Workers Vanguard No 792 - 29 November 2002

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 792 - 29 November 2002

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WfJlillEIiS '.II(JIJ.Ii' oeNo. 792 ~ X . 6 2 3 29 November 2002

Labor, Blacks Need aWorkers Parly!Defend Ir'aqAgainst U.S.Imperialist Attack!

With the Republicans regaining control of the Senate and widening their narrow majority in the House of Representatives, the Bush administration nowclaims to have a popular mandate for itsreactionary policies. Three days after theelection, the U.S. secured a unanimousresolution in the United Nations SecurityCouncil giving it a UN fig leaf for theimpending imperialist subjugation ofIraq. From bible-thumping bigots out toroll back women's rights to plutocratsunfazed by the financial scandals thathave shaken the economy and out forstill more gorging, the forces of reactionare clearly eager to push their agendas:permanent tax cuts for the rich, furtherslashing of social welfare programs andexpanding the role of the religious rightin government. The White House nowsees a free hand to pack the judicialbenches with anti-abortion bigots, whitesupremacists and the like.But the elections were hardly indicative of popular support for this rightwing agenda. In fact, the Republicansscored a narrow victory-with controlof Congress hinging on barely 41,000

votes-and only a small minority of theelectorate even bothered to vote. Goinginto the elections, poll after poll indicated that overwhelming majorities ofvoters were primarily concerned not with"national security" but with economicsecurity-their jobs, health benefits andpension funds and the threatened privatization and gutting of Social Security.

George Bush rallies troops for imperialist slaughter in Iraq while workersface mass layoffs and attacks on pensions and health care. September 25:NYC transit workers rally in lead-up to contract battle.Even in the face of a government whichhas all but declared any dissent to be "terrorism," over 200,000 came out to protestBush's war plans against Iraq on October26. But a central purpose ,Of the organizers of these protests, the ANSWER coalition connected to the Workers WorldParty, was to provide a pre-election platform for a range of Democrats. This

purpose was captured by Jesse Jacksonintoning, "Come alive on November 5!"Following the elections, the Democratic Party is rife with recrimination.House minority leader Richard Gephardtstepped down and was replaced by themore liberal California CongresswomanNancy Pelosi, who promptly voted forcontinued on page 10

Government ThreatensRoundup of Iraqi AmericansThe New York Times (17 November)reported that the government has plansto round up and detain potentially thousands of Iraqi Americans or Iraqi nationals in the U.S., who are already being monitored under "national security"warrants coordinated by a range of spyagencies. The article stated, "In theevent of an American invasion of Iraq,officials would intensify the program'smission through arrests and detentionsof Iraqis or Iraq sympathizers if they are

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believed to be planning domestic terrorist operations."In the name of the "war on terror,"the government has already arrested ordragged off for "interrogation" thousands of people of Near Easterndescent. Well over a thousand peoplewere detained last year without anycriminal charges, denied access to lawyers or even to their families, and heldbehind bars for months on end. In midNovember, nearly 150 airport workers,including a number of union members,were arrested in a sweep of New YorkCity area airports by the Feds and localpolice. Mainly Hispanic immigrantsworking as cleaners for low-wage, nonunion subcontractors, they were pickedup for allegedly lying on their job applications. One cleaner was surrounded by

a half dozen federal agents, forced to hisknees, handcuffed and then paradedaround the airport like a prize trophy. Aunionized black worker was arrested onminor drug charges dating back to hishigh school days nearly ten years ago.Since the beginning of these sweeps,labeled "Operation Tarmac," more than900 airport workers around the country have been arrested or indicted, withmany facing deportation. The roundupof the New York airport workers reportedly was the culmination of a ninemonth investigation of 58,000 workers.Clearly the aim of these police dragnetsis to intimidate and terrorize the entireworkforce, victimize militants and keepa lid on labor struggle.Now, according to the Times, the government is planning to throw Arabs in

the U.S. into concentration camps-andsuch plans didn't start with the warpreparations against Iraq. As far back asthe 1980s, the U.S. government has had"contingency plans" for herding Arabimmigrants into detention camps in theevent of U.S. military intervention in theNear East and North Africa. During the1986 bombing of Libya, a camp in Louisiana had already been prepared for asmany as 5,000 Arab detainees.Plans for mass internment in times of"emergency" have a long history in thiscountry. In 1942, as the U.S. waged waragainst Japan in the Pacific, Franklin D.Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066,which sent J20,000 Japanese Americansand immigrants to concentration camps.In the period before the roundups, allcontinued on page 2


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Several Palestinian activists are amongthose incarcerated as a result of thegovernment's racist "anti-terror" witchhunt. Well-known Palestinian communityleader Farouk Abdel-Muhti was draggedfrom his New York City.home in Aprilby FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS} agents and has beenshuttled fr!;lin one New Jersey jail toanother ever since. I f he is deported toIsrael, Abdel-Muhti would almost surelyface torture or worse at the hands of theZionist state. Last week, his attorneysfiled a habeas corpus petition demanding .his immediate release, citing a SupremeCourt decision limiting detention to sixmonths in most deportation cases.Earlier this month, Amer Jubran,cofounder of the New England Committee to Defend Palestine, was seized by theFeds and INS two days after leadinga Boston march for Palestinian rights.On November 21, Jubran was released onbond, with the judge acknowledging thereceipt of dozens of letters in his defense.However, Jubran still faces a February 20court hearing on his deportation case. ThePartisan Defense Committee calls on allfighters for democratic rights and therights of immigrants, all opponents of theZionist terror machine to demand: FreeFarouk Abdel-Muhti and all the detainees! Hands of fAmer Jubran!

