After weeks of vocal protest, Indiana Governor Mike Pence has begun to walk back his bigoted “religious freedom” law, which sanctioned refusal of service to customers based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
Sexist Attacks
Members of the homosexual and transgender population are frequently targeted in sexist campaigns for violating gender norms. Forced to the margins of society, these people make easy targets to enforce the sexist order. Their persecution in Indiana will reinforce the persecution of women while dividing a potentially united working class.
Women are always targeted by the sexist anti-abortion movement. On March 30, under a 2014 amendment to the state criminal code, a judge in Indiana sentenced Indian immigrant Purvi Patel to 20 years in prison for having a miscarriage and abandoning her stillborn fetus (NYT, 4/1). This year to date, 235 bills have been proposed around the country to limit abortion rights. Many seek to criminalize pregnant women as well as doctors and clinics that provide for women’s health (RHRealityCheck, 3/31).
The attack on women is often intertwined with racism. In an atmosphere of surging anti-immigrant racism, Indiana has chosen Purvi Patel and Chinese immigrant Bei Bei Shuai to test the new law’s limits precisely because they are Asian immigrants. Once precedent is set with these prosecutions, the attack will be extended to all women.
New Southern Strategy
Governor Pence’s attack is an extension of the Republican Party’s “Southern Strategy,” a 50-year-old campaign to appeal to the most reactionary elements in capitalist society. The strategy uses racist and sexist attacks on the working class to roll back the social safety net while escalating police violence in poor neighborhoods.
Capitalism needs scapegoats for the misery caused by their system. This is the ultimate goal of the Southern Strategy: white workers fighting Black workers, men fighting women, native-born workers fighting immigrants, straight people fighting gay people.
In 1981, Republican strategist Lee Atwater summed up the strategy:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘n-----, n-----, n-----.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n-----’—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct … is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites” (New York Times, 9/25/07).
Democrats quickly joined the game. In 1976, president Jimmy Carter vowed to protect “ethnic purity” in the U.S. and to oppose any mandate to integrate federal housing, a stand that helped him win the presidency. In 1992, Bill Clinton took time off from his campaign to fly back to Arkansas and personally oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally handicapped Black man. The gambit helped to swing a large portion of the white vote and enabled Clinton to “end welfare as we know it” as president. In 2009, Barack Obama, feeding the myth of a “culture of poverty,” castigated Black working-class youth for “aspiring to be the next LeBron or Lil Wayne” rather than scientists or engineers (Reuters, 7/16/09).
The U.S. bosses’ effort to roll back the gains of the civil rights and labor movements has taken different forms over the last forty years. Black and Latin workers are gunned down in the streets by racist police — 111 people were murdered by police in March alone — or railroaded into a vast system of concentration camps. The U.S. prison and jail system, with more than two million inmates, holds the largest incarcerated population in the world.
During the economic crisis that began in 2008, 90 percent of U.S. workers have seen their income decline (EPI, 2/20/15). As banks were bailed out, workers lost their homes in record numbers. As the business community received record tax breaks and handouts, union membership has continued to decline. As salaries for top university administrators grow at a record pace, tuition hikes have created more than $1 trillion in student debt. Workers are rightfully angry, but it remains an open question as to who they will blame for their troubles.
Mike Pence may have overstepped with his religious freedom law, at least for now. Pence has deferred to his masters in the Indiana business community by demanding revisions to put a humanitarian face on the law. But workers should not be fooled. Only a united working class can hope to challenge the capitalist class. Only a communist analysis can give us the tools workers need for unity.
April 13 is “Katyn Memorial Day.” This is the day that Polish nationalists, and anticommunists everywhere, commemorate the alleged murder by the Soviet Union of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war in April to May 1940 in the Katyn forest.
And IT DID NOT HAPPEN!
This is an anticommunist lie. It was invented by the Nazis in 1943, and taken up by all the capitalist powers during the Cold War.
In 1990 to1992 two fanatic anticommunists, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, “admitted” Soviet guilt.
I believed it myself for a few years. Then for a longer time I believed that “We just can’t know — there’s too much conflicting evidence.”
