its markets (see Mandel's "Late Capitalism" on the role of credit in postponing and exacerbating inevitable crises).

But what's more important is how credit, thanks to the financial institutions through which it flows, performs the redistributive function Davidson correctly notes --although it does so not primarily from rich to poor, but rather from workers to capitalists, and then among the capitalists in a newly socialized form.

That is, the capital flowing through the system originates in surplus value extracted from the workers. Once so extracted, banks and other institutions gather that capital in pools far bigger than the capital of any of the individual capitalists from which it originated. And in so doing banks make available funds for investments far greater than would be possible if a capitalist could draw only upon his own accumulated wealth.

Capital, in other words, is objectively socialized: socialized in its technical function, but only objectively because it is still privately owned. (This is parallel to the objective socialization of manufacturing and services within corporations.) For a description of this feature of credit, see:

Capital, Vol. 3, Chapter 27. The Role of Credit in Capitalist Production

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch27.htm

Why does this matter for workers, especially those who have rallied to the call to "Occupy Wall Street"? Because this objective socialization presents the possibility of such an occupation in the most literal sense, that is, of seizing those banks and other corporations whose technical functions are carried out in a socialized manner and, by taking them out of the hands of private owners, putting the accumulated riches stolen from us at the service of society as a whole, a society which for the first time can vote freely on what to do with these riches.

We can be sure, of course, that once having a democratic say over such expenditures that workers will vote to fund essential needs such as food, housing, education, child care, culture, etc., and not war and luxuries for the idle few.

PS: I must note in passing that the analysis of credit and banks above is at odds with that of David Graeber in his book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years." Or more precisely, not at odds but rather irrelevant to Graeber's schema. Graeber says nothing about the origin of the bankers' wealth in the surplus value produced by workers, focusing only on various debts owed. Nor does he say anything about the possibility of seizing the banks. In fact, the implication of his one concrete suggestion, to declare a "Jubilee" and cancel debt, is that after such a cancellation the system will go on exactly as before, with new debts slowly accumulating until once again somewhere down the road it becomes time for another Jubilee.

Given Graeber's prominence in the Occupy movement (earned in great part by his selfless and courageous activism), these lacunae in his analyses are especially unfortunate -- and go a long way in explaining the reliance upon similarly short-sighted "solutions" among many Occupiers, who call for withdrawing money from the banks and putting them in credit unions or "alternative" banks -- while leaving the great capitalist financial institutions alone.

> The article above was written by Andrew Pollack.

Occupy, longshore workers challenge anti-union bosses

2012-01-13T19:29:00.001-06:00

Time Magazine designated its “Person of the Year 2011” as “The Protestor.” To make clear that its reference was to what the editors considered the most important development of the year, Time added to its cover-page headline: “From the Arab Spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow.” Its feature story began, “No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square, it would have ignited protests that would topple dictators and start a global wave of dissent. In 2011 protestors didn’t just voice their complaints, they changed the world.”

Time, among the most popular mainstream news magazines in the United States, has a point of sorts. No one can predict whether a specific event will ignite mass struggles that can change the course of history. But history does repeatedly demonstrate that the importance and interconnection of seemingly isolated events depend in great part on the historical context in which they take place. Today this context is the worldwide crisis of the capitalist system and the total incapacity of the ruling rich to offer any solution other than deeper incursions into the quality of life of working people everywhere.

In this context, the Occupy movement’s resounding proclamation of the class divide—“We are the 99 percent; the bankers, corporations, and their government are the one percent”—has been seared into the consciousness of millions. In the blink of an eye, yesterday’s impossible challenges can today become the order of the day. The nearly 40-year virtually uninterrupted series of concessions and defeats imposed by capital against labor can be reversed only on the condition that the 99 percent organize to fight back, and that in the course of this fightback a mass revolutionary socialist party is constructed to challenge the capitalist system itself.

A seemingly instant turn of events was sparked by the late December call of the relatively small numbers actively engaged in Occupy Oakland to mobilize a mass force in January to help embattled International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Union (ILWU Local 21) workers challenge a major union-busting effort by the EGT corporation. EGT’s union-busting ship, to be escorted by the U.S. Coast Guard, military ships and helicopters, and an expected mass force of land-based police and military personnel, seeks to dock and upload a grain cargo at its new $200 million non-union facility.

This won’t be the first time that EGT has moved to make its scab facility operational. Last July, 1000 ILWU members and supporters responded by blocking a train carrying grain to the Longview terminal. And again, on Sept. 7, according to a flyer distributed by Local 21, “400 union supporters blocked a grain train in Vancouver, Washington, and then again in Longview. The next morning hundreds of longshore workers arrived from all the Northwest ports before dawn, and news media reported thousands of tons of grain ended up on the tracks. The ports of Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Vancouver and Portland were shut down—the workers were all in Longview.”

Today, ILWU Local 21 and the Bay Area-based ILWU Local 10 have joined to put some teeth into Occupy Oakland’s call for a January mass mobilization in Longview. They are supported in this effort by the San Francisco Labor Council, which will be joining a Solidarity Caravan headed for Longview. The labor council, which subsequently approved $1500 toward the caravan’s expenses, passed a Dec. 19 solidarity resolution that states:

“Whereas, EGT Development, a joint venture of multinational corporations Bunge, Itochu and STX Pan Ocean, agreed to hire union Longshoremen when accepting millions in taxpayer funds to build a massive grain exporting terminal at the Port of Longview, and once the terminal was built has tried to void its contract and has refused to hire ILWU labor, ...

“Whereas, with the use of police and courts and the 220 arrests in the 225-member ILWU Local 21, EGT has managed to get enough grain across ILWU picket lines and into the terminal that EGT appears poised to load a ship soon in violation of their agreement with the Port of Longview, ...

“Whereas, an ILWU Local 10-endorsed solidarity caravan of union members and community activists from the Bay Area is being organized to bolster our brothers and sisters of ILWU Local 21 in Longview, WA, for an emergency mass protest when requested to do so, therefore:

“Be It Resolved that the San Francisco Labor Council endorses the solidarity caravan, will spread the word about the caravan to its membership and constituency groups, and encourage their participation.”

Similarly, the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties (Washington) Central Labor Council adopted a Jan. 2 resolution stating in part: “It is estimated, sometime in late January or early February the [scab] EGT facility at the port of Longview will receive its first grain ship to be loaded at its berth. The name and timing of this ship will undoubtedly be kept secret until the last possible moment. It is likely there will be a few days to as little as 24 hours notice of when the ship will dock. Notification will be given via the Internet and any other relevant means of networking throughout the country.

“We are imploring all able working-class people willing to take time out of his or her own lives, to come to Longview, Washington for a historic protest. …

“The class struggle never really goes away. Right now the rich and the ruling class are attempting to deal a blow that labor might never recover from. The ILWU has always been the vanguard of labor everywhere. Today, the ILWU’s value of “An Injury to One, Is an Injury to All” couldn’t be any more pertinent for all organizations. So please, if you believe in a better future for the 99% of us that work for a living, do what you can to support ILWU Local 21.”

The stakes in the Longview ILWU struggle are high. If EGT’s planned scab-operated effort is successful, the door will swing open for the corporations to attempt to smash unionized ILWU port workers on the entire West Coast—one of the most important union bastions in the country. As with the massive defeats they imposed on the United Automobile Workers in recent years, the government and bosses now seek to take their pound of flesh from the ILWU. They aim to reduce labor costs to the near minimum wage rates that have been imposed on other once powerful unions.

A defeat in Longview will resound throughout the world—as will a union victory. The highly unionized West Coast ports are the point of entry and departure for commodities worth hundreds of billions of dollars that are traded on world markets. The historic ILWU victories against powerful corporate and government forces in the 1930s and 1940s were a product of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike of 65,000 workers that won the union collective bargaining rights, model wage scales, benefits, and working conditions that persist to this day.

“Third-party” pickets

The Occupy Oakland call to close down the port of Longview was no idle bluster. It was the Occupy Oakland activists who first issued a call for a city-wide “general strike” on Nov. 2 to protest the police attack a few days earlier that had demolished the encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza (renamed Oscar Grant Plaza by the Occupiers) and brutalized peaceful Occupiers with tear gas, pepper spray, and clubs. A police-fired missile that night that smashed the skull of the encampment leader and U.S. Marine veteran of the Iraq War, Scott Olsen, was a shot heard around the world.

The reaction shocked more than a few when 30,000 working people mobilized in response to shut down a good number of Oakland’s banks and other corporate institutions and the multi-billion-dollar Port of Oakland itself. In the face of this power in the streets, the very city officials that ordered the crackdown felt compelled to instruct their subordinates that no punishment was to be implemented for city and country workers who chose to join the “general strike.”

In solidarity with the Longview workers and with some 22 Los Angeles truckers fighting for a union contract who were fired by a port corporation owned in part by Goldman Sacks, Occupy Oakland’s General Assembly proceeded to organize for a Dec. 12 West Coast port shutdown, in which 6000 protesters took part in Oakland alone. Support was won from the Longview ILWU Local 21 members, from the Los Angeles Labor Council and from several unions up and down the coast. Major efforts were undertaken to win the solidarity of ILWU workers at most of the West Coast ports.

This partially successful second effort to challenge the bosses’ austerity drive and organize solidarity for port workers from Los Angeles to Longview caused a bit of a stir in the labor bureaucracy. Some ILWU officials and other class-collaborationist labor bureaucrats argued, for the first time, that “third-party pickets”—that is, Occupy Oakland supporters and their allies who mobilized at the docks up and down the state—were flaunting what they called the “democratic right” of ILWU members to decide whether or not to engage in solidarity actions.

The corporate press and employers took it a bit further, claiming that the Occupy-initiated pickets were causing ILWU members to lose pay.

This was a peculiar development, and especially so in light of the ILWU’s longstanding tradition, and the contract provision won in struggle, that allowed the union to respect third-party picket lines when the “health and safety” of ILWU workers was in question. For decades, the ILWU ranks have utilized this “health and safety” contract provision, as well as others, to respect political picket lines and to effectively demonstrate solidarity with working-class causes around the world.

Over the years, the ports of Oakland and San Francisco, and sometimes the entire West Coast, have been periodically shut down for 24 hours, and sometimes longer, in solidarity with a broad range of struggles. These have included the fight against South African apartheid, protests against the slaughter of Salvadoran trade unionists by that nation’s then death-squad government, freedom and justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, opposition to non-union ships arriving from unionized ports in other countries, and antiwar actions demanding the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

These political and symbolic strikes have been widely acclaimed by trade unionists and social activists. The implication that today’s one-day port shutdowns to defend ILWU Local 21 are done behind the backs and against the wishes of ILWUers is not credible, and especially so when Local 21 and a broad range of other trade unionists clearly understand the major threat posed to the entire labor movement.

ILWU International President Robert McEllrath’s Jan. 3 statement entitled, “Prepare to take action when EGT vessel arrives” was issued to all ILWU locals. The statement expresses the union’s solidarity with Local 21’s cause and condemns the employers, government, and anti-union laws like Taft-Hartley that restrict solidarity pickets.

But McEllrath’s statement appears to differ in at least one critical aspect from the call for mass mobilizations issued by Local 21 and Local 10 and the San Francisco and Washington State Labor Councils. These organizations appear to be aiming their calls for solidarity to the coast-wide ILWU ranks and to the broader labor movement and its allies in the Occupy movement. Understanding that any confrontation with police and military authorities to thwart the operation of the EGT scab terminal must entail a labor and allied mobilization of massive proportions, not only in Longview but at all West Coast ports, they have not advised ILWU locals to refrain from mobilizing in Longview. By implication they seek to not only close down Longview but the entire West Coast.

McEllrath’s statement, in contrast, takes great pains to do the opposite. It reads, in part: “Locals need to be aware of the narrow path that we must cut through a federal labor law (the Taft-Hartley Act) that criminalizes worker solidarity, outlaws labor’s most effective tools, and protects commerce while severely restricting unions. Because Local 21’s labor dispute is with EGT, federal labor law entitles the Local to conduct picketing and other collective actions directed at EGT. Further, while the NLRB, which administers Taft-Hartley, sought and received an injunction in federal court on behalf of EGT against the ILWU and its members, the federal court denied the NLRB’s motion to ban picketing at the EGT facility in Longview, preserving our First Amendment rights to peacefully picket the company.

