May 15, 2003 Vol. 45, No. 19

50¢

By Berta Joubert-Ceci

Even as the Bush administration projects its military mightin the Middle East and sends troops back to the Philippines, ithas had to pull its Navy out of a small island in Puerto Rico.

After more than six decades of living under U.S. Navy bom-bardments, strafing and many other military exercises in theirterritory—and suffering the abuse of soldiers who ventured intothe civilian part of the island—the people of the island of Viequesfinally celebrated the end of this violence on May 1. Thousandsjoined in the celebration, traveling from the rest of Puerto Ricoand parts of the United States.

At midnight, the deadline set for the Navy to leave the CampGarcía base, hundreds of activists began a massive entrance ontothe firing range. They smashed the fence with sledgehammers,wire cutters and whatever they could use to break down the bar-rier that for years had kept the islanders from stepping onto theirown land.

Soon the rage felt against the U.S. military was manifested inaction. So many years of contempt, so many deaths by cancerwidely believed to be the product of military toxins, the terribledevastation of their economy, unemployment, separation offamilies by forced emigration, lack of health care services. Insum—the island’s lack of development, held hostage to thePentagon, exploded in a people’s catharsis.

Structures were hammered down. So were military vehicles.Minutes later, those vehicles were set afire with chants of “FreeVieques—the Navy is gone, at last.”

The first round of this David and Goliath struggle of tinyVieques against the U.S. war machine had finally ended and thepeople had won—a victory cherished not only by Viequenses butby the world as well at this dangerous time when U.S. imperial-ism is spreading its fury all over the planet.

Ayer sí, hoy no–Los motivos deBush en sanciones contra Iraq 12

Continued on page 10

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For also at this time, as the international mobilizations againstthe war have demonstrated, the people are taking their rightfulplace in history. As the people in all of Latin America are saying,“The sword of Bolívar is running throughout the continent.”

It is interesting to note that the only place in the Puerto Ricanislands visited by Simón Bolívar, the great 19th-centuryVenezuelan leader of anti-colonial struggles, was Vieques, wherehis statue presides over the main plaza. Here, too, his sword hasextended.

Next, decontamination, devolution and development

But the struggle has not ended. The Committee for the Rescueand Development of Vieques, the main organization fighting forthe ousting of the military, demands what it calls the four Ds:demilitarization, decontamination, devolution of the land anddevelopment.

Of these, only demilitarization has been accomplished. The continued colonial domination of Puerto Rico by the

United States makes the transfer of the land to the people aninsult. Two-thirds of the territory had been occupied by theNavy—the western part for weapons storage, and the eastern formilitary maneuvers and a bombing range.

The people’s forceful, committed struggle to liberate their landforced the U.S. to close its base in the western part in April 2001and transfer most of that land to the municipality of Vieques.

Round one goes to the people

U.S. Navy pulls out of Vieques

IRAQCounter-revolution& resistance 9

ASIAU.S. rattles sabers 8

DOCKWORKERSRatifying the struggle 5

MUMIA ABU-JAMALStunning new evidence of police frame-up 3

BLACK CHILDRENExtreme poverty deepens in U.S. 2

ATHENSDemocracy for whom? Neocons, Athens and the Paris Commune 11

California protesters to Bush: ‘Jobs, not war!’ 5

CUBA Millions vote socialism–with their feet 7

CINCO DE MAYO Still battling empire 6

May Day in L.A. Legalize immigrant workers! 6

WW PHOTO: BILL HACKWELL

Page 2 May 15, 2003 www.workers.org

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WW CALENDAR

�� National40 years after Birmingham protests . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2New evidence cops concocted Mumia ‘confession’ . . . 3

Mumia on the great dissenters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

50,000 workers protest in Albany, N.Y. . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Wall Street bandits get slap on wrist . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Operation Homeland Resistance underway . . . . . . . . 4ILWU ratifies struggle resolutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Bush couldn’t duck Calif. protesters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Cinco de Mayo: still battling the empire. . . . . . . . . . . 6

May Day in Los Angeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Neocons, empire building and democracy . . . . . . . . 11

�� Internat ionalU.S. Navy pulls out of Vieques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Millions pledge to defend Cuba. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

U.S. empire menaces Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Solidarity with Filipino struggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Counter-revolution & resistance in Iraq . . . . . . . . . . . 9

May Day in Belgium. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Walter Sisulu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

�� Editor ia lsThis is what democracy looks like . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

�� Notic ias En EspañolArgentina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Irak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

40 years after Birmingham protests

More Black children mired in extreme poverty

Workers World55 West 17 StreetNew York, N.Y. 10011Phone: (212) 627-2994 • Fax: (212) 675-7869E-mail: editor@workers.org Web: www.workers.orgVol. 45, No. 19 • May 15, 2003Closing date: May 7, 2003

Editor: Deirdre Griswold; Technical Editor: Lal Roohk; Managing Editors: Greg Butterfield, JohnCatalinotto, Leslie Feinberg, Monica Moorehead,Gary Wilson; West Coast Editors: Richard Becker, Gloria La Riva;Contributing Editors: Joyce Chediac, Pat Chin,Naomi Cohen, Shelley Ettinger, Teresa Gutierrez;Technical Staff: Rebecca Finkel, Elena J. Peckham,Hank Sambach; Mundo Obrero: Carl Glenn, Carlos Vargas; Internet: Janet Mayes

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By Monica Moorehead

Who could forget the horrific images of whitefirefighters aiming their water hoses at AfricanAmerican youths who were trying to protectthemselves from the torturous blasts of water?Or racist police, at the behest of the notoriouspublic safety commissioner “Bull” Connor, urg-ing their vicious dogs to tear at the flesh of theseyouths?

It was a scene that would forever change thepolitical landscape of the civil-rights movement.

The place was Birmingham, Ala., once con-sidered the most segregated city in the UnitedStates. The year was 1963. On May 3, thousands of AfricanAmerican students, from elementary to high school age,walked out of their classes all over the city to protest racistJim Crow laws.

Much of the organizing for these demonstrations cameout of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Just fourmonths later this same church would be the scene of a ter-rible bombing by the KKK, resulting in the murders of fourBlack girls.

Child activists, supported by their parents, werearrested in massive numbers for organizing marches andcivil disobedience. As their bodies filled the jails, they kepttheir spirits high by singing civil-rights songs.

This year, on May 3-4, more than 2,000 participants inthose protests, now in their 50s and 60s, came togetherwith former civil-rights leaders in the city once referredto as Bombingham to commemorate these significantprotests that are credited for helping to force the signingof the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The progressive gains coming out of the civil-rightsmovement helped win political and economic concessionsfor a significant sector of Black people battling conditionsof semi-slavery.

Forty years later, have fundamental conditions gottenbetter or worse for Black people—especially the young?

The 2000 Census Bureau statistics for Birminghamshow that there has been a severe decline in living stan-dards.

Black people compose more than 73 percent of the gen-eral population in the steel capital of the South. The per-capita income is about $16,000.

Close to 25 percent of the population and 21 percent offamilies live below the official poverty line.

Of those living in poverty, more than 35 percent areunder the age of 18.

Deepening emergency crisis for Black children

The Birmingham statistics are just the tip of the iceberg.On April 30, the Children’s Defense Fund released veryalarming figures.

They indicate that in 2001, almost 1 million Black chil-dren were living in “extreme poverty”—meaning belowhalf the poverty line.

Extreme poverty refers to after-tax income, includingthe value of food stamps, subsidized lunches and housingbenefits. Half the poverty line in 2001 was $7,064 annu-ally for a family of three.

The most devastating federal policy affecting the riseof extreme poverty was and continues to be the 1996“Welfare Reform” Act, which eliminated federal fundingfor Aid to Families with Dependent Children. AFDC once

guaranteed Medicaid health benefits for poor children. Allthis occurred under Democratic President Bill Clinton.

“The story of deepening poverty is central to the storyof Black children in poverty in the wake of the 1996 wel-fare law: without it, the story is incomplete,” the reportstresses. “That is because more than eight in 10 Black chil-dren on AFDC were already poor in 1995, the year beforethe law was signed. Therefore, any deterioration in theeconomic circumstances of most Black children on wel-fare can only be measured by looking at the deepening orlessening of the severity of poverty for these already-poorchildren—not by changes in official poverty rates.”

This is the highest level since these annual data werefirst collected in 1979. It marks an increase of 50 percentfrom the number in 1999, based on the 2000 CensusBureau figures.

The fact that African Americans compose about 13 per-cent of the U.S. population highlights that 1 million Blackchildren in extreme poverty is hugely disproportionate.In fact, more than 8 percent of Black children lived inpoverty in 2001—double the percentage for all othernationalities, according to the study.

To characterize the current Bush administration’s atti-tude toward the poor as callous is much too generous.Bush’s attitude is both racist and hostile.

He now wants to eliminate any federal spending forHead Start, a pre-kindergarten program for poor chil-dren. At the same time he is pushing for gigantic tax cutsto benefit the rich.

Black children are not the only children languishing inextreme poverty. In 2001, there were over 700,000 Latinochildren living in extreme poverty, an increase of 13 per-cent from 2000. There was also a 2 percent increase invery poor white children, who now number 2 million.

It is no wonder that with the deteriorating social statusof poor children, especially those of color, the UnitedStates has the highest infant mortality rate and largestprison population of any industrialized country.

Despite all the racist repression they faced—policebeatings, dogs and fire hoses—the heroic mass resis-tance of the Black children of Birmingham who helpedoverturn Jim Crow laws showed how real change can bebrought about.

The time is more than ripe to organize nationwideprotests in Washington, D.C., to demand money forhuman needs, not war abroad. And once again poor andworking-class youths must lead the way. ��

Schoolchildren being arrested in Birmingham in1963 for protesting racist segregation. Jim Crowsegregation laws have been overturned, butBlack poverty hasn't.

www.workers.org May 15, 2003 Page 3

By Betsey PiettePhiladelphia

The last remaining pillar of theprosecution’s case used to convictMumia Abu-Jamal in 1982 has beenknocked down.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, an AfricanAmerican activist and award-win-ning journalist, was convicted of the1981 killing of Philadelphia policeofficer Daniel Faulkner. Policeclaimed that Abu-Jamal confessedafter the incident while he was hos-pitalized for gunshot wounds.Mumia Abu-Jamal has always main-tained his innocence.

Now, new evidence reveals thatcops concocted the “confession.”

Attorneys for Abu-Jamal havefiled a declaration in the Pennsyl-vania Supreme Court and the U.S.Court of Appeals for the ThirdDistrict. In the declaration, KennethPate swears that his half-sisterPriscilla Durham, during a tele-phone conversation with Pate in1983 or 1984, admitted that she hadnot heard a “confession” by Abu-Jamal.

Durham, a security guard, was onduty at Jefferson Hospital on Dec. 9,1981, when Abu-Jamal and Faulknerwere brought in to the emergencyroom with gunshot wounds.

According to Pate, Durham toldhim that the only statement Abu-Jamal made at the hospital was, “Get

off me, get off me—they’re killingme,” when police interferred with hismedical treatment.

This directly contradicts Dur-ham’s testimony at Abu-Jamal’s1982 trial that she heard him yell out,while surrounded by police, “I shotthe motherf—-er and I hope he dies.”

According to Pate, the policeappealed to Durham to “stick withthem” because as a security guardshe was part of the “brotherhood” oflaw enforcement officers.

Abu-Jamal’s jury was neverallowed to hear testimony from thepolice officer responsible for guard-ing him at the hospital; the policeofficer had filed a written report thatAbu-Jamal had made no statements.

So why is Mumia Abu-Jamal—viewed by millions around the worldas a U.S.-held political prisoner—still sitting on Pennsylvania’s deathrow?

Free Mumia!

It would be difficult for any jurytoday to possibly convict Abu-Jamalafter hearing all the evidence thathas come to light since his 1982 trial.

Abu-Jamal’s attorneys have tapedsworn testimony from a man namedArnold Beverly who passed a liedetector test while confessing that hekilled Faulkner.

Beverly says he shot Faulkner in a“mob hit” ordered by some policeand organized crime because

New evidence:

Cops concocted Mumia‘confession’

Faulkner was an obstacle to the pay-offs racket that corrupt police wererunning in center city Philadelphiain the 1980s.