We reprint below a 14 November letter in defense of Jubran sent by the PDCto the Boston-area INS director.* * *The Partisan Defense Committee denounces the 4 November" INSIFBI arrestand seizure of Palestinian l:!-ctivist AmerJubran. Mr. Jubran has been dragged

off to the Adult Correctional Institutionin Cranston, Rhode Island where, eventhough he is charged with no crime, he isthreatened with indefinite detention.The attack on Mr. Jubran comes inthe context of a vicious nation-widedragnet targeting immigrants or anyoneof Arab or South Asian descent whilethe U.S. imperialist behemoth girds forwar against impoverished Iraq. Under theaegis of reactionary legislation, hundredslanguish in INS "detention" without eventhe pretense of due process or constitutional rights.This outrage is clearly meant to chillany dissent-a frontal assault on all political activists who would defend the Palestinian people from escalating Zionist terror in the West Bank and-Gaza as well asanyone fighting in defense of the workingclass, the poor and oppressed. We demandthe immediate release of Amer Jubran.The PDC demands freedom for all thedetainees.

Bourgeois Elections and theDictatorship of CapitalAmerica's rulers trumpet this country'spolitical system as a model of democracy

for the whole world. But periodic electionsunder capitalism are a fig leaf or the classdictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In a 1919lecture, v.l. Lenin, leader of the 1917 Russian October Revolution that establishedthe first workers state in history, explainedTROTSKY that even those capitalist states that were LENINthen upheld as among the freest and mostdemocratic, such as the United States and Switzerland, are simply instruments for thebrutal suppression of the working class.

Nowhere does capital rule so cynically and ruthlessly, and nowhere is it so clearlyapparent, as in these countries, although they are democratic republics, no matter howprettily they are painted and notwithstanding all the talk about labour democracy andthe equality of all citizens. The fact is that in Switzerland and the United States capitaldominates, and every attempt of the workers to achieve the slightest real improvementin their condition is immediately met by civil war ... Nowhere is this suppression ofthe working-class movement accompanied by such ruthless severity as in Switzerlandand the U.S.A., and nowhere does the influence of capital in parliament manifest itselfas powerfully as in these countries. The power of capital is everything, the stockexchange is everything, while parliament and elections are marionettes, puppets ....Whatever guise a republic may assume, however democratic it may be, if it is a bourgeois republic, if it retains private ownership of the land and factories, and if privatecapital keeps the whole of society in -wage-slavery, that is, if the republic does not carryout what is proclaimed the Programme of our Party and in the Soviet Constitution,then this state is a machine for the suppression of some people by otliers ... We shallreject all the old prejudices about the state meaning universal equality-for that is afraud: as long as there is exploitation there cannot be equality. The landowner cannotbe the equal of the worker, or the hungry man the equal of the full man. This machinecalled the state, before which people bowed in superstitious awe, believing the old talesthat it means popular rule, tales which the proletariat declares to be a bourgeois l ie-this machine the proletariat will smash.

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-Y. l . Lenin, "The State" (July 1919)

! ~ ! ! ! ! ! Y l ~ e ~ ! ! ' ! . ~ l ! . 1 ! . . EDITOR: Alan WildeEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Michael DavissonPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Irene GardnerEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Jon Brule, Karen Cole, Paul Cone,George Foster, Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, JosephSeymour, Alison SpencerThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning w ~ h omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 316, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7662 (Editorial), (212) 732-7661(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:vanguard@ti ac.net:Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116.Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.The clOSing date for news in this issue is 26 November.No. 792 29 November 2002

Mr. Jubran's detention follows theprevious arrest of another Boston-areaPalestinian activist, Jaoudat Abouazza,who has since been sent to Canada.These arrests, part of a nationwidepattern, are meant to criminalize anyopposition to U.S. support for Israeliattacks-on the besieged Palestinians. Thisrepression will not go unopposed! FreeAmer Jubran!

Roundup ...( continued from page 1)persons of Japanese descent who werenot citizens were designated "enemyaliens." Their bank accounts were frozen,they were forbidden by law to becomecitizens and were forced to register andcarry ID cards. This horrifying product ofracist war hysteria destroyed thousands of 'lives.In the past, some elements of thebourgeoisie have bemoaned the WW IIconcentration camps as a "mistake" oraberration. But the Supreme Court hasnever overturned its endorsement of theWorld War n internments. And only afew years after the war, the 1950 McCarran Act mandated the registration andfingerprinting of Communist Party members and sympathizers, who were deemed"subversives." Tens of thousands of themwere marked for internment in concentration camps in the event of a "national. emergency."The report of plans for detention ofIraqis and the roundup of NYC airportworkers came amid almost daily pronouncements of new "anti-terror" legislation, executive orders, court rulingsand arrests. The launch of the Department of Homeland Security marks it

Sign at Januarydemonstrationin New Yorkagainstroundups ofimmigrantsrecallsWorld War IIinternment ofJapaneseAmericans.