“The NLRB is currently seeking a second injunction, this time on behalf of PMA, on the theory that any disruption of work by the ILWU on the West Coast docks at the same time that the Union is protesting EGT constitutes a violation of Taft-Hartley. However, we have no dispute with PMA or its member companies. Thus, any showing of support for Local 21 at the time that a vessel calls at the EGT facility must be measured to ensure that the West Coast ports have sufficient manpower so as not to impact cargo movement for PMA member companies. A call for a protest of EGT is not a call for a shutdown of West Coast ports and must not result in one.” (Emphasis added.)

McEllrath’s statement also cautions ILWUers as to the severe penalties, including imprisonment, that might be imposed on would-be Longview protesters. And while condemning the government’s anti-worker collusion with corporations, McEllrath warns ILWU leaders to “take extreme caution” against those who might take non-ILWU-sanctioned actions against EGT.

Experienced trade unionists have long been aware that the ILWU and many other unions have often been compelled to take great care in their formulations to the ranks in order to avoid government-aided company attempts to impose serious fines and other sanctions against unions that exceed the limitations imposed by contracts. Indeed, most all of the politically powerful ILWU solidarity actions and one-day strikes over the years have been formally conducted in the name of ILWU members’ “concern” over their “health and safety” should they cross a third-party picket line aimed at closing down a port. Few believe, however, that any of these third-party pickets would pose a serious threat to an ILWU member’s safety.

This must be kept in mind when evaluating the statements of President McEllrath. The test of his fealty to Local 21’s cause will be in life itself, not in the words that might have been crafted to legally protect the union against massive employer damage claims. If the ILWU leadership mobilizes the mass forces necessary to seriously confront the planned scab operation in Longview, a battle of the first order is in the works. If not, the Longview struggle may well be lost, but nevertheless seen as an important component in labor’s coming fightback.

One critical point seems clear. The ILWU International president’s statement expressing solidarity with Local 21, however restricted, and its pledge to aid in the upcoming protests at Longview, would not have become a reality were it not for a dedicated small group of Oakland Occupiers and the solidarity they have lent to an ILWU local that faces destruction at the hands of a boss class that has hitherto run roughshod over workers around the world.

Workers’ pent-up anger explodes worldwide

The Longview struggle takes place in the context of working-class mobilizations around the world. These include the mass mobilizations that forced the resignation of the U.S.-backed dictators in Tunisia and Egypt (though the victories are still incomplete), the eight or more one-day anti-austerity general strikes in Greece, the mobilizations of millions in France that challenged the degradation of the pension system, the millions in Spain who occupied public plazas to protest the government’s austerity measures, and the 150,000 workers who occupied Madison, Wis., for a month to challenge the state’s abolition of public employee collective bargaining rights.

Today’s majority-supported Occupation Wall Street movement proved to be the spark that ignited the anger and pent-up class hatred of never-ending government and employer attacks on workers, oppressed nationalities, students, and youth in the United States. The 99 percent are coming to understand that their interests are diametrically opposed to those of the ruling-class rich and its government.

This government was quick to respond to the challenge to its political hegemony. In short order it systematically organized, military style, its ever-growing repressive police/military apparatus across the country to demolish virtually every one of the close to 1000 Occupy sites. In the course of a few weeks 5000 innocent protesters were arrested, many brutalized and jailed.

The power elite understood the modest campsites and meeting places of a few score to several hundred activists as the physical symbol of a challenge to its legitimacy, and thus deemed them unacceptable. The elite did not foresee that the brutal removal of Occupiers along with their tents and equipment would galvanize hundreds of thousands across the country.

The Occupiers found a receptive audience when they championed virtually every demand of the oppressed and exploited, including opposition to capitalism’s wars, its racist discrimination, its attacks on public education and soaring tuition, its increasingly for-profit and privatized prison-industrial complex, and its bail-out of multi-billion-dollar banks and other financial institutions at the expense of working people. Today, the call initiated by Occupy Oakland to stand in solidarity with beleaguered longshore workers is being watched closely around the world.

The shift in the public mood has been rapid and remarkable. A December 2011 Pew poll found that among young people in the age bracket of 19-29, 49 percent preferred socialism over capitalism. Forty-three percent favored capitalism. “Despite all of the declarations that socialism is dead,” said the Chicago-based education publication Substance News, “a growing minority of people, especially the young, see socialism as a more human alternative.” The Pew survey found that in the general population 60 percent to 31 percent favored capitalism over socialism. Among Blacks 55 percent favored socialism as against 36 percent favoring capitalism. The figures mark a significant change from a similar Pew poll taken a year ago.

It is unfair to expect the Occupy Wall Street movement to spearhead the inevitable class battles to come. But history will record that at a time when capitalism’s offensive was at full blast, Occupy was part of a series of struggles that evidenced the capacity of working people to resist and fight back. Such was also the case with the 2006 one-day strike of five million immigrants to protest planned punitive immigrant legislation.

Today Occupy stands tall as an example of what a dedicated core can accomplish if its politics and demands reflect the highest aspirations of the masses for a better life. Occupy’s solidarity with ILWU Local 21 and its encouragement of a mass effort to reverse yet another ruling-class offensive will not be forgotten.

> The article above was written by Jeff Mackler, and first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

After ‘withdrawal’ from Iraq, U.S. seeks new battlegrounds

2012-01-13T19:26:00.001-06:00

On Jan. 5, President Obama made a major speech about a coming shift in U.S. military strategy, a strategy that has been described as more “lean” and more “mean.” The fact that the speech coincided with the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq led mainstream commentators to characterize the change primarily as a move from employing large occupation forces in “nation-building” missions to the employment of drone warfare and special operations of the type that killed Osama Bin Laden.

While it is true that the United States, a nation deep in financial crisis and politically weakened by its failure to establish stable and effective client regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, hopes to do more damage with fewer troops and more Orwellian technology, the new strategy is hardly a decision by the U.S. elite to implement a substantial military drawdown. As The New York Times noted in an editorial on Jan. 5, even with the $500 billion in proposed cuts to the military budget over the next 10 years, the budget will continue to grow to be larger than in the past.

The Times editors also reflected ruling-class impatience with Obama’s election-year emphasis on the reduced deployment of ground forces, and reduction of the Army to 490,000 soldiers. “That sounds reasonable,” they said, “but there must be a clear plan on how to build it up again quickly as needed.”

It is also worth noting that the strategy review that Obama recently reported had come out was commissioned last year, well before the U.S. request to maintain a substantial combat force in Iraq had been squelched by the insecure Maliki client regime. In fact, the “shift” should be more properly understood as a geographic expansion of the number of arenas in which the White House hopes to flex its yet unchallenged military weight.

The direct link between the deepening of the U.S. economic crisis and the expanding geographic spread of projected military deployments is clearer than in the past. While the White House has to deal with a real deficit in funds available for war, they are at the same time driven by conditions of extreme economic competition to use their military might to gain an edge. In the Middle East, Central Asia, the Asian Pacific, and Africa, the U.S. is determined to meet longstanding objectives having to do with the ability to manipulate oil and gas supplies needed by its main economic competitors.

Iran and “the return to Asia”

Reporting of the Pentagon’s strategy shift, for example, focused on the U.S. decision to pay more attention on pressuring Iran and a new threat to intervene in the China Sea. The new sanctions on Iran, which make it more difficult for China and Japan to buy Iranian oil in the normal way, has stirred outrage in the East.

An amendment to the recently signed National Defense Authorization Act actually imposes additional sanctions on any countries or companies that buy Iranian oil and pay for it through Iran’s Central Bank. While this measure will probably not stop many sales in the long run (many such sales will likely be re-routed through new private banks), it is part of the new belligerency aimed directly at China.

U.S. intentions in the Pacific have been in the news since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in November 2011, took the side of the Philippines and Vietnam in a dispute with China over claims to the China Sea. Oil reserves in the South China Sea may total as much as 213 billion barrels. China has proposed joint development of the reserves by Asian powers, but the Philippines and Vietnam have rejected this proposal, with U.S. backing, and have awarded contracts to Exxon Mobil and other firms.

Chinese vessels, including at least one military ship, have been testing the maritime boundaries declared by the Philippines. It is understood that the Pentagon’s decision not to reduce its number of aircraft carriers has to do with the perceived need to boost naval presence in the Straits of Hormuz and the Pacific simultaneously.

The “War on Terror” in Africa

The U.S. government’s desire to use its military might to have leverage over energy flows is now also manifesting itself in a more visible way on the African continent. Obama’s declaration that he was sending combat troops to Central Africa alerted the antiwar movement that the U.S. efforts to secure Somalia, which is strategically located on the shipping lanes adjacent to the Horn of Africa, was beginning again in earnest. The proxy war there, which has recently involved the invasion of Somalia by Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia, is being disguised as part of a so-called War on Terror in Africa.

The U.S. is training Nigerian troops with the supposed goal of subduing a fundamentalist Islamist group called Boko Haram. A December report by a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security claims that Boko Haram is a link between a group called Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb in Niger and the group called Al Shabaab in Somalia and, naturally, an “emerging threat” to the U.S.

In truth, progressive scholars of African studies have been casting doubt on the U.S. characterizations of these groups for years. Jeremy Keenan, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, has documented the way in which the U.S. colluded with the Algerian secret military intelligence services to actually orchestrate a series of hostage takings and terrorist attacks that, over time, connected Algeria, the Sahel, and Nigeria as nations in need of an imperialist military presence.

According to Keenan, northern Nigeria lies on a path that will carry the central section of a proposed Trans-Saharan gas pipeline from Nigeria to Algeria. In addition to Nigeria’s high quality crude oil, the region contains oil, bauxite, uranium, and other strategic resources important to the U.S., the EU, and China.

Imperialist intervention has spurred corruption and the increasing impoverishment of the majority, with the highest inequality manifested in the Muslim north of Nigeria. The youth that today make up Boko Haram, according to Caroline Ifeka of the Department of Anthropology of University College London, began organizing as part of an anti-corruption movement that demanded more of the patronage pie for those at the bottom.

Iraq and oil

The desire of the U.S. to throw its military weight around in Asia and Africa, and against Iran, has not in fact translated to a lack of attention to securing gains made in Iraq and Afghanistan. While U.S. has, at least temporarily, withdrawn combat troops to the borders of Iraq and abandoned the five large military bases in Iraq that it once characterized as “enduring,” it has left behind both a central client regime and regional client regimes whose political futures are based on the successful foreign exploitation of Iraqi oil.

In 2011, according to USA Today, U.S. companies reached deals worth $8.1 billion, and spokespeople compared Iraq, sectarian bombings notwithstanding, as an oasis of stability compared to Egypt and other neighboring countries. The failure of the coalition government to reach agreement on an oil law—i.e., an agreement among Iraqi elites about the division of the spoils of this war—has not really inhibited U.S. companies from profiting and from rewarding regional collaborators.

The New York Times reported in 2011 that U.S. firms like Halliburton and Baker Hughes were awarded at least $150 billion in oil services contracts. In December, Exxon was in the news because the Iraqi central government was threatening to revoke its substantial oil service contracts in the south of the country since the oil company had gone around Baghdad to sign six major deals with the regional government of Kurdistan.

It is unclear if the immediate upswing in bombings that occurred as soon as U.S. troops crossed into Kuwait will substantially change the fortunes of foreign oil profiteers. Observers from afar cannot yet even know how the U.S. intends to play the Shia/Sunni/Kurd divisions that they have carefully nurtured since the early days of the occupation. It is clear that they are prepared to patrol the Kurdistan oil fields, however.

The news of the U.S. withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq was accompanied by reports of a new U.S.–Turkey deal that would allow the U.S. military to fly drones out of the Incirlik air base on the Turkish-Iraqi border. That the Maliki regime has also agreed to these incursions indicates that there are also special agreements on U.S. special operations inside Iraq as well.

Drones and special ops, along with the 16,000 State Department “personnel” (one half of whom are mercenaries) attached to the embassy—with a five-year budget of $30 billion—and the continuing displacement and immiseration of the Iraqi people by the U.S. client regime suggest that the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, however welcome, is not likely to open up political space for the working people of Iraq. Instead, they are facing, at best, life under a regime dedicated to the enrichment of foreign oil firms and their local enablers, and one that is more fearful of and brutal toward the masses of Iraqis than ever before.

The withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, seen in context, provides no rest for the antiwar movement. While the U.S. has been forced to shift course in its search for military solutions to its economic problems, it has not thrown in the towel in the Middle East or Asia. Instead, it plans more bases, more drone flights, more targeted assassinations, more indefinite detentions.

To effectively build a movement against such a geographically disparate series of U.S. interventions, those dedicated to ending U.S. military interventions need to come together to share analysis and practical experience. There will be such an opportunity from March 23-25 in Stamford, Conn., at the conference of the United National Antiwar Coalition.

The UNAC conference will provide nearly 40 workshops on topics ranging from updates on the struggles of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street to the obstacles created for movement building by the government’s policy of mass incarceration in the Black and Latino communities. Plenary sessions will allow participants to vote on a list of important activities to follow the major spring antiwar mobilization that will occur at the site of the NATO/G8 summits in Chicago on May 19. To register for the conference and to find out how to help build the event in your area, visit www.unacpeace.org.

> The article above was written by Christine Marie, and first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Defend the Egyptian Revolution!

2012-01-13T19:24:00.002-06:00

The military junta ruling Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), carried out its second wave of murders in as many months, killing at least 14 between Dec. 16 and Dec. 19, when it attacked protesters engaged in a sit-in outside the Cabinet building. As had happened the month before, the murders sparked off a return of mass protests in Tahrir Square and other cities.

The sit-in, called “Occupy Cabinet,” was called to try to prevent the assumption of office by the military-appointed Prime Minister Kamal Ganzouri, and in denunciation of the killing and blinding of demonstrators during the Battle of Mohammad Mahmoud Street in November. The mid-December attacks once again included detention and torture of protesters, with the added tactic of army and police throwing glass, stones, and various heavy objects from rooftops onto activists on the streets below.

Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists noted that the military and its allies in the Muslim Brotherhood were particularly worried about the potential for the Cabinet sit-in to deepen links between protesters in the streets and in workplaces, where strikes continue to grow in number and political content. Furthermore, “the army wants to muzzle the revolutionaries until political positions and powers can be divided between the opportunist political forces which consented to enter the battle of parliament under military rule.”

Concerns that the military was moving to detain, torture, and even assassinate leading movement activists led to calls for support from international allies. In the U.S. these calls sparked the formation of the Ad Hoc Coalition to Defend the Egyptian Revolution, initiated by the activists who have been holding protests at the Egyptian consulate and mission in New York, as well as at corporate offices of manufacturers whose tear gas has been used by SCAF against protesters (see defendegyptianrevolution.org).

The Coalition initiated a statement protesting SCAF’s actions, which in just a few days garnered several dozen organizational endorsements, including at least 13 Occupy sites, and over 500 individuals. The statement drew the connection between repression by the military in defense of Egypt’s ruling class (including its own economic perks; the military controls 30% of the country’s economy) and the global offensive by ruling classes and governments. And it reminded supporters of the role of the Egyptian revolution in sparking the global fightback, including the Occupy movement, which drew inspiration so explicitly from the Egyptian revolt.

The statement noted: “The same 1% that arms the Egyptian dictatorship commits systematic violence in this country against the Occupy movement; antiwar and solidarity activists; and Arabs, Muslims, and other communities of color. As the U.S. Palestinian Community Network recently observed, ‘the same U.S.-made tear gas rains down on us in the streets of Oakland, Cairo, and Bil’in.’”

The Coalition stressed, “Because of Egypt’s key strategic location, the fate of its revolution echoes across the world. Its success will bring us all closer to achieving economic and social justice. But its defeat would be a major blow to social justice movements everywhere, including Occupy. … In short, Egypt is key to the continued success of the Arab Revolution, and movements she has inspired.”

The Coalition demanded the end of all U.S. aid and weapons to the Egyptian military and police, an end to the murders, tortures and detentions, release of all political prisoners, and an immediate end to military rule in Egypt. In addition to encouraging protests at consulates and missions, the Coalition organized a speedy, efficient mass calling campaign to the offices of SCAF head Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi Soliman and Prime Minister Kamal El Ganzory.

After the brutal treatment of women protesters, most notoriously captured in a video which went viral showing Tantawi’s thugs stripping and stomping a female protester, the Egyptian and Egyptian-American women in the Coalition (who have been its leaders from the beginning) initiated a statement supporting women in Egypt. They noted the bold response of the 10,000 women who took to the streets in Egypt after this thuggery and called in one voice: “Egyptian women will not be stripped!” The statement also noted the leading role of women in “vital initiatives such as field hospitals [to care for wounded protesters] and the campaign to end military trials for civilians.”

The Coalition also issued an appeal for Mohamed Hashem (a leading progressive publisher who has worked with dedication to protect protesters from the military’s thugs and in return was threatened by the regime), and is working on sector-specific appeals for unions, legal rights groups, and others.

Who’s the real “foreign agent”?

On Dec. 29 the military raided the offices of 17 human rights and civil liberties organizations, most of them legitimate, three of them fronts for the U.S. State Department. The latter were purposely chosen as part of the military’s campaign to label all opposition to its rule as part of a plot on behalf of unnamed “foreign powers.” This was from a regime whose survival is completely dependent on $1.3 billion in annual military aid from the United States! What’s more, the military knows that the overwhelming majority of its opponents have in principle not only refused financial support from the U.S. government, but in fact see completion of the revolution as indissolubly connected to ending all collaboration with imperialism and Zionism.

The most steadfast of such opponents of collaboration, the Revolutionary Socialists, came under attack on Dec. 24 when a lawsuit against it was filed by a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s leadership formally distanced itself from the lawsuit, yet repeated in its media the lies articulated in the lawsuit even after it had been withdrawn.

The lawsuit was filed using the pretext of a statement captured on video of one of the leading members of the Revolutionary Socialists, Sameh Naguib, in which, the RS said, he “talked about how the revolutionaries want the downfall of the state to build a new revolutionary state, and that the military council does not protect the interests of the Egyptian people but instead protects the interests of the 1000 richest families in Egypt, the interests of the Pentagon, the U.S. government, and the Zionists.”

“Our reply,” the Revolutionary Socialists affirmed, “is that it is no indictment to say that we want the downfall of the oppressive state and the creation of a just state. … Yes, we are seeking to overthrow the state of tyranny and poverty that has ruled us for the last 30 years, and continues to rule us today, the state that has killed thousands of fighters in its prisons, the state which has looted and stolen from the poor to increase the wealth of the rich. … This is the state which discriminates between its citizens on the basis of religion, gender, and race.”

In a longer late-December document on strategy and tactics in the current stage of the revolution, the RS identified three key forces in the country’s politics: First is the ruling military.

Second is the bloc of Islamist and liberal reformist political forces, “which are straining to contain the revolution within the limits of formalistic democracy. These forces believe that they are due a greater share of power and wealth without disturbing the old economic and social system,” and as a result “flirt with the military council and the remnants of the old regime, and make promises about their ability to contain and terminate the mass movement politically, as they cannot deliver this by repression.”

The third factor is the mass movement, “with the workers’ movement in the vanguard and around it the protest movements of the poor and oppressed.” This movement “reached an unprecedented level during the months of September and October with a wave of mass strikes by 700,000 workers for the first time in Egypt’s modern history.”

(A report issued in mid-December showed education workers moving to the forefront of working-class mobilization, with 80,000 workers employed by the Education Ministry and thousands of teachers striking for pay, benefits, and permanent contracts. And, reports the independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, in the last days of 2011 a new form of worker action arose, as large groups of workers blocked roads and doorways in front of various government and corporate offices, calling for the dismissal of the corrupt leaders of their companies, payment of overdue compensation, and implementation of court verdicts in favor of re-nationalization of their companies. They have also protested hundreds of arbitrary dismissals while company officials give jobs to their relatives.)

The RS also noted the regular protests by poor Coptic Christians, Nubians, the people of Sinai, “and other sections of society which have suffered decades of organized oppression from the regime.”

With the military’s lack of certainty, given the continued mobilization and self-confidence of the masses, that it could get away with the wholesale repression that would be needed to put an end to protests, the regime has instead resorted to selective repression combined with reliance on its partners in the Muslim Brotherhood and in Salafi (ultra-orthodox religious) groups, who have used the current staged elections to try to fool the masses into thinking they can achieve justice by passive reliance on Parliament and the president.

Such duplicity is carried out in the face of continued assertions by the military that it would not relinquish power to such elected figures, and in the face also of repeated assurances by these Islamist forces to the military and to their U.S. masters that once elected they would maintain “free market” policies and collaboration with Israel (see The New York Times, Jan. 4). Their dispute with the military is simply over a division of the spoils and over where to draw the line in what the military and the Islamists agree must be a shared control of the country.

Finally, the RS document examines the factors that could unite the various components of the mass movement, the obstacles to such unity, and specific projects for overcoming those obstacles. The authors break down the mass movement into three principal blocs. First is the youth of the slums, the marginalized and unemployed, “joined by the Ultras [organized football fans] and many independent youth and anarchists.” These have suffered the heaviest casualties in street fighting. While representing “a model of revolutionary courage,” and calling for the downfall of military rule, the cleansing of the police, an end to military trials and for the rights of the families of the martyrs and the injured, “they have failed to raise social demands, or even to offer solidarity with workers’ protests.”

“The second bloc among the revolutionary forces has at its heart the core sections of the Egyptian working class … which have fought a large number of battles since 2006,” and dealt the death blow to the Mubarak presidency last February. It has organized many independent unions since then and engaged in waves of mass strikes. “However,” writes the RS, “its birth has been aborted by the absence of a revolutionary workers’ organization and the absence of demands which link the social and the political,” as well as its absence as an organized force in the rallies in city squares and sit-ins against military rule.

The third bloc within the mass movement is the far left, including the RS itself, as well as other radical groups. Taken as a whole, these groups “remain relatively marginal to the political scene, lacking the ability to propose initiatives which rally wider forces, despite their participation in the leadership and development of the November sit-in and their support for workers’ and professionals’ strikes and sit-ins.”

The desire to overcome these weaknesses inspired the Revolutionary Socialists to make several concrete proposals. They advocate turning the abstract slogan of social justice adopted by the revolutionary movement—“which sets them apart from the liberals and the Islamists”—into concrete, practical demands around wages, prices, housing, health, education, and jobs, “in turn connecting the achievement of this program with the presence of a revolutionary government in power.”

They note in this regard the demagogy of the Islamists, whose mention in their electoral program of social demands is pure hypocrisy given their longstanding opposition to labor organizing, their own huge economic investments, and their support for neo-liberal policies during the Mubarak era.

To organize and mobilize for these concrete demands, and in so doing to link the varied components of the mass movement, the RS proposes “to construct a revolutionary front with a political program,” which could unite the social, economic. and political demands of the revolution, and unify the struggles in the workplace, the squares. and the campuses.

Finally, the RS calls for translating its slogan “power and wealth to the people” into a concrete radical program that could mobilize the masses from the very first day on which the newly elected parliament members take their seats and begin enacting anti-worker, anti-revolutionary legislation. And to ensure the success of all these projects, the RS pledges “to build a revolutionary socialist party rooted in the ranks of the workers, peasants and students, capable of leading the masses to victory.”

Workers and next phase of Arab Revolution

At the very same time as Egyptian government employees were staging mass protests, their counterparts in Yemen began mass action against their own officials’ corruption.

As the AP reported on Dec. 26: “The strikes are following a pattern. Workers lock the gates to an institution, and then they storm the offices of their supervisors, demanding their replacement with bosses who are not tainted with corruption allegations. So far the scenario has played out in 18 state agencies.”

As in Egypt, Yemen’s military has a large stake in the country’s economy, and hundreds of workers have demonstrated in front of the Military Economic Institution, protesting its budget secrecy and demanding dismissal of the agency manager, one of the regime’s most powerful and corrupt figures and a funder of the armed gangs that have attacked protesters.

This similarity in tactics in Egypt and Yemen is, as far as we know, a coincidence. But it could and indeed must become part of a conscious, organized sharing of tactics, and a discussion of shared needs and goals among workers across the region. Such a regional class project would, of course, require construction of a revolutionary party for the Middle East and North Africa as a whole.