Physical evidence, witness testi-mony and a polygraph examinationback up Beverly’s confession. Yet thecourts have not even allowed Beverlyto come in for a routine deposition.

Witness statements by YvetteWilliams and private investigatorMike Newman prove that the prose-cution’s “eyewitnesses”—CynthiaWhite and cab driver RobertChobert—did not even see the shoot-ing and lied on the witness stand.

Philadelphia Common PleasJudge Sabo’s neutrality was chal-lenged by Terri Maurer-Carter, whowas working as a court stenographerin 1982 when she heard Sabo makethe statement, “Yeah, and I’m goingto help them fry the n----r”—refer-ring to Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case.

Yet Abu-Jamal remains in prison.The Fraternal Order of Police, dis-

trict attorney, judges, Pennsylvaniagovernors and even the mediaremain hellbent on silencing thedeath-row prisoner known as theVoice of the Voiceless, keeping himimprisoned and even attempting toreinstate his death-penalty convic-tion.

As more truth comes to light, it isclear that it will take a militant grass-roots struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. ��

By Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row:

The great dissenters

“I have been accused of obstructing the war. I admit it. Gentlemen, I abhor war. I would opposewar if I stood alone. ... I have sympathy with thesuffering, struggling people everywhere. It doesnot make any difference under which flag theywere born, or where they live...”

—Eugene Victor Debs, Socialist, to the jury at hisespionage trial in 1918

The name Eugene Debs may not ring bells today, butin the first quarter of the 20th century his trial rockedthe nation. An ardent Socialist, Debs made plain hisopposition to World War I, and more importantly, hisopposition to the class character of the war; that it wasa war waged by working people for the wealthy. A pow-erful and stirring orator, Debs drew waves of applausefrom those who came to hear him. He also spoke plainlyabout war and the wagers of war:

“They tell us that we live in a great free republic;that our institutions are democratic; that we are a freeand self-governing people. That is too much, even for ajoke. ... Wars throughout history have been waged forconquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell.The master class has always declared the wars; the sub-ject class has always fought the battles.” (Howard Zinn,“A People’s History of the United States,” p. 358)

Debs, charged with violating the Espionage Act, wasconvicted of obstructing the draft for giving this speech,and a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court would affirm hisconviction a year later. The imprisoned labor leader, con-victed of exercising his alleged First Amendment rightsof speaking out against an unpopular war, would go on towrite his stirring “Walls and Bars: Prisons and Prison Lifein the ‘Land of the Free’” (1927).

Nominated by the Socialist Party to run for presidentin 1920, Debs received over 1 million votes—while behindbars!

Nor was Debs alone in his opposition to the war, aspapers of the time attest. The Minneapolis Journal wouldblare, “Draft Opposition Fast Spreading in State.” Over300,000 men evaded the draft for the “War to End AllWar” (as it was called). Working people demonstratedagainst the war all across the nation, and were attackedby cops and soldiers, under orders of their brass. Tens ofthousands of men claimed conscientious objector status.What is clear is that anti-war sentiment didn’t justsprout up during the unpopular Vietnam War in the 1960sand 1970s.

Being anti-war is part of the historical fabric ofAmerica.

Although it may surprise us in this age to speak of himthus, Abraham Lincoln was famous before his presidencyfor his outspoken opposition to the Mexican-AmericanWar (1846-1848), when, as a member of Congress, theIllinois delegate challenged President James Polk tospecify exactly where American blood was shed “on theAmerican soil”—the pretext for the Mexican War. As aWhig, Lincoln was outspoken on his party’s position:

“The declaration that we have always opposed thewar is true or false, according as one may understandthe term ‘oppose the war.’ If to say ‘the war was unnec-essarily and unconstitutionally commenced by thePresident’ be opposing the war, then the Whigs have verygenerally opposed it.” (Zinn, p. 151)

Historians who now review the basis for the Mexican-American War generally agree that the White House useda lie to justify it.

We have mentioned the Vietnam War. Who can ques-tion the outspoken contributions that the heavyweightboxing champ, Muhammad Ali, or the Rev. Dr. MartinLuther King Jr. made to challenging and ending thatfevered carnage in the Far East? Ali’s famous phrase, “NoVietnamese ever called me a n——r,” shone a garish lighton the plight of Blacks in this country, who were asked todefend a “democracy” abroad that was sorely lacking athome.

Dr. King’s speeches against the war earned him theenmity of his liberal, fair-weather “friends,” and causedthe corporate press to attack him relentlessly for trea-son. Yet who, some 30 years later, can remember thecatcalls of his critics, when compared to the excellenceand ethics of his dissent against the rampant militarismof the war?

Dr. King’s proclamation that America was the “great-est purveyor of violence in the world today” is found inthe mouths of tens of thousands of anti-war protestors inAmerica who weren’t alive when he said it, and isrepeated in a hundred different languages around theworld to legitimize a global anti-war movement of mil-lions who oppose the American way of war.

To paraphrase the former Rap Brown (now Imam JamilAl-Amin), “Dissent is as American as cherry pie.” ��

Where is Bush going? What’s next for our movement?

NATIONAL CONFERENCEMAY 17-18

IN NYCAgainst war,colonial occupation & imperialism

THE A.N.S.W.E.R. COALITION Act Now to Stop War and End Racismwww.InternationalANSWER.org www.VoteNoWar.org email: info@internationalanswer.orgN.Y. 212-633-6646 D.C. 202-544-3389 L.A. 213-487-2368 S.F. 415-821-6545

�Imperialism's strategy in the Middle East and South/Central Asia

�War and intervention in Asia: From the Philippines toKorea to Afghanistan and the Caspian Sea

�U.S. intervention and the struggle for national liberationin Latin America

�The war at home: fightback against cutbacks, racism,attacks on women's rights

�Defending workers’ and union rights

�Introduction to core concepts: What do we mean byimperialism, neo-liberalism, self-determination

�Patriot Act (I and II) and the assault on civil liberties and immigrant rights

�The strategy of empire: From invasions to elections

�U.S., Israel and Palestinian liberation movement

�Driving forces behind U.S. foreign policy— Who profits from war?

�Intensifying U.S. aggression against Cuba

�Zimbabwe: The struggle for land, sovereignty and self-determination

�Corporate and independent media

�Organizing among doctors and nurses

�GI organizing

�Queers for peace and justice

�Movement in motion: music and organizing

�U.S./NATO expansion in Eurasia

�The crime of the occupation in Iraq

PARTICIPATE IN WORKSHOPS ON:

Join anti-war organizers and activists from around the country for � strategy � analysis� evaluation and assessment � plenaries and workshops

Opens Saturday, May 17 at 10:30 am Be there for a multi-media presentation on imperialism’sstrategy in the Middle East and South/Central Asia, an assessment of the rise of a global movement and more.Join in discussion on an Action Plan for the coming period.

Page 4 May 15, 2003 www.workers.org

Some 80 activists were arrested May 5-6 in civil-disobedience actions in front ofthe Federal Building in New York City. Afollowing day of actions was also plannedas part of a three-day campaign called“Operation Homeland Resistance.”

This campaign was organized and ledby people of color and immigrant-rightsgroups. The purpose was to draw atten-tion to “war and occupation abroad” andthe continued domestic war against immi-grants, people of color and poor people.

Organizers said the actions were to“draw attention to the different wayscommunities in New York City are underattack through criminalization of localcommunities of color, increased policingand police violence, massive cuts in basicservices, and targeted attacks on immi-grant communities.”

More than 56 local and national social-

Fifty thousand teachers and staff ralliedin Albany, N.Y., May 3 to demand Gov.George Pataki’s budget cuts be restored.The workers came from big cities, likeBuffalo and New York, small towns likeRiverhead on the eastern tip of Long

levels not seen in 30 years. Citigroup alsobenefits from the unprecedented growthin credit card debt worldwide. The aver-age in the U.S. is about $8,000 per fam-ily, having tripled in the last 10 years, andthat’s not including other forms of house-hold debt like home mortgages and carpayments.

Citigroup is not merely profiting fromconsumer debt and mortgaging. Citibankmanipulated a compliant Washington tobecome lord of the mergers and acquisi-tions business.

Citigroup CEO Sanford Weill led thecampaign to gut Depression-era legisla-tion known as the Glass-Steagall Act,which had put a firewall between thebanks and the stock market. With thehelp of telecommunications analyst JackGrubman—who would become head ofCitigroup’s brokerage business, Salo-mon Smith Barney—Citigroup and thebanking industry managed to buyenough congressional influence to passthe 1999 Financial Services Modern-ization Act. Its promoters touted itsvirtues, claiming it would “give con-sumers the opportunity to shop for

almost any financial service ... in oneplace.” (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 25,1999)

That opened the door to the kind ofmanipulation exposed in the recent set-tlement. Now Weill is under a court ordernot to even talk to his company’s stockanalysts without a lawyer being presentand Grubman is barred from the securi-ties business for life.

When workers steal they go to prison.When members of the ruling class stealthey get richer, and they have the law ontheir side.

While the majority of workers own nostocks at all, the super profits Citigroupand the other banking giants make comedirectly from the labor of workers all overthe world. The “Citi never sleeps” as itracks up assets of nearly $1 trillion.(Newsweek, Aug. 5, 2002)

Meanwhile the punishment of WallStreet pirates is a joke. But Wanda andTyrell R. and millions of jobless, indebtedand homeless workers are not laughing.Neither are the small investors on WallStreet whom the big capitalists took to thecleaners. ��

justice organizations endorsed theactions. They include Blacks Against War,Desis Rising Up and Moving, Jews forRacial and Economic Justice, New YorkCity AIDS Housing Network, Harlem Anti-War Coalition, CAAAV: Organizing AsianCommunities, Malcolm X GrassrootsMovement, Audre Lorde Project,Nodutdol—For Korean CommunityDevelopment, United for Peace andJustice New York and New York ANSWER.

The vast majority of those arrestedwere women and a large proportion ofthe activists were from the lesbian, gay,bi and trans movement.

—Imani Henry

Biggest protest in Albany history

50,000 workers demand state restore budget cuts

Wall Street bandits get a slap on the wristBy Heather Cottin

Citibank is the most powerful bank inthe world. It has gotten away withmoney laundering in Mexico in 1999 andwas in on the Enron and WorldComfrauds. Now Citigroup, the corporateentity that controls all of Citibank’sfinancial maneuverings, has been caughtunloading stocks at inflated prices,manipulating initial public offerings anddefrauding investors.

The fine levied against all the banks thattook part in this wheeling and dealing was$1.4 billion. Citi’s penalty was $400 mil-lion—equivalent to a week’s profits.

On April 29, New York State AttorneyGeneral Elliot Spitzer made theannouncement that Citigroup and twosmaller financial institutions would befined for open malfeasance of the law. Butnot a single criminal charge was levied onanyone. The fine was merely a “slap on thewrist,” wrote economist Paul Krugman inthe New York Times on May 2.

Analysts at Citigroup’s Salomon SmithBarney acted as the agents for this fraud.But they were not alone. Merrill Lynch,

Credit Suisse First Boston, J.P. MorganChase & Co., Goldman Sachs, LehmanBrothers, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns,UBS AG and US Bancorp use the samemethods. Neither Citigroup nor theother firms admitted wrongdoing, andmost Citicorp executives were allowed tokeep their jobs under the settlement.

For Citigroup it was business as usual.Their M.O. is extortion. Sometimes theydo it legally, sometimes not. Citi hascheated the public out of billions of dol-lars, costing workers their homes, jobsand businesses.

Bank foreclosures have accelerated inthe declining economy. Citi is the “repoman” that throws people like Wanda andTyrell R. into the street. Last summer,Citibank foreclosed on their one-storyhouse in Chicago. Citibank kept theirdown payment and all the money they hadpaid toward their mortgage. It then resoldthe house at a profit.

Citigroup is the largest U.S. bank andfinancial services company and the pre-mier underwriter of global debt andequity. Wanda and Tyrell’s misfortune isnot unusual. Foreclosures have reached

Island and Masena on the Quebec border.This was by far the largest rally in thehistory of Albany. Handmade signs read:“Pataki’s budget: nothing more than aclass war” and “A second of war costsmore than a year of school.”

