WfJliNEli1 ",1N(JU,1" 25¢No. 327 :~, X-523 8 April 1983

Defend the Soviet Union!

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"Stardate, 1984: This is the captain's log ofthe Starship Free Enterprise, whose four­)ear'mission is to destroy the 'evil empire'."

No, it isn't Captain Kirk fighting Klingons, but theAmerican imperialist commander in chief. Early lastmonth Reagan had preached to his evangelicalfollowers that the Soviet Union was an "evil empire"and the "focus of evil in the modern world," that it wasbetter to see your children "die now" than live undercommunism. For the benefit of the "nervous nellies"worried about the future of humanity, a few weekslater he went on national TV to sell his nuclear first­strike plans with a "vision" of science-fiction weaponsproviding an impenetrable shield against retaliation,First talking about shovels and sheJteu.now~iaRtas,jl Iing about lasers and particle beams, the Reaganautswant to convince the public that they can blow up theSoviets without a single white middle-class Americangetting killed. This is patently absurd, but make nomistake about it: Reagan. Weinberger & Co. are intenton launching nuclear war against the USSR.

In his March 23 TV special, after a lengthydissertation on the mythical "Soviet threat"­complete with satellite. photvs of three (count 'em)Soviet helicopters in Nicaragua (which the Sandinistleadership note.d can be "discovered" by any traveler.such as the pope. landing at Managua airport)-heargued for his mammoth $239 billion military budgetfor 1984. Then toward the end came his "vision of thefuture"-vet another arms race for the ideal anti­ballistic ~issi\e (ABM) defense system. Exhorting thescientific community. he called for a gargantuanprogram which "will take years, probably decades. ofeffort," In fact. under Reagan the budget for spaceweapons has already increased to about $\ billionannually (not including the amounts spent on the spaceshuttle, which already has numerous military assign­ments. including the testing of an aiming mechanism

continued on page 10

C:.oncept of Operahonsof US StrategicOffensive Fo~ceson the BasIs ofMajor Military E..>:ercioos\ \970·1980)

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framed up and finally shot up on thestreets. in their offices. in the jails, evenin their beds. The new FBI Guidelinesare a set-up for legal murder andwholesale destruction of the left.

Thus the fraud of the "internationalterrorist conspiracy"-with its wildpope plots and "yellow rain" lies-hascome home with a vengeance. The word"terrorism." which has been developedas a code-word in the anti-Soviet wardrive. now frames up left-wing politicalopponents of the go'vernment in theU.S. And these "Regulations" are sobroad as to ultimately set up anypolitical opponent of the governmentfor disruption. suppression. expropria­tion and murder. For the new Cold

continued on paxe 4

criminal enterprise." What happensthen'? Ask some Black Panther survivorsof the 1960s what it means to be taggedas a terrorist by the feds. They wereinfiltrated by provocateurs, set up.

ISNCC: "Black Power"and the Democrats 6

•effect March 21.

All of us on the state's wide-open hitlist had better know what it can mean tobe treated as a terrorist outlaw inAmerica. The FBI Guidelines are notonly about the usual tapped phones andplainclothes agents visiting the employ­ers of "subversives." The state takesterrorists with drawn guns. You aredri\ing down a road one night and getpulled over by the cops, A name goesinto the computer. and it comes out"terrorist" . , ,"member of a violent

eYou, a Workers Vanguard reader,

may think of yourself as a politicalactivist, a member ofa left organization,for instance. a supporter of a blackorganization, or a militant trade union­ist. But the capitalist state-with all itspower, its cops. courts and secretpolice-is defining you as a terrorist./\nd it IS defining your organization as a\io!ent "criminal enterprise," In short.an outlaw. That IS the meaning andthreat of the new FBI red-hunt ordersannounced on March 7 and put into

MI;Carth,ism with a Drawn Gun

White Racist Backlashin Chicago Elections

Democrat Washington No Answerto (pton-Byrne Race-Hate Reaction

Twice in the last two weeks Chicago'sblack Democratic mayoral candidatehas been accosted by ugly racist mobs ashe campaigned in predominantly whiteneighborhoods. On Palm Sunday Har­old Washington and Democratic presi­dential hopeful Mondale were drivenfrom a Catholic church up on the ethnic­Polish Northwest Side by an angrycrowd of whites sporting Epton buttonswho snarled "Nigger go home," "carpet­bagger" and "babykillers. " On Easterthe police had to be called to escort thecandidate through a menacing mobwhich surged around him shouting"crook" and "sleaze." These outrageousoutbursts of bigotry are only the tip ofthe iceberg of the virulent racism whichhas increasingly come to dominate themayoral race.

The city is being swept by a viciouswhite racist backlash. And the Demo­crats are to blame. It is the DemocraticParty with its legacy of ethnic­patronage politics that made ChicagoSegregation City. No one's done moreto inflame the situation than JaneByrne, \vho tried to cancel the electionresults with her write-in campaign.Before the primary one aldermanquipped, "Attila the Hun or YuriAndropov could win Chicago's Aprileiection provided they ran as Demo­crats." But perhaps a black cannot.

For over half a century theDemocratic "primary" has been the realelection in Chicago, and the Aprilelection nothing but a rubber stamp.But now a section of the Machinedoesn't like the result of the last election,so they in effect called another vote forApril 12. Police chief Brzeczek an­nounced (threatened) that the streetswould not be safe to walk if Washingtonwas elected. Then came Byrne's "white­in." A new chancellor was hurried Iv

On March 31, before a packedcourtroom in Brooklyn, racist killerGino Bova was sentenced to 5-to-15years for his role in the lynch mobmurder of black transit worker WillieTurks. In five years Bova could be outon the street; but Willie Turks willnever walk this earth again. This isjustice?

A virtually all-white jury had acquit­ted Bova of second degree murder,while finding him guilty of the lessercharge of second degree manslaughter.That means Turks' death was an"accident," there was supposedly nointent to kill! It's obvious the defenseand the prosecution were on the sameside-how else could you end up with a"whites only" jury in New York City?Even the judge admitted in her

2

appointed for the city college system tohead off a Washington appointee. Wewrote that although "the election of thisMachine Democrat (in a fracturedMachine) is no victory for blackpeople," nevertheless "Washington hasthe right to take office with all thenormal prerogatives. Blacks have a rightto elect whoever they want to office"("Jane Byrne, You Lost!" WVNo. 326,25 March).

Bernie Epton, a liberal Jewish Repub­lican from Hyde Park, initially seemedan unlikely candidate for the race-hatersto rally 'round. But his campaign sloganmakes an overtly racist pitch: "Epton,before it's too late." And he's getting thepayoff. Right-to-lifers chose Epton overWashington, though both supportabortion. The Polish American Con­gress has announced for the Republicanand "Solidarnosc-Epton" buttons arepopping up all over the city. There was amass rally for Epton in Marquette Park,long a focus of fascist "white power"rallies, where only a few years ago anti­Semitic Lithuanians gave Nazi leaderFrank Collin 20 percent of the vote in alocal election!

There's big stakes for the DemocraticParty in this election. In recent weeksevery major Democratic presidentialcontender and a host of other big nameDemocrats have paraded through Chi­cago stumping for Washington. Demo­cratic Party fundraisers in New YorkCity and Washington netted the candi­date nearly a"million dollars. It was theblack vote that gave Jimmy Carter theelection in 1976. Washington said it inNew York: "The last 15 days of thecampaign to elect me mayor of Chicagoare the first 15 days of the campaign todefeat Ronald Reagan as President ofthe United States." Black politicianshave warned that a defeat for Washing-

remarks before the sentencing, "Therewas a lynch mob on Avenue X thatnight. The only thing missing was arope and a tree. Gino Bova sup­plied that when he hit Turks over thehead."

Earlier D.A. Liz Holtzman hailedthe verdict, "It means a raciallymotivated homicide will not be tolerat­ed in Brooklyn." In Camden, NewJersey a young Hispanic child ismowed down with a car because thelife of a "minority" had a certain pointvalue for the sicko driver. In Brooklyna racist punk can bludgeon a blackman to death and only do five years inthe pen. It is a measure of the depth ofthe racism in this society that the valueof a black man's life is quantified insuch trivial terms.

Racist mob drivesHarold Washington from

church screaming,"Nigger go hamel"

ton could lead to a massive defection ofblacks from the Democratic Party, andare talking of a symbolic black presiden­tial candidacy as a pressure tactic.

Washington is being touted as thesavior of black people. But what has hepromised to do about racism? The"Chicago Plan" for "voluntary" segre­gation of the schools is a creature of theDemocratic Party, and Washington hasmade it clear he'll do nothing to upsetthat Jim Crow deal. As for openhousing, Al Raby, Washington's cam­paign manager, recently said, "We'revery interested in community stability... the most destabilizing force in the cityhas been block busting ... " (In TheseTimes, 30 March-5 April). The "blackelected officials" may get "their turn torule," but the black masses will just getmore of the same ... racist cutbacks,strikebreaking, mass unemploymentand cop terror.

The reformists on the left are just wildabout Harold. Manning Marable, of theDemocratic Socialists of America(DSA) and a spokesman for the Nation­al Black Independent Political Party(NBIPP), was on to something when hecited the left's role in Washington's vic­tory, comparing it to "the situationfaced by Salvador Allende in 1970" inChile (Guardian, 16 March). The liberalDemocrat-black-labor alliance is the

Gino Bova got off easy. He spent sixmonths in a private segregated cell onRikers Island. Throughout the trialdefense attorney Callan tried to makethe victims of this racist atrocity thecriminals, arguing Bova was just ayoung man who tried to defend hisfriend and his neighborhood. In anemotional appeal to the court Bovapleaded, "Nobody here knows meexcept my family and Jesus Christ. ...I spent six months in jail by myself.Nobody saw me, nobody saw how ithurt." Well, since he's not doing muchtime, every black person from Brook­lyn to Harlem would like to see himsent to the Attica Yard ... no segregat­ed cell this time. Let him explain to theAttica brothers how it hurt.

But Gino Bova, though the ringlead­er, is only one of the 15 to 20 whiteracist punks who beat Willie Turks todeath last June 22. The cops onlycaught three others. Joseph Powell is afugitive at large. Paul Mormondo,who also faces murder charges inTurks' death, is out walking the streetsright now. His lawyer has moved todelay the trial citing the judge'sremarks about lynching and the"poisoned atmosphere in Brooklyn."Hell, that anger against the racist

question of the popular front in theUnited States. Under the pressure ofReagan's anti-Soviet war drive virtuallyevery organization on the left is scram­bling to become the best broker for theDemocrats in their campaign to unseatReagan. Of course the DSA has theinside track because they've been "bor­ing from within" the Democratic Partyfor years. But the Communist Party'snot far behind. The Daily World readslike a campaign rag for Washington.Support for "progressive" Democrats isnothing new for the CP ... they've beendoing it for half a century. Why theyeven supported "lesser-evil" Jane Byrnein 1979!

Meanwhile, on March 27 a mass rallyof 15,000 was held for DemocratWashington by union sellout artists likeDoug ("gIveback") Fraser and LaneKirkland. The popular front ties work­ers and blacks to the class enemy. Youcan't fight racist reaction with Demo­crats. Powerful integrated class struggleis needed against segregation, masslayoffs, plant closures, givebacks, risingfascist terror in Reagan's America. TheSpartacist League showed the waymobilizing 3,000 unionists, blacks,Jews, gays and socialists who stoppedthe Nazis in Lincoln Park last June 27.Break with the Democrats! Oust thebureaucrats! Workers and blacks needtheir own revolutionary party.•

killers should have been right there inthe courtroom, packed with outragedtransit workers staring at Bova and thejury. We say put away all the killers ofWillie Turks and throw the keys in theEast River!

Willie Ann Lee, Willie Turks'mother, addressed the court brieflybefore the sentencing. Her facewracked with pain she said, "Nomother should have to go through this;what I've been through. Death is deathand something we all have to gothrough, but not this way-it got me."And that is the question. What willprevent future racist murders like thatof Willie Turks? Not reliance on thecapitalist courts that treat the racistswith kid gloves anyway. Not illusionsin the Democratic politicians, blackand white, whose racist cops maintaincapitalist "law and order." It will takeintegrated working-class action to putan end to lynch mob terror. Militantsin the TWU have fought for effectiveunion action, thousands of unionmembers making a show of force,rolling through Gravesend on flatbedtrucks to defend the right of blackpeople to walk the streets of Brooklyn.That's the kind of action it will take tostop racist attacks.

WORKERS VANGUARD

Spartacist Candidate for Oakland City Council

Vote Martha PhillipslFor a Workers Partyl

SF PubliC library

1.946 Oakland general strike shows the power that labor and minorities couldwield.

for and it's not for our children. It's formore wars. it's for more austerity. It'sfor sitting around in these boardmeetings while the Ku Klux Klan growsin Oakland ...."\ say it's time to fight. Let's go out onstrike if necessary. No cutbacks. nolayoffs. no takebacks [applause]."

The big city Democratic mayors aredesperate to keep the lid on as thepressure builds among workers, blacksand the unemployed driven into miseryby the bipartisan anti-Soviet war driveof a capitalist system in deep crisis. InOakland the local Democratic machineis divided between Mayor Wilson's"moderates," who push a "trickle­down" program of reliance on bigbusiness to bring jobs through sweetdeals for a large-scale downtown devel­opment project, and the Ron Dellums/Wilson Riles. Jr. "progessives," whourge reliance on the national Democrat­ic Party to spread a few more crumbsaround. Both wings of the Democrats,and the craven bureaucrats of theCentral Labor Council, endorsed Rea­ganite Republican Frank Ogawa for theat large seat on the city council as partof their election-time wheeling anddealing.

Only the Spartacists tell labor andminorities to rely on their own organ­ized strength. This call for independent,militant class struggle brought theNovember 27 victory over the KKK inWashington. D.C. when the Spartacist­initiated Labor/Black Mobilizationprevented the racist terrorists frommarching for genocide in the nation'scapital. Phillips. an organizer of theNO\ember 27 victory. has made theLabor/Black Mobilization a centraltheme of her campaign.