Furthermore, this discussion of how to deepen the centrality of workers’ mobilization and demands in the Arab Revolution is also crucial for opposing imperialism’s latest maneuvers. Nowhere is this more needed than in Syria. For months the regime has murdered dozens in cold blood every single day. Yet for months the masses’ response has been to turn out in the tens or hundreds of thousands after each massacre.

But in contrast to this almost unparalleled heroism and steadfastness by Syria’s working people, depending not on lying imperialist “saviors” but rather on the masses’ own strength, the traitorous leadership of the liberals heading the Syrian National Council speaks more and more openly about requesting aid from Washington’s murderous military.

We in the U.S. can further this counterposition of workers’ power to imperialist maneuvers by raising ever louder our own demands that Washington cut all military aid to its client regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and elsewhere, that it stay out of Syria, and that it end all aid to Israel!

> The article above was written by Andrew Pollack, and first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Obama signs bill allowing indefinite detention of U.S. policy opponents

2012-01-13T19:22:00.001-06:00

The kind of repression that can be expected to increase exponentially as a result of the new indefinite-detention rider to the National Defense Authorization Act was illustrated just a week before Obama signed it on New Year’s Eve. On Dec. 20, a Boston jury convicted the pharmacist Dr. Tarek Mehanna of material support to terrorism based on the fact that he translated and disseminated a document titled “39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad,” a document that prosecutors failed to recognize as composed in great measure of lines from the Koran.

Mehanna was first targeted for prosecution when, as a young pharmacy student, he refused the FBI’s request that he act as an informer for them. His first arrest was orchestrated on the basis that he had made a false statement in an interview forced on him by the FBI, a charge that the government could never prove. He was released and later arrested for what the Massachusetts ACLU characterized as a political speech—that is, speech that should have been protected in the United States.

Despite the unjust character of the government case against Mehanna, his family and friends, as well as the broad civil liberties community, will likely know in which prison he may be found and be able to appeal his conviction. However, under the new indefinite-detention provisions codified in the NDAA, the government will be able to disappear someone like Mehanna and hold them indefinitely without trial or any kind of due process.

Combined with already existing government practice that allows the interpretation of political speech in opposition to U.S. foreign policy to be considered “material support to terrorism” and the mandate to “preemptively prosecute” those who express such opposition, the passage of the NDAA indefinite-detention provision marks a dramatic escalation of U.S. repressive policies.

The deliberate and well-documented debate in Congress about whether or not this provision would apply to U.S. citizens, a debate that ended with a majority affirming its applicability to everyone, has given the government tools for a new level of domestic repression.

Both the ACLU and Human Rights Watch have noted that this is the first time that the U.S. has clearly legally enshrined indefinite detention since the Internal Security Act of 1950, a McCarthy-era law mostly overturned in 1971, authorized the imprisonment of Communists or “subversives” without full trials or due process.

One of the most shameful elements of the reaction to the NDAA within the broad antiwar and social justice movements has been the effort by a layer of Obama supporters to downplay the significance of the indefinite-detention provision. Some argue, in a perverse replay of a decade of inattention to the defense of the Muslim American victims of FBI entrapment and confinement in CMUs, that it really does not apply to U.S. citizens. Others have insisted that it only codifies what is already being done under the Bush era 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF).

Activists who find this political stance toward the NDAA inexplicable should remember that due to their support for President Roosevelt’s war effort in the 1940s, both the Communist Party USA and the National Lawyer’s Guild ended up supporting FDR’s executive order for Japanese internment. “Lesser evilism” in electoral politics has, in the past, led to a serious weakening of the fight to defend working-class political action.

In response to efforts that obfuscate the real political intent of the NDAA provision, the civil libertarian and commentator Glenn Greenwald wrote, “Three Myths About the NDAA.” He explained that supporters of Obama could claim that U.S. citizens are exempted because there are two sections of the provision, and the language about “citizens” is “purposely muddled.” In Section 1021, there is a disclaimer that states that U.S. citizens or others captured or arrested in the United States rather than abroad cannot be held indefinitely by the U.S. military. The next section, Section 1022, however, only exempts accused U.S. citizens from the mandatory military detention.

“It does not,” Greenwald pointed out, “exempt U.S. citizens from the presidential power of military detention: only from the requirement of military detention.” This distinction was the result of a demand by the White House that the president retain his powers and that they not be handed over completely to the military.

The Obama administration also demanded an explicit expansion of the powers that they claimed they had been granted in the 2001 AUMF. The Bush-era AUMF named those whom the president had determined “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.” The NDAA, on the other hand, adds as a target a person who “substantially supports” such groups “and/or associated forces.”

This language could give the government a license to detain people who carry out solidarity work with groups working in opposition to U.S. foreign-policy aims. Already, a number of antiwar activists in the Midwest have been threatened with having to give testimony to a grand jury convened to investigate “terrorism” because they sent aid to child-care centers in Gaza or publically explained the plight of peasants living in FARC-controlled sections of Colombia.

The NDAA indefinite-detention provisions must be opposed with all the strength the broad movements for social change can muster. The Muslim Peace Coalition, in collaboration with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), and many others, have begun assembling a national coalition that can implement a three-month campaign to build grassroots opposition.

The coalition will soon make available the tools for activists to seek support for a repeal campaign to bar associations, academics, 1000 members of the clergy, unions, and city and town councils around the United States. To become involved in this effort, contact UNAC via www.unacpeace.org.

> The article above was written by Luana Albert, and first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

U.S. Justice Dept. charges Arizona sheriff with discrimination against immigrants

2012-01-13T19:20:00.001-06:00

On Dec. 15, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration Customs and Enforcement announced they would be canceling Maricopa County’s 287(g) agreement and restricting the Arizona county’s access to the Secure Communities program. This decision was based on findings by the U.S. Department of Justice that the sheriff’s office had been engaging in unconstitutional discrimination and racial profiling against immigrants (particularly Latinos). In a separate decision on Dec. 23, U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow enjoined Sheriff Joe Arapio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office from “detaining any person based only on knowledge or reasonable belief, without more, that the person is unlawfully present within the United States,” effectively halting their enforcement of federal immigration law.

Arpaio, who styles himself as “America’s toughest sheriff,” has long been notorious for his unbelievably harsh treatment of prisoners, and especially Latino immigrants. Arpaio’s discriminatory practices include forcing prisoners to endure temperatures of up to 145 degrees in the notorious “tent city,” re-initiating the use of chain gangs, humiliating prisoners by forcing them to parade through the streets in pink underwear, and organizing all-volunteer citizen posses to help him enforce the law (including an armed citizens posse in November of 2010 to help his deputies conduct an immigration sweep to round up undocumented immigrants).

As a result of his actions and policies, Sheriff Arpaio has been accused of or has come under investigation for racial profiling, violating the constitutional rights of prisoners in medical and other related care issues, abuse of power, misuse of funds, and election law violation.

According to the Arizona Republic, the U.S. Department of Justice recently culminated a three-year investigation by sending a 22-page letter to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, in which it stated that the following civil rights violations were found:

“Hispanics were routinely targeted for traffic stops without reasonable cause, and subsequently charged with immigration-related crimes. Legal residents were sometimes treated as if they were illegal immigrants and even jailed.

“Latino inmates with poor or no English proficiency were frequently punished for not understanding English, were required to fill out forms in a language they did not understand or were denied critical services available to English-speaking inmates.

“Community activists and critics who spoke out against the Sheriff’s Office’s treatment of Hispanics were themselves targeted for retaliation.

“The Justice Department also found that the Sheriff’s Office did not adequately train or supervise its personnel to avoid civil rights violations and, in fact, permitted the specialized units to engage in unconstitutional behavior.”

Julianne Hing, Colorline.com’s immigration reporter, stated, “For folks who are at all familiar with Sheriff Arpaio’s nasty tactics, none of the DOJ’s revelations are actually brand new. He engages in racial profiling, condones excessive force from his officers, and retaliates harshly against anyone who speaks out against him. He ignores actual, serious crime to hunt down undocumented immigrants. This is his brand.” Hing added, “The federal government contracted Arpaio, with programs like 287(g) to use his police officers to enforce immigration law. Now they’re chasing after him to rein him in.”

In the letter, the DOJ also issued an ultimatum to Sheriff Arpaio: either come to a voluntary (and court enforceable) agreement to stop discriminating against immigrants, or face a federal lawsuit under provisions of the Civil Rights Act. In a press conference held the following day, Arpaio defended his actions, stating, “We are going to cooperate the best we can. And if they are not happy, I guess they can carry out their threat and go to federal court.” Arpaio has until Jan. 4 to make his decision.

The limitation of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s discriminatory actions and the elimination of Maricopa County’s participation in the 287(g) and Secure Communities programs must be celebrated as a victory in the struggle for immigrant rights; 287(g) is a federally funded program that authorizes local police officers to act as immigration agents. The fact that police officers are able to question people regarding their immigration status has long been shown to encourage racial profiling, and in places like Maricopa County, discrimination has run rampant.

The Obama administration and ICE have recently pushed the increasing implementation of other ICE enforcement programs, such as Secure Communities, across the country. Secure Communities is a national fingerprint database used to check the immigration status of anyone booked into jail. Despite evidence of racial profiling and increasing resistance from counties, cities, and states where the program is being implemented, the Obama administration has vowed to implement the program nationwide by 2013.

Programs like 287(g) and Secure Communities are part of a wider strategy known as “attrition through enforcement.” It is clear that the United States economy is heavily dependent on the cheap labor of the super-exploited undocumented immigrant population. It is estimated that if all undocumented immigrants in the United States were deported, economic activity in the U.S. would decrease by over $500 billion, while GDP would fall by an additional $245 billion.

The tactic of “attrition through enforcement” was originally the brainchild of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, the largest anti-immigrant hate group in the United States. It was designed to make life so difficult and absolutely unbearable for undocumented immigrants that they will be too afraid to speak out for their rights, to fight against injustice, or to struggle to make working conditions and life in general better for themselves and their communities.

“Attrition through enforcement” has recently given rise to extremely discriminatory anti-immigrant laws such as SB 1070 in Arizona, or copycat laws like HB 87 in Georgia, and HB 56, recently passed in Alabama. In these states, so many fearful immigrants left the state that crops began to rot in the fields for lack of anyone to harvest them, while parents pulled their children out of school.

A coalition of organizations, led by the National Immigrant Law Center and the ACLU filed a lawsuit against HB 56. Their complaint stated, “HB 56 is reminiscent of the worst aspects of Alabama’s history in its pervasive and systematic targeting of a class of persons through punitive state laws that seek to render every aspect of daily life more difficult and less equal.” In fact, according to a report from the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, in the first half of 2011 alone, lawmakers from all 50 states introduced a record-breaking 1592 bills and resolutions dealing with immigration.

Despite these massive attacks on undocumented immigrant workers, the immense immigrant uprisings in 2006 and the nationwide protests against SB 1070 in 2010 show that immigrants do have the capacity to rise up and take their fate in their own hands. And while the recent federal decision against the discriminatory practices of Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a step in the right direction, it is clear that this is only a small victory in the greater struggle for immigrant rights. What remains now is to continue to struggle for justice for immigrants in all communities across the United States.

> The article above was written by Lisa Luinenberg, and first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

The Passing of Kim Jong Il

2012-01-13T19:17:00.003-06:00

The death of Kim Jong Il, on Dec. 17, caught the attention and imagination of the capitalist media hucksters. His death, which wasn’t reported for two whole days, was in many ways symbolic of his life. It was a life that, through the lens of the Western media, was obscured by secrecy and unflattering portrayals. This distorting lens is designed to sell American workers on U.S. intervention in Korea.

The passing of Kim saw an avalanche of mocking obituaries in the capitalist press. Many of the characterizations, in fact, were down right racist. The U.S. propaganda machine is notorious for villainizing its enemies—particularly when that enemy is not white. This was often seen in the mocking depictions of Kim Jong Il, with the frequent unflattering references to his height, supposed sexual deviancy, hairstyle, accent, and clothing. He was presented as a modern day Fu Manchu—an Asian super-villain with the most sinister plans.

This depiction of Kim underscores a perennial fear of the East as a “yellow peril.” The racist villainizing of Kim Jong Il will no doubt continue with his son, and apparent heir, Kim Jong Un. At the end of the day, regardless of whether these stories are true or not, they are a distraction from the real issues.