Letters demanding that all chargesagainst Amer Jubran be dropped shouldbe sent to: Steven J. Farquharson,USINS District Director, Room 1700,JFK Federal Building, Boston, MA02203. Copies should be sent to:Commissioner James W. Ziglar, Immigration and Naturalization Service,425 I Street NW , Washington, D.C.20536,.

new level in the state's ~ b i l i t y to monitorthe entire population's activities. Anothergovernment spying operation is the TotalInformation Awareness System. Headedby John Poindexter, who was convictedon five counts of lying to Congress inthe Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, this"Big Brother" operation would gatherand centralize information on virtuallyanything you do, from applying for apassport to renting a car or buying an airline ticket. On November 18, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ofReview, which meets in secrecy, overruled its own lower court and affirmedbroad powers to spy on individuals,which include allowing break-ins andwiretapping with absolutely no evidenceof criminal activity.The new police-state measures thatfirst target immigrants will be usedagainst just about everyone perceivedas an opponent by the capitalist rulersfrom those who oppose U.S. imperialistwars abroad to those who speak outagainst racist oppression or fight to defend their unions and livelihoods. As theroundups of airport workers underline, itis necessary for the airline unions and thelabor movement as a whole to mobilize indefense of immigrant workers and allthose in the cross hairs of this capitalistgovernment's "war on terror." .

fl4 h ""',"Ku8elleRt 10' CI"II-W", P'/IOlle'I",,,,,u,,,,,",,,,gOrganize for Jamal's Freedom

6 Harrison St., Manhattan(Take 1 or 9 to Franklin St.)

For more information:(212) 406-4252P.O. Box 99, Canal St. Sta.New York, NY 10013

Sunday, December 83t o 7 p.m.United Electrical Hall

37 S. Ashland (at Monroe)For more information:(312) 563-0442

P.O. Box 802867Chicago, IL 60680

Sunday, December 81 to 4 p.m.Centro del Pueblo

474 Valencia, San FranciscoFor more information:(510) 839-0852

P.O. Box 77462San Francisco, CA 94107SPONSOR: PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE

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Order from/make checkspayable to:Partisan Defense CommitteeP.O. Box 99Canal Street StationNew York, NY 10013-0099Phone: (212) 406-4252E-mail: [email protected]

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WORKERS VANGUARD


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Two Workers Killed on Tracks in Two DaysNew York Transit Workers ys.

Union-Busting AusterityNEW YORK CITY-With a December 15 contract deadline fast approaching, the 34,000 members ofTransport Workers Union (TWU)Local 100 who keep this city's subways and buses running are facinga major showdown with the politicalrepresentatives ofWall Street. Threatening "very severe" penalties if theTWU votes for strike action, multibillionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city bosses want togut the union, a powerhouse of NewYork's multiracial working class, aspart of an effort to make workingpeople pay for the city's huge budgetdeficit. The state Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is intenton pushing through a wide array ofattacks on health benefits and working conditions, while foisting a massive fare hike on riders. Transit workers rally outside NYC transit headquarters in Brooklyn, September 25.The MTA's drive to cut costs isdeadly. Two transit workers werekilled on the job in as many daysbecause of the transit bosses' contempt for the safety of the workforce.On November 21, signal maintainerJoy Antony, a 41-year-old father oftwo young children, was killed by anoncoming train because managementdid not provide a flagman to warn thedriver that work was being done on thetracks. The next day, 57-year-old lightmaintainer Kurien Baby was draggedunder a passing train at another station.Four workers have been killed on the jobin two years and 21 since 1980.New York City Transit is the only transitsystem in the state not subject to federalsafety regulations. After the second recentaccident, management stopped all nonemergency track work for 24 hours toreview safety procedures. But unsafe procedures should be stopped before workersare killed or injured! Transit workers mustfight for elected union safety committeeswith the power to shut down any unsafeworking conditions on the spot.What's needed is for transit workers tomobilize union power in defense 9f theirinterests and those of all of New York

Roger Toussaint, TWU Local 100 pres-ident, embraces Democratic SenatorHillary Clinton at union meeting lastyear.City's working people and the ghetto andbarrio poor. Workers from one maintenance facility at a union rally in MidtownManhattan on October 30 carried a ban- -ner reading, "Ready to Rumble." But astransit workers prepare for a confrontation with the capitalist class enemy, they29 NOVEMBER 2002