—Photo and story by G. Dunkel

New York civil disobedience

‘Operation Homeland Resistance’

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PHOTO: OPERATION HOMELAND RESISTANCE

The vast majority of those arrested inNew York civil disobedience werewomen.

www.workers.org May 15, 2003 Page 5

The following resolutions were adoptedby the International Longshore andWarehouse Union Convention in SanFrancisco on May 1. The ILWU’s mili-tant, progressive history extends backdecades, to the 1934 general strike inSan Francisco. During the struggle toend apartheid, union members refusedto unload cargo from South Africa.They shut down every West Coast portin April 1999 to support death row pris-oner Mumia Abu-Jamal. And they tookpart in the historic 1999 Seattle protestsagainst the World Trade Organization.The ILWU opposed U.S. intervention inEl Salvador and today is standing upagainst the U.S. military occupation of Iraq.

Opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq

WHEREAS: The ostensible purpose ofthe U.S. military invasion of Iraq was toeliminate weapons of mass destruction,facilitate “regime change” by endingSaddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorshipand “liberate” the Iraqi people; and

WHEREAS: The real purpose that warwas waged by Bush was for control ofIraq’s nationalized oil fields and toimpose its influence in the Middle East;and

WHEREAS: To realize those aims theU.S. is occupying Iraq and imposing itsown military dictatorship while the Iraqipeople have been angrily demonstratingin the streets demanding U.S. militarywithdrawal; and

WHEREAS: This war cost $75 billiondollars while the U.S. economy is inshambles, leaving people jobless, home-less, without universal health care, andpublic school systems in major cities likeOakland bankrupt; and

WHEREAS: Over a billion dollars isbeing cut from veterans’ benefits asmany who fought in the 1991 Gulf Warare still suffering from debilitating dis-eases while hundreds of millions of dol-lars in contracts are being given to U.S.companies closely connected to the Bushadministration like Stevedoring Servicesof America to run the port of Umm Qasr

and the San Francisco-based BechtelCorporation to rebuild the infrastructuredestroyed by U.S. bombs in Iraq; and

WHEREAS: The war in Iraq is overand Bush is now making threats in thatregion against Syria and Iran, not tomention North Korea, China and Cuba;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:That we demand that the U.S. militaryimmediately withdraw from Iraq and theMiddle East and recognize the right ofthe Arab peoples to self-determinationfree of foreign interference.

Submitted by ILWU Local 10

Oppose the U.S war against Iraq

WHEREAS: Working people in theU.S. will pay for the war on Iraq by cutson health, education, workers’ safety andsocial services; and

WHEREAS: The war in Iraq is beingused to escalate attacks on the workingclass, workers’ democratic rights, andour civil liberties, through the use of theHomeland Security Act, Patriot Act, andPort Maritime Security Act; and

WHEREAS: Workers throughout theworld, and in every trade union, muststand together to oppose this war; and

WHEREAS: United labor action inter-nationally has the power to stop the waragainst Iraq; and

WHEREAS: The ILWU had opposedthe Vietnam War and the first U.S. inva-sion against Iraq in 1991;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:That the International Longshore andWarehouse Union opposes the waragainst Iraq and stands in defense oflabor and people’s democratic rightsthroughout the world.

Submitted by ILWU Local 8

Stop allowing the threat of warto attack our civil liberties and workers’ rights at home

WHEREAS: The Bush Administrationhas carefully crafted a strategy of dis-tracting Americans from its anti-civil lib-erties, anti-labor and anti-workeragenda at home by an endless war onterrorism; and

WHEREAS: Wars have been waged in

Afghanistan, Iraq,with Syria andIran possiblybeing next; and

WHEREAS:The BushAdministrationhas used the issueof patriotism tosilence the dis-sent of workingpeople whooppose the warsand who speakout against thegrowing infringe-ment on our civilliberties, civil rights and workers’ rights; and

WHEREAS: The anti-labor agenda ofthe Bush Administration using the coverof the economy and national securityintervened into our contract negotia-tions; and

WHEREAS: Taft-Hartley was invokedagainst us subsequent to the lock-out bythe Pacific Maritime Association (PMA)during an impending war against Iraq;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:That in the tradition of the ILWU’s pro-gressive history, we take an active role inbuilding labor and community coalitionsto organize to protect our workers’ rightsand civil liberties here at home.

Submitted by ILWU Local 10

General strikes and Taft-Hartley

WHEREAS: This Union was born of ageneral strike; and

WHEREAS: The current national andinternational political environmentrestrains the rights of workers to such adegree that they are unable to rise above

Fresh from his entrance, all costumedas though he was a Navy fighter pilot,onto the aircraft carrier USS AbrahamLincoln 100 miles off San Diego, PresidentGeorge W. Bush had to come back to real-ity May 2 in the economically depressedSilicon Valley. He was greeted by a coupleof thousand demonstrators who marchedwithin two blocks of where he was speak-ing at the military contractor UnitedDefense.

They protested the occupation of Iraqand lack of jobs in this country.

Once the crown jewel of electronictechnology, Silicon Valley today has anunemployment rate of 8.4 percent. SantaClara County alone has lost over 175,000jobs in the past two years.

Protesters who had gathered atLafayette Park marched to within twoblocks of the Brokaw Road entrance toUnited Defense despite police on horse-back trying to push them onto to the side-walks. Several protesters were knocked

Stop the war—at home and abroad

Longshore workers ratify struggle resolutions

the oppression; andWHEREAS: The achievement of the

Longshore hiring hall, the elimination ofthe shapeup, and the current right for allmembers to attend every LongshoreLocal Union General Membership meet-ing followed the San Francisco generalstrike of 1934; and

WHEREAS: Since the inception ofTart-Hartley, workers have beenunfairly and unjustly fettered in theirability to organize, to strike in sympathywith other workers, to engage in sec-ondary boycotts and pickets and engagein large-scale acts of solidarity;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:That the ILWU will publicize and cham-pion the goal of regaining the right ofworkers to engage in a general strike, inplain and proud view of all workers forfurther consideration; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED: Thatthe ILWU will work with other Unionsand coalitions towards repealing theTaft-Hartley Act.

Submitted by ILWU Local 5

ILWU drill teamcarrying cargohooks leads unioncontingent inOakland anti-warmarch.

WW PHOTO: BILL HACKWELL

Bush couldn’t duck California protesters

over.But the demonstrators’ strength and

determination succeeded in holdingthe street. Protesters chanted, “Warcriminal!” as the presidential motor-cade entered the plant.

The early morning demonstrationhad to be organized in only two daysbecause the location of Bush’s speechwas kept secret in an attempt todiminish the strong Bay Area opposi-tion to his imperial regime.

The protest was organized by theSouth Bay Mobilization to Stop the War,Global Exchange and the San Franciscochapter of International ANSWER.

Ignoring growing opposition and resis-tance to occupation by the Iraqi people,Bush proclaimed at United Defense thatthe war was just about over. UnitedDefense is the military contractor thatproduces the Bradley fighting vehicle. Italso produces the Hercules tank recoveryvehicle best known for its role in the

made-for-TV toppling of the statue ofSaddam Hussein in central Baghdad.

Bush hailed United Defense as a modelcompany in his war economy that is suck-ing the life out of schools, health andhuman services.

In reference to the economic depres-sion and unemployment of the region inCalifornia, Bush had no answers except to

push his tax plan. This plan is not aboutjob programs or economic stimulus.Instead, it is a huge handout to the rich.

Under the Bush administration’s plan,those making a million dollars a yearwould get a tax cut of about $100,000. Aworker making under $50,000 would getan average of $482.

–Story and photo by Bill Hackwell

Santa Clara: ‘JOBS, NOT WAR!’

Page 6 May 15, 2003 www.workers.org

kind of invasion or intervention of onecountry over another. And the positionof the Mexican people on the U.S. inva-sion of Iraq was a clear rejection of thatinvasion.”

Latinos Por La Paz is demanding a pub-lic apology from LULAC. The group is ask-ing supporters to denounce their expul-sion and defend freedom of expression.

To support Latinos Por La Paz, call (713)426-4804 or check www.geocities.com/latinosporlapaz.

A rallying cry

Cinco de Mayo commemorations arisefrom the events of May 5, 1862. It was inthe Mexican state of Puebla where theMexican army heroically defeated a bat-talion of one of the major colonial armiesof the time, the French.

Although Mexico did not win the war,and would end up colonized by the Frenchfor a number of years, the Battle at Pueblaon May 5 has become a rallying cry againstforeign colonial domination as well as forself-determination.

It is outside of Mexico that Cinco deMayo is mainly celebrated. In fact, it wasin the Chicano liberation struggles of the1960s and 1970s that Cinco de Mayo wasrevived and commemorated in Mexicancommunities throughout the southwestand other regions in the United States.

Over the years, however, the politicalsignificance of Cinco de Mayo got lost.The commemoration became instead akey market for the beer and cigaretteindustries.

Said a spokesperson for the Distilled

Cinco de Mayo: still battling empireSpirits Council of the U.S., “We see noth-ing wrong with adults celebrating Cinco deMayo with a margarita or other tequilacocktail.” (AP, May 3)

Corona, a Mexican beer distributed inthe United States, has previously mar-keted the beer as the “drinko for Cinco.”

The Washington Post wrote on May 4:“Many bars in the U.S. are offering ‘cincobeers for cinco dollars.’ Flower deliveryservices are offering floral arrangementswith a packet of hot sauce. The U.S. avo-cado industry estimates that 37 millionpounds of avocados, much of it mushedinto guacamole, will be consumed just onthat one day.

“Cinco de Mayo has become a major-league reason to party for anyone who hasever dipped a chip or stuffed a lime wedgedown the neck of a beer bottle.”

But this year’s Cinco de Mayo in thiscountry, as testified to by the Houstonevent, reflects the worldwide struggleagainst not only U.S. colonial militaryaggression—but against the overallencroachment of imperialist culture onthe oppressed as well.

In California and Arizona, Latinos haveled a small but significant struggle againstthe corporate co-optation of Chicano cul-ture. Under the slogan “Our culture is notfor sale,” groups such as Latin@s forHealth and Justice are sponsoring alco-hol- and tobacco-free events as part oftheir “Cinco de Mayo con Orgullo” (Fifthof May with Pride) campaign.

In New York City, where the Mexicanpopulation has exploded with growth inthe last few years, an Indigenous dance

group held a Cinco de Mayo Resistance tothe War event in El Barrio.

Latino union activists used the non-political Cinco de Mayo events to reachout to thousands of Mexican workers.Brian Barraza told Workers World:“Unionists and immigrant-rights activistsdistributed thousands of fliers on thestruggle to demand amnesty for immi-grants. My union [Food and CommercialWorkers] supports amnesty becauseimmigrants need legalization to make iteasier to join unions and get a good pay-ing job.”

Thousands of fliers were handed outabout the national demonstration foramnesty that will take place in Washing-ton, D.C., on Oct. 4.

In 2001, President George W. Bush, itwas said, “elevated” Cinco de Mayo byholding the first-ever commemoration atthe White House. But it is George Bush, asthe principal representative of imperial-ism, whose actions are laying the basis fora massive and militant worldwide move-ment against the empire.

Latinos Por La Paz in Houston as wellas others are showing that the “party cul-ture of margaritas and chips” is not a truepicture of the Mexican culture.

The Mexican culture is centuries oldand marked with glorious contributions tocivilization. It is a culture rich with strug-gle and fight back.

With Latinos dying in Iraq in dispro-portionate numbers to the population,imperialism has laid the basis for profoundsolidarity with the very people these sol-diers have been ordered to kill. ��

May Day in L.A.

‘Legalize all immigrant workers!’By John BeachamLos Angeles

May Day in Los Angeles: More than4,000 marched on the downtown FederalBuilding calling for the immediate legal-ization of all immigrant workers in theUnited States.

The demonstration, organized by theMulti-ethnic Immigrant Workers Organ-izing Network, raised its banners againstimmigrant bashing and the invasion andcolonization of Iraq.

In a concrete embodiment of increasingsolidarity among peace and social-justiceorganizations, anti-war forces includingthe ANSWER coalition of Los Angelesjoined with the various immigrant work-ers’ organizations that make up MIWONto bring off this enthusiastic and militantmarch—in a city that is home to one of thebiggest immigrant populations in theUnited States.

The biggest and strongest sections ofthe demonstration were made up of immi-grant garment workers.