In stark contrast to the Spartacists'fighting class-struggle campaign. So­cialist Workers Party candidate JanGangel echoes the Dellumsites' tiredrefrain about "changing the priorities"of the imperialist U.S. government.When the candidates for council mem­ber at large appeared on KOlA. a localblack radio station with a wide audI­ence. on March 27. Gangel whined: "Atthis point the'prio't1ties me-'Tt~t f\n .human needs but for profits." "Any­body who tells you that the ruling classin this country is going to put anythingbefore their profits is either a liar or afool," replied Martha Phillips. Phillips'campaign calls tor military victory to

continued on page 10

power that we have. which is the powerof a teachers' union. of the parents withtheir support. the power of the Oaklandlabor movement. ..."There's another program here. thatsays don't struggle, vote Democrat. waitfor some new Democrat. Well. we'vealready seen what you Democrats stand

packed room of 300 angry teachers andparents when she denounced the boardand its layoff schemes:

"We haven't come here to beg the Boardof Education for mercy. So many of ourchildren alreadv come out of theseschools unable to read. let alone hopefor a job.... \ say it's time to use the real

mass layoffs in California" in the lastthree years, citing the resulting toll insuicides, homicides, heart-related anddrinking-related deaths, mental illness,etc.

The next day, March 23, Phillipsattended a spirited picket line of 300

members of the Oakland EducationAssociation teachers' union held in thepouring rain to protest the schoolboard's plans for mass layoffs. Oneweek later at a follow-up school boardhearing, the Spartacist candidate drewenthusiastic applause from the jam-

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OAKLAND, April 3-As the Demo­cratic Party front men for Reaganausterity throw teachers, county work­ers and warehousemen out of their jobsand onto the unemployment lines,Martha Phillips, Spartacist candidatefor city council member at large, isbringing the Trotskyist call for "Sit­downs, Not Souplines" to this black andworking-class city.

On March 22 Phillips attended theOakland city council meeting where theDemocratic administration applied thefinal touches to its plan to screw theCarnation workers, who are members ofInternational Longshoremen's andWarehousemen's Union (lLWU) Local6. With fake-left ILWU business agentJim Ryder pleading for a "fair" sever­ance deal, the council put its stamp ofapproval on the dirty deal betweenCarnation and the Port Commission toclose the 60-year-old plant on May 31,"encouraging" Carnation to provide a"iu~t severance package," a retrainingprogram-and to use ILWU membersto clean up the plant after closure! Alocal paper reported:

"In :.t fiery eruption that had to beljuieted by the mayor, City Councilcandidate Martha Phillips called onunion members to reject the council"splan and fight to keep their jobs.'''The time to fight for a job is when youstill have it: she invoked them. sayingthat they should conduct a sit-in andtake over the plant until they get theirjobs back."

-TIle l:lllerprise. 23 March

Phillips' sharp exchange with blackDemocratic mayor Lionel Wilson (seebelow) was also reported in the OaklandTrihune and the Monte/arion (29March), which noted that "300,000 jobshave been lost to plant closures and

Martha vs. the Mayor

WfJRKERSVANGUARD

ministration that wants to take jobsaway from people. is that it's time for thelabor movement to start to fight. If youtake over that plant, the labor move­ment will back you up. With masspicketing and a plant occupation. I'll tellyou. this mayor will sing a differenttune. It's sitdowns or souplines. Carna­tion workers, we salute you. You occupythat plant and the labor movement willback you up. The time to fight is now!Thank you.•

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly ofthe Spartacist League of the U.S.

EDITOR: Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner

CIRCULATION MANAGER: Linda Jarreau

EDITORIAL BOARD: Charles Burroughs.George Foster, Liz Gordon, Mary JoMcAllister, James Robertson. ReubenSamuels, Joseph Seymour. Marjorie Stamberg

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098·770) pUblishedbiweekly, skipping an issue in August anda week in December. by the SpartacistPublishing Co, 41 Warren Street. New York,NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial),732-7861 (Business). Address all corres­pondence to: Box 1377, GPO. New York, NY10116. Domestic SUbscriptions: $5.00/24issues. Second-class postage paid at NewYork. NY.

Opinions expressed in signed articles orletters do not necessarily express the editorialviewpoint.

III

8 April 1983No. 327

Let me tell you what happened only afew blocks from here ...Wilson: I'm sorry ... call the guard.

Phillips: ... a couple of blocks fromhere there were 110.000 workers whenthe city. just like your city administra­tion. wanted to take jobs away frompeople ...

Wilson: Would you ... I'm sorry. willyou please step back from the mike.

Phillips: You know what happened­110,000 went on strike. I would like toaddress my remarks not to you but tothe Carnation workers ...Wilson: Well, address your remarkssomewhere else, not in this meeting.Phillips: Look. you and your high officesay that these workers should be on thestreets. Let me remind you whathappened to the Fremont autoworkers ...Wilson: Just pardon me.Phillips: People like you said that theyshould be thrown out on the streets. Ayear after ...

Wilson: Now just a moment please ...

Phillips: ... they were out on the streetsonly 12 percent of them got a job. Themessage that I have to the Carnationworkers is this: the time to fight for ajobis when you still have it! Don't let themthrow you out on the streets. Take thatplant! You spent your lives working init, you deserve the right to ajob. And themessage that I have to the voters ofOakland, despite the Democratic ad-

Wilson: WelL that's the same side.Phillips: This deal is an outrage ...Wilson: Well, that's the same side.Phillips: Excuse me. could you pleasespeak when I'm finished ...

Wilson: I'm sorry. I called only becauseI thought we've dealt with this issue. butif you were on the other side and weregoing to speak against what we'redoing.... And that's just what we're do­ing, then you ought to be entitled tospeak. But say I'm sorry since you'renot speaking against it, why, I'm goingto proceed.

Phillips: Excuse me, I would like tospeak to the Carnation workers here.Let's look at what's happening. ThePort Commission is getting millions ofdollars. Carnation is getting millions ofdollars, and the workers at Carnation,160 of them of the ILWU, plus 20others, are getting the ax. Now, let'slook at the real situation here. There'sno ...

Wilson: Pardon me, just a moment(gavel, gavel).

Phillips: '" reason that this plant has toclose.Wilson: Excuse me, now just a moment.

Phillips: I would like to talk about theexample of the Oakland general strike.

Ryder: ... My final comment is that theplant committee and the membership ofCarnation had suggested that I be thespokesperson for that plant this eveningand whatever you're going to hear nextis not official IL W U Local 6 orCarnation policy or a presentation, it'sindividual.Wilson: Now. Martha Phillips indicat­ed she wanted to speak on the other sideof this issue.Phillips: Yes, my name is MarthaPhillips. I'm the Spartacist candidatefor Oakland Councilmember At Large.Yes, the side that I want to speak for isfor the Carnation workers to keep theirjobs ...

We reprint helow a verhatim tran­script ofthe attempt by Oakland marorLionel /-t'ilson to silence Spartaci~t

candidate Afartha Philli!)s, running forCitr CO/lnci/member At Large inupcoming April 19 lucal electiuns, athearings on plans by the city administra­t/on and company oificials to dosedown the Carnation ,mrehouse in theEast Bar docks area. Phillips wasscheduled to speak alier Jim Rrder, ahusiness agent of International Long­shoremen's and Warehousemen '.I UnionLocal 6.

8 APRIL 1983 3 =::..II

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L.- Note the importance given to "Union AffLliation,"

L- Some of the political groups are obvious: BPP-Black Panther Party; PLP-Progress.ive Labor Party;SDS-Students for a Democratic Society; SNC-Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; SWP­Socialist Workers Party; WWP-Workers World Party. For some, we can make educated guesses: MIN­Minutemen; NOI-Nation of Islam; PRN-Puerto Rican Nationalisu. Some are less clear: NL may meanNational Lawyers Guild; AWe may be American White Citizens C'buncU; SPL could mean SpartaeistLea~ue;no one at CounterSpy can guess. what JFG stands for.

Sample page from FBI's "ADEX" hit-list file as It appeared in CounterSp-ymagazine 6 December 1976 (above). The special listing of "SPL" on ADEXmakes us targets for the new FBI Guidelines. The FBI definition of theSpartacist League (below) uses classic witchhunt language of "violentoverthrow," and "does not Q~enly[our emphasis] advocate" to falsely accusethe SL of secretly planning some kind of conspiratorial putsch. Now theyhave added "terrorist."

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prosecute or not to prosecute. theinvestigation of a criminal enterprisedoes not necessarily end...."

Step four: establish that anythinggoes. "U nlike the usual criminal case....It often requires the fitting together ofbits and pieces of information manymeaningless by themselves to determinewhether a pattern of criminal activityexists. For this reason, the investigationis broader and less discriminate thanusual. ..."

All this talk about "intelligence" and"information" is of course about pene­tration agents, informers and disrup­tion, smear jobs. firings and worse."Highly intrusive" measures are to beemployed only for "compelling rea­sons." But the FBI decides when to feelcompelled. Editorializing in defense of"constitutional rights," the Los AngelesTimes (9 March) expresses concern thatthe new FBI Guidelines will make iteasier within the law to "place informersin organizations before the agency has a'reasonable indication of criminal activ­ity'." And the New York Times (8March) notes that an FBI investigationnow "is substantially less strict than thestandard for obtaining a search warrant,which requires 'probable cause' tobelieve that a crime has been or will becommitted."

For prosecution. the government hasthe extended conspiracy laws of RICOwhich gives them sweeping legal powersthat are in particular aimed at financial­ly stripping their victims, thus denyingthem adequate legal defense. Passed byCongress in 1970, RICO's vague defini­tion of "racketeering" invites preciselythe strategy the government is using toensnare the left in its net. RICO is thelaw to get those who are "ungettable" bythe usual means. Not only are multipleprosecutions and special heavy sen­tences available under RICO, but thegovernment can grab the assets of the

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The 5partacist Le~Bue (~PL), founded in 1965 byformer f:H:'f:lbe:rs of nnother Trotskyist-cor.'.munist orf,anization,lIdvocates the destruction of the capitalist systeP.1 and the lersPY 7

creation of a ~orkers class system and a workers classsccicty. The SPL national he"drilwrters is lOC:ltCc.l in j;e",Yorl~ Citv. \l.'1i1e the SPL does riot oDenlv acivocC'.te theviolent cverthro\,; of the U, 5. (;overnment nt this time orvioJo.tions of other Federal or state Im.;s, the 51'L doesbelieve that eventual violent revolution to overthrow thepresent co))italist syst€Q of £ovcrn:71ent in the U. 5, isinevitable. The objective of the srL is to organize amembership to take action to precipitate such a revolutionwhen conditions are ripe and to direct nnd seize controlof the revolution ",hen' it occurs.

In 1971, Attorney General John Mitchell, in an attempt to stave off further criticism of the FBI's practice of keepinghuge lists of dissidents-alleged subversives-·for who knows what nefarious reuons, announced that all of the lists hadbeen abolished. and were replaced by one short "Administrative Index," or. "ADEX," of less than 10,000 names. St.!lctthat list was also unrelated to proven, or even suspected criminal activity, in 1974 Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Grayannounced that the ADEX had been abolished. However, in 1976, a politically active attorney from New York, requestinghis FBI file under the Freedom of Information Act. discovered, buried in his dossier, a copy of his ADEX entry Memoran­dum and Report. ADEX. it appears, was not abolished, simply moved around. No explanation of the four categories wasgiven. The New York office re,ommended thai the lawyer be put in the lowest category, IV. "because of subject's apparentinfluence with New Left leaders." HO\Yever, the home office stated: "In adtlition to the foregoing, a review of subject'sactivities clearly depicts him as a revolutionary attorney and sympathiur who, during a time of national emergency. wouldbe hkely to commit acts inimical to the national defen$t. In view of the above, subject is being included in Category IIIof ADEX:' What fate is in store, we wonder, for people put in Category n The names and addresses have been changed;otherwise the document below is an exact replica of an ADEX M.emorandum:

tions for the witchhunters: I) forinvestigation it justifies the continuingspying on left-wing organizations al­though no crimes have been committedor even alleged; and 2) for prosecution itdefines the left within the special set ofRICO (Racketeer-Influenced and Cor­rupt Organizations Act) conspiracylaws.

Under the Guidelines Section IIIheaded, "Criminal Intelligence Investi­gations." the attorney general lays outthe rationale for the FBI to continue todo all those things it was supposed tohave stopped doing after the exposuresin the 1970s because they exceeded its"legitimate authority."

Step one: equate "the mob" with theleft as similarly violent "enterprises.""This section authorizes the FBI toconduct criminal intelligence investiga­tions of certain enterprises who seekeither to obtain monetary or commer­cial gains or profits through racketeer­ing activities or to further political orsocial goals through activities thatinvolve criminal violence [our empha­sis]." (For the government. participa­tion in the struggles of the working class.like strikes and demonstrations. andparticularly the preparation of theworking class for a future socialistrevolution necessarily "involve criminalviolence.")

Step two: define the investigation asnot limited to specific, actual crimes."These investigations differ from gener­al crimes investigations.... An intelli­gence investigation of an ongoingcriminal enterprise must determine thesize and composition of the groupinvolved. its geographic dimensions, itspast acts and intended criminal goals.and its capacity for harm."

Step three: determine that the licensefor such investigation lasts indefinitely."While a standard criminal investiga­tion terminates with the decision to

Big Brother RICO Does MoreThan Watch

Branding the left as terrorist "crimi­nal enterprises," the Reagan FBI Guide­lines serve two important, linked func-

These FBI Guidelines are a dangerousdeception. Of course the governmentknows full well that such groups are notterrorist or criminal conspiracies. Afterall. it has been the government whichhas had these groups under its surveil­lance for decades. "Surveillance!" Whata mild word. for the witchhuntingattacks of the government. Continuous"surveillance"-for over 60 years theyhave spied. penetrated, set up, framedup. imprisoned and attempted to de­stroy the Communist Party in everyknown way-legally and illegally; forover 40 years the SWP has been hit withthe same "surveillance" of provocateurs.informers. wire taps and mail covers.firings. Smith Act prosecutions andjailings; and we know that the SpartacistLeague has been on the FBI hit list forthis filthy business for 20 years.

The only time they ever got criminalprosecutions and / or convictions waswhen they invented laws in connectionwith "advocacy" or membership. TheFBI excuse for all of this surveillance isthat they are supposed to be stoppingcrimes which it is even historically clearthese groups do not commit. But whathas the FBI done to stop the Croatianterrorists. for instance, or gusanoterrorists of Omega 7, who really dobomb and murder, extort and hijack?