Break with the Democrats-Mobilize Union Power!are saddled with a union leadership thatplaces its faith not in the power of a mobilized membership but in the false "friends"of the capitalist Democratic Party.Thousands of transit workers haveturned out for union rallies in Brooklyn and Manhattan this fall. The signsand banners carried by union members spoke to the issues facing the workforce. "No Health Care Cuts! Stop Abusive Discipline!" read one. "T.A. LaborRelations = Plantation Justice" declaredanother. With the Health Benefit Truston the verge of bankruptcy, the MTA isnow driving to drastically increase whattransit workers pay for medical care. TWULocal 100 should fight for full health carecoverage at no cost for all union members, including retirees, and their families.With health benefits increasingly underattack by employers across the countryand with at least 42 million people havingno health coverage at all-the labor movement must take the lead in fighting forfree, quality health care for all!In the year 2000 alone, more than16,000 disciplinary notices were dishedout to transit workers. Now the MTA isout to undermine seniority rights by cutting the number of "job picks," whichallow workers to choose their shifts andwork locations. This is a step towardeliminating this hard-won union gainentirely. An array of other proposed MTAmeasures target working conditions andsafety regulations, from speedup and"broadbanding," which would broadenjob descriptions to force workeJ::s to dojobs they're not trained for, to reductionof "release time"-time allotted duringworking hours for elected union representatives to defend their members. This is arecipe for more death on the tracks.The MTA's "plantation justice" and theranks' determination to defend theirunion rights were both on display at theEast New York transit facility in Brooklyna few months ago. Union stewards andother workers there told Workers Van-guard that a black worker was threatenedwith firing for defending himself againsta foreman who physically attacked andhurled racist slurs at him. After a cam-

paign in which over a hundred of his coworkers organized in his defense, thecompany backed down.The attacks on transit workers' healthbenefits and working conditions go handin hand with plans to increase the subway fare by up to 33 percent. Riding on ahuge budget surplus during the 1990sboom, the city administration kept wageincreases for city workers to a bare minimum while allowing rents to skyrocket.Meanwhile, schools and hospitals wereleft to deteriorate and the homeless tofreeze and starve in the streets. Now, inthe midst of an economic downturn anda huge budget deficit, they intend to takeit out of the hides of the workers, slashing services and wages even further. Aunion sign at the October 30 TWU rallydeclared: "No Fare Hike on the Backs ofthe Public and T.A. Workers." A fight todefend the union, linked with the call forfree public transit, would win enormoussupport, not least among the city's poorand minority populations.Democrats: Enemies of Labor

The union rallies should have beenused for mobilizing union power againstthe capitalists' attacks. Instead the Local100 leadership under President RogerToussaint turned them into election ralliesfor capitalist politicians, as the speaker'splatform was given over to Democratslooking for votes. Certainly, with a particularly vicious Republican administration in Washington that flaunts its ties tobig business and openly revels in inflicting pain and suffering on working people, many workers buy into the lie thatthe Democratic Party is a "lesser evil."But it is precisely their image as "friends"of labor and minorities that allows theDemocrats to more easily get away withattacks just as vicious as those carriedout by the Republicans-witness theClinton years, with the axing of welfareand the massive growth in inequalitybetween a handful of rich and almosteverybody else. When it comes to thefundamental interests of the capitalistclass-against labor at home and theperceived enemies of U.S. imperialism

abroad-the Democratic Party is atone with the Republicans.Tying the unions to the DemocraticParty is an obstacle to labor struggle.It was Democratic state attorney general Eliot Spitzer, not just Republican mayor Giuliani, who broughtthe full force of the capitalist statedown on Local 100 during the contract battle three years ago, invokingthe strikebreaking Taylor Law, threatening to arrest transit workers whoeven uttered the word "strike" andsurrounding union headquarters withan army of cops. And then-candidatefor Senate Hillary Clinton endorsedthis draconian assault on the union,calling the Taylor Law a "wise law"because "public employees shouldnot legally be allowed to strike." Twoyears later, Toussaint invited Clintonto be the featured speaker at a massunion meeting, where she drummedup support for the "war on terror" andthe U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.The bipartisan "war on terror" hasmeant a racist witchhunt againstArabs and Muslims and a wholesaleassault on immigrant rights and thecivil liberties of the population as awhole. Its ultimate target is the labormovement, the real "enemy within" in

the eyes of the American bourgeoisie. Asthe U.S. imperialists gear up for waragainst Iraq, they will further escalate theirwar on the unions in order to ensure classpeace at home. This has already beenunderscored by the anti-union Taft-Hartleyinjunction leveled against the InternationalLongshore and Warehouse Union.The bosses have already wheeled outtheir anti-union propaganda machineagainst the TWU. Attacking Toussaint as a"radical," the New York Post railed againstthe possibility of a strike in a rabid editorialtitled "Communist Underground" the dayof the October 30 rally. And on the ground,a horde of cops prevented transit workersfrom marching to Governor Pataki's Midtown offices. Yet the Local 100 leadershiphad invited the head of the police "union,"Patrick Lynch, to speak at the earlier TWUrally in Brooklyn. Cops are the paid strikebreakers of the capitalists; they have noplace in the labor movement!The TWU bureaucracy itself has fallenin line behind the "war on terror." As theNew York Times (17 November) reported,the Local 100 tops have complainedabout subcontractors who do not undergobackgound checks yet have access to thesubway system's power and communications facilities. John Samuelsen, a Local100 official, ranted that the typical subcontractor "picks up a truckload of daylaborers .... We don't know if they have acriminal background or anything aboutthem." Rather than denouncing these nonunion and largely immigrant workers, theTWU should be fighting to organize theminto the union at full union wages andbenefits. The TWU should also be organizing the "workfare" laborers forced totake on transit jobs to get their meagerwelfare payments. The labor movementmust take up the fight for citizenshiprights for all immigrants.Union Tops Threatento Split TWU