But now we know that this story simply cannot possibly be true. Much of the evidence for this conclusion is only available in Russian. One English-language article was published in August 2013:
“The ‘Official’ Version of the Katyn Massacre Disproven? Discoveries at a German Mass Murder Site in Ukraine.”
http://sdonline.org/62/the-official-version-of-the-katyn-massacre-disproven/
No communists or pro-Soviet people made the discoveries that utterly disprove the “Katyn” story. Polish and Ukrainian archeologists did that. They found things they never expected to find, and certainly hoped no one would ever find.
And now they are keeping quiet about it. Yes, the Poles, the Ukrainians, and the Russians too, are keeping this secret. This, the biggest World War II-related discovery of the past several years, is simply hushed up, a real “conspiracy of silence.”
“Katyn Memorial Day”, April 13, is a good day to tell the world:
“Stalin and the Soviets Are Not Guilty of Killing The 22,000 Polish POWs! They are innocent!”
This isn’t going to stop the anticommunists. Of course not! Since when have anticommunists cared about the truth?
Capitalist Poland has spent at least $500 million on hundreds of memorials all over Poland, and three of them in Russia. They aren’t going to allow a little thing like historical truth spoil their wonderful anticommunist orgy!
So we should do our best to spoil it for them. Today is a good day to tell the world:
“The so-called ‘Katyn Massacre’ Is An Anticommunist Fraud!”
Spread the word!
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40th Anniversary of Boston ‘75 — PLP Smashed Anti-Busing Racists
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- 09 April 2015 685 hits
This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the Boston Summer Project, the first such project held by the Progressive Labor Party and its Party-led mass organization, the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR).
Forty years ago, Boston was one of the most segregated and racist cities in the country. The ruling class of Boston profited greatly from dividing workers along racial lines and many white workers bought into the racist ideas pushed by the politicians. It was dangerous for Black workers to enter all-white neighborhoods like Charlestown and South Boston. Black families who moved into white neighborhoods were attacked. Schools in Black neighborhoods were woefully underfunded and overcrowded; schools in working-class white neighborhoods were not much better. Racist covenants by white homeowners banned sale of homes to Black families.
For years, Black parents and community organizations had fought for better schooling for their children. It was found that the city of Boston had engaged in a deliberate, systematic pattern of segregation of its public schools. Therefore, in 1974, Boston was ordered by a federal judge to desegregate its schools by busing Black children to schools in white neighborhoods and vice versa. Immediately, racist city council members Louise Day Hicks and Albert O’Neil organized a group called ROAR-Restore Our Alienated Rights, (which was more accurately nicknamed Racists on a Rampage) to protest the busing order. During the 1974—75 school year, ROAR organized mob violence against Black children bused into South Boston.
PLP decided to organize a project in the summer of 1975 to combat this blatantly racist violence. It began with our May Day march in Boston where we were physically attacked by a group of racists and soundly defeated them. Then the Party and InCAR sent more than 125 people from all over the U.S., mostly students, to Boston for the summer. Our activities varied. Some organized an anti-racist summer school for Black children who had lost considerable schooling due to a year of racist attacks. Others enrolled in courses in community colleges to spread ideas of multiracial unity. We held daily rallies against ROAR’s racist ideas and collected thousands of signatures on a petition calling for multiracial unity, an end to mob violence and quality, integrated education for all. We went on the offensive against the local racists by fighting them physically again and again. There was a constant tension that permeated the city. By the summer’s end, we so weakened the power of the racist anti-busing movement that ROAR was defeated.
Then in September 1975, PLP and InCAR members rallied to greet Black children on the first day of school. The cops pushed us into a crowd of racists throwing stone at the kids. PL’ers turned their bullhorn on the racists with a message of multiracial unity.
For many, Boston ’75 was a defining moment in our lives. For some it marked an increased commitment to fight for a communist revolution. Even for others who are no longer members of Progressive Labor Party, it was a time of political commitment and activism that we can look back on with pride.
Today, capitalists are still building racist terror to prevent workers from uniting. We invite all antiracists to join us in celebrating May Day 2015. It is especially important now to learn about that movement since the ruling class rewrote history, and expunged the blatant racism of the anti-busing movement from the record.