In Los Angeles, garment workers aresubjected to illegal working conditions ona massive scale. If they are lucky enoughto work in legal garment factories, theywork in a local industry in which fully 67percent of bosses violate state labor laws,according to the Department of Labor.Many other immigrant workers are notthis lucky and find themselves working inunderground garment factories.

In the United States there are some22,000 garment factories. In an estimated75 percent of these factories, bosses violatethe labor laws that set the minimum wageand fail to pay overtime to the workers.

In the current climate, immigrantworkers live in fear that the Departmentof Homeland Security, which oversees thenewly constituted Bureau of Citizenshipand Immigrant Services, will escalate its

By Teresa Gutierrez

At the Cinco de Mayo commemorationin Houston the weekend of May 3-4,members of the group Latinos Por La Paz(Latinos for Peace) planned to participatewith an anti-war contingent.

They had a nicely decorated vehiclein the parade. Their members carriedplacards against the U.S. occupation ofIraq.

The peace organization, however, wasforced out of the parade by the League ofUnited Latin American Citizens, the offi-cial organizers, who charged that LPLPwas conducting a “protest.”

LULAC called the police to expelLatinos Por La Paz only 15 minutes afterthey had begun to march. In those short15 minutes however, LPLP organizersreported, the crowd clapped, cheered andshouted “viva” at them.

Cristobal Hinojosa, an LPLP organizer,told WW: “What is interesting is thatmany Mexicano activists have partici-pated in the Cinco de Mayo parades inHouston now for almost 10 years. We havecome with many messages: against thedeath penalty, against other militaryinterventions, in support of the Zapatistasand other issues.

“We have never been treated this way.We have always been allowed to march.”

Hinojosa continued: “Cinco de Mayois very important to Mexicanos becauseit represents a victory against an invad-ing military force. It symbolizes formany Mexicans, especially out ofMexico, that we do not approve of any

demonization of immigrants and continueto pursue policies that increase jailing,deportation and arbitrary revocation oflegal status for immigrants.

In a well-received speech in front of

the Federal Building, John Parker ofANSWER demanded the immediaterelease of all immigrants—workers whohelp create the wealth of this country—andan end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. ��

WW PHOTO: JULA LA RIVA

Los Angeles, May 1.

www.workers.org May 15, 2003 Page 7

By Gloria La RivaHavana, Cuba

More than 1 million Cubans gathered inHavana’s Revolution Square on May 1 forInternational Workers’ Day and pro-claimed this year’s theme: “The First forSocialism.”

As early as midnight, a proud and mil-itant people left from their residences allover Havana province to assemble in thecity. Half of Havana’s 2 million were there.Across the country, almost 6 million moremarched in all 14 provinces and the Isle ofYouth.

As the people entered RevolutionSquare, small Cuban flags were distrib-uted to all present. This has become a tra-dition in recent years. A sea of flags risesin the air as people show support forspeakers’ remarks.

In the aftermath of the Iraq war, andfaced with increasing threats by the U.S.,the Cuban people show a deep awarenessof the need to mobilize in their defense.

That’s why the mass rally was not just aday to honor workers and their accom-plishments. Along with beautiful culturalperformances, the speakers denouncedU.S. imperialism’s designs on the world,and pledged that Cuba is not alone.

Pedro Ross, general secretary of the 3-million-strong Cuban WorkersFederation (CTC), opened the rally. Hementioned the actions taken by Cuba todefeat counter-revolutionary forcesdirected by the U.S., as well as to stop U.S.-backed hijackings.

“I want to put a vote to you. Are you inagreement with the measures that thegovernment adopted to defend theintegrity and sovereignty of the nation,and those that may be necessary to defendthe lives of citizens and of socialism? Raiseyour flags if you agree.”

The giant gathering turned red, whiteand blue with the paper Cuban flags as thepeople proclaimed a resounding yes.

U.S. incites counter-revolutionaries

At the same time that the U.S. waspreparing its attack on Iraq, James Cason,the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, wasinciting counter-revolutionary activityinside Cuba, personally handing out mate-rials and money to nurture an opposition.The U.S. government was also encourag-ing hijackings by refusing to return toCuba the criminals and property they hadstolen. This crisis came to a head just asthe bombs started falling on Baghdad.

In this dangerous situation, Cubaarrested and tried 75 people on charges ofcollaborating with U.S. officials againstthe revolution. Then three boat hijackerswho had endangered the lives of manypassengers were tried and executed inApril.

This led some governments and promi-nent individuals to attack Cuba, but inrecent weeks they have been answered bystatements coming from many parts of theworld.

Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano,U.S. professor Noam Chomsky and Port-uguese writer José Saramago were amongthose who immediately signed on to a par-ticularly scurrilous statement circulatedby the U.S. Campaign for Peace andDemocracy.

This was answered by a declaration

from well-known Cuban artists and writ-ers, called a “Message from Havana forFriends Who are Far Away.” It urged thosewho had signed the anti-Cuba statementsto understand Cuba’s embattled situationand reconsider their position.

The sponsoring Cuban Union ofWriters and Artists (UNEAC) made a dis-tinction between those who they considerto be friends of Cuba, like Galeano andChomsky, from those who have long beenhostile to the Cuban Revolution, like right-winger Mario Vargas Llosa. So far, thisdeclaration has been signed by 13,352Cuban artists, including Silvio Rodríguez,Amaury Pérez, Omara Portuondo, PabloMilanés, Miguel Barnet and others.

At the May Day rally, speakers stressedthe urgency of solidarity with Cuba,among them Rev. Lucius Walker ofPastors for Peace and German writerHeinz Dieterich Stefan.

Well-known Mexican sociologist PabloGonzález Casanova, who has circulated adeclaration in Latin America called “Tothe Conscience of the World,” available atwww.granma.cubaweb.cu, said, “Manystatements on the Cuban situation,although done in good faith, can seemsupportive and yet still magnify issues thatthe U.S. seeks to justify an invasion ofCuba.

“That truth obligates all the peoples ofthe world—including the people of theUnited States, whose role in the survivalof humanity is and will be very impor-tant—to think in concrete terms, how wecan detain the cowardly offensive againstCuba, which is an offensive againsthumanity.”

Galeano and Chomsky also signedGonzález’s defense of Cuba. Several U.S.figures joined in, including Danny Glover,Harry Belafonte and Ramsey Clark.

Miguel Barnet, noted Cuban author andUNEAC vice-president, said, “Humanityis experiencing moments of crisis andextreme danger for the survival of theplanet. … Our obligation, as intellectualsand artists, is to avoid all possible risks forour country. We need to be conscious thatour main priority is to defend our home-land.

“It is a matter now of closing ranksagainst the dark forces of fascism thatdestroy human beings, that oppress andalienate them.

“The world will not permit our peopleto be massacred, or Havana to go up inflames some day like Baghdad, or our her-itage to be ransacked, our educational,cultural and scientific works leveled ….That is why to slander Cuba today, to turnone’s back, is an act of injustice and irre-sponsible.”

Claudia Cambia, Argentinian organizerfor the Cuban Five political prisoners inthe U.S., condemned the imperialistmedia’s mercenary role.

“The media campaign launched againstCuba in these last weeks is indignant,dirty, disgusting ….

“Why don’t they inform the publicabout the terrible violation of humanrights that the five Cuban heroes are con-stantly subjected to in U.S. prisons? Whydon’t they write about the solitary con-finement, the isolation. … Why not?

“It’s simply because one doesn’t talkabout the untouchable empire. They canimprison innocent people and torturethem, they can massacre peoples, invade

nations, carry outterrorist acts, theycan have weaponsof mass destruc-tion with the cer-tainty that theywill not be con-demned in themedia, nor theUnited Nations orOrganization ofAmerican States.

“But be careful,because we the people did condemn themwhen we came out throughout the worldto repudiate the genocide and doublestandard of the U.S. government. And itwill be the people who will put a brake onthe empire and their emperor….”

‘Never has the world witnessedsuch an unequal fight’

As Cuban President Fidel Castro walkedfrom the assembled crowd to the podiumbelow a contemplative statue of JoséMartí, the crowd erupted into cheers andchants for the Cuban leader. His talkbegan with a vow that Cuba would neverbow to the demands from 90 miles to thenorth.

“Our heroic people have struggled for44 years from this small Caribbean islandjust a few miles away from the most for-midable imperial power ever known byhumankind. In so doing, they have writ-ten an unprecedented chapter in history.Never has the world witnessed such anunequal fight.

“Some may have believed that the riseof the empire to the status of sole super-power, with a military and technologicalmight that has no counterweight any-where in the world, would frighten or dis-hearten the Cuban people ….

“On a day like today, this gloriousInternational Workers’ Day, which com-memorates the death of the five martyrsof Chicago, I declare, on behalf of the 1 mil-lion Cubans gathered here, that we willface up to any threats, we will not yield toany pressures, and that we are preparedto defend our homeland and our revolu-tion with ideas and with weapons to ourlast drop of blood.”

President Castro reviewed the feats ofthe revolution and its people, beginningwith the 1959 overthrow of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista,with its 80,000 soldiers and police. Hespoke of the literacy campaign, the 72-hour defeat of the 1961 Bay of Pigs inva-sion, and the Cuban people’s bravery dur-ing the precipitous 1962 Cuban MissileCrisis.

He talked of the impressive educationallevels Cuba has achieved. “It has the high-est school retention rate–over 99 percent

between kindergarten and ninth grade—of all the nations in the hemisphere. Itselementary school students rank firstworldwide in the knowledge of theirmother language and mathematics.”

Saying, “In no other people has thespirit of international solidarity become sodeeply rooted,” President Castro gave asweeping overview of Cuba’s internation-alist missions in support of liberationstruggles from Algeria, Republic of Congo,Guinea and Angola to Vietnam andGrenada.

Lastly, he warned that if the U.S. wereto attack Cuba, “The aggressors would notmerely be facing an army, but rather thou-sands of armies that would constantlyreproduce themselves and make theenemy pay such a high cost in casualtiesthat it would far exceed the cost in lives ofits sons and daughters that the Americanpeople would be willing to pay for theadventures and ideas of President Bush.Today, he enjoys majority support, but itis dropping, and tomorrow it could bereduced to zero.

“The American people, the millions ofhighly cultivated individuals who reasonand think … will show that you cannot foolall of the people, and perhaps not evenpart of the people, all of the time. One daythey will put a straitjacket on those whoneed it before they manage to annihilatelife on the planet. …

“We do not want the blood of Cubansand Americans to be shed in a war. We donot want countless numbers of lives ofpeople who could be friends to be lost inan armed conflict. But never has a peoplehad such sacred things to defend, or suchprofound convictions to fight for, to sucha degree that they would rather be oblit-erated from the face of the Earth thanabandon the noble and generous work forwhich so many generations of Cubanshave paid the high cost of the lives of manyof their finest sons and daughters.

“We are sustained by the deepest con-viction that ideas are worth more thanweapons, no matter how sophisticatedand powerful those weapons may be.

“Let us say like Che Guevara when hebid us farewell:

“Hasta la Victoria Siempre!” ��

In response to U.S. threats

Millions pledge to defendCuba's sovereignty

Havana, May 1.

PHOTO: GRANMA DAILY NEWSPAPER

Page 8 May 15, 2003 www.workers.org

U.S. empire menaces Asia

Solidarity with Filipino struggle

program as a “green light for war.”The May 2 Arab Times reported, “Pyong-

yang regularly reports the number of U.S.spy flights it says were carried out in theprevious month, but Thursday’s tally onthe official KCNA news agency was partic-ularly detailed and came at a time ofheightened tension with the United States.KCNA quoted an unidentified militarysource as saying various types of U.S.reconnaissance aircraft had flown at least220 missions to spy on military targets,coastlines and front line positions alongthe Demilitarized Zone border with thesouth.”

The U.S. has 37,000 troops across theborder in South Korea. An additional42,000 U.S. troops are stationed innearby Japan.

In 1992, when the senior George Bushwas president, the Pentagon admitted tohaving 2,400 nukes in the south aimed atNorth Korea and People’s China. Bushclaimed these were withdrawn, but therewas no independent verification. ManySouth Korean and U.S. anti-war activistsbelieve the nukes are still there.