Criminally, in the face of a ruling-classoffensive, Toussaint's oppopents in theunion bureaucracy, TWU Internationalpresident Sonny Hall and his cohorts incontinued on page 83


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Young SparlaeDS"War on Terror" on Camp.us

Defend Pro-Palestinian ProtesterslOn campuses across the country, a sinister cabal ranging from the nefariousAnti-Defamation League (ADL) to racistdemagogue David Horowitz to campusadministrators and higher offices of thestate is targeting any student who wouldspeak out in defense of the Palestinians.Last spring, the UC Berkeley administration banned the Students for Justice inPalestine (SJP) after an April 9 WheelerHall demonstration calling for the uni

versity to divest its holdings in Israel.This fall, Harvard's Lawrence Summerscondemned divestment proposals as"anti-Semitic in their effect, if not theirintent" and accused unnamed studentgroups of having links with "terrorist"organizations.Around the same time, the Zionistthink tank Middle East Forum set up the, Campus Watch Web site in an attempt toblacklist pro-Palestinian academics, whomit labels "apologists to terrorism." An adpublished on November 4 in the studentnewspaper of Rutgers University, the DailyTargum, pictures a man with a machinegun captioned "Palestinian school children's hero," imputing that any Palestinian sympathizer is necessarily a supporterof terrorism.This witchhunt is hardly confined tocollege campuses. Last week, a youngwoman Brooklyn high school student ofPalestinian descent wearing a "Free Palestine" T-shirt and Palestinian flag pin toschool was grabbed and frisked by security guards. She was forced to remove proPalestinian stickers from her notebookand summarily warned by a dean that theonly flag she could "represent at schoolwas the American flag" (New York DailyNews, 21 November).The charge of "anti-Semitism" has become the standard smear against thosewho would defend the right of the Palestinians to exist. More than 300 collegeand university presidents pledged in anAmerican Jewish Committee adjn theNew York Times (7 October) that ';alI instances" of supposed intimidation againstJewish and Zionist students "will beinvestigated and acted upon." This ad andthe "anti-Semitism" smear willfully conflate actual anti-Semitic attacks, such asthe defacing of synagogues, with politicalProtest against the Zionist military garrison state. As New York University professor Khaled Fahmy noted, "This narrowingtolerance is sad and dangerous as it leavesreal anti-Semitism and real moral bankruptcy unchallenged" (Washington SquareNews, 20 November).Branding defenders of the Palestiniansas "anti-Semitic" and "terrorists,'.' the Zionists tried everything to shut down theSecond National Conference on the Palestinian Solidarity Movement at the Uni-

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versity of Michigan at Ann Arbor in mid- came heated on both sides. Following theOctober. They filed a lawsuit that claimed rally, university president Robert Corriganthe conference represented a threat to the seized on false allegations that the Gen-physical safety of Jewish students. In - eral' Union of Palestine Students (GUPS)a classic frame-up operation, an anti-' . is riot-prone and anti-Semitic in orderSemitic e-mail message was made to to summarily impose sanctions on theappear to originate from a pro-Palestinian group, including probation, terminationofstudent group helping to organize the funding and the loss of its Web site. The

Young SpartacusBay Area Spartacus Youth Club at September 30 protest outside UC Berkeleyadministration trial of pro-Palestinian activists.conference. (This was exposed as a fraudby the administration itself.) When allelse failed, more than a thousand Zionistsfrom as far away as the East Coastbesieged the conference and demonstrated outside" it chanting "Shame forsupporting the killing of university students" and carrying signs reading "ThisIs an Anti-Semitic Hate Conference."Witch hunts and Repression" The effort by Zionist ideologues tosmear pro-Palestinian protest as "antiSemitic" reached the highest levels of stategovernment in California last July, whenDemocratic governor Gray Davis, citingthe ADL, called on the University of California and California State University systems to crack down on what he called antiSemitic "violence, harassment, and abuse"(UCLA Daily Bruin, 30 July). Davis outrageously and falsely condemned entiredemonstrations as anti-Semitic, including the April SJP demo at UC Berkeleyand protests at San Francisco State University (SFSU).At SFSU last May, a pro-Zionist demonstration was met by a pro-Palestiniancounter-protest, a confrontation w h i ~ h be-