The orientalist portrayals of the Kims is often extended to North Korea and the Korean people themselves. American workers are fed a steady diet of anti-North Korean horror stories, while the capitalist press is careful to never mention the U.S. violations of its agreements with North Korea, or the presence of U.S. nukes in the region. Instead, a considerable degree of fear has been drummed up about North Korean missiles and a possible nuclear attack, both exacerbated by the alleged mental instability of the Kims.

This is reminiscent of the war mongering carried out against Iraq in 2001 and against Iran today. Furthermore, the people of North Korea are often depicted as intimidated, pacified, mindless automatons. This is especially apparent in commentary concerning the authenticity of their mourning. Whether it is authentic or inauthentic is less relevant than the history and context of these expressions of grief.

Lack of history and context also make it hard to imagine why the Korean people would find any comfort in their leadership and state. However, there ample reasons why the people might fear the United States as an aggressor. This fear is exploited by the North Korean state, but U.S. foreign policy has never been sunshine and friendship. The U.S. virtually destroyed the country in the Korean War and has essentially blockaded it economically, diplomatically, and politically since.

There is no denying the fact that North Korea is indeed a brutal Stalinist dictatorship that represses its own people and puts the interest of the ruling bureaucracy and its armed forces above all else. Nevertheless, it is not the job of the United States to police the Korean peninsula. The world’s major manufacturer, distributor, and user of weapons of mass destruction—of the nuclear, chemical, and biological varieties—has no right to make demands on any nation. It has no right to dictate the internal policy of any country, period.

Only the Korean people themselves should determine their country’s policies, and overthrow their governments—both North and South. It is the Korean people alone who can create a just solution to the problems they face, on both sides of the DMZ.

U.S. imperialism does not have the right to intervene, and its bully tactics will never improve the lot of the Korean people. Rather, its policies are geared towards increasing its own power and position in East Asia to the detriment of the working people of the entire region.

> The article above was written by Heather Bradford and Adam Ritscher, and first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Following Teamster election victory, Hoffa seeks limits on members’ rights

2012-01-13T19:16:00.001-06:00

Coming fresh off his reelection victory, Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa Jr. is seeking to take away the right of rank-and-file members to elect their international officers.

Hoffa was reelected with 59% of the vote against two challengers, reform activists Sandy Pope and former Hoffa ally Fred Gegare. Despite such a large margin of victory Hoffa and other top union officers want to do away with direct election of officers and replace it with a delegated convention election—the way most U.S. unions do it.

Hoffa and his slate won reelection despite massive concessions, job losses, pension cuts, and declining Teamster contract standards. Only 20 percent of the membership returned their ballots, meaning Hoffa won with the support of about 12 percent of Teamster members. This took place despite Hoffa’s raising over $3 million for his campaign, donated mostly by officers and staffers who owe their jobs to Hoffa.

Hoffa sent out multiple glossy mailings to the membership, mostly attacking reform candidate Pope, and hired professional telemarketers to do phone banking. Additionally, the International spent millions on supposedly non-partisan get-out-the-vote advertisements, including robo-calls from Bill Clinton and actor Danny DeVito, who just happened to portray the incumbent president’s father in a movie called “Hoffa.”

Sandy Pope, a veteran activist and local officer from New York, ran a different kind of campaign. She didn’t have millions of dollars and Hollywood actors to support her campaign. Instead, Pope had an army of rank-and-file activists who volunteered their time, money, and energy to get out her program to mobilize members and use the union’s resources to fight back against bosses’ attacks on workers.

Where Pope supporters campaigned and provided members with an alternative to the Hoffa concession train her support was strong. Pope did well in locals with large numbers of members under national contracts, particularly UPS and Freight. Despite these efforts, Pope was able to get only about 17% of the vote.

In addition to Hoffa’s resource advantage and the allegiance of most local officers to him, the Pope campaign was hurt by the presence of another opposition candidate. International VP Fred Gegare, a long-time Hoffa ally, formed a slate along with a handful of other VPs and local officers. Gegare gained support from some old-guard bureaucrats who felt left out of the inner circle of power surrounding Hoffa.

Gegare criticized Hoffa’s concessionary record, especially the failing health of the Central States Pension Fund. Yet while Gegare was an International VP on the Hoffa slate, he never raised any criticisms, even when Hoffa crippled the CSPF by letting UPS withdraw from the fund. However, even though Gegare was not a credible reformer, he often raised credible criticisms of Hoffa and echoed many of the same positions as Pope, therefore siphoning votes away from the Pope campaign.

The biggest challenge the Pope campaign faced was disillusionment and frustration of rank-and-file members, who after experiencing more than a decade of losses and concessions under Hoffa, and a generally weakened labor movement, have given up hope that the union’s losses can be turned around. These members didn’t participate in the campaign, and 80 percent didn’t even bother to vote.

Ken Paff, national organizer of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, wrote of the recent election, “In the 1990s, Ron Carey [elected Teamster president on a reform slate], could tap a sentiment that Teamster power was real, and just needed someone willing to unleash it. And the union began to do just that, including the victorious 1997 UPS strike. In the recent political climate, our argument has been more difficult: that Teamster power can be rebuilt. Thousands of members are up for the challenge, and are the heart and soul of the TDU movement. But most Teamsters have been hunkered down, without great hopes of transforming the union to take on corporate power.”

Rank-and-file activists in the Teamsters are now preparing for new battles ahead. First will be a fight to preserve the direct elections of International officers. National contracts at UPS and Freight will expire in the next few years, and members in those industries are preparing to build contract campaigns to force Hoffa to take a strong stand on negotiations.

While Teamster activists continue to face challenges engaging co-workers to get involved, there are encouraging signs. The Occupy Wall Street movement has inspired and mobilized working people, including Teamsters to fight back against the bosses’ offensive. It is notable that in New York the OWS movement has supported and marched in solidarity with locked-out Teamsters at Sotheby’s in New York. The Sotheby’s workers are members of Local 814, a local led by reform officers who supported the Sandy Pope campaign.

Efforts like that of the Sotheby’s workers, the Sandy Pope campaign, and the UPS and Freight workers’ contract organizing campaigns are the foundations for rebuilding Teamster power and returning the union to its militant roots.

> The article above was written by David Bernt, and first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Reviving the Strike — How to win labor’s battles

2012-01-13T19:14:00.001-06:00

Book Review: “Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America,” by Joe Burns, IG Publishing, $15.95.

The holiday season may have come and gone, but it’s never too late (or too early) to find the perfect gift for that aspiring rabble-rouser in your life. Before you wrap up Joe Burn’s “Reviving the Strike” in back issues of SA, though, you’ll want to spend a few hours reading and digesting it yourself.

Burns, a labor lawyer and veteran contract negotiator, presents a concise summary of both the internal and external forces causing the disintegration of organized labor in the U.S. He doesn’t mince words in identifying the “only true weapon” that American unions have practically given up on but must revive in order to regain their power—the production-halting strike.

To start, Burns draws a clear distinction between the meager—both in number and in effectiveness—“strikes” of today, which usually involve picketers standing around watching scabs under police and court projection march in to take over their jobs, and those of the 1870s through 1940s that brought industrial giants like General Motors to their knees. There are two key components that have been lost: the ability to shut down production, staunching the bosses’ profit lifeline, and worker solidarity, defined as coordinated, industry-wide or region-wide work stoppages.

Before 1935, unions were able to build the mass power of organized labor and use it to defy arbitrary barriers imposed by the legislative and judicial agents of the boss class. Burns quotes labor historian William Forbath: “‘Principled disobedience to injunctions was official AFL policy from the late 1880s until the passage of Norris LaGuardia and beyond.’”

What happened since? A series of federal labor laws, designed to look “fair” to both business and labor but really targeted at the right to strike, slowly restricted the legal playing field for unions. The bosses’ robed henchmen on the Supreme Court furthered the process by ruling against workers in almost every labor case they took up since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act, at times blatantly defying the language of the act itself to do so. Liberal justices often led the anti-labor charge.

Burns astutely outlines the philosophical differences undergirding the fight between labor and the bourgeoisie. To the bosses and the courts, human labor is a commodity to be bought and sold on the open market, the means of production are the private property of investors, and workers need to be controlled by management or else they act irresponsibly.

On the other hand, the traditional values of organized labor held that workers are not simply meat for the grinder—they have lives and families that need support, and they are the true owners of the factories, stores, and farms because their labor creates all of the wealth that the boss steals and calls profit. A job is not a consensual contract between worker and boss that can be terminated by either party; it is a means of subsistence and demonstrates membership in a class whose collective interests outweigh the individual “rights” associated with so-called free trade (the “right” to scab, the “right” to quit and starve, etc.).

Sadly, in recent decades, the crop of “progressive” labor leaders who got radicalized in the 1960s have taken on the management framework, and now speak in ways that are much more conservative than even the likes of AFL head Samuel Gompers did in the early 20th century. Today’s union officers often have wages, benefits, and job security that set them apart from the workers they represent. They fear the law and the courts, through which they could face heavy fines or jail time for daring to show the sort of real solidarity and militancy that won the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike or the 1936-37 Flint sit-down strike.

Many unions today operate more like the craft unions of the early AFL than the industrial unions of the CIO. They bank on their members’ job skills preventing the bosses from replacing strikers with scabs (which they don’t). They accept the precept—unthinkable before the 1980s—that their role is simply to represent their members in grievance procedures and negotiate contracts with a single employer.

Perhaps the strongest section of the book details the “alternatives” to militant strikes that have been entertained in recent years, and why each has failed to take the place of the strike (though some can be effective supplements). These include one-day strikes, work-to-rule, corporate campaigns, “social unionism,” and lowering the bar for what constitutes “success.” An entire chapter is devoted to explaining why top-down organizing drives such as those conducted by SEIU are an expensive and ineffective diversion from the task at hand.

There are a few notable, heroic exceptions to the modern lack of labor militancy, and Burns is quick to highlight them—particularly the 1985-86 Hormel P9 strike, the 1989-90 Pittston coal-mine strike, the 1993-94 Staley lockout, and the 2008 Republic Windows occupation. Each of these is treated to a concise analysis of its strengths, weaknesses, and the lessons workers can draw from it.

These struggles are compared to the major establishment battles of the U.S. labor movement, which are outlined early on in the book. Throughout, Burns draws more on quotes from right-wing labor presidents of yesteryear than from the leftist radicals, explaining that his purpose in doing so is to demonstrate just how far to the right of the former right the current “progressives” at the top of today’s labor movement are. However, he does briefly acknowledge the contributions of socialists, anarchists, and communists in building the strength of the movement and leading many of the pivotal battles of the mid-1930s and late ’40s.

One weakness of the book is its vague treatment of the role of the advanced systemic crisis of capitalism in pushing down wages and working-class standards of living. There is mention made of the more globalized nature of capital and the need to coordinate action beyond national borders, but not much specific on how workers might respond to a boss’s threat to shut down a plant and move its jobs to Singapore. Ultimately, the working class will have to replace the entire capitalist system with true economic democracy to stop attacks on its standard of living and make a better world for all.

Burns does not claim to have all of the prescriptions. He acknowledges that economic and social conditions differ markedly today from the early 20th century, and along with defying and ridding ourselves of reactionary laws, unions are going to have to be creative in developing new tactics to fight our battles. He correctly asserts that “collective bargaining cannot work without an effective strike,” and also that “the system of labor control forbids effective strike tactics.” The implication is: to hell with the boss’s law—the great battles of the working class against their oppressors must, and will, be fought again.

> The article was written by Carl Sack, and first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

A visit with Mumia Abu-Jamal

2012-01-13T19:12:00.001-06:00

by Johanna Fernandez is a professor at Baruch College, a member of Educators for Mumia, and producer of the film, “Justice on Trial: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.”

Dear Friends:

I visited Mumia yesterday, Dec. 15, in the new prison that houses him, SCI Mahanoy. Even though he has been released from death row, he remains in Administrative Custody while he awaits transfer to general population. Because he is still in Administrative Custody and not yet in general population, visits still take place behind the plexiglass barrier characteristic of the no-contact visits to prisoners on death row.

Mumia boarded a vehicle to SCI Mahanoy in the early morning hours of Dec. 14 at 4 a.m. Despite the dehumanizing character of the heavily armored vehicle that transported him from SCI Greene to SCI Mahanoy, Mumia delighted in the opportunity to see cows, horses, and Pennsylvania’s beautiful landscape during the 7-hour ride to Frackville, PA.