I’ve been going to the B.P. Amoco picket line about every third day. I am a member of the United Steelworkers (USW) but not of their local. Other supporters from other locals have also come to the picket line. The striking refinery workers really appreciate this worker solidarity that brings into view the bigger picture of the struggle facing the working class as a whole. Like one picketer pointed out, “It is easy to honk your horn as you pass by, but it’s something very different to stop and picket in bitter cold weather.”
The oil industry in 2014 made over $90 billion in profit. The workers know the history of Rockefeller and Standard Oil and know that they are up against a ruthless set of bosses. For example, the first demand the company made to the union was for it to cease being the bargaining unit of the workforce!
The refinery is loaded with outside contractors who are crossing the USW lines and are minimally qualified. Some of the contractors are union members, but their leaders claim that they have to honor previous contracts to do certain jobs. The USW is playing by the rules laid down by the bosses.
The USW has produced a sign reading “Solidarity is Strength.” But the most obvious example of solidarity is the strikers themselves. All the strikers meet at the union hall right across from the plant. They are assigned particular gates to picket. Drivers drop off and pick them up as needed. Hot food is always available at the union hall and canned goods are stockpiled there. Rank-and-filers put on a fundraiser of music and raffles to raise funds for the fightback and raised hundreds of dollars. Speakers called for keeping their rights and dignity on the job and won’t go back without it.
The workers speak of the refinery being understaffed and unsafe. Often four workers are assigned to a job, two working 12 hours and the other two working 12 hours as their reliefs. But if someone takes off, the other two-crew members have to work 18 hours to cover for the missing crewmember. Morale and safety go out the window. Twenty-seven refinery workers have been killed and hundreds hurt in the past five years. Close calls are a frequent occurrence. They work with highly explosive gases and chemicals. One fellow said that he has worked 12-hour days for 19 days in a row (see Red Eye, page 7 on bosses’ risking workers’ lives)!
The strikers are open to communist ideas. One worker upon learning that CHALLENGE was a communist paper said that, “I have some communist leanings and I will check this out.” Many good discussions were held and contacts made. A strike is a good opportunity for workers to see who are their friends and who are their enemies. We will stay involved and make communism clearer to these striking refinery workers.
The devastation and chaos workers face in Ukraine as a result of the ongoing fight between pro-Russian forces and Ukranian troops reveal what the bosses have in store for the international working class. While the fighting is confined for the moment to eastern Ukraine, increasingly hostile rhetoric by both sides and their imperialist financiers, the U.S. and Russia, threatens armed combat throughout Eastern Europe and beyond. As Reuters reported:
More than 45,000 Russian troops as well as war planes and submarines started military exercises across much of the country on Monday [Mar. 16]...President Vladimir Putin called the Navy’s Northern Fleet to full combat readiness in exercises in Russia’s Arctic North apparently aimed at dwarfing military drills in neighboring Norway, a NATO member.
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is the pro-U.S. imperialist military bloc in Western Europe. Three days later, Russia announced it had “doubled the number of troops taking part in mass drills…to 80,000” (Agence France-Presse, 3/19/15).
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the U.S. warmakers’ leading think tank. Representing the dominant finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class, the CFR warned:
Russian armed forces are in the midst of a historic overhaul....Russian interventions in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014–2015...demonstrate that President Vladimir Putin is prepared to use military might to reestablish Russian hegemony….[T]he Russian military budget has more than doubled over the last decade (3/20/15).
World Wars: Crucibles for Revolution
In short, the competition between U.S. and Russian capitalists — for resources, markets, and geopolitical strongholds — is escalating. Current tensions follow Vladimir Lenin’s 1917 analysis, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. As Lenin explained, imperialist countries like the U.S., China and Russia are constantly re-dividing the world through war. (The U.S. rulers used Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor to enter World War II and fight their Japanese and German imperialist rivals. The bosses may use Ukraine as an excuse to launch wider wars.)