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ADL advised Corrigan in the witchhunt ofGUPS. These well-connected Zionistshave a long and sordid history at SFSU. Inthe early 1990s, when the ADL was exposed as spies for some of .the deadliestregimes on the planet-from ,apartheidSouth Africa to Latin American deathsquad dictatorships-more than a dozenSFSU student groups were found on theircomputer hit list.In a September meeting with GUPS,Corrigan responded to a GUPS request tolift the sanctions against it with the outrageous comment: "Why, so'you guys canstart throwing bombs in January?" (GoldenGate [Xlpress, 17 October). This vile andinflammatory comment can only a prelude to aggressive g o v e r n m e n ~ repressionor worse, especially given FBI effortsto use student records to go after NearEastern students as supposed "terrorists."SFSU was among the first to hand oversuch records to the FBI, an action thatwas opposed by an SYC-initiated unitedfront protest demanding "Down withSFSU collaboration with the FBI antiimmigrant witchhunt!" SFSU administration hands off GUPS!, Across the bay at UC Berkeley, theadministration is single-mindedly determined to find some way to punish 32 protesters arrested during the April SJPdemonstration and sit-in, despite the official unequivocal "factual finding of innocence" issued when criminal charges weredropped by the Alameda County DistrictAttorney's Office last June. The administration has charged 31 students with violating the Student Code of Conduct andthreatens them with suspension. One student, Roberto Hernandez, faces an additional trumped-up charge of physical assault and has had his degree withheld,preventing him from attending his docto-

ral program and endangering his financialaid package. This prosecution comes afterthe university banned SJP as a campusorganization (though the university laterbacked down from the ban in the face ofopposition). As Hernandez' lawyer, AnneWeills, told a Young Spartacus reporter,"The attack on these students is such thatit is chilling dissent."The administration's prosecution of theWheeler 32 has been a kangaroo courtfrom the beginning. The 32 were deniedtheir request for a group hearing, the hearings were closed to the public (though twomonths after the initial hearing the university finally agreed to open hearings),and the proceedings were moved from thecentral campus to a more remote location.Meanwhile, much of the scant evidencethe university has come up with is itselfinadmissible according to state law because the Wheeler 32 were found factuallyinnocent. Now, as the result of a ruling ona lawsuit filed by the defendants, the university was issued a court order to restartthe hearings and withhold the arrestrecords from evidence.The SYC has been active from the beginning in the defense of targeted proPalestinian protesters through taking uptheir cause in rallies and publicizing it atour lit tables. In a protest statement distributed in May at SJP rallics, we demanded "Down With the suspension ofSJP! No administration reprisals againstthe protesters!" At an October Wheeler 32defense organizing meeting, we encouraged the participants to bring their struggle to the then locked-out West Coastdock workers, pointing out that gettingthe social power of labor behind themwould represent the best possible defenseof persecuted pro-Palestinian activists.Campus Divestment Campaign:Appeal to Forces of Repression

The divestment campaign pushed bymany in the pro-Palestinian movement,including the International Socialist Organization, embraces the idea that the University of California, which runs laboratories involved in "developing new toolsin the war on terrdrism" (as the UC Website attests), or the Harvard Corporation,run by former World Bank vice presidentand Clinton Treasury Secretary Summers,will side with Palestinians and divestfrom ~ s r a e l . This is .absurd. As we wrotein "What's Wrong with Campus Divestment Campaign" (WVNo. 780, 3 May):"The divestment campaign looks 'toemploy moral suasion to pressure campusadministrations, American corporationsand ultimately the U.S. capitalist rulers toditch Israel and implement a more benevolent policy toward the Palestinians.

Aside froin the fact that American corporations do not have significant investments in Israel, the notion that moral suasion will make the U.S. dump a strategicand longstanding ally in the Near East issimply ludicrous."Now, this campaign puts its advocates inthe position of appealing to campus administrations, who are presently witchhunting pro-Palestinian activists, to cometo the 'aid of Palestinians.

I f the sympathies of the administrationwere not already sufficiently clear, justlook at the lengths it went to quash anyprotest against a November 1,9 appearance at UC Berkeley by former Israeliprime minister Ehud Barak, who presidedover the initial Zionist crackdown on theWORKERS VANGUARD


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Racist Demagogue HorowitzThe Chicago Spartacus Youth Clubprotests the arrest of Jessica Maiorca whohad been simply heckling racist demagogue David Horowitz during his Octo

ber 30 lecture at the University of Illinoisat Chicago (DIC). After Maiorca turnedaround in her chair to call security onright-wing students who had been physically harassing her, campus cops immediately descended on her and draggedher out of the auditorium. Though thearrest charge of disorderly conduct wasdropped, she still faces possible disciplinary action from the administration.. Maiorca, a member of the UIC No Warcoalition, was targeted for her politicalbeliefs. Defend Jessica Maiorca!Horowitz's appearance at UIC was, apart of his neo-McCarthyite campaign towhip up pro-war patriotism and advancethe capitalist rulers' witchhunt against allthose who oppose or even question U.S.imperialism's war moves against Iraq. Inan advertisement published in 15 campusnewspapers in September 2001, Horowitzaccused protesters against the VietnamWar of having been "enemies within."Today Horowitz is touring college campuses giving a speech entitled "Howthe Left Undermines America's Security,"in which he smears leftists as "AI Qaeda'slittle helpers." These slanders are an incitement to violence and a justificationfor government repression against anti-war activists. .In fact, the "big helper" of Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia was theAmerican capitalist state. Osama binLaden and his fellow mujahedin-who