He described the last number of days as a “crazy whirlwind.” Last Friday alone, he spent 6 hours packing up books, letters, and other belongings in preparation for what he believed was a move into general population at SCI Greene. But the Department of Corrections had other plans in mind. As you know, that same day, Dec. 9, his call came through at the National Constitution Center [in Philadelphia]. At the prompting of Pam Africa, the last 30 seconds of that call turned into a rousing ovation to Mumia by the 1100 people in attendance. This is what he wrote in a letter about his experience that very same night on Dec. 9, “It’s been minutes since I’ve hung up the phone, and I’m still buzzing from the loving vibes zapping through the phone. It’s really electric!”

While in Administrative Custody at Mahanoy, Mumia is technically in “the hole.” This means that he has absolutely no human contact; absolutely no belongings in his cell other than a rubber pen, 8 sheets of paper and 8 envelopes (4 of which he has used to write letters to family and friends); he gets only one hour in the yard and one visitor a week; and at night the lights in his small cell are dimmed only slightly, and otherwise remain on all day.

Mumia noted that he missed the knock of his next door neighbor on the Row at SCI Greene, Sugarbear, who called for him through a knock on the wall “at least 20 times a day.” Mumia noted that as he was being escorted to his cell at Mahanoy, the majority of prisoners he saw in “the hole” were black and he immediately thought of Michelle Alexander’s evocative analysis and descriptions of mass black imprisonment nationwide.

Mumia is committed to remaining mindful of the challenges of this new period. He remains strong and hopeful about the possibilities of this next phase of struggle, both in his personal day-to-day life and in the movement. He welcomes and is prepared for the change. Below please also note a special note he dictated to OWS. Mumia reiterated that despite his isolation and the alienating character of his transfer to Mahanoy, he feels vibrations of love around him.

We await, impatiently, Mumia’s transfer to general population and call on the DA’s office to complete the transfer immediately. PLEASE NOTE: The DA’s number and address is below.

Let us remind the DA that Mumia should have been in general population since 2001 when Judge Yohn overturned the death penalty in his case; but the DA’s office held him on death row for a decade while it filed losing appeals. By law, Mumia should be in general population, not in “the hole.” We demand his immediate transfer.

With love and solidarity,

Johanna Fernandez

Seth Williams, Philadelphia DA, Three South Penn Square,   Philadelphia, PA 19107-3499. Phone : (215) 686-8000. www.phila.gov/districtattorney/contac

Mumia's Message to Occupy Wall Street

2012-01-13T19:10:00.001-06:00

Mumia’s Message to Occupy Wall Street, as dictated while in Administrative Custody at SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, PA

Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011

My Friends of OWS,

My message will have to be brief. But let not this brevity take from it, its strength.

You are the central movement of the hour. You’re raising questions that are in the hearts of millions. Your motto, “We are the 99%,” has been heard, heeded, and responded to by millions. You can be certain that the 1% have heard you clearest of all.

Your work, however, is just beginning. You must deepen, strengthen, and further your work until it truly reaches the 99%, almost all of us: workers, black folk, Latinos and Latinas, LGBTs, immigrants, Asians, artists, all of us, for we are integral parts of the 99%. I salute you and hope fervently that you will grow beyond number.

Though I speak to you today by proxy, I’m confident that you will hear my voice soon.

Love, fun and music,

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Indiana YSA in the news

2012-01-13T19:09:00.001-06:00

The Horizon, a student-produced newspaper at Indiana University Southeast, in New Albany, Ind., reported on a recent forum sponsored by the campus Youth for Socialist Action (YSA) chapter.

The writer, Steve Nichols, noted, “For now, the YSA is a study group. However, Christian Litsey, English sophomore and one of the founding members of YSA, said their main focus is to educate people on the theories of Marxism with the hope to come together and form a cohesive disciplined youth organization that can help lead the working-class revolution. ...

“‘[Socialists] want a true equality for all people,’ Litsey said. ‘It’s not everyone making the same. Equality is everybody getting what they need.’

“The YSA also stands for full liberation of workers and oppressed people, opposition to any discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation and jobs for all by advocating a labor party based on the unions.”

During the forum, Levi Groenewold, history sophomore and YSA member, explained why the YSA is trying to build a revolutionary socialist youth organization:

“‘You can go out and take some kind of direct action—standing up against the capitalist system—but because you don’t have a plan or an organized method of resistance, it’s just kind of doomed to just be a heroless act,’ Groenewold said. ‘At the same time, if you have a revolutionary theory, such as Marxism, and you don’t implement it, then there is really no point to that theory, and you won’t be able to change society for the better unless you have action.’

“Bronson Rozier, organizer for Socialist Action in Southern Indiana and Northern Kentucky, has been an active member of the socialist movement for 47 years. Rozier said he attended the forum to support his comrades. ‘In a socialist society, there will be some differences, but it won’t be like this, where 2 percent of the country owns 80 percent of the wealth,’ Rozier said. ‘It’s going to be the [working-class] majority that is in control of it all.’”

> The article above first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Review of "In the Land of Blood and Honey"

2012-01-13T19:07:00.001-06:00

“In the Land of Blood and Honey,” written and directed by Angelina Jolie.

I liked this intense film about the war in Bosnia. But I wasn’t sure if Angelina Jolie intended her directorial debut film to be a story about love and betrayal or a depiction of the horrors wreaked against one’s own people. In this three-and-a-half-year civil war of the 1990s, soldiers killed people they had been classmates with; it tore families apart, and at least 100,000 were killed and two million displaced.

Jolie, involved in humanitarian work around the world, has said that she felt driven to make a film about the Bosnian war because she knew so little about it at the time (she was 17) and felt guilty because no one seemed to want to do anything. It was the worst European conflict since World War II.

“Blood and Honey,” was cut from over four hours to two, which might explain some holes in the script. It opens in 1992 on a scene of people living ordinary lives. Muslim sisters Lejla (Vanessa Glodjic), a single mother of an infant, and Ajla (Zana Marjovich), an artist, share an apartment.

Ajla is involved with Danijel (Goran Kostic), a wiry, blond Serbian army captain. While dancing at a club, it is hit by an explosion. Danijel, unharmed, takes charge, relieved that Ajla had survived.

The film jumps ahead four months. Heavily armed Serbian soldiers patrol the neighborhoods, ordering people out of buildings. Ajla is shocked to see Danijel, who doesn’t notice her, among the soldiers. His father, General Nebojsa (played by Rade Serbedzija), orders him to “cleanse the area, Danijel. Make me a proud father!”

Ajla and other women are herded onto buses and driven to an abandoned school, where Serbian soldiers treat them as both sexual and domestic slaves. Women are randomly raped; they feel doomed.

The women, including Lejla, left in the apartment building are terrified the soldiers will return; she worries about her baby and that her sister could be dead. Lejla returns from a furtive run to a bombed-out pharmacy for supplies, and is horrified to find her baby has met a tragic end. In her absence, the military had returned. She joins a resistance group holed up in a ruin.

Danijel protects Ajla. He confesses that he hates the “war,” cautioning her that “people don’t appear to be who they truly are.” At times, he comes across as the voice of conscience. She makes an attempt to escape but is caught and beaten. What I found strange is that Ajla doesn’t seem concerned about her sister or the baby. Perhaps Jolie directed Marjovich to appear numbed by it all.

Danijel and Ajla argue about his killing of her people. She shouts, “I don’t have to sleep with their murderer!” He asks if she believes her people are not murderers, too: “That you are clean?”

In one scene, General Nebosja bursts in on Ajla; berating her about his mother’s working hard so Muslim women could wear fine clothes. She tells him she believes there’s no difference between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims; for this, he rapes her.

Fifteen years after the war, the people of Bosnia-Herzogovina, of course, still remember. Jolie has said that it was difficult asking Bosnian and Serbian actors to relive it; some were extremely emotional. Yet because of their experience, they made the film real. She admits that they helped her write and direct it.

This is not exactly a blatant antiwar film. Nor does it get to the roots of the the “Great Serbia” ideology, which trod upon the rights of other nationalities in the former Yugoslavia. The conflict flared up over the years, and was spurred on by the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Still, the film depicts the stupidity of war and how, in order to attain their ends, rulers constantly resort to whipping up national, religious, and misogynous prejudices—no matter how irrational they might be. Similarly, the U.S. and NATO are now raising a hysterical cry against Iran, which they have set their sights upon for the next war.

> The article above was written by Gaetana Caldwell-Smith, and first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Northern Lights

2012-01-13T19:05:00.001-06:00

Attawapiskat: Native people suffer while corporations mine riches

by Eric Kupka

It has been called Haiti at minus 40 degrees celsius. Attawapiskat, an isolated Cree First Nations community located near James Bay in northern Ontario, is enduring a severe housing crisis that is just the latest in a series of tragedies that have affected the health and well-being of its residents.

With a current population of just under 2000 people, Attawapiskat was established as a settlement of permanent buildings in the 1960s. In 1979, a diesel spill contaminated the soil near the community’s elementary school. The students suffered bad health effects and the school was ultimately condemned in 2000, displacing the students to portables, where they continue to learn today.

In the last five years, Attawapiskat has suffered through flooding, a power outage that forced the evacuation of the local hospital (because it had no backup generators) and a sewage spill that dumped waste into eight homes housing 90 people.

Meanwhile, since 2008, DeBeers Canada is mining diamonds at a site just 90 kilometers west of Attawapiskat. The contrast between the extraction of such wealth, utilizing the most modern facilities, alongside such deprivation led Attawapiskat residents to travel to Toronto in 2009 to confront DeBeers. They argued that the company had not lived up to its agreement to provide employment opportunities and building materials to the community.

The current crisis results from the growing number of residents, including babies and young children, living in tents or wooden shacks with no electricity, running water or toilets. With winter temperatures routinely dropping well below minus 20 degrees Celsius, heat is provided by improvised (and potentially dangerous) wood-burning stoves. Many of those lucky enough to live in houses have to deal with mould and overcrowding.

The NDP has been at the forefront of the response to this situation. Local NDP MP Charlie Angus spoke out about Attawapiskat’s challenges well before the present crisis. He recently twice visited the community, the second time in the company of NDP Interim Leader Nycole Turmel. (The NDP’s late Leader, Jack Layton, who visited in 2007, described the conditions he saw as “abominable.”)

Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, on the other hand, initially reacted by blaming the leadership of the Attawapiskat First Nation, stating that the crisis was “unacceptable” in light of the funds provided by the federal government to the band. This led to the appointment of a private-sector consultant to manage the reserve’s finances, at a cost of $1300 per day, to be billed to the First Nation.

The situation in Attawapiskat is a reminder to Canadians that many of our First Nations’ brothers and sisters on reserves live in Third World conditions, inside one of the wealthiest countries on earth. Centuries of cultural genocide and indifference have left many First Nations communities struggling with alcoholism and solvent abuse, suicide epidemics, gang violence, substandard housing, contaminated water, unemployment, and abject poverty. This must end.

Socialists demand an immediate, robust and well-funded response to the housing crisis in Attawapiskat, along with a long-term, concerted, federal effort at resolving the dire conditions in which Canada’s First Nations continue to subsist. We demand that the mineral and other wealth of aboriginal lands be transferred out of the hands of multinational corporations and into the control of the First Nations’ communities on those lands.

Mounties spied on aboriginal protesters

by Barry Weisleder

When it comes to native housing, health, and education needs, Ottawa provides funding through an eye-dropper and at a snail’s pace. But where it concerns meeting the perceived “security” needs of capital and the state, the authorities act swiftly, generously, and without much regard for civil liberties.

In early 2007 the Canadian federal government created a vast surveillance network to monitor protests by aboriginal groups aimed at “critical infrastructure” like highways, railways, and pipelines, according to RCMP documents obtained through access to information requests.

An RCMP slide show, produced in the spring of 2009, reveals that its “intelligence unit” reported weekly to about 450 police, government and unnamed “industry partners” in the energy and private sectors. A Mountie spokesperson told the Toronto Star that the Aboriginal JIG (joint intelligence group) was dismantled, but “we cannot confirm that RCMP divisions are not performing Aboriginal JIG activities under another name of program.”