As bosses in both countries strive to both motivate the working class for a wider imperialist confrontation, discipline workers through increased racist unemployment and intensified racist terror. But Lenin also showed that the world capitalist system is temporarily weakened by imperialist war, giving the working class opportunities for revolution. World War I and World War II, history’s two global conflicts, both proved to be crucibles for revolutionary movements. Those great advances were later reversed, as both Russia and then China decayed into profit-based systems with a capitalist elite. But today the Progressive Labor Party is organizing in 27 countries to smash capitalism once and for all with communist revolution!
A Line in the Sand
In The Grand Chessboard (1997), war planner Zbigniew Brzezinski outlined U.S. imperialism’s need to conquer Central Asian countries like Afghanistan. Earlier, as national security advisor, he helped write the Carter Doctrine, which drew a line in the Middle East sand. This policy, backed by every U.S. president over the last 35 years, states that the U.S. will defend its oil interests in the Persian Gulf “by any means necessary, including military force.” On March 9, Brzezinski told the Center for Strategic and International Studies, another ruling-class think tank:
The Russian army today is ... three to four years from being ready for a sustained military campaign against a well-armed professional military, namely [the U.S.] This is strikingly similar to the situation in 1938-1939, when...Hitler decided to go after Czechoslovakia.
But if the bosses who control Russia decide they cannot wait to mass their ground troops, they have a quicker option: nuclear weapons. As ABC News reported (3/19/15):
Russia plans to station state-of-the art missiles ... and deploy nuclear-capable bombers ... amid bitter tensions with the West over Ukraine....The missiles, which are capable of hitting enemy targets up to 310 miles away with high precision, can be equipped with a nuclear or a conventional warhead. From Kaliningrad, they could reach several NATO member states.
It isn’t only Moscow hastening the outbreak of World War III [see box]:
A planned U.S. military exercise near Russia’s border...set to begin Saturday, will involve a convoy of 120 U.S. Army Strykers. Over ten days, the eight-wheel drive combat vehicles will stop in a different border area community each night to showcase the ability of U.S. forces to transport troops quickly, and to assure Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland of NATO’s commitment (Military.com, 3/20/15).
Turn World War Into Class War
Our class has no stake in this ruthless battle among bosses. Both Putin and Barack Obama fight their wars on behalf of the billionaire capitalists they serve. Both are ready to sacrifice the lives of millions of workers. Meanwhile, China continues to ramp up its military spending to project its power beyond Asia to Africa and Latin America, the “backyard” of U.S. imperialism since the 1820s.
The Progressive Labor Party is organizing a mass movement of millions of workers worldwide to upset the bosses’ plans for slaughter. We are waging anti-racist battles big and small on the job, on the campus and in the bosses’ militaries. Most of all, we are preparing to turn the next big war into class war for communist revolution. Join us!
*******
Imagining the Bosses’ Next War
On March 17, the Atlantic Council, a war-bent U.S. think tank, hosted a symposium called “How the Next Great War Begins.” Financed by such imperialist mainstays as Chevron, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Council focused on fictionalized predictions of how wars break out and play out. It awarded its top prize to “Coffee, Wi-Fi, and the Moon,” an essay that foresees “a combination of weaponized Wi-Fi, hackable body implants, and great power politics sparking the next Great War” after a U.S-engineered assassination of Vladimir Putin.
James Stavridis, the retired NATO supreme commander who led the bloodbath to rid Libya of Chinese and Russian oil firms, urged the assembly not to forget China. He plugged a forthcoming book, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War. As described by Amazon:
The United States, China, and Russia eye each other across a twenty-first century version of the Cold War, which suddenly heats up at sea, on land, in the air, in outer space, and in cyberspace. The fighting involves everything from stealthy robotic–drone strikes to old warships from the navy’s “ghost fleet.”
“Ghost fleet” refers to the hundreds of warships and freighters the U.S. Navy is keeping mothballed for World War III. Ghost Fleet’s authors, August Cole and P.W. Singer, are no harmless dreamers. Cole runs Atlantic Council’s Art of Future War project, while Singer has cashed fat checks from the Pentagon, the FBI, and the Call of Duty video game. Like other gore-soaked games of its genre, Call of Duty features gratuitous, carnage with no connection to real places or the working people who live in those places.
The war novel-and-game industry is explicitly tied to the Pentagon and military contractors. They are designed to build support and help recruit willing killers for the U.S. ruling class.