second Intifada. As a member of the BayArea SYC, which had mobilized forthe protest against Barak, reported: "At 5p.m. it seemed as though the cops wantedto make the protest into an occupied WestBank. Helicopters flew overhead, and theentrance to Zellerbach was blocked off bypolice barricades, pushing protesters intoa comer at least 200 feet away fromwhere Barak was supposed to speak."It is a measure of how virulent the Zionist witchhunt against support to the Palestinians has become that they target thedivestment campaign, which in the words

of one of its most renowned supporters,Edward Said, is "the mildest and mostdecorous of responses" to Zionist terror(Washington Post, 12 October).-Yet, thesmear that anyone who protests against.the Zionist military garrison state is antiSemitic has long been used by the Israelirulers to bolster their genocidal aim oferadicating the Palestinians.

We are intransigent defenders of thePalestinians against Zionis t state terror. At

t1fllttro".@!Q'Mtt.!d"4Gi,ji@jjjMtM:ffl'.'--- Near East, 1950s---Permanent Revolution vs.Bourgeois Nationalism

Two-part series appeared inWV No. 740, 25 August 2000 andNo. 741, 8 September 2000$1 for 2 issues (includes postage)

Make checks payable/mail to:Spartacist Pub. Co., Box 1377 GPONew York, NY 10116

29 NOVEMBER 2002

on a Rampage

October 30: Pro-imperialist spokesm,an David Horowitz ranting from podiumat UIC. His appearance was a calculated provocation-four people wereejected from the event and one of them was arrested. .would later fill the ranks of Al Qaeda, theTaliban and the Northern Alliance-werearmed, trained and funded by U.S. imperialism as part of its war to smash theSoviet Union in the '80s.Furthermore, Horowitz's claim that the

the same time, we are equally opposed toArab nationalist calls to "drive the Jewsinto the sea." Against all variants ofdeadly nationalism, we counterpose a program of proletarian revolutionary internationalism. The road to the social andnational liberation of the Palestinian people lies through common class struggle bythe Hebrew-speaking and Arab workersagainst both the Israeli and Arab rulingclasses, who likewise are oppressors ofthe Palestinians. Only within a socialistfederation of the Near East can the right tonational self-determination for both thePalestinian and Hebrew-speaking peoplesbe equitably realized.U.S. imperialism's imminent waragainst Iraq could very well provide theIsraeli state, armed to the hilt by the U.S.,with the cover to carry out a full-scaleethnic cleansing of the Occupied Territories. As the war drive escalates, attemptsto quell protest sympathetic to the Palestinians will only intensify on Americancampuses. This points to the urgent needto mobilize in defense of both the Palestinian people and those who sympathizewith their plight. This struggle must belinked to revolutionary opposition to theimpending imperialist war and standingin defense of Iraq against U.S. attack.The divestment campaign fosters illusions in the potential benevolence of theAmerican state. Effective defense of the

victims of the U.S. military behemoth,as well as the victims of its Zionist juniorpartner, cannot come through a ~ p e a l s tothe moral scruples of the U.S. imperialistsor their agents on the campuses. Instead,it requires mobilizing the social power ofthe working class in militant class struggle directed against the capitalist rulershere. Anti-imperialist students and partisans of the Palestinian people must bewon to a revolutionary perspective, theunderstanding that the working class is the .one class that has both the interest and thecapacity to overthrow this murderous capitalist system and end the threat of imperialist war once and for all .

"anti-American" left has stifled freespeech on college campuses is a calculated attempt to intimidate leftists andminorities into silence. His professedfree speech concerns were completely exposed during his campus visit. Early in

BERKELEY, November 16-The BayArea Spartacus Youth Club mobilizedyouth today to join 150 gay rightsactivists in protesting against FredPhelps' vile Kansas-based WestboroBaptist Church. These anti-gay bigotscame to the Bay Area to picket highschool performances of The LaramieProject, the powerful play about thesadistic 1998 murder of MatthewShepard, a gay University of Wyomingstudent. This comes after they grotesquely picketed outside the homeof trans gender youth Gwen Araujofollowing her brutal murder lastmonth in an act of demented anti-gayhatred (see "Transgender Youth Murdered in Brutal Attack," WV No.791, 15 November). At UC Berkeley,the Phelps family came to picket afootball game, apparently assuming it would be a den of homosexualactivism, with signs reading "Matt