Spread of bases in Asia

Progressive and anti-war forces in Asiajoined the people of Vieques, Puerto Rico,in celebrating their righteous eviction ofthe U.S. Navy from the small island. Formore than five decades, Pentagon wargames rained toxic poison, environmentaldevastation, injury and death on the peo-ple of Vieques.

While much remains to be done—likeforcing the Pentagon to clean up its messand pay reparations to Vieques’ people–their victory gives hope to others, like thevillagers of Maehyang-ri, South Korea,who also face these bombardments and allthe ills that accompany them.

But despite the victory in Vieques, theU.S. is expanding its military operationsglobally—especially in Asia.

Anger against the U.S. occupation inSouth Korea has grown so intense that thePentagon is moving one of its largest basesfrom the capital city of Seoul to a less pop-ulated area. Other bases may be moved aswell. (UPI, April 9)

Protests have grown stronger in recentyears as U.S.-led massacres from the1950-1953 Korean War have come tolight. The killing of two Korean schoolgirlsby recklessly-driving U.S. military per-sonnel has further inflamed anti-Pentagon sentiment.

The Korean people, north and south,want to see their country reunified on thebasis of peace and independence, and theysee the 37,000 U.S. occupation troops asthe main roadblock to that goal.

Much has been said about the Pentagonplan to withdraw from its bases in SaudiArabia in favor of what are called “tempo-rary” bases in occupied Iraq. But that’s justpart of the story.

On April 22, the Iranian news agencyIRNA reported on a strategy paper mak-ing the rounds in Washington. The report“expresses the candidness of key Amer-ican policy makers to ‘eventually seekaccess to Indian bases and military infra-structure.’” The strategy document wasbased on the views of 42 individuals,including 23 U.S. military officers, 10Indian military officers and five seniorU.S. officials.

U.S. military bases in India would forma dangerous beachhead for Pentagonaggression, both to the East, against Koreaand China, and to the West, against Iranand Pakistan.

In an April 30 Reuters feature entitled,“Saudi Move Part of Broader U.S. MilitaryRealignment,” Jack Spencer of the Heri-tage Foundation, a right-wing think tankwith close ties to the Bush regime, said,“The Middle East and Europe are impor-tant, but the Pacific is where the futureaction is going to be. You’re not going tosee a global base restructuring that dimin-ishes U.S. presence in Asia.”

The article added that the Bush admin-istration is maneuvering to recapture itsstrategic bases in the Philippines, a formerU.S. colony where a militant people’smovement forced the Pentagon’s evictionin 1991.

Christopher Hellman of the Center forDefense Information told Reuters he“expects the United States to secure a bas-ing agreement with the Philippines by theend of the decade.”

Real targets in Philippines

The transparent attempt to return U.S.military forces to the Philippines hasprompted mass outrage, like a demon-stration of 50,000 in Manila on Feb. 28.The Filipino people have vehementlyrejected the Pentagon’s return andPresident Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s sup-port for the U.S./British war and occupa-tion in Iraq.

Last year, U.S. and Filipino troopsengaged in attacks on Muslim villages inthe country’s southern islands under coverof fighting terrorism, specifically the tinyAbu Sayyef group, which Washingtonclaimed was linked to Osama Bin Ladenand al-Qaeda. The aggression sparkedprotests throughout the Philippines.

At the time, the communist-led NewPeople’s Army, which characterizes theAbu Sayyef group as “bandits,” said U.S.actions were really aimed against larger

national liberation groups like the NPAand the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

On April 25, some 1,200 U.S. troopsbegan new “counter-terrorism” wargames with the Filipino armed forces. Theexercises had been delayed because ofpopular opposition.

The war games are being conductedfrom three points on the northern islandof Luzon, including two former U.S. mili-tary bases that Washington desperatelywants back: Subic Bay and Clark Air Base.

Later this year, U.S. troops are sched-uled to again join in “anti-terror” exercisesin the southern Sulu islands, althoughtechnically U.S. forces are prohibited fromengaging in combat by the PhilippineConstitution.

The largely Muslim south is home to the12,000-strong Moro Islamic LiberationFront, a group that has been fighting forindependence for 30 years.

The U.S. and Philippine governmentsare now moving to make the MILF a tar-get of their “anti-terror” campaign. Duringrecent talks between Arroyo’s administra-tion and the MILF, the governmentaccused the guerrillas of harboring “al-Qaeda cells” in its ranks. (Gulf NewsOnline, March 27)

The U.S. officially added the MILF andthe NPA to its list of “terrorist organiza-tions.”

But, as Prof. Jose Maria Sison, found-ing chair of the Communist Party of thePhilippines, pointed out: “U.S. imperial-ism is the only force that has used atomicbombs to incinerate entire civilian popu-lations. It has the largest stockpile ofnuclear, biological, chemical and missileweapons of mass destruction. And it mali-ciously boasts of the barbaric doctrine offirst use and preemptive strike.

“It has killed millions of people throughso many wars of aggression, as in the con-quest of the Filipino people [during andafter the Spanish-American War], in theKorean War, in the Vietnam War and inthe recent wars against Iraq, Yugoslaviaand Afghanistan. In the underdevelopedcountries, it has instigated puppet regimesof open terror, such as those of Chiang,Mobutu, Suharto, Park, Pinochet andMarcos, to repress and massacre millionsof people. ...

“Let us expose and oppose the super-terrorism of U.S. imperialism. The Bushadministration has used the Sept. 11,2001, attacks as a pretext for whipping upextremely repressive and bellicose policiesfor the purpose of aggrandizing the U.S. oilmonopolies and the military-industrialcomplex and preserving a world capitalistsystem that devours billions of peopleeven in the absence of a shooting war.” ��

By Greg Butterfield

President George W. Bush’s May 1speech aboard the aircraft carrier USSAbraham Lincoln declaring U.S. victory inIraq was more than just an arrogantproclamation of colonialism to people inthe Middle East. It also signaled new dan-gers and challenges for independent gov-ernments and people’s movements fur-ther east, in Asia and the Pacific.

Increasingly, the White House andPentagon warlords are pushing, proddingand projecting their military prowessthroughout the region, especially in Koreaand the Philippines.

This was the subject of a very differentspeech given at a mass demonstration inPyongyang, North Korea, celebrating theMay Day workers’ holiday. Ryom Sun Gil,leader of the General Federation of TradeUnions of Korea, urged workers there to“form regiments and divisions so that theymay be fully ready to defend the countryfrom the enemy’s invasion.” (KoreanCentral News Agency, May 2)

Seeing how Iraq’s people are now sub-ject to brutal colonial occupation, peoplein North Korea and throughout Asia arestanding up against the proliferation ofU.S. bases, Pentagon intervention in sov-ereign countries’ affairs and outrightthreats of war.

Socialist North Korea, in particular, hasbeen the target of increased U.S. belliger-ence since the Pyongyang governmentannounced plans to reactivate its nuclearprogram and use any means at its disposalto defend the country from a U.S. invasionor attack.

The White House and corporate mediaare working hard to portray this smallcountry of 25 million people as a globalthreat because it dares to say it will defendits sovereignty and independence. Busheven included North Korea, along withIran and Iraq, in the so-called axis of evil.

But for 50 years North Korea has beentrying to get Republican and Democraticpresidents to sign a formal peace treatyending the state of war between the twocountries. Every president—from Eisen-hower to Bush II–has refused.

Both the Clinton and Bush administra-tions egregiously violated a 1994 agree-ment to build light-water nuclear reactorsand provide heating fuel in exchange forPyongyang ending its independentnuclear project. Yet Bush has the gall toaccuse North Korea of breaking the agree-ment.

On April 30, the North Korean gov-ernment said it would view any U.S.moves to impose United Nations sanc-tions over the resumption of its nuclear

By John CatalinottoAmsterdam, Netherlands

The National Democratic Front of thePhilippines celebrated its 30th anniver-sary in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, onApril 26 before a packed room of sup-porters and solidarity visitors from twodozen countries. The day’s activitiesincluded political analyses and culturalpresentations, poetry and song.

The meeting also paid tribute to EdenMarcellana, a human-rights organizer,and Eddie Gumanoy, who organized peas-ants. These two activists were recentlymurdered by the Philippine military. Themeeting recognized them as martyrs inthe struggle for the liberation of theFilipino people.

Professor Jose Maria Sison, the found-ing chairperson of the Communist Partyof the Philippines and the NDFP’s chiefpolitical consultant, and Luis Jalandoni,chairperson of the Negotiating Panel forthe NDFP, presented reports on the cur-rent situation in that country.

The NDFP had been negotiating withthe government of President GloriaMacapagal Arroyo over how to end thearmed conflict in the Philippines. NowWashington, under cover of the so-calledwar on terror, has tried to increase its ownmilitary intervention.

At the same time the Amsterdam meet-ing was taking place, the U.S. war machinewas moving to get back onto Philippineterritory through “anti-terror” war exer-cises with the Philippine Army. Some

1,200 U.S. troops took part in the wargames on the Philippine island of Luzon,at Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark AirForce Base.

Until a mass movement forced theUnited States out of these bases a decadeago, they were key supports for U.S. impe-rialist domination of the Pacific and Asia,used heavily in the wars against Vietnamand Korea.

Part of U.S. imperialism’s offensiveagainst the Philippine liberation strugglehas been to describe the heroic fighters as“terrorists.” Washington has brandedSison a terrorist and pressed the EuropeanUnion to do the same. This has resulted inthe Netherlands cutting Sison off from thefinancial support due to him as an asylumseeker and has placed heavy restrictions

on his right to travel.The NDFP and its European support-

ers have opened a case in the Europeancourt in Luxembourg to demand thatSison’s rights be reinstated.

Those speaking in solidarity with theNDFP included leaders of the NewCommunist Party of the Netherlands andthe Workers Party of Belgium. ��

WW PHOTO: JOHN CATALINOTTO

Luis Jalandoni of the NDFP, NadineRosa Rosso of the Workers Party ofBelgium, and Jose Maria Sison.

www.workers.org May 15, 2003 Page 9

Iraq before the revolution

U.S. involvement in Iraq began in the1920s. U.S. corporations were granted23.75 percent of Iraq’s oil as a reward forentering World War I on the side of thevictorious British and French empires.Britain, France and the Netherlandsreceived equal shares of Iraq’s petroleumresources.

Iraq was then a newly created colony,or “mandate,” in the far-flung BritishEmpire. Because of fierce resistance tocolonial domination by Arabs and Kurdsalike, Britain granted Iraq its nominalindependence in 1932. But the countrywas ruled by a British-installed monarchy,and continued to be occupied by Britishmilitary bases.

To fortify their domination, the Britishpromoted the development of a class ofbig landowners in Iraq, who exportedgrain, dates and other products. The peas-ants who constituted the majority of thepopulation were treated as serfs, bound tothe land and living in utter poverty.

In the 1950s, life expectancy in Iraq was28-30 years. Infant mortality was esti-mated at 300-350 per 1,000 live births. Bycomparison, infant mortality in Englandat the time was around 25 per 1,000births.

Illiteracy was more than 80 percent formen and 90 percent for women. Diseasesrelated to malnutrition and unsanitarywater were rampant.

A statistical survey at the time showedincome of less than 13 Fils—4 cents—perday for individual peasants in Diwaniya,one of the more prosperous agriculturalregions.

According to a 1952 World Bank (IBRD)report, the average yearly income for allIraqis was $82. For peasants it was $21.(“Revolution in Iraq,” Society of Graduatesof American Universities in Iraq, 1959)

The richest of the landlord families wasnamed Chalabi. They owned vast estatesin southern Iraq. Today it is AhmedChalabi, son of this same family, who isthe Pentagon favorite to become the new“leader” of Iraq.

Neocolonial and landlord rule wasmaintained by a ruthless secret police/military regime that tortured, murderedand imprisoned countless thousands ofIraqis. Still, the resistance was strong. Inthe face of it, Iraq was placed under mar-tial law 11 times between 1935 and 1954,for a total of nine years and four months.

Underlying Iraq’s extreme poverty wasthis simple fact: Iraq owned none of itsvast oil reserves.

The U.S. and Iraq

In the latter stages of World War II, theRoosevelt and Truman administrations,dominated by big banking, oil and othercorporate interests, were determined torestructure the post-war world to ensurethe dominant position of the UnitedStates.