The real FBI targets are the leftists.particularly revolutionaries. And withthe charge of terrorism. the secret policehave added a most dangerous twist tothe witchhunt. Not only does the chargeserve to falsely discredit political oppo­nent organizations in the eyes of thepublic. it can scare hell out of potentialnew members. It says that if you join thisorganization you are a terrorist in theeyes of the state. i.e., the guys with theframe-up laws and the guns. Of courseall this is transparently meant to isolateand intimidate the members of the leftistpolitical organization and those peoplewhom it hopes to influence. And withthe net of conspiracy thrown so wide,the witchhunters hope to be able toreduce the funds of the target organiza­tion by intimidating potential contribu­tors. This is the standard stuff ofpolitical witchhunts.

The point of a really effectivewitchhunt then is not only to get theimmediate victims. but to coerce theentire population into ideological con­formity. In the U.S. this obvious kind ofwitchhunting runs into the bourgeoisie'ssometime pretense to the democraticidea of free expression. It is no wonderthat the Reagan FBI Guidelines havealready provoked a nationwide yelpfrom civil libertarians. Even the chair­man of the House Judiciary Subcom­mittee on Civil and ConstitutionalRights noted that "the FBI wants toinvestigate speech": "The guidelinespermit the launching of a full investiga­tion based on 'advocacy' alone" (NewYork Times. 8 March).

In the U.S. the government goes outof its way to define the victims of itspolitically motivated state repression asterrorists rather than political oppo­nents. The victims of ideological witch­hunts are treated as common criminals.There are no political prisoners in U.S.jails according to the government, justcommon criminals. The Reaganite red­hunt has followed this "law of theexcluded middle" to its last letter,coming up with the tag of "terrorist."They recognize only two categories ofopposition. Lawful dissent is limited tothe likes of college professors andchurchmen who write letters to the NewYork Times expressing tender concernover the government's validation ofthe human rights record of El Salva­doran butchers, or South African apar­theid. All other political opponentsof the government become "criminalterrorists."

FBI •••(continued from page 1)Warriors, a new "subversives list" is nota sufficient license for what they have inmind. They want to come after the leftwith armored vehicles and machineguns. Therefore, what was "subversive"in the 1950s has been defined as the"terrorism" of the 1980s. The politically"subversive" organization has been re­cast as a violent "criminal enterprise."

The new FBI "Guidelines" may wellbe the watershed document in thissinister process of criminalizing andsetting up left-wing opposition to thegovernment. It codifies, makes publicand directs the FBI to wipe out any legaldistinction between the government'spolitical opponents and "organizedcrime." The introduction, from Rea­gan's attorney general William FrenchSmith to FBI director William Webster,is, in Richard Nixon's favorite phrase,perfectly clear:

"It is important that the FBI devote itscriminal intelligence expertise to do­mestic security /terrorism cases as it has.with increasing success. in organizedcrime cases. In the past. operating underdistinct guidelines setting differentstandards and procedures has ham­pered this effort. The new approach.combining both organized crime anddomestic security investigations in asingle set of guidelines. should make iteasier for your agents to focus theirintelligence efforts on those criminalenterprises which threaten our people toattain ideological goals."

-Criminal WH' Repurter. Vol.32. No, 24. n March 19H3

The last ten words of the paragraphabove are. of course, a witchhunter'sdream. And so is the entire strategy ofwhich these guidelines are a part. Notsince the days when the Roy Cohn typesread passages of Karl Marx in court as"proof' of criminality has there beensuch an open declaration of official red­hunting.

Worked out with the Senate Subcom­mittee on Security and Terrorismheaded by right-wing fanatic JeremiahDenton. the "Guidelines" were con­sciously aimed directly at the politicalleft and ot~er perceived ideologicalopposition. It was speech. "advocacy"and political program rather thancriminal acts-' which were the targets ofthe hearings, As Webster explained,groups whi~h "produce propaganda.disinformation and 'legal assistance'may be even more dangerous than thosewho actually throw the bombs" (NewYork Times, 24 June 1982).

The FBI claims to be investigatingcrimes, but here the "focus of evil" ispropaganda.' even "legal assistance."This last target might recall the 1950swhen the courts often threw the lawyersin jail along with their clients (this iscalled a "chilling effect" on legalrepresentation for the accused). It wascommittee head Senator JeremiahDenton himself who explained duringthe hearings that the "terrorist groups"are "no different from other criminalenterprises. except that their motivationmay be political rather than financial"(New York Times. 24 June 1982). Thewitchhunters are no longer satisfiedwith the profile of the New Left"terrorist" of the 1960s. They have theirCold War big guns and their army ofprovocateurs not for robbers and bomb­throwers. They already have plenty oflaws on the books for that. They areafter us, gentle reader, you and me!

Just who are these "terrorist groups"and "criminal enterprises"? First onDenton's list was none other than one ofthe most tame, "peaceful-legal" refor­mist outfits on the left: the SocialistWorkers Party (SWP). As for these"legal assistance" "terrorists," he citedthe National Lawyers Guild because it"seeks to exploit the law in order tobring about revolutionary change"(New York Times, 24 June 1982). Sothink about it. If the "terrorist groups"will include the SWP and the Guild,which groups can conceivably not befalsely branded as terrorists?

4 WORKERS VANGUARD

This is to inforn you that the inclusion of the Spartac;st Leaque anrl of theSpartacu5 Youth Leanue on paqe 11 of tne Deoartnent of Justice's rrublication,"0raan ized Cril""'E in California .•. 1979, Annual Report to the CalifnrniaLeClislature, Part? Terrorisl'l," was in error.

·I·····..·•.•····.······

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4

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terror tactics, their own consummatelyviolent state and economic war onmillions of proletarians and blacks.That is why the FBI must portray the"speech crimes" and "thought crimes" ofthe Marxists as "terrorism." Capital­ism's secret police have no otherpurpose than to frame up and destroythe state's political enemies. And theydon't much care about the law or thenaive reformers who imagine otherwise.In 1977 when many liberals were smugin their conviction that the FBI wouldbecome a gentlemanly operation be­cause of the post-Watergate/COIN­TELPRO exposures, we wrote. in"What Is the ADEX File'?":

"The government's covert operationsmay be reshuflled and reorganized.streamlined and prettified, renamedand swept further underground, But theFBi continue, to carrv out its dirt\'work of spying. intImidation andharassmem. slander and disruption ofthe political and persona! li\es of peoplewho,e only 'crimc, is their politiealcomictiom...

Fight the New McCarthyism!

Before the early 1970s, mostAmericans thought of the FBI as theguys who caught the criminals ratherthan being the criminals themselves.They then learned what the left hadknown antoowelHttrd~~.It W'all "0

longer possible for the government tocompletely cover up FBI crimes as it wasrevealed that the FBI was up to itsshoulder holsters in the blood of BlackPanther leaders Fred Hampton andMark Clark, murdered as they slept intheir beds in Chicago. Americanslearned how George Jackson was shotdown like a dog in prison. And they readabout FBI creature Gary Rowe, whowas perhaps the most murderous of allthe Klansmen in the U.S. They learnedof the COINTELPRO program whichset up and tried to destroy particularlywhat it called "black hate" groups whichincluded not only the Panthers. but evenliberal pacifist Martin Luther King.

Because the antiwar movement andcivil rights movement had a largebourgeois liberal constituency, so didthe FBI's "enemies list." Notjust the left,radicals, labor and blacks, but bour­geois "respectable" citizens found outthat the FBI had read their mail andtapped their phones, investigated theirsex lives and medical records. That waswhen the decisive sections of thebourgeoisie decided the FBI had over­stepped its "legitimate authority." TheFBI had broken the rules, they said, andbegan to write new rules. In the wake ofthe Watergate and COINTELPROexposures, "Guidelines" were estab­lished in 1977 by Gerald Ford'sattorney general, Edward Levi. It is thisset of guidelines that is now beingreplaced.

But for the Reaganites the newpunitive Guidelines are part of aconcerted effort to rearm U.S. imperial­ism after the U.S. defeat in Vietnam.When Reagan proclaims that "Americais on the mend" he is sloganeering notonly for his economic policies. TheReaganites understand their politicalmission as the cure for the "Vietnamsyndrome," the disease of declining U.S.imperialism demonstrated by the U.S.defeat in Southeast Asia. This mission

continued on page 10

Geronimo Pratt(right) with

Black Panthersafter their L.A.

headquarters wasshot up In 1969

SWAT teamattack: Ask the

Panthers what Itmeans to be

branded"terrorist"

In the U.S.

hunting strategy into place on a nationallevel. Does the FBI have a list? The FBIis in the hit-list business, from theauthorization of the 1950 McCarranAct secret list for the future internees ofthe concentration camps to the "subver­sives" list compiled and called the"administrative index" or ADEX (see"What Is the ADEX File?" WVNo. 151,I April 1977). The ADEX file wassupposed to be abolished and destroyedin 1974 after the Watergate and COIN­TELPRO revelations. But in 1976 anADEX "memorandum" was obtainedand made public through the FOIA(Freedom of Information Act). Itrevealed a list of 17 organizations whichget special FBI attention, including,besides the CP and SWP, the designa­tion "SPL." The FBI admitted its "SPL"was the Spartacist League (see "FBITargets the Spartacist League," WV~o.151, I April 1977). Because the Sparta­cist League appears on the ADEX, weare surely targets for the new FBIGuidelines.

During the Senate's 1975-76 ChurchCommittee hearings, when the heat wason for the FBI to streamline itsoperation, many promises were made tocease illegal acts and to destroy files likethe ADEX. But there is every reason toassume that the ADEX and its prioritiesremain intact. Recently even the FBIadmitted it. When pressed in connectionwith the Denton Subcommittee's inter­est on how it could "clear" prospectiveemployees if it had destroyed its files,the FBI answered simply:

";-';0 FBI Headquarters files related tosubversive. terrorist or extremist activi­ties by individuals or organizationshave been destroyed. The informationappearing in these files documentingsuch activities is readily retrievable. , .. "

-Analysis of Claimed TerroristIncidents in the U.S., 1981(p. 73)

When does the FBI destroy a file? AskRosemarv Woods. The case of Elmer(Geroni~o) Pratt is a case in point.Pratt, a Black Panther leader, wastargeted for "neutralization" underCOINTELPRO, framed up on murdercharges and is still in jail in California.Pratt has shown that on 18 December1968, the day the state claims hemurdered someone in Santa Monica,his surveillance records would reveal hewas in Oakland. He has demanded thoserecords. But the FBI first claimed theyhad no records on Pratt before 1969.Then it was revealed that the FBI had allthe Black Panther leaders under surveil­lance in 1968. So they explained to anappeals judge that with regard to therecords wanted by Pratt, "the tran­scripts of the conversations recorded bythese telephone taps have been lost ordestroyed" (CounterSpy, February­April 1982). It is in part on the basis ofthe Pratt case that Amnesty Interna­tional is demanding a U.S. human rights"commission of inquiry into the effect ofdomestic intelligence activities on crimi­nal trials.... "

It is the U.S. government and itssecret police which are a criminal enter­prise. They are the perpetrators ofterrorism and violence, leaving a trail ofdead and maimed across the entireglobe. Preparing to plunge the worldinto another war, they contrive thespectre of a "violent revolutionaryconspiracy" to legitimate their own

~.o.•ox l33S7

IlACIIA",,[HTO '5.':1

(916) 322-2430

A Workers Party Has theRight to Organize!

When the Spartacist League dis­covered in 1981 that we had beenincluded on a government "terrorism/RICO" hit list, we determined that wewould not be silent while the secretpolice branded us "terrorists" and blewus away. We fought California's attor­ney general (now governor) GeorgeDeukmejian and his pioneer effort todefine the left as terrorist. His "Organ­ized Crime Report" was developedunder Reagan adviser Edwin Meese IIIwhen he was Alameda County DistrictAttorney. The Spartacist League waslisted as "left-wing terrorists" under thecategory "organized crime." It was notjust a "subversives" list. The witchhunt­ers want us to be known for what wedon't do. They willfully confuse Marx­ism with terrorism so they can create theatmosphere to wipe out the Marxists.We fight to be known for what we do.We organize demonstrations against theKKK/Nazis, for instance. We publishMarxist socialist propaganda on behalfof the workers and the oppressed. Thecops long to answer Workers Vanguardor militant trade-union leaflets with a.357 Magnum. It is they who want theexcuse for a military solution to thepolitical opposition of the revolutiona­ries. We understand that at bottom thewitchhunters want to destroy the van­guard of their class enemy. In our fightagainst Deukmejian's hit list, we de­manded: "Workers Party Has a Right toOrganize!"

We fought this dangerous smear witha campaign that included a lawsuitagainst Deukmejian, And we won."Marxists Not Mobsters." was thememorable headline in the S. F. Exam­iner (18 December 1981), as our successstruck a blow against California's newMcCarthyism and punched a small holein the RICO net. Deukmejian's officewas forced to back down on its terroristsmear charge against the SL, retractedour name, and admitted their "error" ina statement which it distributed to cop/FBI agencies nationwide.

Now the White House and the FBIare putting this most dangerous witch-

who bomb for "freedom" but not forprofit slipped out of the RICO net incourt.

AtlIIrnrg lSrnrral

Decellber 14. 19R1

&Iatr uf <!:alifurnia

Ill'purtmrnt of ~u5tirl'

(l)l'Ofgr ilrukmrttun1~."'MCro D.... I1_••,.·~'.l

Dear Si r or Mada"':

Subject: Cnrrection of Depart"ent ofJustice's Publication

Federal Bureau of InvestigationPennsyl vani a Avenue between 9th" 1nth 1MWashinnton, D.C. 2nS3S

~~Chief, Bure.u of Prnani,erl Cri ....and Criminal Intelliqence

In 1981, Californiaattorney general GeorgeDeukmeJlan backs downand his office Issuesstatement of "error" to FBIand other police agencies.SL campaigns In SanFrancisco, July 23, againstDeukmeJlan "terrorist"smear: We do not Intend tobe nameless, facelessvictims.

accused "criminal enterprise" even as itis being tried. Thus without a crime, thevictim is made to pay. Further, RICOgrand juries can make wide-rangingassaults based on conspiratorial "asso­ciation" which can be as flimsy as a"common belief" in "social goals" suchas socialism.