the day of his talk, after he failed to havean International Socialist Organizationcampus literature table shut down, thisright-wing provocateur went so far as toattack that lit table, ripping down aprotest sign and tearing it to pieces! During his talk, he fingered people in thecrowd who were angered by his reactionary ranting so that the campus cops wouldforcibly remove them. Following the lecture, he abruptly cut off the promiseddiscussion, claiming he didn't like the"tone" of a question.Horowitz has a recent history of fueling racist reaction and campus witchhunts.Two years ago, Horowitz orchestrated anational ad campaign on college campuses that attacked "reparations" for blackpeople on the grotesque basis that slaveryactually "created wealth for black Americans." In a similarly twisted vein, his current ad, which ran in the UIC Flame justweeks before his appearance, blames Palestinians for their own oppression at thehands of the murderous Zionist state,painting all those who sympathize with thePalestinian cause as terrorist supporters.The SYCs have initiated united-front protests against this reactionary ideologue.Marxists UIiderstand that it is necessaryto refute the lies of pro-imperialist ideo-- logues like Horowitz and combat the corrosive impact of their retrograde ideas.However, our aim is not just to exposereactionary ideas, but to change reality. Asocialist revolution is needed to uprootthe racist system of imperiali'st exploitation and war for which Horowitz is a brazen mouthpiece.

[Shepard] in Hell" and "No Tearsfor Queers." Demonstrating just howtwisted they are, the Phelps clan alsoheld a sign that said, "Thank God forSept. 11," derived from their beliefthat America is being punished bygod for allowing itself to be overrunby "hedonists."Most 'of the counter-demonstratorspassively staged a toothless "silentprotest." In contrast, our intention wasto make sure that the Phelps congregation's murderous provocation didnot go unanswered and that theynever set foot in Berkeley again. TheSYC militantly opposed their religiousfanaticism with chants such as "Downwith the anti-gay crusade! Separatethe church and state!" and "Get yourcross out of our crotch, antirgay big.otry must be stopped!" Down withanti-gay bigots! Matthew Shepard,Gwen Araujo-We wjll not forget!

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In Memory of Our ComradeCory PearsonFamily, friends, co-workers and comrades

of Cory Pearson joined with his comrade andwife Ellen at the AFSCME District Council1737 hall in New York on November 16 to celebrate Cory's life and commemorate his death.A committed communist and member of ourmovement for 29 years, Cory died on October16 following a heart attack. He was 54.A display in the hall gave a sense of Cory'sremarkable talents, featuring a selection ofthe many, many photos he had taken as chiefphotographer for Workers Vanguard and inpursuit of his many other interests. Attendance by fellow phone workers and membersof the Communications Workers of America(CWA) spoke to the impact Cory had on allwho knew him-and that included many comrades throughout the International CommunistLeague, even though Cory was based in NewYork City all his years as a member. Comradesin Berlin honored Cory with a wreath at theTreptow Park monument for the Soviet soldiers who liberated the city from the Nazis; inTokyo, comrades will similarly honor Cory atthe graves of Richard Sorge and Ozaki Hotsumi, heroic defenders of the October Revolution who were executed in 1944.

We publish below excerpts from remarks tothe memorial gathering by comrades BruceMishkin and George Foster and by Cory's sister, Connie Pearson Duquette. Among otherspeakers was Irene Granovsky, who workedclosely with Cory during his five years in theWV circulation department.Bruce Mishkin: Shocked expressions of sorrow at Cory's death have come from citiesaround the world, from New York to Tokyo,the Midwest to Australia. Cory touched a lotof people. For many of us, Cory was perhapsthe nicest man we'd ever met. He moved manywith his generosity, his diligence, his characteristic infectious enthusiasm, and his devo-tion to the ICL and to the comrades who comprise it. .Growing up in the South concurrently with the civilrights movement, Cory developed a revulsion againstracism and all the forms of bigotry that he encountered.His distaste for conventionality combined with a lifelonginterest in the history of black struggle. It's not accidental that year in and year out Cory was part of our Southern Tour each Workers Vanguard subscription drive.He said he entered political awareness on the rightwing of the American spectrum, but that didn't last long,as he always sided with black people in battles againsttheir oppression. As an engineering student at CornellUniversity, he was affected by the militant black studentoccupation in 1968. It was there, during the height ofthe Vietnam War, that he was won to radical politics.While there, he was a DJ at the campus radio stationand developed what would become a lifelong interestin music, recording and electronics. Later, he worked in

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Pearson Family

1948-2002a sound studio in Washington, D.C.While living in Washington, he was won to Trotskyismas the program and ideology for realizing his radicalideals. He moved to New York to be active in the Spartacist League's youth organization, then called the Revolutionary Communist Youth. Although during the courseof his life the bulk of his political responsibilities wereelsewhere than the youth organization, he was alwayskeenly interested in our younger members, frequentlyhosting them in his loft and offering his loft for youthparties and social gatherings.A few years after moving to New York, he became aphone worker and was a member of CWA locals 1150and 1101 for over 20 years. Pictures of him on picketlines during phone strikes are in the displays out there.He became an adept and capable phone technician.The bulk of his life as a party member was bound upwith our press, in one capacity or another. Whatever he

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Documents

Workers Vanguard No 792 - 29 November 2002