The key elements in their strategy were:1) U.S. military superiority in nuclear andconventional weaponry; 2) U.S. domina-tion of newly created international insti-tutions like the United Nations, Inter-national Monetary Fund and World Bank,and establishment of the dollar as theworld currency; 3) control of globalresources, particularly oil.

In pursuit of the latter, the UnitedStates was intent on taking control of cer-tain strategic assets of the British Empire,war-time alliance notwithstanding.Among those assets was Iraq.

A February 1944 exchange betweenRoosevelt and British Prime MinisterChurchill makes clear that the Britishwere well aware of U.S. intentions.

Churchill wrote Roosevelt: “Thank youvery much for your assurances about nosheep’s eyes [looking enviously] on ouroilfields in Iran and Iraq. Let me recipro-cate by giving you the fullest assurancethat we have no thought of trying to hornin upon your interests or property in SaudiArabia.” (quoted in Gabriel Kolko, ThePolitics of War, New York, 1968)

What this note clearly showed was thatthe U.S. leaders were so intent on takingover Iran and Iraq, both important neo-colonies of Britain, that it had set off alarmbells in British ruling circles.

It is also worth noting that SaddamHussein was just 7 years old in 1944, whenthe U.S. leaders fixed their sights on Iraq.

Despite Churchill’s bluster, there wasnothing the British could do to restrain ris-ing U.S. power. Within a few years, theBritish ruling class would adapt to the newreality and accept its new role as Wash-ington’s junior partner.

In 1953, after the CIA coup that put theshah (king) in power in Iran, the U.S. tookcontrol of that country. And by the mid-1950s, Iraq was jointly controlled by theUnited States and Britain.

In 1955 Washington set up the BaghdadPact, which included its client regimes inPakistan, Iran, Turkey and Iraq, alongwith Britain.

The Baghdad Pact, or CENTO—CentralTreaty Organization, had two purposes.First, to oppose the rise of Arab and otherliberation movements in the Middle Eastand south Asia. And second, to be anotherin a series of military alliances—NATO,SEATO and ANZUS were the others—encircling the socialist camp of the SovietUnion, China, Eastern Europe, NorthKorea and North Vietnam.

The Iraqi Revolution

But on July 14, 1958, a military rebel-lion led by Brigadier Abdul Karim Kassemand the Free Officers movement turnedinto a country-wide revolution. The kingand his administration were suddenlygone, the recipients of people’s justice.

The 1958 revolution put an end to colo-nial domination and marked the beginningof Iraq’s real independence. Although theIraqi Communist Party was the biggestorganized force among the revolutionaryforces, the revolution did not lead to asocialist transformation of the country.The ICP strategy was alliance with theanti-colonial nationalist bourgeoisie.

Though not a socialist revolution, theIraqi Revolution created panic in Wash-ington and on Wall Street. PresidentDwight Eisenhower called it “the gravestcrisis since the Korean War.”

The day after the Iraqi Revolution,20,000 U.S. Marines began landing inLebanon. The day after that, 6,600 Britishparatroopers were dropped into Jordan.

The U.S. and British expeditionaryforces went in to save the neo-colonialgovernments in Lebanon and Jordan.Had they not, the popular impulse fromIraq would have surely brought down theWestern-dependent regimes in Beirut andAmman.

But Eisenhower and his generals hadsomething else in mind as well: invadingIraq, overturning the revolution and re-in-stalling a puppet government in Baghdad.

Three factors forced Washington toabandon that plan in 1958: 1) the sweep-ing character of the Iraqi Revolution; 2)the announcement by the United ArabRepublic—Syria and Egypt were then onestate that bordered Iraq—that its forceswould fight the imperialists if they soughtto invade; and, 3) strong support for therevolution from the People’s Republic ofChina and the Soviet Union. The USSR

began to mobilize troops in the southernSoviet republics close to Iraq.

The combination of these factorsforced the U.S. leaders to accept the exis-tence of Iraqi Revolution. ButWashington never really reconciled itselfto the loss of Iraq.

Over the next three decades, theUnited States applied many tacticsdesigned to weaken and undermine Iraqas an independent country. At varioustimes—for instance after Iraq completednationalizing the Iraqi PetroleumCompany in 1972 and signed a defensetreaty with the USSR—the United Statesgave massive military support toKurdish elements fighting Baghdad andadded Iraq to its list of “terrorist states.”

Washington supported the more right-ist elements within the post-revolutionpolitical structure against the communistand left-nationalist forces. For example,the United States backed the overthrowand assassination of President Abdel KarimKassem in 1963 by a right-wing militarygrouping. And Washington applauded thesuppression of the left and unions by theArab Ba’ath Socialist Party governmentsin the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 1980s, the United Statesencouraged and helped to fund and armIraq, under the leadership of SaddamHussein, in its war against Iran.Secretary of State Henry Kissingerrevealed the real U.S. attitude about thewar: “I hope they kill each other.”

Bourgeois governments in both Iranand Iraq pursued the war for expansion-ist aims. The war was a disaster for bothIran and Iraq, killing a million peopleand weakening both countries.

The collapse of the USSR and the Gulf War

Shortly after the Iran-Iraq war ended in1988, developments in the Soviet Unionposed a new and even graver danger. Inpursuit of an illusory “permanent détente”with the United States, the Gorbachevleadership in Moscow was eliminating orsharply cutting back its support for alliesin the developing world.

In 1989, Gorbachev withdrew supportfor the socialist governments in EasternEurope, most of which then collapsed.This sharp shift in the world relationshipof forces, culminating with the collapse ofthe Soviet Union itself two years later,opened the door for the U.S. war againstIraq in 1991—and for more than a decadeof sanctions/blockade and bombing thatseverely weakened Iraq and its people.

It would have been inconceivable evena few years earlier that Soviet leaderswould have stood by while the UnitedStates sent more than a half-milliontroops to attack a nearby country withwhich the USSR had a mutual defenseagreement.

Rather than ushering in a new era ofpeace, the counter-revolutionary overturnof the government of the USSR andthroughout the socialist camp was seen inWashington as the green light for a newround of wars and interventions fromPanama to Somalia to Yugoslavia.

The counter-revolution in the SovietUnion paved the way for U.S. aggressionand counter-revolution in Iraq, the nega-tion of Iraq’s sovereignty and the destruc-tion of the structures that made it an inde-pendent state.

Having achieved their victory, however,the occupiers now confront a people whohave a long and proud history of resis-tance. The anti-war movement here andaround the world must give its uncondi-tional support to the Iraqi anti-colonialresistance. ��

Counter-revolution & resistance in IraqBy Richard Becker

In April 2003 the U.S. and British rulersfinally achieved what they had wanted todo since July 1958: the counter-revolutionin Iraq. But erasing 45 years of indepen-dence from a people’s consciousness is noeasy task, and the occupiers face a futureof resistance to their imperial rule.

The counter-revolution in Iraq—exe-cuted by the vastly superior firepower ofthe world’s lone superpower—is a heavyblow not only to the Iraqi people, but to allthose struggling for liberation in theMiddle East.

The imperialist takeover of the biggestand most populous Arab state in the Gulfregion gravely threatens Syria, Lebanon,Iran and the Palestinian people. It is not acoincidence that the crushing of Iraq wasimmediately followed by the unveiling ofBush’s “road map” for the Palestinians. Inthe aftermath of the first Gulf War and thecollapse of the Soviet Union, the firstPresident George Bush launched the now-defunct Oslo “peace process.”

Last month, on April 9, organized mili-tary resistance in Baghdad and most ofIraq suddenly ended. Iraq had by thenendured three weeks of air-, ground- andsea-based attacks by “coalition”—U.S. andBritish—forces.

The circumstances surrounding the col-lapse of the Iraqi government and stateremain unclear, but the relief in the rulingcircles of Washington and London wasapparent. From the beginning of the war,Washington pursued a strategy of “decap-itation”—either killing the Iraqi leadershipor fomenting a coup d’etat.

The longer the war continued, thegreater the possibility of new upheavals inthe Middle East and elsewhere in theIslamic world.

Relief was quickly replaced by limitlessbourgeois triumphalism—and theannouncement that the invaders werenow hunting the leaders of the oustedregime, the same way that in earlier man-ifestations of colonialism the authoritiestracked and killed the leaders of defeatedslave revolts. The images of Iraqi officialswere grotesquely imprinted on decks ofplaying cards, with Saddam Hussein asthe Ace of Spades.

U.S. leaders and their corporate mediahave relentlessly promoted the idea thattheir goal of “regime change” simplyinvolved removing the ultra-demonizedHussein and his immediate circle. In real-ity, Washington’s aim was to destroyeverything that made Iraq an independentstate.

Everything is gone—from the militaryto the government ministries to the state-run food-distribution and health-care sys-tems.

In the aftermath of the war, Iraq isunder a Pentagon military dictatorship.Meetings of U.S.-picked Iraqi “leaders”are now being held to set up a puppet“interim government.”

The commander of U.S. ground forcesin Iraq, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, madeit clear that these Iraqi leaders are littlemore than ornamentation. On April 23,McKiernan issued a blunt proclamationstating, “The coalition alone retainsabsolute authority within Iraq.”

U.S. diplomatic and intelligence offi-cials are slated to be the directors of all thenew Iraqi ministries set up by the militarydictatorship.

Early in the war, U.S. military forcesseized the great prize in Iraq, the rich oilfields in the north and south. Iraq holds anestimated 12 percent of the world’s provenpetroleum reserves, second only to SaudiArabia.

Page 10 May 15, 2003 www.workers.org

May Day in Belgium

Ben Bella honored at Workers Party fete

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By John CatalinottoBrussels, Belgium

Some 2,500 activists and workers fromaround Belgium filled a building outsideBrussels on May 1 to celebrate the work-ers’ holiday with the Workers Party ofBelgium.

The day had two major themes: thestruggle to “stop U.S. aggression,” withemphasis on the Pentagon’s crimes duringthe invasion and occupation of Iraq; andan effort by the WPB to elect some specialactivists as representatives to the BelgianParliament in the May 18 elections.

Keynote speaker for the anti-war themewas the leader of Algeria’s liberationstruggle from France, former AlgerianPresident Ahmed Ben Bella. The 86-year-old Ben Bella described the war on Iraq as“a war decided by the group of oil baronswho lead the United States today.

“But it concerns more than Iraq and itsoil,” he said. “It’s also a struggle for thedomination of the world. The UnitedStates sees Europe as a growing powerthat it wants to control.” But an evengreater danger, he said, is the U.S. plan torestrict China’s access to energy resources.

Ben Bella also described “people likeRumsfeld, Ashcroft and Cheney” as being“part of a Christian religious current thatrepresents a fundamentalism much moredangerous than that of Bin Laden.

“After his war on Iraq,” Ben Bella con-tinued, “Bush plans to hit Syria, Iran,Korea. It’s an endless war. This system isno longer tenable. There must be anotherway. We live in the time of the beginningof the end of the capitalist system. Wehave to change it.”

About Palestine he said: “Sharon isthe little cousin of Bush! The UnitedStates supports Israel unconditionallybecause this country plays the role ofregional gendarme for the Americans.”He added that “the Iraqi people will also

make their Intifada.”Ben Bella also linked the struggle

against the war with that against capital-ist globalization. He called attention to thelarge demonstrations in London and otherEuropean cities against the war.

Regarding the Belgian parliamentaryelections, WPB Secretary General NadineRosa Rosso focused on three leading can-didates who represent different sectors ofthe Belgian working class.

One is Dyab Abou Jahjah, a dynamicyoung man of North African origin whohas been a leader of the anti-racist strug-gle and for immigrant rights.

Another is Maria Vindevoghel, who hasbeen a leader of the struggle of the work-ers at Sabena Airlines, laid off when thestate-owned company declared bank-ruptcy, to fight to regain their jobs andrights. Vindevoghel wrote a book aboutthe Sabena workers called “I Accuse.”

The third was Dr. Colette Moulaert,who had just returned from Iraq. Thereshe, along with three other doctors fromthe Belgian progressive movement, hadboth cared for the injured and wounded inIraqi hospitals and confronted U.S. tanksin the streets of Baghdad. ��

This is what democracy looks like

he case of Delma Banks Jr. hasmade it clear once more that theUnited States of America is a

bourgeois-democratic police state.This seemingly contradictory state-

ment is really simple to understand onceyou look at class differences within U.S.society. For rich people, especially richwhite men, there is little governmentinterference with freedom of movementor expression. Even their crimes arerarely punished. That’s bourgeois—capi-talist—democracy.