RICO is also a first-strike legalweapon in the government's union­busting war against the labor move­ment. With such "labor racketeering"laws the bosses' state has carried outvicious vendettas against the ILA'sTony Scotto, and recently used RICO toget the Teamsters' Roy Williams.Marxists say: labor must repel the classalien intruders and take care of its ownhouse-state out of the unionmovement!

The model offered by the witch­hunters for the effectiveness of the"terrorism/ RICO" method is the NyackBrinks job witchhunt in the fall of 1981.Using the case of a bank robbery with astrong smell ofgovernment provocationabout it, the FBI whipped up a first-rate"red terror" and "anti-terrorist" witch­hunt. Pushing the line of getting "to thebottom of" widespread "conspiracy,"the cops kicked down doors, shot upand arrested people on the basis ofalleged "connections." While tanks andAir Force SWAT teams hit the home ofa black nationalist leader in Mississippiwith no evidence of involvement, anofficial explained that "the groups sharecommon purposes." Another officialsuggested that the purpose could be "thecreation of a socialist state" and "an endto the United States Government as \veknow it" (see "The Nyack Brinks Job:We Don't Know," WV No. 292. 6November 1981). The deputy director ofthe FBI in New York was quick toproclaim the witchhunt a "major racket­eering investigation," thus putting theRICO grand jury in place which hasbeen busy rounding up and terrorizing"the usual suspects."

Recently, the government's RICOmachine was buffeted around in appealscourt, which ruled that the Croatianterrorists didn't fit as a "racketeer"organization because they weren't outfor financial gain. And an "organizationstriving for the independence of theirnative land" was cp-tainl~! not "cor­rupt," the judge's panel said (New YorkTimes, 27 January). Thus the Croatians

8 APRIL 1983 5

Neither Nationalism Nor Liberalism,But Revolutionary Integrationism!

Doug Harris

with the anti-Communist prejudices oftheir parents which had paralyzed thestruggle against racism.

SNCC was formed in 1960 at theinitiative and under the auspices ofKing's SCLC. Its founding statement ofprinciples began: "We affirm the philo­sophical or religious ideal of non­violence as the foundation of ourpurpose.... " SNCC at birth was aconstituent part of the black liberalestablishment in the South, the youthgroup of what W.E.B. Du Bois earliertermed "the talented tenth." Yet sixyears later SNCC \vould infuriate liberalopinion by raising the slogan "blackpower," and shortly thereafter its newchairman Hubert "Rap" Brown woulddeclare, "the only thing 'the man's' goingto respect is that .45 or .38 you got."What caused so radical a transforma­tion during those six years?

Through bitter and repeated experi­ence the SNCC activists learned first­hand that the white liberal leaders-theBobby Kennedys, the Hubert Humph­reys and Walter Reuthers-were a lotcloser to Dixiecrat racists GeorgeWallace and James Eastland than theywere to the civil rights activists. Theysaw information given in confidence toJustice Department "observers" passedon to cracker sheriffs who naturallyused it to victimize SNCC organizersand supporters. There came a momentwhen a majority of SNCC had rejectedliberalism as they knew it, but had notyet embraced black nationalism. Blackoppression could not be overcomewithin the framework of bourgeoisdemocracy, however radical. The condi­tions weighing upon the impoverished

So here you have the spectacle of twoformer chairmen of SNCC: one leavestown ordering his cops to protect theKlan, and the other tells the Howardand UDC students who were part of thethousands of black Washingtonianswho stopped the KKK November 27that their action was "a diversion." Arecent book, In Struggle-SNCC andthe Black A wakening of the 1960s, byClayborne Carson sheds considerablelight on a subject of great interest tocommunists: how the left wing of thecivil rights movement, located mainly inSNCC, broke from liberalism only todisintegrate and become trapped in thedead end of black nationalism.

In Struggle is a comprehensive, vividdescription of the crisis in this crucibleof black radicalism. What Carsoncannot explain is why it happened. Tounderstand the impasse of the civilrights movement, to open the road tothe genuine emancipation of blackpeople in America, requires a material­ist analysis and Marxist program ofrevolutionary integrationism.

From Liberal Pacifism to"Black Power"

The appearance of the Southern civilrights movement with the 1956 Mont­gomery bus boycott opened a new phasein postwar American history, ending theperiod of Cold War/McCarthyite hys­teria. Increasingly American society waspolarized along the lines of for-or­against Jim Crow. The young liberalactivists, black and white, who threwthemselves into the lunch counter sit-insand freedom rides were not sympatheticto communism, but they were breaking

such as it is. But what has that meant forthe quality of life in the Southeast D.C.black ghettos? As ex-SNCC stafferCharlie Cobb, narrator of the TVdocumentary, noted, "The guys inAnacostia don't really feel like theyknow Marion Barry anymore." Barry,who once led lunch counter sit-ins inNashville, now tells the demonstratorswho picket outside his office, "I can getmore done in five minutes with mysignature on a document" than they canwith LOOO people on the street. And justwhat are those documents he's signing?How is it that these "Movement people"have now become the protectors of theKKK, the administrators of racistbudget cuts, the instigators of massexpulsions of black students at theUniversity of the District of Columbia?

Marion Barry did not "sell out."SNCC was heterogeneous, and its"moderate" wing never saw itself goingbeyond reforms "within the system."They and their seniors in Martin LutherKing's SCLC were always looking tobecome something like the mayors ofAtlanta and Washington, D.C. Andthey did. But what about the radicalslike Stokely Carmichael (now KwameToure) who fought against the MarionBarrys and whose break from liberalpacifism was expressed by the slogan"black power"? While Carmichael andhis "All-African Peoples RevolutionaryParty" may not be administering thebourgeois state apparatus, they aretotally irrelevant and frequently obsta­cles to today's black struggles. As thewhite sheets and burning crosses multi­ply in Reagan's America, Stokely says,"It's a waste of time" to fight the Klan!

Election night, Lowndes County, Alabama, 1966.

••"BLACK POWER" AND

THE DEMOCRATS

Washington Post

Washington, 27 November 1982:Spartaclst -Initiated Labor / BlackMobilization stopped the Klan.

The 5,000 demonstrators, over­whelmingly black and working­class, who stopped the Ku KluxKlan from marching in the

nation's capital last November 27 mayhave opened a new chapter in thestruggle for black liberation in America.Responding to the call of the Labor /Black Mobilization, initiated by theSpartacist League, thousands of anti­racists streamed from the Capitol to theWhite House, chanting, "I, 2, 3,4, Timeto Finish the Civil War-5, 6, 7, 8,Forward to a Workers State!" Ourslogan caught on instantly, expressingthe continuity of a century and a half ofstruggle for black freedom. After adecade of defeats, November 27 pointedthe way forward out of the impassereached in the 1960s when the militantcivil rights activists ran headlong intothe realities of black oppression inracist, capitalist America.

The spectre of blacks and reds backedup by the power of labor sent shiversdown the spine of the bourgeoisie. Sotheir furor against "outside agitators,"the "Tarzan Trotskyists," was predict­able. Despicably, a "socialist" cult-sectbased in Ann Arbor even echoed thiswith talk of "carpetbaggers." Thebourgeois hysteria came not just fromReagan, whose attorney general hadvowed to protect the KKK and evenbrought in the FBI to back up citypolice. On November 27 Washington'sblack mayor, Marion Barry, conven­iently departed for a "mayor's confer­ence" in Los Angeles, leaving his cops totear gas and club black youth. TheWalter Fauntroys and their reformisthangers-on had their "free food" diver­sions, their pop-front gab fests at distantsites to try to channel the anger of themasses into "safe" directions. But theyfailed ... and the Klan was stopped.

On November 27, a spokesman forthe Southern Christian Leadership Con­ference (SCLC) asked from the Labor/Black rally podium why Marion Barrywasn't out there with us. Many demon­strators had the same question, and aNational Black Network talk show hostlater asked rally organizers whether wethought Marion lBarry had sold out.After all, Marion Barry was the firstchairman of the militant Student Non­violent Coordinating Committee(SNCC) in the early 1960s. And as waspointed out in a recent TV documentaryin the Frontline series, "In the Shadowof the Capitol," ex-SNCC activistsdominate the D.C. city administration.Ivan!ioe DonalOson, Manon Barry'sdeputy mayor and chief political advis­er, was a SNCC organizer in Mississip­pi. John Wilson, now a city councilman,used to run SNCC's draft resistanceprogram. Courtland Cox is another topBarry aide. Frank Smith wasjust electedto the City Council, and so on.

So ex-SNCCers are practically run­ning the Washington city government,

6 WORKERS VANGUARD

$2.50

Mar~DulIetJn5_liIiiii

WHAT SlImlY-lUCK lJ8EllA'nuN?~

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MFDP ys. Lowndes CountyBlack Panther Party

As the culmination of SNCC's voterregistration projects in Mississippi,80,000 blacks who had been preventedfrom registering as 'Democrats signed"protest ballots" as members of theMississippi Freedom Democratic Party(MFDP). At the 1964 Democratic Partyconvention, the MFDP hoped their 68­member alternate delegation wouldunseat the "regular" Jim Crow slate.With the Dixiecrats already vowing tobolt to Goldwater in '64. the MFDP wasmaking a bid to the liberals for theDemocratic Party franchise. As Carsonput it, "The hopes of the M FOPdelegation were based on the belief thatthey, rather than the regular. all-whitedelegation. represented the expressedprinciples of the national Democraticparty."' Surprise, they didn't.

The MFD P was based in Ruleville,Mississippi, where Dixiecrat boss Sena­tor James Eastland had his plantation.Chairman of the Senate JudiciaryCommittee, Eastland launched a per­sonal vendetta against SNCC forregistering the blacks off his estate. Thestory of Fannie Lou Hamer, who

continued on pa!?e 8

bureaucracy was used by the govern­ment to put the lid on the explodingblack movement. The civil rights leadershad initially called the march to put theheat on Kennedy who was dragging hisheels on the passage of the civil rightsbill. But when the president called theminto conference they quickly changedtheir tune, agreeing to change the marchlocation from the White House to theLincoln Memorial, deny participationto all "subversive" groups and censor allspeeches. So, orchestrated straight fromthe White House, the march wouldbe a giant liberal prayer fest to channelthe masses safely back into liberalDemocratic politics. King's "I Have aDream" speech celebrated "non­violence," while the USIA filmed thewhole event for foreign consumption toprove how "peaceful change" was stillpossible in America. Disgusted S!\'CCstaffers took to wearing "I Have aNightmare" buttons, and Malcolm Xdubbed it the "Farce on Washington."

While the popular front stretchingfrom Kennedy to Reuther to King couldall comfortably rail against the South­ern Dixiecrats, at the march S!\'CC'sbitter fury against the federal govern­ment had to be kept in check. Therewould be no "communist" words like"masses" or "revolution" in Washingtonthat day, the "official" black leadersvowed. They censored SNCC chairmanJohn Lewis' speech, deleting his conclu­sion that:

"The party of Kennedy is the party ofEastland .... We cannot depend on anypolitical party for both Democrats andRepublicans have betrayed the basicprinciples of the Declaration ofIndependence."

The labor bureaucrats Walter Reutherand A. Philip Randolph took the lead inpressuring Lewis (who was far from aradical within SNCC) to tone down hislanguage and criticism of the Kennedyadministration.

A Spartac;lSt PamPhIe1 25c

Make checks payable/mail to:Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

$1.00

were less than thrilled with King andAbernathy's highly publicized weekendjaunts into town to cool things out andarrange "truces" on their behalf. "Don'tget weary. We will wear them down withour capacity to suffer," King told theblack masses in Albany. But SNCC wasbeginning to question King's wholestrategy of non-violent resistance. Inmidsummer with 3,000 Klansmenmassed outside town, Albany's blackyouth fought back with bricks andbottles when the cops attacked a rallyoutside a black church. King declared a"day of penance" for the "violence," butSNCC refused to condemn the action.In Albany, SNCC started referring toKing contemptuously as "De Lawd."

At the August 1963 March onWashington, SNCC saw how the wholeliberal establishment and particularlythe liberal wing of the trade-union

government rushed in their blackbrokers to cool it, their CIA agents toco-opt it, their courts to indict it, theirtroops to crush it.

Albany, formerly the slave and cottoncapital of southeast Georgia, markedthe beginning of the open split betweenSNCC and the black preachers of theSCLC. In Albany SNCC sang "Ain'tGonna Let Chief Pritchett Turn Me'Round," but after more than a year ofsustained struggle, SNCC found all itstactics-mass arrests, flooding the jails,rallies, boycotts, vigils-failed to breakthe grip of Jim Crow. "We were naiveenough to think we could fill up thejails.... We ran out of people before[Chief Pritchett] ran out ofjails," SNCCstaffer Bill Hanson said later.

In Albany, the SNCC workers whohad tirelessly stomped the dirt roads,gone door-to-door on the black side oftown to win support for the movement,

into Amite County, Mississippi in 1961,a black sharecropper who helped himwas gunned down by a white statelegislator, E.H. Hurst. A black witnessthen told Moses he would testify atHurst's trial, if promised federal protec­tion. Moses told this to a JusticeDepartment official who not onlyrefused protection ("Justice" was onlythere to "observe"), but the identity ofthis witness was passed on to the localracists and he was subsequentlymurdered.

CORE's FloydMcKissick

(left), MartinLuther Kingand SNCC's

StokelyCarmichael

lead march inMississippi,1966. WhenCarmichael

raised theslogan of

"black power"at this time,

incensedliberal

establishmentwent wild.

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'"iii:c.~u.