An annual Strategic Intelligence Report from June 2009 indicates that the spying focused at the time on 18 “communities of concern” in five provinces. These included First Nations in Ontario such as Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI), Ardoch, Grassy Narrows, Six Nations and Tyendinaga, which carried out road and railway blockades and opposed mining and logging on their lands.

The JIG presented itself as a “central repository” of information about First Nations protests, assisted by an “extensive network of contacts throughout Canada and internationally,” and an undisclosed number of spies in the field acting as its “eyes and ears.” No price tag was specified for this “extensive” surveillance apparatus.

An RCMP submission to the Canadian Intelligence Security Service (CSIS) in April 2007 states: “There is a growing concern among high-level government officials and the policing community about the potential for unrest in aboriginal communities, and an increasing sense of militancy among certain segments of the aboriginal population.”

True enough. One example is the KI First Nation, in northern Ontario, which in 2008 prevented the establishment of a platinum mine by Platinex on their traditional territory. The Liberal Ontario government bought out the Platinex claim for $5 million—a sum that would cover the cost of building more than 20 modern houses in a remote northern aboriginal community.

In its sales pitch to the private sector, the RCMP slide show promotes the notion that the aboriginal intelligence unit can “alleviate some of your workload as we can help identify trends and issues that may impact more than one community.”

Now, can you imagine a federal police service that would gather information on, and arrest corporate violators of aboriginal treaty rights and land claims? Can you imagine the cops doing that, instead of spying on, harassing and jailing First Nations’ activists who defend their communities? In capitalist Canada?

No, neither can I.

Ottawa ignores Kyoto

by Barry Weisleder

A previous Liberal government cynically entered into it, and systematically violated it. The present Conservative government thumbed its nose at it from the start, and unceremoniously quit the treaty on Dec. 12. Despite its abject weaknesses, including low targets and unenforcability, the Kyoto Protocol still signifies the need to address escalating carbon emissions, climate change, and the dire threat they pose to civilization.

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries spent two weeks in Durban, South Africa trying to reach an agreement on a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012.

The original treaty was a concession to the mobilizing power of the global environmental movement. Its limitations reflect the class nature of that movement, its failure to collectively articulate a socialist agenda—the prerequisite to democratic control and economic planning in harmony with nature.

The Harper Conservatives seem not to be troubled that their unilateral exit of Kyoto violates domestic law. The Kyoto Implementation Act, adopted by Parliament in June 2007, remains on the books. It was not rescinded. The latest Tory decision was not even debated. The law still requires Canada’s environment commissioner, Scott Vaughan, to inform Parliament annually of the government’s progress in meeting its targets under the climate accord. That is bound to be a bitter pill the government will want to ditch a.s.a.p.

After six years of Conservative rule and $9 billion budgeted to curb green house gases Canada’s output remains very high. Even if Prime Minister Harper keeps his promise to cut emissions by 2020 in lock step with the U.S., by 17 per cent from 2005 levels, Canada will continue to generate some 600 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually. That is the same as in 1990, the Kyoto benchmark year.

Skepticism about the pledges made at the United Nations conference in Durban is no excuse for inaction at home. The United States, China, and India, the world’s biggest carbon spewers, pledged to negotiate a common binding agreement in the next few years. Even if they do, it won’t have much impact until 2020, which means another wasted decade in the drive to cap the rise in Earth’s temperature to a barely tolerable 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era, instead of a disastrous 3.5 degrees.

But at least those governments acknowledge the problem and set themselves a target. Ottawa, on the other hand, closes its eyes and sticks its head into the dirty oil sands, failing even to provide tax incentives for renewable energy, or measures to curb coal-fired electricity, and car and truck emissions.

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau was certainly justified in denouncing Tory Environment Minister Peter Kent when Kent blamed an NDP MP for not attending the Durban conference. It was Kent who had barred opposition MPs from the Canadian delegation to Durban.

So, Trudeau was right to call Kent “a piece of shit.” But the same can be said for the whole Canadian establishment, from the hypocritical eco-posturers to the climate change deniers. The world is in a soggy mess, and time is running out, not only on capitalism but on the human species.

Will 2012 be year for Labour fightback?

by Barry Weisleder

The big business Conference Board of Canada predicts that 2012 will be a year of major labour-management strife across the Canadian state.

In a report released in early December, the Board points to Toronto, where the right-wing administration of Mayor Rob Ford has been waging a war on workers to cut costs, and to privatize city services. The report also noted that the Toronto District School Board is set to negotiate a new collective agreement with teachers in 2012 “on a course of bargaining that is unlikely to be resolved peacefully.”

In 2011, Canada Post workers staged rotating strikes, got locked out by management, and were ordered back to work by the federal government, which imposed a wage rate lower than management’s last offer. The threat of legislation kept Air Canada workers from striking, despite workers voting twice to reject management’s position.

According to McMaster University labour relations Professor Charlotte Yates, governments aren’t just trying to keep deficits in check; they are cutting for political reasons. Unions, per se, are the target. They believe they can succeed at this time knowing that the bosses are permitted to cut jobs without any real challenge from the working class, including its unionized sections. When postal workers challenged the Stephen Harper Conservative government agenda, the labour movement across the country failed to back them up with job action. The NDP filibuster in the House of Commons made many workers feel good, but it did not threaten to deter the government’s course of action.

The Conference Board is now worried that the potential for strikes in the public sector will be greater in 2012 because those workers gave concessions at the outset of the recession/depression in 2008. Rank-and-file frustration is rising. The average public sector raise will be 1.5 per cent in 2012—below the predicted inflation rate of 2 per cent. In contrast, private sector workers will earn an average raise of 2.3 per cent. Overall, workers’ wages have been falling or stagnant for over 30 years.

Health care workers in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba will be negotiating new collective agreements in 2012, as will employees at the Canada Revenue Agency.

By alerting its well-heeled members to potential labour conflict, and by countering the arguments that unions make (for example, that government revenues are down due to corporate tax cuts and concessions to the rich), the Conference Board is helping to get the Canadian capitalist class ready for the big fight ahead. But what is the labour leadership doing to get workers ready for this fight?

The Ontario Federation of Labour, at its November biennial convention in Toronto, promised to expose the one-sided class war being waged by bosses and their governments. But OFL leaders have no plan to challenge the rulers’ agenda with mass action in the streets and work places.

There is talk about a possible merger of the Canadian Auto Workers Union and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers’ Union. A democratically conducted merger would be good. Much better than a raid, which too often is the resort of shrinking unions. But a merger is no substitute for organizing the unorganized, much less for an anti-concessions strategy.

Can workers fight back? Transit workers in York Region, north of Toronto, show that we can. Those employees of private bus companies that pay $7 an hour less than what Toronto transit workers earn, are in the third month of a strike for a wage and benefits catch-up. Their weekly mass pickets and bus occupations are attracting tremendous attention and inspiring considerable hope in broad sections of the working class.

They show the way forward—to a coordinated labour struggle against the bosses’ “austerity” agenda.

If 2012 is to be the year for a labour fight back, now is the time to start talking up the idea of a general strike. Nothing less than escalating, mass job actions are needed to stop the attacks on jobs, public services, and workers’ rights. And that’s what we need to win nationalization of the banks and big business under workers’ democratic control—to lay the basis for an economy that serves the majority.

U.S.-Canada treaty escalates attack on civil liberties

by Barry Weisleder

The Dec. 7 border agreement between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama requires Canada to adopt more U.S.-style security measures, and to share more information on Canadians with American state authorities. This is contrary to the interests of working people in both countries.

Obama has agreed to ask the U.S. Congress for money to speed up truck and business traffic across the border. The funding may or may not be forthcoming. In any case, the price is too high. Heightened security means a stepped up war on civil liberties. Talk of security is a distraction from the capitalist system’s real economic malaise. It’s an excuse for more spending on police and the military, and less money to meet pressing human needs, like health care, education and housing.

So, what exactly is at risk in the latest deal? It’s not “privacy” in the abstract. Remember the U.S. no-fly list? Under the deal, Ottawa has effectively agreed to adopt it. This is the list that famously targeted, among others, the late U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. It has already barred some innocent Canadians from air travel within their own country because their planned flight paths briefly crossed the U.S. The agreement to develop common “decision processes” for air screening can only lead to more folks being stranded.

Since the deal was announced, attention has focused on a new scheme for border exit controls. But bigger dangers lie elsewhere. For instance, the agreement commits the two countries to engage in more “informal information sharing.” Canada also agrees to change its laws, if necessary, to “provide the widest measure of (intelligence) cooperation possible.”

Maher Arar knows first-hand about such intelligence cooperation. He is the Canadian citizen who was arrested by U.S. officials during a New York stopover and sent to Syria to be tortured. As a royal commission later found, Arar’s ordeal was caused by exactly the kind of informal and wide-ranging intelligence cooperation that the new deal envisions.

Since 9/11, U.S. governments, regardless their political stripe, have hurt civil liberties. Washington spies on the most mundane habits of its people, including which library books they read. In at least one case, it carried out the extrajudicial execution of an American citizen. Its agents are no longer permitted to torture people on their own. But even Obama has refused to renounce the practice of so-called extraordinary rendition—sending suspected terrorists to third countries to be tortured.

The U.S. maintains a prison camp at Guantanamo Bay that, in the tepid language of a 2010 Supreme Court judgment, has engaged in the “improper treatment” of detainees, including a Canadian, Omar Khadr, captured by U.S forces in Afghanistan at age 15.

Sweden learned about the dangers of allowing American agents to operate on its soil. In December 2001, the Swedish government decided to deport two Egyptian refugee claimants whose asylum applications were refused. The Swedish Security Police accepted a U.S. offer to provide the plane to carry out the deportation.

When the Swedish officials handed over the deportees, after having searched them according to Swedish procedure, the Americans proceeded to cut off the two men’s clothes, dress them in jump suits and hoods, medicate them, and bundle them on board. They were transported to Egypt, where they were allegedly subjected to torture.

In a 2005 report, the Swedish ombudsman concluded that Swedish officials mishandled the case. They had allowed the American officials to operate on Swedish soil in a manner contrary to Swedish custom and possibly in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture and inhumane and degrading treatment.

U.S. law and practices violate Canadian laws and norms. More to the point, the new border agreement threatens to diminish individual liberties already under attack. In the name of universal human rights, and working-class internationalism, the deal must be undone.

Statement by Afghan and Pakistani Progressives

2012-01-13T19:02:00.001-06:00

The progressive and democratic forces of Pakistan and Afghanistan met here in Lahore for two days [Dec. 21-22] in the first ever joint conference.

This is a historic step for the progressive forces of both sides to sit together and share the sufferings of our people at the hands of U.S.-led NATO forces as well as the religious extremists in the form of the Taliban. We also vehemently condemn the military establishment and the governments of both countries who use different excuses to justify the occupation by foreign forces as well as [being the] tacit [patrons] of religious extremism.

We resolve to launch a sustained campaign against the forces of imperialism and religious extremism. We plan to organize coordinated days of action and other initiatives at the political as well as the cultural and educational levels.

We plan to broaden this movement and include other left and progressive forces who share the common goals of establishing a just peace and of progress in the region. We resolve to also include the progressive movements in India and Iran in order to build up a broad regional alliance to secure a just peace.

We agree that by occupying a sovereign country under false pretences, in blatant violation of all accepted norms of international law, then cynically deploying the smokescreen of “human rights” and “democracy,” NATO’s active promotion of criminal, misogynist warlords has exposed the myth of bringing democracy and freedom to the people of Afghanistan.

The policies of the occupation forces have resulted in the country being hijacked by medieval warlords, who are as adamant in their rejection of democratic processes and denial of civil liberties and equal rights for women as the Taliban regime they have replaced. This has resulted in Afghanistan regaining its ranking as the biggest producer of opium in the world, adding another potent element to the lawlessness that is destroying the fabric of Afghan society.

The violent, theocratic movement of the Taliban is deeply anti-people and promotes the ideal of rule by an elite clergy. The Taliban claims to defend the sovereignty and freedom of Afghanistan, yet it is unable to guarantee basic freedoms and protection to its own population, and its policies make Afghanistan an easy target for foreign interference (e.g., from Pakistan and Iran) and even outright occupation.

It is commonly portrayed in the Western media that the situation of women in Afghanistan has drastically improved since the NATO intervention, with the protection of women being used as an excuse to justify the occupation of Afghanistan as well as military operations in Pakistan.