For the poor, on the other hand, thereare few means of expression of ideas. Forpoor people of color, the capitalist stateis a club hovering over the head. That’sthe police state that has now imprisonedmore than 2 million people in this coun-try.

It’s true that the Bush administrationand the Ashcroft justice department havecontinually curtailed existing bourgeoisrights. But even before this change forthe worse the United States was a repres-sive police state directed against thepoor, reinforced by 400 years of racism.

Banks is a 40-year-old Black man whocame within a hair’s breadth of beingexecuted by the state of Texas a fewweeks ago. He was reprieved at the lastminute when the Supreme Court agreedto hear his case.

As a teenager in 1980 he was chargedwith murdering a 16-year-old youth heknew. The youth was white. Banksquickly became a victim of the racist,repressive court system in Texas.

Cops lined up white drug addicts, oneof them a paid informer, to testify againstBanks. His lawyer barely defended him.The jury, like the prosecution, was allwhite.

The fact that there was no strong evi-dence linking Banks to the crime hardlyslowed down his prosecution. He wasquickly found guilty and sentenced todeath. Prosecutors hid their ties to thewitnesses, who later recanted their testi-mony.

While the racist injustice in Banks’case is egregious, it is not so rare. It is astark example of class injustice in a landwhose ruling class and their paid propa-gandists proclaim it the epitome of free-dom. It is why a majority of the morethan 2 million people in jail—anextremely high number overall—are peo-ple of color.

This is how capitalist democracy worksin the United States. Not badly—if youare rich. Bad for the poor. Horribly forthe poor of color.

Laws punish petty theft but rewardexploitation. The court system is biasedtoward those who can pay for the mosteffective lawyers. And the weight of thecapitalist state—its police, its courts, itslaws—all hangs over the working classand the poor.

This is U.S. capitalist democracy. Andthat’s even before the Bush gang got in.

It is a built-in injustice system thatmust be uprooted. ��

T

Legendary South African leader WalterSisulu passed away on May 5. He wouldhave turned 91 years old in May. Sisulu,a longtime member of the AfricanNational Congress and a founder of itsYouth League, spent 26 years in prisonalongside Nelson Mandela for fightingagainst the racist apartheid regime. Amore in-depth tribute to Sisulu willappear in an upcoming issue of WorkersWorld newspaper.

—Monica Moorehead

WALTERSISULUpresente!

WW PHOTO: JOHN CATALINOTTOBen Bella

However, 100 acres were kept by thePentagon for a radar facility that targetsColombia and neighboring countries.

The eastern part, where Camp García islocated and most of the demonstrationswere held, will not revert to the people ofVieques, nor even to the Puerto Rican gov-ernment. With their usual imperialistarrogance, Washington and the Pentagonhave simply decided to transfer it to theU.S. Department of the Interior.

The Department of the Navy will pay fordecontamination of these areas—butthere are already signs that this will alsobe a most difficult struggle. The Navy hasso far only allocated $2.3 million—aridiculously small amount for the conta-mination it has left behind.

Consider that napalm, depleted ura-nium and countless other heavy, toxicmetals have been contaminating not onlythe soil but the underground water sup-ply and the surrounding ocean fordecades. Decontamination is a life-and-death demand for the people.

The intense contamination of the air,land and water has caused serious healthproblems in Vieques, where the cancerrate is 26 percent higher than in the restof Puerto Rico and more likely to be fatal.The people hold the demand for deconta-mination as a very high priority, since

their lives depend on it.For years, while they organized actions

to oust the military, they also carefullyplanned for their future. They learned thelesson of Culebra, a smaller sister islandalso used by the U.S. Navy where a strug-gle in the 1970s kicked out the Pentagon.The people’s militancy won, but theymade no plans for the disposition of theland. Today, regretfully, Culebra is stillvery poor, still contaminated and its landin the hands of speculators.

The Viequenses are making sure not tofollow that path. They have assembledpanels of experts in every field to makesure that they are part of the decision-making process that ultimately will revertclean land to its rightful owners, the peo-ple of Vieques.

The U.S. government, of course, doesnot want them to have any role in decid-ing their own future, and has included thePuerto Rican government in the processmerely as a diplomatic gesture, withoutyielding any decision-making power to it.

The courageous people of Vieques haveput up a relentless struggle against theimperialist giant, showing once more thepower of the people united. In this newphase and challenge, it is crucial that theprogressive movement in the U.S. con-tinue to support their struggle for self-determination and independence. ��

Continued from page 1

U.S. Navy pulls out of Vieques

www.workers.org May 15, 2003 Page 11

By Deirdre Griswold

It seems, according to recent newspaperaccounts (e.g., “A Classicist’s Legacy: NewEmpire Builders,” New York Times Weekin Review, May 4), that the more ideolog-ical among those defining a newly aggres-sive role for U.S. imperialism, who todaywield the upper hand in Washington, liketo harken back to ancient Athens for theirpolitical inspiration. People like PaulWolfowitz, Richard Perle and George W.Bush himself often present their missionas one of imposing “Western values” on arecalcitrant world, and cite Atheniandemocracy as the model civilization.

Of course, one could say that all this ismerely ideological window dressing forpolicies that are so clearly dictated by theprofit greed of the huge oil companies,banks and military corporations whichcall the shots in Washington, despite allthe hype about representative democracy.

But what was Athenian democracy?Can the “neocons”—the neoconserva-tives who are but a makeover of the oldright wing—lay claim to it? And whereshould the workers and oppressed oftoday be looking for democratic forms toserve their interests, as opposed to theinterests of the war profiteers and mod-ern-day slave drivers?

Peasant uprisings & the ‘Tyrants’

Athenian democracy evolved over aperiod of about 150 years, beginning in thesixth century B.C.E. Repeated peasantuprisings had been challenging the plu-tocracy, the rule by a class of wealthy landowners. At the same time, new men ofwealth were emerging as Athens becamea center of trade, commerce and the man-ufacture of many commodities by skilledartisans and slaves.

The use of the word “men” here is verydeliberate, because, whether it was amonarchy or a democracy, women wereexcluded from political life and, with a fewexceptions, from owning property.

The word “tyrant,” which today hassuch a brutal connotation, comes fromthis period. The Tyrants were military fig-ures, usually swept into power by peasantrebellions against the monarchs and land-owning nobles whose wealth came fromserfdom. The Tyrant Solon seized powerin Athens in 594 B.C.E. He cancelled thedebts of the poor, gave the right to vote toall male citizens and established a newgoverning council of 400 people. He wasthe first ruler to codify a body of laws. Buthe refused to carry out land reform.

Pisistratus, who became Tyrant ofAthens 34 years later, in 560 B.C.E., redis-tributed the land and abolished land own-ership as a requirement of citizenship.

Even having land, however, the peas-ants were not truly free. The productivityof their land was declining even as wheatand other foods began to be importedfrom more fertile areas around theMediterranean, and they soon fell intodebt slavery. The class antagonisms hadnot been eradicated by the reforms of theTyrants.

The first democratic assembly, whererepresentatives of all 10 “tribes” of Athensvoted directly on major issues, was formedin 508 B.C.E. when Cleisthenes tookpower and extended the reforms, cuttingdown further the power of the nobility.This assembly of 500—50 from eachtribe—met 40 times a year and also

selected a smaller body that met almostevery day. Members of this standing com-mittee could be recalled at any time if theydidn’t carry out the wishes of the assem-bly.

The century that followed was consid-ered the Golden Age of Greek democracyand produced many accomplishments inscience and culture. It was also an age ofmilitary conquest and the taking of con-quered peoples as slaves. Many of thesepeople came with highly developed skillsfrom other centers of civilization aroundthe Mediterranean and northern Africathat had also amassed impressive scien-tific, technological and cultural knowl-edge. (See, for example, the book “TheAncient Engineers” by Lyon Sprague deCamp.) They enriched Athens in manyways.

No rights for slaves, women and foreign-born

Slaves and the foreign-born in generalwere never granted the rights of citizens.By the fourth century B.C.E., Athens hadthree slaves for every two free citizens.Most labored in the homes and workshopsof their masters. There were no large agri-cultural estates based on slave labor,unlike later in the Western Hemispherewhen slaves captured from Africa wereintensely exploited by European settlers toproduce sugar and cotton for an interna-tional capitalist market. The hardest andmost dangerous work done by slaves inancient Greece was in mines and on sail-ing vessels.

Ancient Athens at its height was a city-state of about 140,000 people, of whomsome 40,000—free men—had the right tovote. However, only those citizens whoowned property could run for office.

What is it about this particular center ofancient society that so enthralls the neo-conservatives? Undoubtedly, it is the highdevelopment of the art of politics—that is,the art whereby a minority, propertiedclass succeeds in ruling over a propertylessmajority while engaging in the politicalprocess a broader section of society thanjust themselves. In this, today’s liberals arejust as enthusiastic as the right-wingers.

Socrates, Plato and the state

Many thinkers in the period of Atheniandemocracy, like Socrates and Plato, benttheir minds around the problem of how tostrengthen the state, which seems to standabove society but in fact serves the inter-ests of the dominant class. Students todayread Plato’s “Republic” and other suchpolitical works but are seldom told that inthe course of social evolution the state is afairly recent development. For tens ofthousands of years, people lived in com-munal societies where there was no divi-sion into opposing classes and no state—that is, no special, organized body ofrepression. The state arose with the over-throw of communal societies and theemergence of a class that claimed for itselfthe ownership of land and even of otherhuman beings.

In a society like that of Athens, whereslaves outnumbered free citizens andwhere the peasants were in a constantstruggle with the nobility over the land, thequestion of the state became preeminent.

The obsession of Athenian intellectualswith politics stands in stark contrast toother areas of the ancient world, wherewealthy people who had leisure time in

which to think and experiment were muchmore interested in solving the problems ofmechanics, astronomy and navigation,metallurgy and other scientific challengesposed by the expansion of trade.

Science & materialist philosophy

In Miletus, a city in Asia Minor (todayTurkey) not dependent on slavery but onwage labor for its extensive role in com-merce, remarkable progress was made notonly in these sciences but in developing acomprehensive view of the universe. Thisenthusiasm for understanding the mater-ial world, rather than for ruling over peo-ple, fostered the early development ofmaterialist philosophy.

The view that everything in the universewas made up of tiny particles called“atoms”—which was advanced 2,300years before the tools existed to prove ordisprove this theory—originated withLeucippus of Miletus. His greatest disci-ple was Democritus of Adbera in Thrace,who traveled to Persia, Egypt and Babylon(today’s Iraq) in search of knowledge, andmay also have been to Ethiopia and India.(The book “Greek Science” by the BritishMarxist scholar Benjamin Farringtonskillfully explains the social conditionsthat led to the development of opposingphilosophies—materialism vs. idealism—at the same time in different parts of theancient world.)

It is a twist of historical fate that today’sneocons hold up Plato and Aristotle astheir great inspirers. They would be morehonest to honor Leucippus and Demo-critus, for it was the awesome detonationof two atomic bombs over Japan in 1945that encouraged the intellectual servantsof the U.S. capitalist class to entertain theidea that it was their manifest destiny torule over the entire world and turn the20th into the “American” century.

Capitalism has revolutionized themeans of production by incorporating theintellectual achievements of all previoussocieties whenever they could be useful inturning a profit. In this respect, it cares notat all whether the ideas came from Greeceor Mesopotamia or China.

But when it comes to political ideas, thepresent-day rulers are very choosy. Theireyes mist over and their hearts beat fasterwhen they encounter a political philoso-phy that glosses over terrible socialinequities as long as the form of class ruleis democratic.

Slaves and women shut out

The United States political systemowes a great deal to Athenian democ-racy. This, too, is a country where slav-ery was considered normal for hundredsof years, and slaves had no politicalrights, even though their masters wereable to claim added seats in the House ofRepresentatives by counting each slaveas two-thirds of a person.

A bitter Civil War ended in the abolitionof slavery, but the Northern capitalistssoon betrayed their promises of Recon-struction and the descendants of slaveswere effectively disenfranchised until theCivil Rights Act of 1964. And even in 2000,George W. Bush became president onlyafter the systematic exclusion of Black vot-ers allowed him to claim victory in the keystate of Florida.