From Albany to the"Farce on Washington"

From Albany, Georgia to LowndesCounty, Alabama to the plantationcountry of Mississippi, SNCC wasradicalized by its grassroots organizingof poor black sharecroppers whichrepeatedly brought it into head-onconflict not just with the Dixiecrats, butthe whole racist, capitalist state. Everystruggle drove them further away fromthe liberal premises on which they werefounded. The Kennedy White Housemight be willing to integrate the busstation bathrooms and drinking foun­tains, but they were not about to make afundamental change in life in the "BlackBelt," where the heirs of slaveownersstill lorded over the plantations and theDixiecrat politics, while the sons anddaughters of slaves, the terrorized blackmajority, scratched out a precariousexistence as sharecroppers, day laborersand maids. And as SNCC's organizingamong the black masses repeatedlybrought the situation to flash point, the

sion of black liberalism, the initial goalwas formal, legal equality-civil rights,or "Northernizing the South." Thepolitical strategy was to seek the supportof. and avoid antagonizing, the liberalestablishment, bringing to bear thepowers of the federal government whichwas controlled by this establishment.

But if the SNCC activists at first sawthemselves as the future Martin LutherKings, soon their experience was teach­ing them different lessons from thosetaught by the preachers. They hadillusions in the federal government, butrepeatedly received object lessons in theclass nature of the bourgeois state. Onthe freedom rides, the young activistswatched how the FBI "observers" stoodby taking notes as the sheriffs' goonsbashed demonstrators' heads (theFBI of course was in cahoots with,and often part of, the Klan). Carsontells how, after Bob Moses first went

Breaking with the Liberals

SNCC emerged out of the lunchcounter sit-in movement which sweptthe Southern black campuses in thespring of 1960. It began when theNorth Carolina A&T students sat in atWoolworth's in downtown Greensboro(the city where 20 years later, the KKK/Nazis would massacre five blacks andleftists in cold blood). The SNCCactivists came out of the elite blackschools like Morehouse College (JulianBond), Howard University (StokelyCarmichael), Fisk (Marion Barry) oreven Harvard (Bob Moses). An exten-

urban masses, South as well as North­terrorized, last hired/first fired, con­demned to a life of desperation in theghettos with their mean streets, lousyschools. rat-infested housing-thesecould not be solved by a new CivilRights Act. Genuine equality for blacksis inconceivable without socialist revo­lution and the massive redistribution ofsociety's \\ealth, possible only throughsocialist economic planning.

The S!\'CC radicals came up againstthe social revolutionary implications ofthe struggle against black oppression,but without the intervention of commu­nists they were not able to make the leapto proletarian socialism. When SNCCattempted to go beyond voting rightsand access to public facilities (whichblacks in the North and a number ofSouthern cities already had), the organi­zation entered a prolonged crisis ofidentity. James Forman, SNCC execu­tive secretary in this period, later wrote,"So long as we were working on voterregistration and public accommoda­tions, there was a broad consensusunder which everyone could move" (TheMakin!? o( Black Revolutionaries). Solong, but no longer.

During the critical period of 1963-66S'\CC militants faced three fundamen­tal political alternatives: reintegrationinto the liberal establishment, thereactionary utopianism of nationalistseparatism. or proletarian socialism(Marxism). Some, like Marion Barry,took the first road via LBJ's "GreatSociety" poverty programs. However,the most militant elements in SNCCwent over to black nationalism, initiallya small and isolated current in theorganization. Why did these youngblack radicals opt for nationalist separa­tism rather than Marxism?

One important factor was theirrevulsion against the existing organizedlabor movement, whose liberal face wasthat of United Auto Workers chiefWalter Reuther, a man SNCC cadre hadgood and personal reasons to despise. Ingeneral, the Meany/Reuther-led AFL­CIa was, if anything, more committedto the racist status quo than were manyliberal Democratic and even Republi­can politicians. Typically the children ofpreachers, schoolteachers and funeralparlor owners, the student radicals inSNCC were isolated from the mass ofthe black working class and sociallyabove them (despite wearing farmers'coveralls, which became almost· auniform). These petty-bourgeois radi­cals had no conception at all of settingthe base of the labor movement againstthe top.

But who couid bring them thisconception except Marxists? The fate ofST\'CC was decided. as much as by anyother single factor, by the criminalabstentionism of the ostensibly Trotsky­ist Socialist Workers Party (SWP).Defining itself in effect as a "whiteparty," the SWP rejusedto involve itselfin the Southern civil rights struggleswhile tailing "the Movement" from theoutside. Here a historic but fleetingopportunity was lost to change thecourse of black struggle in contempo­rary America. The history of SNCC isthe story of the road not taken, theonly road leading to black liberation,that of proletarian socialist revolution.

8 APRIL 1983 7

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zation in 1964 and set up his ownoperation, the Atlanta Project. Wareworked briefly building support for theJulian Bond Democratic election cam­paign in Atlanta's Vine City ghetto.(Bond, who had won election to theGeorgia state legislature, was refusedseating by die-hard white supremacists.)But the Atlanta Project soon split off towork Vine City on a hard nationalistbasis. The Atlanta separatists arguedthat whites could not "relate to the blackexperience," that their presence "dilut­ed" SNCC and intimidated blacks fromexpressing themselves, etc. But to mostSNCC cadre, white staffers like BobZellner and Jack Minnis were seen as anintegral part of the group. The Warefaction's motion at the March [966 staffmeeting to expel all whites was defeatedby a majority which then includedCarmichael. (Although he's disap­peared it now, Stokely, from BronxHigh School of Science, was aroundYPSL and the social-democratic How­ard University Non-Violent ActionGroup and for years had some of theclosest ties to white leftists.)

Although the nationalists wereinitially isolated, they quickly gainedground for they were the only ones witha coherent anti-liberal ideology. SNCChated in their guts the treacherous whiteliberals, the trade-union bureaucrats,the government agents with their croco­dile tears and their money, their connec­tions, all tantalizingly held out to wrap anet around the struggle and draw it backunder their control. The black militantsrejected integrationism which theyidentified with the ideological hege­mony of the Bobby Kennedys andAllard Lowensteins. They never becameaware of the program of revolutionaryintegrationism-integration into egali­tarian socialist society.

SNCC knew who they hated. But itwas a negative program. In the absenceof a revolutionary alternative, thenationalists won out in their call tobreak all ties with the "white Establish­ment" in which they lumped togetherthe communists with the liberals, theunions with the bureaucrats, thuscutting off the road to socialist revolu­tion for the black working masses inAmerica. It is a historic crime of theSocialist Workers Party that it refusedto go in and do battle for people whowere quite openly groping for a radicalalternative to the liberalism of theHubert Humphreys and Martin LutherKings. Inside the SWP the Revolution­ary Tendency (RT)-the core of thefuture Spartacist League-fought forthe party to seize this opportunity to winblack Trotskyist cadres. An RT motionto the convention of the SWP's youthgroup, the Young Socialist Alliance(YSA), urgently insisted:

"The masses of black workers and theSNCC leadership and ranks will notpragmatically come to understand andadopt the science of Marxism simply byvirtue of their militancy and readinessto grasp any methods within theirreach... ,"The rising upsurge and militancy of the

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Crisis of Identity

SNCC radicals had broken withliberalism as they knew it. But where didthey go from here? Although he cannotexplain it, Carson graphically describesthe prolonged crisis which broke outafter the MFDP debacle-the malaise,the complaints of "loss of will," theendless conferences, the debates, thetherapy sessions. Psychiatrists came inand diagnosed it as "battle fatigue" afterthe grueling Mississippi summer. Soci­ologists chalked it up to the problems ofelite black students "relating" to ghettoyouth. It was not a sociological ques­tion. SNCC had run head-on into theblack question in capitalist America.

The Waveland Retreat in November1964 was symptomatic. For this confer­ence 37 papers were written analyzingSNCC's failure to act decisively after the"freedom summer." The ensuing de­bates took up everything from Forman'sposition to turn SNCC into a profes­sional cadre organization'to Bob Moses'"anti-leadership" bent for local commu­nity work. But around what program?There was massive dissatisfaction withSNCC's penny-ante projects. Whatgood was integrating the lunch coun­ters, if you couldn't afford to buy lunch,they argued. Instead of "stopgap meas­ures which buy off revolution," SNCCshould "take all the Negroes from therural areas into the cities and force therevolution," one member proposed. AtWaveland, a women's workshop washeld protesting the relegation of SNCCwomen to office chores and theirexclusion from leadership roles. Theworkshop was generally ridiculed;Carmichael notoriously responded thatthe proper position of women in SNCCwas "prone."

Basically SNCC was, within its ownterms, effective so long as it was fightinginstitutionalized Jim Crow and couldunite the entire black communityaround the most elementary democraticdemands, such as voter rights or accessto public facilities. But in places likeAtlanta or Montgomery, they foundthat the kind of things they were doinghad been done, and done better, bythe Democratic Party lobby, or thechurches, and somewhat later by thepoverty programs. They had to developa social revolutionary program. In theabsence of this, those who did not wantto be merely co-opted into the liberalDemocratic mainstream were drawn tonationalism.

The first nationalist locus in SNCCwas a circle around Bill Ware, a Pan­Africanist who only entered the organi-

1965 King declared, "It was necessarythat as powerful a police force aspossible be brought in to check them[the ghetto masses]" (New York Times,16 August 1965). The Black Muslims'famous cartoon captured King's spirit:"If there is any blood spilled on thestreets, let it be our blood." King'sdefense of cop terror to smash the ghettoexplosions was the ultimate proof ofwhat his one-sided "non-violence" reallyamounted to. For the SNCC radicalsthis provoked a sharp break with Kingand the whole liberal civil rightsmovement. For up until that point theyoung militants, although many werenever committed pacifists, had accepted"non-violence" as a tactic. They hadfought for "one man, one vote." Buthow did "non-violence" and voterregistration answer the oppression ofNorthern ghetto blacks? As Formanlater wrote:

"The basic question, 'What is SNCCThad not yet been answered. Our long­range goals had called for redefinitionever since Atlantic City, and especiallysince the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rightsacts-which made obsolete manyaspects of our early organizing work.Watts had exploded in August. 1965;could we still call ourselves 'nonviolent'and remain in the vanguard of blackmilitancy'? If we were revolutionaries.what was it that we sought tooverthrow'?"

-James Forman, The Making ofBlack Revolutionaries (1972)

327

organized in opposition to the Demo­crats. The Lowndes Black PantherParty was also important for its openadvocacy of armed self-defense. Armedself-defense was a burning necessity forthe black movement in the South. InMonroe, North Carolina beginning in1959 local NAACP chapter head Rob­ert Williams' courageous battle againstKKK terror and his book Negroes WithGuns became a beacon to militantblacks throughout the South. Indeed,James Forman, then a young ChicagoDefender reporter, visited with Wil­liams just before Williams was forcedinto exile in Cuba in 1961. In Lowndesthe SNCC workers were influenced byand defended the militant black share­croppers who owned guns and werewilling to use them against racist attack.By 1965 the Louisiana-based Deaconsfor Defense and Justice had spread toAlabama; black rallies in the countywere often defended by these armed self­defense squads.

The Ghettos Explode

But it was above all the Northernghetto explosions which marked the endof the civil rights period and had aprofound effect on the SNCC militants.This is something Carson doesn'tunderstand-the main weakness of hisaccount is its SNCC-centricity, barelytouching on factors such as the ghetto"riots" or the influence of Malcolm X,except insofar as they directly intersect­ed SNCC. But "non-violence" died inHarlem in the summer of 1964 andWatts a year later. Until then the civilrights leaders could plausibly claim thattheir policies and outlook were support­ed by the black masses, actively in theSouth and at least passively in theNorth. But after Harlem and Watts,when it was clear that the explosionswere no isolated event, but part of apattern, it was clear that the whole "turnthe other cheek" ethos had no relevanceto the embittered urban black masses.

There was enormous pressure on theofficial black leaders to denounce the"riots." So in '64 it was only the reds whodefended the Harlem ghetto massesagainst what was in fact a police riot.Bill Epton of the Progressive LaborParty, organizer of the militant HarlemDefense Council, was witchhunted by abourgeois hysteria campaign whichincluded all the black establishmentfigures. The Spartacist group vigorouslydefended Epton and the Harlem youth.On the eve of the "riots" we had notedthat the mass character of the blackstruggle in the North was posing a directthreat to the capitalist system andpredicted that the cops would sooncrack down hard. Spartacist (No.2,July-August 1964) called for blockcouncils as a "basis for the organizationof self-defense." At a mass rally in theNew York garment center, called by theSpartacist-initiated Harlem SolidarityCommittee, we called for removal of therioting cops from the ghettos andrecognition of the ghetto masses' rightto defend themselves against policeoccupation.

In contrast, in Watts in the summer of

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became the MFDP's Congressionalcandidate, was typical-the youngest of20 children of black sharecroppers, shewas evicted from the plantation whereshe had worked for 18 years because sheregistered to vote. When she moved inwith a friend in Ruleville, their housewas firebombed.

The MFDP was really an outgrowthof the 1964 "Mississippi SummerProject," braintrusted and financedthrough Allard Lowenstein, the sinisteroperative of Cold War liberalism. (Asthe New York Times wrote upon hisassassination in 1980, "Most of the NewLeft labeled Mr. Lowenstein as a CIAagent.") Working closely with BobMoses, Lowenstein brought thousandsof Northern white college kids to theSouth for the summer, hoping to"restore faith in the system" by forcing aconfrontation in which the federalgovernment would have to intervene.

Going into Atlantic City, the MFDPhad considerable support from North­ern state delegations. But LyndonJohnson, still determined to keep theSouthern white vote, offered HubertHumphrey the vice-presidency on thecondition that he get the MFDP to backdown. They lined up the whole liberalentourage-from Reuther to King toLowenstein-to put the squeeze on theMFDP to accept the "compromise" bywhich they would get two "at large"seats, while the entire Dixiecrat delega­tion would be seated. Despite thepressure, the SNCC leadership rejectedthe "compromise" and the racists wereseated. As Forman wrote, "AtlanticCity was a powerful lesson, not only forthe black people from Mississippi butfor all of SNCC and many other peopleas well. No longer was there any hope,among those who still had it, that thefederal government would change thesituation in the Deep South."

In Lowndes County, Alabama Stoke­ly Carmichael and the other SNCCstaffers who stayed on to organize afterthe Selma demonstrations of April 1965drew their conclusions from the bitterexperiences of the MFDP. In GeorgeWallace's Alabama where the words"white supremacy" were part of theDemocratic ballot designation, SNCCdecided to register blacks for an inde­pendent party. As Carmichael said, itwas "as ludicrous for Negroes to join[the Democratic Party] as it would havebeen for Jews to join the Nazi party inthe 1930s." The local residents agreed.One recalled, "SNCC mentioned aboutthe third party and we decided we would00 it, because It alanl make sense for usto go join the Democratic party whenthey were the people who had done thekilling in the county and had beat ourheads." The new organization took asnarling black panther as its symbol,and soon came to be called the BlackPanther Party.