We reject these claims as false and point out that after 10 years of occupation, Afghanistan has been awarded the rank of the most dangerous country for women, with Pakistan in the top five.

Looking at the effects of the U.S. “War on Terror” on Pakistan, we note the consolidation of the links between the CIA and sections of the Pakistan army, resulting in drone strikes inside Pakistan, the abduction and selling of Pakistani citizens to the United States, the continued transit of military supplies to ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] from Karachi to Khyber, the use of Pakistani military bases by U.S. forces.

We also observe that the closing of ranks between the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban and the Pakistan army—as part of the Pakistani establishment’s policy of dealing with both the Taliban and NATO—has led the army to adopt a more belligerent attitude in public, and seeking to capitalize on the peak in anti-U.S. feeling in the country, to attempt to derail the India-Pakistan peace process ...

Given this history, we reject any military solution to the problems of Pakistan and Afghanistan and pledge to devote all our energy to constructing concrete alternatives to the false choice between NATO and Taliban, a genuinely pro-people, pro-freedom alternative. The immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops along with measures aimed at achieving socioeconomic justice are what we believe can alleviate the suffering of the people of both Afghanistan and Pakistan and lead to a just peace in the region.

However, let us be clear that none of these people-friendly measures will ever be given to the people, but will have to be extracted from the impending alliance of local and foreign powers that is planning to dominate Afghanistan even after the withdrawal of NATO troops (the recent Bonn conference is the latest example of attempts to make such alliances). And this can only be done by a genuine movement of the masses of Afghanistan and Pakistan working together with a clear identification of their common enemies: U.S. imperial power, the neo-colonial Pakistan army, and the Taliban and various allied groups. We recognize this struggle as part of the larger fight against the economic colonization of the region in the name of globalization and neoliberal agenda. ...

[signed] Afghan Labour Revolutionary Organization

Solidarity Party of Afghanistan

Afghan Revolutionnary Organization

Malalai Joya Defence Committee

Labour Party Pakistan

Awami Party Pakistan

Workers Party Pakistan

Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign

Awami Tehreek

United Kashmir Peoples National Party

(This statement has been slightly cut for space reasons. — Socialist Action Editors)

Jamaicans seek change, elect opposition PNP

2012-01-13T19:00:00.001-06:00

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica—Car horns blared, orange flags waved, and campaign reggae jingles pulsated. Youthful political celebrants blew vuvuzelas from roving car caravans on the evening of Dec. 29, continuing well past sunrise across this Caribbean island nation.

A snap election called by the governing Jamaica Labour Party catapulted the opposition People's National Party into government after a five-year hiatus. In terms of seats in the House of Representatives, it was a landslide, 41-22 for the PNP. In terms of votes, it was a three per cent shift from the very close 2007 results. This time the PNP won 53 per cent, the JLP 47 per cent. Political pundits were equally surprised by the relatively large margin of victory, and by the record low 52 per cent turnout.

Still reeling from the effects of the global economic crisis, the vast majority of Jamaicans are deeply troubled by the skyrocketing cost of living, chronic unemployment, and especially dismal prospects for young people, school graduates included. In this election, deep cynicism competed with a desperate hunger for change.

Now don't mind the political labels. The JLP is not a labour party, not even vaguely pro-labour. It is a right-wing business party. And the PNP, notwithstanding its formal affiliation to the Socialist International, long ago abandoned its social democratic pretensions in favour of catering to the whims of foreign capital. The difference between the parties is more superficial than substantial, more akin to what distinguishes Canadian Liberals from Conservatives, or American Democrats from Republicans. In policy terms, precious little; in fundamental social class terms, zip.

Still the “comrades” of the PNP, led by Jamaica's first female Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, raised the expectations of workers, women, and youths. Promises to refrain from slashing public-sector jobs, and to invest in national economic development, set the PNP apart from the JLP.

The “Labourites,” under new leader Andrew Holness, bragged about a decline in the crime rate and, after three years of shrinkage, marginal growth in the GNP under their tutelage. Both parties pledged to slash the country's odious debt (over $18 billion U.S., equalling 130 per cent of GDP) and to abide by International Monetary Fund loan conditions—which means exactly what it means in Greece, only worse.

Business groups rushed to express their “confidence” that the PNP government-elect will do what big business deems necessary. Congratulations poured forth from the President of the Jamaica Exporters' Association, Vitus Evans; from the Jamaica Manufacturers' Association, Brian Pengelley; and from the President of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, Milton Samuda. Samuda praised Simpson Miller's “strength of character” and anticipated working “with the government, especially on the growth agenda to ensure that the climate is created for growth.” It seems unlikely that the agenda he has in mind would include an increase in the minimum wage, which now is equivalent to about $10 U.S. a day, or $1.25 an hour.

Despite some delays and slow voting in some areas, the election was devoid of major mishaps. Invited international observers gave it their stamp of approval. Unlike Jamaican elections in the 1970s and ’80s, this one was virtually violence-free.

The JLP calculated that it shouldn't wait to the end of its mandate in 2012. A series of corruption scandals prompted the resignation of several government officials in 2011, including Bruce Golding, then the prime minister. The party had been out of power for 18 years before winning a majority in 2007.

Golding quit after initially rejecting an American demand that his government arrest and extradite an indicted drug dealer, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, straining diplomatic relations with Washington. In 2010, the government finally sent hundreds of police and soldiers to search for Coke in his gang’s territory — which Golding represented in parliament. The raid led to more than 70 deaths in Kingston, the capital.

In October, the Jamaica Labour Party selected Andrew Holness to succeed Golding. Holness, 39, became the country’s youngest prime minister. The party hoped to weather the storms of corruption and economic misery with a fresh face who had been untouched by scandal while he served as education minister.

But expensive JLP television ads did not only obsess about the personality of Holness. They viciously attacked Simpson Miller with a noxious brew of sexism and disparagement of her working-class origins, implying that the 66-year-old political veteran is not sufficiently educated or competent to govern. The ads backfired big time.

The question now is what will Simpson Miller and the PNP do in the face of (officially) 13 per cent unemployment and over 16 per cent of the population living below the poverty line? Indeed, to grasp the real levels of joblessness and want, double those figures.

Over the past dozen-plus years, while spending part of each winter in Jamaica, I've befriended a number of activists in the National Workers' Union, a major Jamaican labour central. This past week some expressed their views to me. A current “delegate” (local president) of an NWU bargaining unit told me he's elated by the PNP win, confident that unemployment will not spike. Another acquaintance, a former union “delegate,” shrugged his shoulders, saying “they're both the same.”

What about other parties? The “free enterprise” National Democratic Movement has served as a farm team for the JLP. Golding briefly led the NDM. The policies of the Marcus Garvey People's Political Party are a mystery. Neither the NDM or the MGPPP were able to garner 0.01 per cent of the votes cast. And sadly, the unions remain staunchly “non-partisan,” although the NWU leans towards the PNP, and the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union brass favour the JLP.

The small Stalinist-led Workers' Party of Jamaica, which supported the PNP in its leftist phase until the PNP caved in to IMF pressure, never offered a revolutionary option. The WPJ dissolved in 1992. Its former leader, Trevor Munroe, was appointed to the Jamaican Senate by the PNP. Today, a party run by, and for, the working class remains tragically absent.

At her swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 5, in front of an adoring crowd of thousands, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller called for “national unity,” but waxed a bit to the left. She pledged to tackle poverty and underdevelopment. She said that in a global crisis like the present one, government must take the initiative. But how to square that with a request to the IMF for a more favourable repayment schedule, while shunning the very cuts that IMF conditionalities stubbornly demand?

Simpson Miller added a dash of ginger and a sprinkle of nutmeg. She promised to break ties with the British monarchy and make Jamaica a republic, with its own president. Such a move would, no doubt, stimulate national pride. But it would not put food on the table for the multitude of sufferers. Without socialism, national liberation remains only a tantalizing dream.

So, we are left mainly with questions. When the PNP fails to deliver justice to its working-class electorate, will they hold the party accountable? Will Jamaican workers initiate a fight against the capitalist austerity drive that may lead to a break with capitalist politics, and foster the launch of an independent workers' and farmers' political alternative? Only time, and unfortunately, much more experience with hardship will tell the tale.

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder, and first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

No Death Sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal

2011-12-11T17:51:00.003-06:00

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced on Wednesday, Dec. 7, that he would NOT seek a new sentencing hearing to execute innocent death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. On October 11, 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court, affirming two federal court decisions in the same case, effectively ruled that the sentencing portion of Mumia's 1982 trial was a violation of the U.S. Constitution. This mandated that Williams either conduct a new sentencing hearing OR place Mumia Abu-Jamal in the general prison population to serve a life term without possibility of parole. Williams and Pennsylvania officials chose the latter, thus eliminating the possibility of Mumia's being executed.

Mumia's attorneys and supporters are now focused on the fight for a new trial before a new jury where evidence of Mumia's innocence can for the first time be presented in full public view. Mumia's 1982 racist frame-up trial has been widely condemned, with organizations ranging from Amnesty International, the European Parliament and the NAACP to heads of state in France and South Africa demanding a new trial.

Winning a new trial for anyone convicted of murder is no easy task. Mumia's legal team must meet an extremely high legal standard. This includes presenting "compelling and not been previously litigated new evidence" that could not have been "previously discovered through due diligence." A special investigator and associated team has been hired to begin this difficult and arduous process.

We have reached the end of one struggle and the beginning of another. But, better to fight on for Mumia's freedom in the context of a threat of execution NOT hanging over his head.

In truth, the recent Supreme Court action, essentially affirming previous decisions of the Federal District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that Mumia's death sentence was unconstitutional, was a political decision as well as an affirmation of the "letter of the law," one that was 30 years in coming and one that never would have come had it not been for a massive national and international effort on Mumia's behalf.

A Philadelphia, if not national decision, was obviously made at the highest levels to avoid a new sentencing hearing where evidence of innocence could have been presented that would have exposed the entire racist and frame-up nature of Mumia's 1982 trial.

Such a hearing, the DA likely judged, might have led to a level of public outrage and exposure of the criminal "justice" system sufficient in itself to force a new trial despite formal legal restrictions to the contrary. The risk to an institution where the racism inherent in U.S. society, expressed in the actions and mentality of corrupt police officers, judges, prosecutors and reactionary laws, makes justice for the poor and oppressed an impossibility, was too great to contemplate. Mumia's trial and "conviction" classically revealed all of the elements of a rigged racist and classist judicial system. Philadelphia officials chose to avoid any further risk to its credibility.

One fact is certain. After 30 years of insisting that justice has been done – that Mumia's rights were fully protected – the State of Pennsylvania has been proven, through state institutions of its own choosing, to have violated the U.S. Constitution. Mumia has been unconstitutionally held in a tiny death row cell, in virtual isolation from all family and friends - all physical contact barred - for thirty years.

This constitutional violation was scored by Mumia's legal team almost three decades ago when Mumia's first appeal included the simple assertion that the presiding Judge Albert Sabo violated the law by falsely instructing the jury regarding their deliberation. This is the same "hanging judge" Sabo who stated before two witnesses in his private antechambers that he was "going to help 'em fry the n****r."

Sabo falsely told the jury that in order to not execute Mumia and instead arrive at a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole, they had to be unanimous with regard to considering any and all mitigating circumstances. Contrary to Judge Sabo the law states clearly in the Supreme Court's 1988 Mills v. Maryland case, that a single juror is sufficient to place any mitigating circumstance sufficient to negate a death penalty decision, before the jury for its consideration.

Sunday, December 11 at 2:00 pm is set for a mass meeting to open a new phase in the struggle for Mumia's freedom. Join us at the Laney College Forum, Oakland, CA at 2 pm. (one block from the Lake Merritt BART station). Speakers include: Angela Davis, Ramona Africa, Barbara Becnel, Jeff Mackler, Boots Riley, Crystal Bybee, Bishop Desmond Tutu (via video) and Michelle Alexander (via video). Admission free for Peralta students. All others $10 sliding scale. See attached flyer.

In Philadelphia, a parallel meeting featuring Cornel West is set for Friday, Dec. 9, 7:30 PM at the National Constitution Center.

On the West Coast contact Jeff Mackler for further information: 510-268-9429 jmackler@lmi. net. In Philadelphia contact: 267-760-7344

> The article above was written by Jeff Mackler.