Athenian women never got the right tovote. It took nearly a century and a half forwomen here to win suffrage.

From Athens to the Paris Commune

Neocons, empire building and democracy

And even after these victories for theright to vote, the elections in the U.S. stillresult in the domination of the billionaireruling class over the political process. Thatis why, when the people registered theiropposition to attacking Iraq in the clear-est way, demonstrating again and again innumbers not seen since the Vietnam War,the Congress completely ignored the willof the people. Without even a mock debate,it allowed the executive branch to proceedwith its criminal war of aggression.

The word democracy supposedly meansrule by the people. In a modern capitalistsociety, the majority of the people arewage earners and their families—not theowners and CEOs of Halliburton andExxonMobil and Fox News, all of whomare so cosy with the Athenian democracy-loving Bush administration.

The democracy of the Paris Commune

Can the majority really rule, and not justbe used to rubber stamp the agenda of themoneyed class?

That question was answered, if only fora short time, by the workers of Paris in1871. While the central government waspreoccupied by a war with Germany, theytook over and set up the Paris Commune.Some of the measures they instituted, likethe right of the people to recall their electedrepresentatives at any time, echoed stepsfirst taken in Athens. But the Commune’sdemocracy went much further.

The Commune dissolved the standingarmy and police and replaced them with apeople’s militia. It reduced the salaries ofpublic officials to what an ordinary workerearned. It opened up all schools and uni-versities to the people, free of charge.

It ended the state’s support of and useof the church by disestablishing all reli-gion. Priests who had been paid by thestate would have to depend on theirparishioners for support.

The Commune conferred full politicalrights on those from other countries whosided with the revolution. At a time of warbetween France and Germany, it elected aGerman-born worker as Minister of Labor.

The Commune was not advancedenough to offer full equality to women,even though women had started the upris-ing. But by establishing a pension for allwidows and children of “citizens killeddefending the rights of the people,” itstruck a blow for women’s emancipation,recognizing the rights of children born“out of wedlock.” Many Parisian workerslived in “free unions” not previously rec-ognized by either church or state.

The Commune was crushed by the com-bined weight of French and Germanarmies before it had a chance to go further.Karl Marx analyzed its strengths andweaknesses in “The Civil War in France.”It was not a blueprint for today. It had nopolitical party or other experienced lead-ership at its helm, and that left the fieldfree for adventurers and opportunists ofall kinds. But it showed emphatically thatthe working class could become an inde-pendent force in history and could createnew political forms to strike directly at theentrenched privileges of the old rulers.

For these reasons, and because it pro-moted the international solidarity of theworkers and opposed national chauvin-ism, the democracy of the Commune isdespised by today’s empire-building neo-conservatives in Washington. ��

Por Alicia Jrapko

Con el 57% de la población Argentinaviviendo en condiciones de pobreza ycon una taza oficial de desempleo del30%, un hecho sin precedente estátomando lugar en este país Sud-americano. Algunos trabajadores hantomado control de fábricas abandonaspor sus dueños debido a bancarrota,“falta de ganancias” o inestabilidad.

Desde 1998, trabajadores en Argentinahan tomado más de 150 fabricas—incluyendo plantas de la industria de lacomida, metalúrgica, partes de autos,imprentas, cerámicas y textiles.

Cincuenta años atrás, Argentina eraconsiderada una de las economías másdesarrolladas e industrializadas del tercermundo. Cerca del 50% de su productonacional bruto provenía de las industrias.

Sin embargo, las políticas neoliberalesdictadas por Washington, e implemen-tadas, casi por tres décadas por el FondoMonetario Internacional y otras institu-ciones financieras, no han traído otra cosaque miseria al pueblo Argentino.

Las circunstancias que rodean la tomade fábricas, varían entre ellas. En algunoscasos, los trabajadores consiguieron per-miso de los antiguos dueños para admin-istrar la fábrica, pagando una renta yademás comprando los medios de pro-ducción.

En otros casos, los trabajadores for-maron cooperativas y establecieron unsistema igualitario de pago, con unaestructura de poder democrática de votodirecto en asambleas donde se discutenlos problemas y se encuentran soluciones.

Entre las fábricas tomadas por los tra-bajadores, dos de ellas, se transformaronen símbolos de este nuevo movimiento: lafábrica de cerámica Zanón en Neuquén yla fábrica de textiles Brukman en BuenosAires, donde la mayoría de las traba-jadores son mujeres.

Brukman: ‘La fábrica bajo control de lostrabajadores’

Cuando los trabajadores tomaron con-trol de Brukman, ellos quisieron negociarcon los dueños, pero no recibieronrespuesta. Como un testimonio de estenuevo fenómeno, un gran cartel a laentrada de la fabrica Zanón dice “EstaFábrica Produce Bajo Control de losTrabajadores”

En marzo, la policía trato de ganar con-trol de Zanón, pero se tuvo que retirardebido a la resistencia de los trabajadoresy la enorme solidaridad de miembros dela comunidad. Los trabajadores de estaplanta han lanzado una campaña parajuntar 50.000 firmas en una petición ypedirle al estado la expropiación de lafábrica para que sea administrada por lostrabajadores.

Desde que los trabajadores comen-

zaron a administrar la compañía, ellos hancreado 40 nuevas fuentes de trabajo paradesempleados. Han comprado materiasprimas y han pagado impuestos de agua,electricidad, y gas.

Mientras que se acercan las eleccionespresidenciales, dos jueces que eran activosdurante la dictadura militar de 1976ordenaron a los militares que ocuparan lafábrica Brukman. El 18 de abril, bajo ame-nazas de desalojo, cinco trabajadores sepreparaban a pasar la noche en la fábrica.

Policías fuertemente armadasirrumpieron en la fábrica atacando y desa-lojando a los trabajadores.

Miles de trabajadores desempleados(piqueteros) y miembros de asambleasbarriales se congregaron afuera de lafábrica, pero también fueron reprimidospor la policía federal.

Pablo Kilberg, un activista con laAsociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, laorganizacion formada por valientesmadres quienes por décadas han estadomarchando cada jueves, desde que sushijos “desaparecieron” durante la dic-tadura militar de 1976, dijo que la policíano tuvo compasión con esas mujeres,ahora en sus 80 y 90 años. Kilberg agregóque las madres fueron rodeadas por nubesde gases lacrimógenos y tuvieron que serrescatados por vehículos de la prensa.

Kilberg dijo además que la policía usóbalas y balas de goma y que fue un mila-

ARGENTINA.

Trabajadores toman control de 150 fábricas

gro que no haya habido ningún muerto. Aveinte cuadras de la fábrica, la policía and-aba en una cacería humana. Como resul-tado, 120 personas fueron arrestadas ymuchas de ellas resultaron heridas.

La solidaridad demostrada por otrossectores de la población fue inmensa.Unos días mas tarde, en una mani-festación en contra de la brutalidad poli-cial y la represión, más de 30.000 per-sonas acompañaron a los trabajadoresde Brukman. Entre ellos, estuvieron pre-sentes parlamentarios, partidos políti-cos, la Asociación Madres de Plaza deMayo, Madres de Plaza de Mayo LíneaFundadora, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo,organizaciones de derechos humanos,mas de 25 asambleas barriales, estudi-antes y varias organizaciones depiqueteros.

Los trabajadores de Brukman estáncomprometidos a continuar la lucha hastaganar control de la fábrica y hanprometido pelear hasta el final.

Los trabajadores Argentinos que hantomado control de sus lugares de trabajohan demostrados que son capaces deadministrar las fabricas, comprar mate-rias primas, fabricar productos, pagarsalaries dignos, y crear fuentes de trabajo.La mayor preocupación de los capitalistases que mas temprano que tarde la clasetrabajadora va a tomar el poder políticopara controlar su destino. ��

PRIMERA PARTE:

Detrás de las exigencias de Washingtonde levantar las sanciones contra Irak

Por Sara Flounders

El gobierno de los Estados Unidos haexigido el levante inmediato y completo delas sanciones contra Irak al Consejo deSeguridad de la ONU.

Por 13 años, un movimiento contra lassanciones ha encontrado una resistenciatotal por el gobierno de los EstadosUnidos, tanto bajo las administracionesDemócratas como Republicanas. ¿PorquéWashington ha cambiado su posiciónsobre este asunto? ¿Y cómo debe respon-der el movimiento mundial a la nuevaestrategia de Washington?

Primero, es importante entender losmotivos de las administración Bush. ElConsejo de Seguridad de la ONU ahoratiene el control sobre por los menos $30mil millones de dólares que se encuentranen las cuentas bancarias colectados parala campaña de Petróleo por Alimento pro-ducidos por la venta de petróleo iraquídurante las sanciones contra el régimende Saddam Hussein.

Ya que ha destruido militarmente algobierno, los Estados Unidos se ha autoproclamado el observador de Irak y lafuerza que escogería al nuevo gobierno.Pero las sanciones no dejan que el dinero

entre a Irak. Por eso los Estados Unidosquieren dan fin a las sanciones para queestos miles de millones de dólares seanentregados al nuevo gobierno de Irakadministrado por los Estados Unidos.

Además miles de millones de dólares deIrak han estado congelados desde agostode 1990 en cuentas bancarias alrededordel mundo. El fin de las sanciones podríaser el primer paso en hacer disponible estedinero al “gobierno iraquí” bajo el controlde los Estados Unidos, el cual a su vezsería puesto al alcance de las avaras cor-poraciones estadounidenses que hanrecibido grandes contratos para la“reconstrucción” de Irak.

Las sanciones causaron la muerte demás de un millón y medio de Iraquíes,según los cálculos de la ONU. ¿Podemosconfiar en el gobierno que causó estasmuertes y destruyó las ciudades iraquíesen una brutal guerra de conquista paraque administre los fondos que por tantotiempo ha prohibido al pueblo iraquí?

Es esencial el reconocer que ni losEstados Unidos ni Bretaña tienen dere-cho alguno a los recursos en Irak. No hayjustificación alguna para que decenas demiles de tropas imperialistas ocupen a unpaís. Es criminal, una agresión sin ley.

Ahora la campaña de los EstadosUnidos para dar fin a las sanciones yentregar los miles de millones de dólaresprohibidos a los iraquíes a sí mismos, losocupantes. Esto es una piratería en suforma más cruda.

Miles de millones en juego

La cuestión de levantar las sancionescontra Irak está tomando la forma de unagran confrontación en el Consejo deSeguridad de la ONU.

Francia, Rusia y China tienen el poderdel veto para poner fin a las sanciones.Una cantidad de países en el Consejo deSeguridad han hecho recordar alWashington que las sanciones no puedenser anuladas hasta que los inspectores dearmas de la ONU hayan confirmado queIrak no tiene armas de destrucciónmasiva. Este recordatorio tira a la cara deWashington la misma excusa fraudulentaque el gobierno de los Estados Unidos usópor 13 años para continuar las sanciones.

Francia ha provocado la rabia de laadministración de Bush aún más con lasugerencia de que las sanciones civilespuedan ser “suspendidas” por razoneshumanitarias. Declarando que no fue afavor de “rescindir” las sanciones, fue una

forma de recordarle a Washington que latelaraña de sanciones que los EE.UU.habían tejido le da al Consejo deSeguridad de la ONU el control sobre elfuturo de la totalidad de los ingresospetroleros de Irak. Esto también es la posi-ción de Rusia.

El vocero de la Casa Blanca, AriFleischer rechazó estas perspectivasdeclarando categóricamente que, “Lassanciones deben ser rescindidas, no mera-mente suspendidas. ... Con la desapari-ción del régimen, la posición de losEE.UU. es que las sanciones económicasya no son necesarias”.

Siempre que las sanciones se quedanfuncionando oficialmente, los ingresos detodas las ventas de petróleo iraquí con-tinuarán estar depositados en cuentascontroladas por la ONU. Billones dedólares de contractos futuros están enjuego. Los países en el Consejo deSeguridad que habían participado con losEE.UU. en imponer las sanciones notienen mucho interés en entregar estosfondos acumulados, las pujas por los con-tratos de reconstrucción, y los ingresospetroleros futuros a los conquistadores.

Continua la proxima semana