Although narrowly based on a singleimpoverished rural Black Belt county,Lowndes was important because it was

8 WORKERS VANGUARD

UPIHarlem, 1964: Ghetto youth protest against shooting of black teenager byracist cop Gilligan. In response cops rioted against black community.

black revolt and the contradictory andconfused, groping nature of what is nowthe left wing in the movement providethe revolutionary vanguard with fertilesoil and many opportunities to plant theseeds of revolutionarv socialism. Ourtask is to create a Trotskvist tendencv inthe broad left wing of the movement,while building that left wing.... "

-"The Negro Struggle and theCrisis of Leadership,"Draft Resolution on CivilRights. submitted to the YSA.August 1963

The RTs resolutions were voteddown and shortly after we were ex­pe1led. The majority's position was thatno SWPer was needed in the South atall, since SNCC would become revolu­tionary on its own in the course of thestruggle. When black RTer ShirleyStoute received a personal writteninvitation from James Forman to workwith SNCC in Atlanta, the SWP had toaccede. But they sent down majorityagents to spy on her, and within about amonth ca1led her back to New York on apretext, refused to let her return toAtlanta, and would not even let her givethem a statement why! Thus as the SWPtailed popular black figures, searchingaround for a "black Castro." theyactua1ly forced militant party cadres outof this critical work. For the SWP'scentrist degeneration was marked pre­cisely by its rejection of the need for arevolutionary vanguard party fromCuba to the black struggle at home. In1963, the expulsion of the RT openedthe road for the SWP's consolidationaround reformism-only a year laterafter the murders of Chaney. Schwernerand Goodman in Philadelphia, Mis­sissippi, the SWP would come out withits obscene call to withdraw the troopsfrom Vietnam and send them toMississippi!

"Black Power"

In Lowndes County SNCC hadhroken with the Democrats. The blackradicals advocated armed self-defense inthe South and sided with the ghetto re­bellions in the North. As the VietnamWar escalated, they made the linkbetween black oppression at home andthe U.S.' dirty imperialist war abroad.SNCe's stand against the war horrifiedthe black establishment. When King,Roy Wilkins and Whitney Youngpleaded with SNCC to call off anantiwar protest outside Lucy BainesJohnson's wedding on 5 August 1966,they shot back a bitter reply:

"You have displayed more backbone indefend ing [the president's daughter andher fiance] than you have shown for ourblack brothers engaged in acts ofrebellion in our cities. As far as we areconcerned you messengers can tell yourboss that his day of jubilation is also theday that his country murdered many inHiroshima."

This trend had culminated in the May1966 election of Stokely Carmichael asSNCC chairman. A month later inGreenwood, Mississippi Carmichaelraised the "black power" call to acheering crowd.

The effect was electric. "Black power"was picked up by the young radicalsfrom the burning ghettos to the JimCrow South as the rallying cry againstthe black preachers' sermonizing, theliberals' begging. After all the hopes andexpectations of the black masses raisedand betrayed by the civil rights leaders,"black power" was the definitive rejec­tion of their "faith in the system," a vowto take matters into their own hands.For SNCC, the "black power" sloganwas their hoped-for route to catch up tothe urban ghetto masses who hadoutstripped them. "If America don'tcome around, we're going to burn itdown," swore "Rap" Brown. As thebourgeois press screeched, virtua1ly theentire black establishment was mobi­lized to condemn it as the "new racism."King temporized, saying he didn't wantto "excommunicate" the black powerradicals. And Harlem demagogueAdam Clayton Powell was sharpenough to see which way the wind wasblowing-he jumped on the bandwagon

8 APRIL 1983

declaring "black power" meant votingfor him. But white liberals werehorrified.

Initia1ly. the "black power" move-ment was contradictory. As we wrote:

"S:\CCs empirical rejection of themore obvious brands of reformismadvocated by white liberals and petty­bourgeois Slack 'leaders' has taken theform of a call for 'Slack Power.' amilitant-sounding phrase which fright­ens the white liberals and Uncle Toms.The concepts implied in the SNCCslogan of 'Slack Power' are radicalenough to have caused the bourgeoispress and politicians to shower viciousabuse on it, precisely because the sloganis a groping for solutions uutside theframework of the capitalist society."

-"S:\CC and Revolution."Spartacis( :\0. 8. November­December 1966

But we warned: " ... the slogan 'blackpower' must be clearly defined in class.not racial terms. for otherwise the 'blackpower' movement may become theblack wing of the Democratic Party inthe South" ("Black and Red-Class

Struggle Road to Negro Freedom,"Spartacist No. 10, May-June 1967). Ourprediction seemed almost inconceivableto most people at the time, yet that isprecisely what happened.

Even though we were sma1l, theSpartacist tendency, recently expe1ledfrom the SWP, fought to intersect the"black power" radicals. Our ca1l for a"Freedom-Labor Party" was the axis tolink the exploding black struggle to thepower of labor, North and South. Withit we posed a series of transitionaldemands to win militants to this class­struggle perspective: for "A SouthernOrganizing Drive Backed Up by Organ­ized Labor," for "A Workers UnitedFront Against Federal Intervention,"for "Organized, Armed Self-Defense."And we sought to translate this intopractice, organizing aid ("Every DimeBuys a Bu1let") for the Deacons forDefense and Justice. The Deacons wereblack vets who sprang up in Jonesboroand Bogalusa, Louisiana to protectCORE workers there. As we wrote:

"The Deacons organization is a tremen­dous step forward for the Negrostruggle. not only because it saves lives,but also because it raises the level ofconsciousness of the civil rights move­ment by encouraging independentaction and discouraging reliance uponthe institutions of the bourgeois state."

-"Toward Arming the NegroStruggle," Spartacist No.5,November-December 1965

But we lacked the forces. As a resultof the criminal abstention of the SWPwhen SNCC first began to break fromliberalism the "black power'" radicalsnever found a bridge to the program ofworkers power. Increasingly in SNCC"black power" came to mean exclusionof whites and consolidation around ahard separatist program. In December1966 the remaining whites were finallyexpelled. Even then the vote was 19-18with 24 abstentions, indicating howdeep the bonds of comradeship hadbeen, how wrenching the destructionprocess. A few years later, as Carsonobserves, Carmichael's anti-"honky'"separatist diatribes put SNCC far to the

right of the Panthers. In Oakland,California, the Black Panther Party forSelf-Defense had been inspired by andtook its name from Lowndes County.But in 1968 the Panthers broke withCarmichael over, his anti-communistand anti-white political line. At onepoint Carmichael refused to speak at abig "Free Huey" rally at the OaklandCourthouse (where Huey Newton wasimprisoned on frame-up charges ofki1ling a cop) because he didn't want tosit on the same platform with whitesfrom the Peace and Freedom Party.When he fina1ly did show up, it was onlyto denounce all "white" doctrines suchas "Marxism." "Communism is not anideology suited for black people, period,period," Carmichael raved. Bobby Sealefelt compe1led to reject this positionfrom the podium, stating that Carmi­chael was playing "the Ku Klux Klan'sgame."

Forman, who had been increasinglyuneasy about Carmichael's hard "reac-

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tionary nationalism" and seeing himselfsome kind of Marxist. went with thePanthers in the split. After playingaround with his "Black Manifesto"scheme. Forman briefly got involvedwith the important circle of blackradical workers springing up in andaround the Detroit auto plants. But theLeague of Revolutionary Black Work­ers never broke from nationalism andlumped the UAW into the white "powerstructure." Thus even though it waslocated in America's most strategicconcentration of black workers, it toocould not find the road to reVOlutionarypower, working-class power.

Repression and Co-optation

But if the bourgeoisie uniformlydenounced black radicals, they alsorecognized that some of them could bebought. Lyndon Johnson's "GreatSociety" poverty programs were ex­tremely important in co-opting many.Carson te1ls how Marion Barry, whowas sent to Washington in 1965 asS NCe's representative, wrote back tocomplain that they were losing goodorganizers to the federal poverty pro­grams. which were doing the same thingas SNCC but paying the staff a lotbetter! Shortly after. Barry quit SNCCto become head of PRIDE. Inc. Barrywas typical of a whole layer of theorganization that went this route intothe Democratic Party.

On the other hand, those who were soalienated that they couldn't be bought­the "Rap'" Browns and a big layer of thePanthers-were simply wiped out. Asthe ghettos exploded. the bourgeoisiemounted a campaign to pin the riots onblack radicals (while SNCC leaderBrown played into their hands with hisverbal terrorism). Dubbed the "RapBrown Act.'" an amendment to LBJ'svoting rights act made it a federal crimeto cross state lines to start a riot. Thefeds busted down the doors to SNCCoffices, framed up the leaders on thewhole gamut of phony charges-arson,conspiracy, criminal syndicalism-and

finally just gunned them down in thestreets. J. Edgar Hoover's COINTEL­PRO labeled Carmichael and Brown"vociferous firebrands" and startedmoving in-Carmichael escaped toAfrica (having married South Africanfolk singer Miriam Makeba). but theyshot Brown and sent him up for a longstretch in jail. The Panthers, comingslightly later, got the full brunt of theunprecedented campaign to extermi­nate a whole generation of black radicalleaders.

Where Are They Now?

In Carson's "Where Are They Now?"epilogue. you can see three SNCCgenerations. The first generation, whoreally were simply younger versions ofMartin Luther King. ended up in theDemocratic Party-Marion Barry,Julian Bond. John Lewis, CharlesSherrod. Ivanhoe Donaldson. A middlelayer, like James Forman and BobMoses (who, burned by Lowenstein.broke off a1l relations with whites anddropped out after MFDP) drifted backinto academia-they were not hardenednationalists but were too radical to becomfortable in the Democratic Party.And the black nationalists only becamemore so. Carmichael and his AAPRPare the embodiment of reactionaryutopian Pan-Africanism. Rap Browntoday is a Black Muslim.

Although at one time Barry andCarmichael represented polar oppositesin SNCC, nonetheless, as was seen onNovember 27. their basic response totoday's struggles is to put themselves onthe same side-the side opposite theblack masses. There is indeed a symbiot­ic relation between the black" liberalestablishment and the nationalist­separatist sects. One is the wing of "thetalented tenth" who have made it inAmerica; the other is the wing whoaspire to their own bourgeois statepower. Both of them are instinctivelythreatened by real struggle for blackliberation in America.

A decade ago when black militantswere groping toward revolution we didnot have the organizational weight topose an alternative to the no-win choiceof liberalism or dead-end black nation­alism. A whole general ion of dedicated,young black fighters< was lost. Whatwould 100 black Trotskyist cadre havemeant in Oakland iIi 1968 or in thevolatile conditions of Detroit auto atthat time? Surely the Whole course andrhythm of the American class strugglewould look quite different today.

We didn't have the weight to changethe course then. Today, instead of the"choice" between Carmichael and Bar­ry, there is a Marxist answer for class­and race-conscious black youth, forblack workers seeking emancipationfrom racial oppression and wage slav­ery. November 27 as we marched, 5.000­strong. blacks and workers led bycommunists triumphantly through thestreets of the capital, the resoundingslogan, "Finish the Civil War­Forward to a Workers State!" pointedthe way forward to Black Liberationthrough Socialist Revolution.•

Spartacist Forum

Black LiberationThrough Socialist Revolutlonl

Finish The Civil War!SNCC, Black Power,and the Democrats:

A Marxist Analysis ofthe Civil Rights Movement

Speakers: MarjorIe Stamberg,SL Central CommitteeBrian Manning, SYL

Tuesday, April 12, 2:00 p.m.UDC Van Ness Campus. Bldg. 44-A03

Wednesday, April 13, 7:30 p.m.Howard UniversityBlackburn Center, Room 148-150

For more information: (202) 636-3537

WASHINGTON, D.C.

9

"Star Wars" ...(continued from page 1)for a laser weapon).

Democratic critics, posing as thepeace party in order to grab the WhiteHouse in 1984, instantly dubbed it a"Star Wars" scheme. But some, likeTime and Newsweek, took it seriouslyand dutifully printed artists' concep­tions of laser battle stations in space.Edward Teller, the so-called "father ofthe H-bomb" and archetypal "Dr.Strangelove," dubbed Reagan's speecha "turning point in history" comparableto FDR's decision to build the atomicbomb. Despite the Democrats' ridicul­ing, it is being taken seriously inimportant bourgeois circles becauseboth sides of the aisle recognize the needto sell the anti-Soviet war drive in theface of peace sentiment in West Europeand at home.

Ever since the outbreak of the ColdWar the American ruling class has triedto convince itself that it could fight anuclear war with the Soviet Union andsomehow still survive. Reagan ran in1980 openly calling for military "superi­ority" over the Russians, that is, first­strike capability. The now notoriousPentagon "Defense Guidelines," leakedlast year, spoke of "prevailing" in a"protracted" nuclear war. But as Sovietdefense minister Dmitri Ustinov warnedlast July, "the aggressor will not be ableto evade an all-crushing retaliatorystrike." Hence, developing "defensive"weapons against incoming missiles iskey to any first-strike strategy. And thisfact is recognized by all weaponsexperts. For example. Victor Weisskopfof M IT. one of the scientists who metwith Reagan just before his Star Warsspeech. called the U.S. commander inchief's plans "extremely dangerous anddestabilizing" (New York Times, 25March).

Reagan has rekindled an aspect of thearms race which has lain relativelydormant for II years-since 1972, whenthe U.S. and the USSR signed the ABMtreaty. Ballyhooed as a victory for"peace," the treaty merely was a tacitrecognition of technical reality-that atruly effective ABM system was impos­sible. Pentagon experts lamented at a1981 Senate Armed Services subcom­mittee hearing that a "damage denial"ABM system would cost an incredible$500 billion and even then would suffer"Ieakage"-i.e., enough "enemy" mIs­siles would get through to cause "unac­ceptable" damage. And it would be easyto foil such a system-such as byoverwhelming it with decoy missiles or,in the case of a laser system, wrappingyour offensive missiles with a shinycoating to reflect the laser beams. Evenmore ominous, a space-based systemdesigned to destroy the "enemy" missileswhen they were launched would have todestroy thousands of missiles within afew hundred seconds after detecting anattack, and so would have to be virtuallyautomatic and computer-controlled.

The 1972 ABM treaty was theproduct of the momentary weakness ofAmerican imperialism, which at thetime was spending millions of dollarsper day for carpet-bombing the Viet­namese, and so wanted to limit thenuclear weapons race. This was a majoraspect of the short-lived "detente" withthe Soviet Union. But now the Ameri­can imperialists are trying to shake the"Vietnam syndrome" in favor of arenewed arms race aimed at the SovietUnion. Even if a space-based ABMsystem doesn't work, Reagan gloats atthe prospect of bankrupting the Sovieteconomy with a spiraling militarybudget.

Reagan Newspeak:"War Is Peace"

While mobilizing the greatest armsbuildup in human history, Reagan isusing "peace" rhetoric to cover for hiswar plans. His PR men have noted thesignificant public opinion in favor of anuclear "freeze." Why, his ABM plan is

10

not for war but "to give us the means ofrendering these nuclear weapons impo­tent and obsolete," cooed Reagan. The"peace through strength offensive" wasalso taken to Europe, in an attempt toundermine the protests against thescheduled deployment of 572 NATOmissiles beginning this year, including108 Pershing 2s in West Germany-ascant six minutes from the SovietUnion. Reagan's original "zero-option"proposal was a pure propaganda ploy:the USSR is supposed to dismantle anddestroy all 600 of their presentintermediate-range missiles in exchangefor the U.S. not deploying the 572Pershing 2s and cruise missiles inEurope. Soviet leaders naturally andrightly rejected this demand for massiveunilateral disarmament out of hand.

Now Reagan steps forward withanother propaganda ploy, the so-called"interim solution," suggesting that hewould compromise at an "equal" num­ber of missile launchers and warheadsfor the U.S. and the USSR in Europe.The Soviets, of course, noted thecynicism of this "equality," which wouldprevent them from answering thethreats from France, Britain, China andU.S. sea-based forces. Even the Stalinistbureaucrats in Moscow, who long agogave up world revolution for the will-o'­the-wisp of detente with imperialism,seem to be finding Reagan's plans fornuclear war too much to take. In anunusual press conference in Moscowbroadcast live on Soviet TV on April 2,Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromy­ko answered the hypocrisy of Reagan's"interim solution," Noting that "it iscommon knowledge that a circle ofAmerican military bases surrounds theSoviet Union." that "Japan and thewaters around it are stuffed with nuclearweapons and carriers for them," heasked, "Does the Soviet Union nut, mayone ask, have the right, for the purposesof defense, to have something to matchthose weapons? It does have this right."And in a cutting response to Reagan's"evil empire" remark, he shot back, "If itwere possible to start compiling chartsof the amount of evil in the two systems Iwant to assure you that the height of thecurve for the United States would behundreds of times higher than ours"(Ne"f'.· York Times, 3 April 1983).

The "Freeze" Fraud

The Stalinists and other reformistsbase their hopes on the so-called"freeze" movement, a loose protestmovement whose focus is a Congres­sional resolution which calls for "amutual and verifiable freeze on thetesting, production, and further deploy­ment of nuclear warheads, missiles andother delivery systems." While it haspostured as "non-political," it is over­whelmingly led by Democratic politi­cians. Anybody who thinks the Demo­cratic Party is the party of "peace"should be reminded that it was theTruman administration which in 1945dropped two atomic bombs on .lapan,which had already been defeated, inorder to intimidate the Russians. And itwas the Kennedy administration whichbrought the world to the brink ofnuclear war in the 1962 Cuban missilecrisis. Indeed, the Democratic Party hashistorically been the American imperial­ists' war party in the 20th centuryprecisely because it has a more popularimage and so is more capable ofmobilizing for war.

To the extent that the freeze resolu­tion represents a real policy differencewith the Republicans, it is a call for amore "rational" weapons mix of nuclearand conventional arms to make waragainst the Soviet Union. Some of the$90 billion savings from the freeze overthe next five years "could be spent ... toimprove the readiness and reliability ofour conventional forces," candidlywrote Democrat Kennedy and Republi­can Hatfield in their book Freeze.' Butleave it to the "left" donkeys for theDemocrats to paint even this cynicalgimmick as some kind of "people's"

movement for "peace." "Peace PowerShakes House," trumpeted the Commu­nist Party's Daily World (17 March)about the drive to pass the "freeze"resolution in Congress. "Freeze move­ment is snowballing" boasted the social­democratic In These Times (23-29March) and, just to prove how popularit's become, they brag shamelessly thatformer CIA director William Colby hasbecome "a convert to the movement,"along with "disillusioned military scien­tists and even former Pentagonofficials."

American imperialism led by bothmajor parties is rushing headlongtoward World War III-unless theproletariat stops it. Reagan's maniacalbelief in finding the "super-weapon" tosave a dying system is reminiscent ofHitler's Gotterdammerung and reflectsat bottom the frenzy of a dying class.More than ever, the American workingclass needs a workers party to fight for aworkers government, to put an end tothe capitalist system of war and exploi­tation. And a workers political revolu­tion is needed to oust the Stalinistbureaucracy in the Soviet Union, whosedangerous detente illusions threaten thedefense of the gains of the OctoberRevolution! Defeat Reagan's anti­Soviet war drive through internationalproletarian revolution, the only road toworld peace!.

Phillips...(continued/rom page 3)leftist insurgents in EI Salvador, forunconditional defense of Cuba and theSoviet Union. for a one-day West Coastport shutdown against Reagan's CentralAmerican war drive. The main enemy isat home, she told the KDIA audience."For there to be real justice. realequality, real jobs, it's going to take asocialist revolution."

Phillips is running as a class-strugglefighter for black rights on the Trotskyistprogram of black liberation throughsocialist revolution. On March 28 theSpartacist candidate sent a telegram tothe Orange County district attorneydenouncing the grotesque police murderof a five-year-old black child, PatrickMason, in his home near Los Angeles,and the racist victimization of Patrick'smother Patricia Ridge by a grand juryinvestigation. Phillips demanded thatthe killer cop be jailed and all chargesagainst the victimized mother bedropped.

As Phillips concluded in her electionbrochure:

"There isn't much time. Reagan is readyand able to blow up the world. What isneeded is a multi-racial revolutionarvparty whose aim is a workers govern­ment that will rip the productive wealthof this country. including all the idlefactories. out of the hands of thecapitalist class and establish a plannedsocialist economv. This is kev to theliberation of minorities, women and allthe oppressed. The struggle must beginnow to forge such a party. Stopping theKlan, fighting for jobs, the fight againtracial and sexual discrimination~

victories in thesc struggles will not bewon at the ballot box. \1artha Phillips'campaign aims to mobili7e the exploit­ed and oppressed against their classenemy. A central part of this campaignis building a new and very neededLabor/ Black League For Social De­fense, Join Us!".

FBI ...(continued from page 5)has been expressed lately in the vocabu­lary of faith-healing. Like Hitler duringthe interwar period, Reagan & Co. aretrying to revive new "national pride"based on militarist Cold War reaction.

It is in this context that the Reagan­ites want to create a climate of opinionmore favorable to the secret police.This was stated quite clearly by Sena­tor John East of North Carolina, onthe Denton Subcommittee, to Webster.East associated the 1976 Guidelines with"a tendency in the Congress and among

a number of people ... to belittle' and toberate the FBI and CIA ... weakeningtheir morale ... weakening their capacityto perform effectively." East explainsthat it is the job of the committee "to seethat you have the tools that you need.To do everything we can to help boostthe morale of your organization.... "

These are not the words of a mere FBI"booster." This man is preparing thetools to whip up a good ole witchhunt tohelp the war drive. In 1977 we wrote in"FBI Targets the Spartacist League":

"The current climate of bourgeoisopinion militates for the present againstthe application of the kind of 'Catch 22'for which the FBI lusts: legislating the'criminality' of the communist programin order to force the left into thedefensive semi-clandestine status whichwould then serve as a definitive self­justification for the illegal conspiraciesand murderous machinations of thesecret police."

It is the political residue of that climate,conditioned by the Vietnam War defeat,which Denton and East hope to witch­hunt out of existence.

This particular strategy for domesticwitchhunting for Cold War II has beena while in the making. The wide-rangingMcCarthyite witchhunt of the 1950s wasnot a carbon copy of the Palmer raid"red scare" and deportations of the1920s against "foreign Bolsheviks." Andnow the witchhunt of the 1980s hasfollowed its own twisted logic. It has itsdeadly machinery in place-retooled,streamlined and ready to roll outdestruction to the left, black and labormovement.

Witchhunting is part of an overallpolitical policy. Often for the imp::rial­ists it is the natural political ref1ex tll warpreparations. In this case it is the anti­Soviet war drive pushed by all wings ofthe U.S. capitalist class-starting withthe Carter administration and mademore acute and ideoiogical by Reagan.

Congress has taken steps toward an"official secrets act" in an attempt tostop up "leaks" while the CIA escalatescovert operations from Nicaragua toPoland. Polygraph loyalty tests forfederal employees, visas denied, FOIAinformation squeezed off, convictedFBI criminals pardoned, a variety of"Un-American" committees in theCongressional wings, and the extendedconspiracy net called RICO. All of thisin Reagan's America with racist terroron the rise from the KKK/Nazis to thetrigger-happy cops.

It is in this context that the 1983Reagan FBI Guidelines represent theculmination of a Cold War witchhunt­ing process. Defining the left organiza­tions as violent and conspiratorial"criminal enterprises" and their mem­bers as "terrorists" sets up all of us forlegal murder. It gives the police a licenseto treat leftists as if they were mad dogsto be shot down with impunity. It isMcCarthyism with a drawn gun.

For all the government's talk about"terrorism" it is precisely the element ofstate terror which they have madecentral to the new style of witchhunting.For those who think that a U.S.witchhunt must follow the pattern of the"Hollywood 10." recall the case ofFulani Sunni Ali (Cynthia Boston). Notlong after the Brinks robbery, she was ather home in rural Mississippi while herchildren played with neighbors' kidsoutside. Sunni Ali, a black nationalistmember of the Republic of New Africa,was the first victim of the Brinks jobRICO dragnet. They blitzkrieged hershack with three tanks, four SWATteams, helicopters, 150 cops and troops.They seized Sunni Ali and held herincommunicado. They even grabbed theterrorized kids. "When you exercisemilitary force or armed force," ex­plained FBI director Webster to theDenton Subcommittee, speaking of theMississippi operation. "in a potentiallyviolent situation, be sure that you are ina position to succeed ...."

When you're looking up the road andthe tanks are coming down, it may betoo late. That's why the new red huntmust be fought now.•

WORKERS VANGUARD

Down with Racist Gun Control!

Recall Labor-Hater Feinstein in S.F.!

TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA

SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY

National Office Cleveland New YorkBox 1377, GPO Box 91954 Box 444New York, NY 10116 Cleveland, OH 44101 Canal Street Station(212) 732-7860 (216) 621-5138 New York, NY 10013

(212) 267-1025Ann Arbor Detroitc/o SYL Box 32717P.O. Box 8364 Detroit, MI 48232 NorfolkAnn Arbor, MI 48107 (313) 961-1680 P.O. Box 1972(313) 662-2339 Main P.O.

Houston Norfolk, VA 23501Berkeley/Oakland Box 26474 (804) 543-4300P.O. Box 32552 Houston, TX 77207Oakland, CA 94604(415) 835-1535 Los Angeles San FranciscoBox 29574Boston Los Feliz Station Box 5712

Box 840, Central Station Los Angeles, CA 90029 San Francisco, CA 94101

Cambridge, MA 02139 (213) 663-1216 (415) 863-6963

(617) 492-3928Madison

Chicago c/o SYL Washington, D.C.Box 6441, Main P.O. Box 2074 210 7th SI. S.E., Suite E12Chicago, IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701 Washington, D.C. 20003(312) 427-0003 (608) 251-3398 (202) 636-3537

the gun ban issue. Jobless minoritiesliving in dilapidated housing havewatched the mayor cut city funds forjobs and training while hoarding th"budget surplus to entice the Democratsto hold their '84 national conventionhere with promises of massive policeprotection and plenty of red carpeltn:atment. Gays have been outraged b~

Feinstein's broken promises of moreprotection from police harassment and,most recently. her veto of "live-in lover"legislation that would have granted legalstatus and opened the door to minimalhealth benefits for non-married com­panions of city employees.

But centrally. it is the city's workersand unionists who have every reason tohate Feinstein. Her anti-labor recordgoes back to when she was on the Boardof Supervisors and in the forefront ofthe labor-baiters during the 1976 cityworkers strike. Her administration haspursued a vendetta against the smallPlumbers local union stemming fromthat strike, seeking a $4 million damageaward because the Plumbers alonerefuse to waive the right to respectpicket lines. In 1980, Feinstein's copsrepeatedly waded into the picket lines ofstriking hotel workers for violation of"excessive noise" laws. Last fall. Fein­stein sparked repeated demonstrationsof shipyard workers when City Hallengineered the sale of Bethlehem Ship­yards' city-owned land to Todd Ship­yards at the cost of hundreds of unionjobs.

Having been repeatedly kicked in theteeth. the city'" \abOT \eadeTs haveshamelessly thrown themselves intoFeinstein's anti-recall campaign in agroveling attempt to regain someinfluence at City Hall. The CentralLabor Council and the influentialInternational Longshoremen's andWarehousemen's Union have providedfull-time organizers and hundreds ofcanvassers to hit the streets backing themayor.

The recall's perceived threat tobourgeois "stability" has united virtual­ly the entire spectrum of the city'spolitical establishment. The unholyalliance embracing Feinstein rangesfrom the labor bureaucrats to "demo­cratic socialist" Supervisor Harry Britt.The Republican County Central Com­mittee joined its Democratic counter­part in backing Feinstein, reportedlyafter promises of patronage appoint­ments in the future. The Black Leader­ship Forum and most of the city's blackministers are boosting Feinstein, includ­ing the rad-lib Rev. Cecil Williams, afavored speaker at reformist El Salva­dor protests. Virtually all the bigbusiness-controlled newspapers, TVand radio stations have come out forFeinstein. Unfettered by normal finan­cial restrictions on campaign contribu­tions, S.F.'s big corporations havepoured thousands of dollars into Fein­stein's nearly $350,000 war chest, withFeinstein's investment banker husbandRichard Blum acting as bagman. Stan­dard Oil, Bechtel, Pacific Telephone,Bankamerica Corp. and SouthernPacific among others have each con­tributed $10,000.

The bourgeoisie and its bootlickinglabor lieutenants are sticking withFeinstein. The Communist Party'sPeople's World has maintained silenceon the question, characteristically un­willing to part company with theDemocrats and labor misleaders. Forour part, we urge a large and defiantturnout on April 26: Dump Feinstein!Vote "yes" on the recall! •

Ressmeyer

S.F. mayor Dianne Feinstein sportspolice jumpsuit while trying todisarm citizenry.

buried by a two-to-one margin a'\'0\ ember ballot proposition whichwould have frozen the number of pistolsin the state. a repudiation of gun controlthat went largely unreported in thenation's media. The state Court ofAppeals subsequently ruled Feinstein'sgun ban illegal and inconsistent withstate jurisdiction over gun ownership, adecision upheld by the CaliforniaSupreme Court.

What was especially rankling aboutFeinstein's attempt to confiscate every­body's guns was her long and well­known record as a fervent fan of thepolice, whose day-to-day job is to inflictviolence on the poor and workingpeople. The mayor has opposed even thesop of a civilian review board toinvestigate repeated charges of policebrutality and harassment. particularlyagainst Chicanos, blacks and gays. Witha penchant for giving the keys to the cityto right-wing dictators, she has sent herT AC Squad heavies agi'.inst protesterswhile the Philippines' Ferdinand Mar­cos, Pakistan's Islamic fanatic Zia andSalvadoran junta president NapoleonDuarte enjoyed the city's hospitality.

Of course, Feinstein would continueto enjoy ample armed protection whileeveryone else went defenseless. One ofher pet projects is to cruise the streets inher city-provided limo, surrounded byarmed bodyguards, radioing in policecruisers when she "suspects" trouble.Just last month, Feinstein outragedblack residents when she called inseveral carloads of police after she"thought" she had seen a man witha gunthrough the window of a parked van.Shotgun-brandishing cops spilled intothe streets, roughing up several blacRs­and no gun was found.

In her anti-recall campaign. Feinsteinhas attempted to bury the failed gun banand focus on a red-baiting attack on theWhite Panthers as a radical "fringegroup" abusing the recall process. Butthe thousands of signatures on the recallpetitions show the breadth of discontentsurpassing the White Panthers or even

VancouverBox 26, Station AVancouver. B.C. V6C 2L8(604) 681-2422

Gun Ban BacklashThe recall effort was sparked by

Feinstein's attempt to ban handguns inS.F. last year. Modeled on the infamousMorton Grove. Illinois ordinance,Feinstein's gun ban was passed by theBoard of Supervisors and signed intolaw last June. It required all owners ofhandguns to turn them in to their localpolice precinct or face confiscation andprosecution.

Shortly after the gun ban passed, theWhite Panthers, a small communalgroup left over from 1960s Haight­Ashbury hippiedom, began circulatingrecall petitions against all the Supervi­sors who had supported it, then decidedto focus in on Feinstein. Basing them­selves on an eclectic "Marxism, Leninc

ism. Maoism, Castroism," flavored by astrong devotion to the Bill of Rights'Second ("right to bear arms") Amend­ment. the White Panthers clearly tappedinto a pool of discontent far beyondtheir small numbers, estimated at lessthan two dozen.

The attempted gun ban generated anenormous controversy. There is wide­spread opposition to attempts to dis­arm the populace. In Reagan's America.with Klan/Nazi terrorism on the riseblacks feel the threat with especialintensity. Campaigning with Rich­ard Bradley last November for S.F.Board of Supervisors, Spartacist candi­date Diana Coleman won vigorousapplause when she spoke out at a specialpublic hearing on the gun bill: "If gunsare banned, only the cops and Klan willhave guns ... gun control will leaveblacks and other minority peopledefenseless in the face of racist terror."

Despite various Feinstein stunts toboost the gun ban (a highly publicizedceremony where she handed over herown .38 police special and a presenta­tion to the pope of a cross made of 15melted-down guns, including her own),only a few dozen guns were handedover. A nervous city attorney ruledagainst enforcement of the ban untilcourt suits against it were resolved.Meanwhile, the California electorate

office for two years, a respite much to beenjoyed. A "yes" vote on the recall is arepud iation not only of Feinstein but ofthe class-colla borationist city labor topswho have rushed to embrace the labor­hating Feinstein. Vote yes! RecallFeinstein!

TorontoBox 7198, Station AToronto, Ontario M5W 1X8(416) 593-4138

SA;\, FRANCISCO--"I shed a fewtears," San Francisco mayor DianneFeinstein told reporters in January,when recall petitions with 35,000 signa­tures. nearly twice the required number.were filed at City Hall. And wei! shemight have. For the recall election.scheduled for April 26, gives S.F.workers. minorities, gays and leftists achance to dump the haughty Feinstein.with reason aplenty.

Turning out Feinstein would be richlysatisfying to the oppressed of SanFrancisco, who have suffered herarrogant labor-baiting, pro-cop grand­standing, benign-neglect racism andanti-gay bigotry. From her posh PacificHeights mansion, Feinstein has lorded itover S.F.'s workers and poor since 1978,when she slipped into the mayor's officeover the corpse of then-mayor GeorgeMoscone, gunned down along with gaySupervisor Harvey Milk by ex-copSupervisor Dan White.

San Francisco is a financial, legal andmarketing center and has not been ashard-hit by the capitalist recession as theindustrial Midwest and Northeast; thecity even shows a budget surplus. Butthis has not prevented Feinstein fromturning the screws on the unions,unemployed, the homeless and aged,like her brethren big city Democraticmayors who were wielding the austerityax even before Reagan was elected.

Doubly grating is the style in whichFeinstein wines and dines the city elite.delights in hobnobbing with visitingdictators and dignitaries (most recentlythe British monarch). while turning adeaf ear to the city's dispossessed. Ablend of Jane Byrne. Marie Antoinetteand Nancy Reagan. with her guilelesscurrying of the rich and famous,Feinstein has richly earned such nick­names as Attila the Hen, Queen Bee andLady Di.

The San Francisco recall law isextremely limited, even by normalbourgeois-democratic standards. IfFeinstein loses the vote, Board ofSupervisors president Wendy Neider(the not-too-bright live-at-home daugh­ter of an ex-S.F. police chief) assumesthe post until the Board appoints a newmayor. No new election is mandatedand S.F. voters would be saddled withthe hand-picked choice of the Board ofSupes, most likely another mainlineDemocrat like Feinstein.

But Feinstein would be barred from

8 APRIL 1983 11

WfJltllEItS ,,1NfitJl1ltlJ

i2S!ayomasSL Protests CIA/Somozaist Invasion of Nicarag!rn

chanted. "Drive the conrras into the sea'Kill the invaders!" and "Roach motelsfor the CIA-They check in and therethey stay!" But it's not just a question ofa mop-up operation against a fev\'thousand die-hard SODlota-lovingkillers.

This is a moment of decision fllr1\icaragua. "EI PUf'b/o u/i;dujalllas sera\'eneido" (The people united will neverbe defeated) was a constant refrain fromthe picket organized by Casa 1\icaragua.The supporters of the petty-bourgeoisnationalist FSL'J want to maintain the"unity of the people" at all costs. TheTrotskyists say that's impossible. thatthe "unity" of the working masses withtheir exploiters will only pave the wayfor a reactionary bloodbath as in Chile.Today in Central America it's eithersocial revolution or bloody counterrev­olution. As the SL spokesman told thedemonstrators:

"!t's necessary not just to defend theNicaraguan revolution. It is necessarvto extend it and complete it. InsideNicaragua there is a capitalist fifthcolumn. They just expropriated CocaCola. [They] aren't the only pro­imperialist forces there. The capitalistclass there is aiding the counterrevolu­tion. It's necessary to expropriate thebourgeoisie and wage a Centra)American-wide war."

SL signs proclaimed: "For CentralAmerican Workers Revolution!" and"For a Trotskyist Party." while demon­strators chanted. "Col1lras no, ohrerossf. overthrow the bourgeoisie!"

The strategy of the reformists andnationalists is to pressure the imperial­ists with appeals to the United Nationsand the Democrats in Congress. CasaNicaragua's press release says. "Duringthe critical moments CAS A NICARA­G V A asks the support of the AmericanPeople to denounce this aggression bywriting to your Congress Person or thePresident of the Vnited States." Incontrast, the SL protesters carried signsdemanding, "No V.S. Aid to CentralAmerica! For a One-Day Port Shut­down!" Militants in the San FranciscoBay Area longshore union have initiateda call for a 24-hour shutdown of all WestCoast ports to oppose Reagan's wardrive. That's what's needed-militantworking-class action not impotentappeals to the imperialist war makers.

The reformist left in the UnitedStates. taking their cue from theSandinistas and the leaders of theSalvadoran opposition popular front.call for a negotiated "political solution"that would sell out liberation strugglesin Central America. Thc SpartacistLeague, which has consistently foughtfor military victory to leftist insurgentsin EI Salvador and workers revolution.chanted "No sellout political deals, winit on the battlefield!" While the Ameri­can bourgeoisie, from Reagan to theliberal Democrats, worries about domi­noes toppling from Panama to the V.S.'southern border. SL signs at thedemonstration proclaimed boldly. "Ex­tend the Revolution to the Rio Grande!Mexican Workers Arise'" As a speakerat the Spartacist protest told the crowdin Spanish, "We must put all of CentralAmerica in flames! Defend. complete.extend the revolution'''.

massive escalation of V.S. militaryand economic aid to the bloodyjunta, including sharply increasingthe number of V.S. military advis­ers. and

WHEREAS:Our brothers and sisters in EISalvador urgently need immediatehelp from the American labormovement in the form of specificacts of labor solidarity. thereforebe it

RESOLVED:The ILWV will organize a 24-hourshutdown of every major WestCoast port to demand an end to allV.S. military, political and econom­ic assistance to EI Salvador.

butchers. Even now as the CIA! contrasattack towns along the Honduranborder and deep inside Nicaragua, andthe V.S. Second Fleet conducts menac­ing "exercises" only miles off the shoresof Cuba, the Sandinistas deliberatelydownplay the counterrevolutionarythreat. "Coalition" representatives evenobjected to our references to "invaders,"saying it was only a matter of "interven­tion." In contrast, the SL vigorously

invasion and it's necessarY to strike at itssource. We say that Jeane Kirkpatrickought to be extradited to a liberatedar;a of EI Salvador. Kill the invaders'"

WHEREAS:The November 1980 InternationalExecutive Board has stated "TheILWV strongly protests any furtherV.S. military, political or economicassistance to the military govern­ment of EI Salvador which hasimposed a virtual reign of terrorover its people" and all ILWV localshave been authorized to "refuse tohandle any and all military cargo orso-called 'riot control' equipmentbeing shipped to EI Salvador", and

WHEREAS:In response to the dramatic battle­field victories by the Salvadoranrebel forces the Reagan administra­tion is demanding an immediate

The V.S.-orchestrated onslaughtagainst Nicaragua is aimed at destroy­ing revolutionary struggles throughoutthe region. The Sandinistas have con­stantly sought to appease Yankeeimperialism, refusing to aid Salvadoranleftist rebels against the V.S.-backed

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WV PhotoNew York City, March 25: Spartacist-organized protesters chant "DefendNicaragua! Complete the revolution! Kill the invaders!"

The following resolution was passedon March 21 by the executive board ofLocal 10, International Longshore­men's and Warehousemen's Vnion(ILWV) to be forwarded to theupcoming ILWV convention as theposition of the Local. The callfor a 24­hour West Coast port shutdown isurgently necessary in the face ofReagan's war escalation against Sal­vadoran rebels and Sandinista Nicara­gua. We hope that union militants willpress forward their efforts to turn thiscall into effective action, which couldelectrify the labor movement, strikinga dramatic blow of solidarity with theembattled workers and peasants ofCentral America.

"Defend 1\icaragua! Complete theRevolution' Kill the Invaders!" read thebanner the Spartacist League (SL)unfurled outside the Honduran Missionto the lJ nited 1\ations in 'Jew York City.Some 90 Spartacist-organized protest­ers chanted, "Smash Reagan's Bay ofPig", 1\icaragua .\"eeds \-1IGs." The SLmobilized th,: largest. most combativecontingent on March 25 to protest theCIA-directed, V .S.-financed invasion of'J icaragua by counterrevolutionarymercenaries bent on overthrowing theSandinista government. Meanwhile. thereformists, nationalists and liberals ofthe anti-Reagan popular fron,t split thedemonstration in half rather thandemonstrate with the Trotskyists, andheld their own desultory picket aroundthe corner.

As members of the Honduran missionpeered out the windows they saw some200 demonstrators ringing the building.Casa Nicaragua and the Coalition for aFree Central America who called theemergency protest mobilized a grandtotal of 100. Their organizers refused tomarch with the Spartacists because wecalled for defense of Cuba and theVSSR against U.S. imperialism and forthe Russians and Cubans to send allnecessary military aid to Nicaragua tobeat back the contras. Quite a few LatinAmerican militants were disturbed bythe sectarian splitting move, lingeringbetween the two picket lines engaged inintense political discussion with Sparta­cist supporters. While the dispirited"Coalition" droned on with their liberalslogans. many picked up our chants.including "i Aluerte a los sonwcistas,Obreros al poder.''' (Death to theSomozaists, Workers to Power!).

The official orgamzers of the protestalso went out of their way to avoiddirecting their fire against the V.S.,choosing to focus on Honduran backingof the Somozaist invaders. As an SLspokesman said at the rally:

"Whv are we here at the Honduranmission" We should be at the U.S.mission to the LJ nited Nations. thehome of Jeane Kirkpatrick, America'sMadame Chiang Kai-shek. The Reaganadministration is what's behind this

12 8 APRIL 1983