Click on the headline to link to the International Communist League website.
Workers Vanguard No. 1003
25 May 2012
Solidarity with Longview ILWU and Its Supporters
Our article “Protest State Vendetta Against Longview ILWU and Its Allies!” (WV No. 998, 16 March) urged unions, both nationally and internationally, to protest the vindictive prosecution of some 100 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), mainly from Local 21 in Longview, and their supporters. As the article noted, this anti-union vendetta “is a shot at all of labor, aimed at creating a chilling effect on trade unionists who were inspired by the power ILWU members brought to bear during their fight against EGT union-busting in Longview.” Union locals from California, New York and Wisconsin sent letters. International solidarity was expressed by unions in Canada, France and Germany. The Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle legal and social defense organization affiliated with the Spartacist League—and its fraternal organizations internationally issued an appeal for unions to send protest letters to Cowlitz County prosecuting attorney Susan Baur.
In its letter, the Northern Region of the German Locomotive Engineers recalled the fines and restrictions on the right to strike that had been imposed upon them in the heat of a contract battle in 2006-07. The Oakland Education Association, one of several unions from the San Francisco Bay Area that sent protest letters, wrote: “The motto of the ILWU is ‘An Injury to One is an Injury to All.’ We concur with this viewpoint and are sending a donation to Local 21 to be used in the legal defense of their members and supporters.” In its letter, the New York chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists demanded “an end to this persecution” and that all charges be dropped.
WV is publishing in this issue a letter from the wife of one of the persecuted unionists, who was president of the Cowlitz County Central Labor Council (see page 4). While that unionist, Jeff Washburn, was convicted, at least six others facing similar charges were acquitted in jury trials. Prosecutor Baur subsequently dropped a number of misdemeanor cases. But she threatened to file trumped-up felony charges against others—including Local 21 president Dan Coffman—in order to pressure them to plead guilty to misdemeanors that juries might have acquitted them of. The ILWU has rightly characterized this now-standard prosecutorial ploy as a “form of extortion.” Those opting to cop a plea have been sentenced to hundreds of dollars of fines and many hours of community service. Felony trials against at least two ILWUers are still pending, and Baur continues to threaten to file additional felony charges.
Two unionists, including ILWU Local 21 secretary-treasurer Byron Jacobs, have been sentenced to jail time. Jacobs was one of two courageous ILWUers who came to the aid of Ladies Auxiliary members under attack by police during a protest against an EGT-bound train on September 21. The two union members were tackled and forced to the ground, where the cops shot pepper spray directly into their eyes. This brutal attack was caught on video and later posted on YouTube. Yet Jacobs was charged with three felony counts! Baur only agreed to drop these frame-up charges if Jacobs pled guilty to three misdemeanors. He was sentenced to 20 days of jail work release, $500 in fines, one year’s probation and an “anger management” assessment. Local 21 member Ronald P. Stavas was sentenced to 22 days in jail after pleading guilty to felony attempted burglary and four misdemeanor charges. Dozens of ILWUers rallied at the Cowlitz County jail in solidarity with Stavas when he began serving his sentence on April 11.
The union-hating climate fueled by Baur and Cowlitz County sheriff Mark Nelson has encouraged additional attacks on Local 21. On April 9, the union hall was broken into, robbed and vandalized. Thousands of dollars of damage was done, and the words “scabs” and “ILWU fags” were scrawled on the wall with red spray paint. A significant amount of cash was stolen from the local’s safe, as well as blank checks, credit cards and other financial records. The union is offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible. Local 21 also had to replace a union billboard publicizing the ILWU’s long history in the area after it was defaced by graffiti.
Playing its role as the enforcer of anti-union laws, Barack Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has pursued its own vendetta against the ILWU. It went to the federal courts and obtained a restraining order last September against the union for “aggressive picketing,” which resulted in some $300,000 in fines. The Labor Board also issued a complaint against the union based on unfair labor practice charges filed by both EGT and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) during the Longview battle. In the April issue of the union’s newspaper, the Dispatcher, the ILWU International announced a settlement with the NLRB on this complaint. The PMA is reportedly objecting to the settlement, the details of which are not yet publicly known. The Dispatcher estimates that it will take up to two years to resolve the ILWU International’s appeal of the fines levied by the federal courts. As such, the fines could well be hanging over the union’s head as it faces off with the PMA when the coastwide longshore contract expires in 2014.
In the face of the anti-union offensive against the militant labor struggles waged in Longview last July and September, the ILWU International leadership backed off. It retreated to filing a lawsuit in the capitalist courts that charged the city of Longview, Cowlitz County and their top officials, including Sheriff Nelson, with violating the union’s “respective officers and members’ rights under the Constitution and laws of the United States and Washington.” While it is in the interests of the working class to defend all democratic rights, which have been increasingly curtailed, the battle of Longview was not a question of defending such civil liberties as freedom of speech and assembly. It was one of mobilizing the power of labor against the EGT union-busters, who are backed by the forces of the state. The laws of the United States are designed to uphold the interests of the capitalist owners—and the state, namely the courts, cops and military, enforces them against workers in struggle.
If the working class is to effectively organize to fight in its class interests, it must wield its ability to stop production and shut off the flow of profits. There is a vital need to revive the traditions of effective labor solidarity, not just in words but in deeds.
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-Lessons of Longview: An Exchange (Washington ILWU Struggle)
Click on the headline to link to the International Communist League website.
Workers Vanguard No. 1003
25 May 2012
Lessons of Longview: An Exchange
(Letter)
The following letter was sent to the Spartacist League on March 28.
Thank you for your article, “Protest State Vendetta Against Longview ILWU & Its Allies.”
My husband, Jeff Washburn, President of the Cowlitz Wahkiakum Labor Council and President of the Longview/Kelso Bldg & Construction Trades, was the very first person arrested near the Tracks on Sept. 7th, 2011, the day of the train delay. Today we will go to another pre-trial hearing, if the prosecutor does not ask for another postponement today, we will go to trial on Friday.
He is one of the very few folks that have not been coerced into pleading guilty. He is not a longshoreman and had very good reason to be there. His attorney is Chad Sleight from Vancouver, WA. Although admittedly it would have been easier on our family to plead and get it over with months ago, this had been very time consuming and stressful for all of us. However, someone has to stand up for what is right, it might as well be us.
Jeff was instrumental in getting our State Representatives together and tasking them to push the Governor to meet with the parties. He started coordinating these meetings way ahead, it took them that long to find common meeting times. I firmly believe that had it not been for Jeff, the parties would never have met with the Governor. The strategy was not headed in that direction when he called for the Executive meetings with our state Reps. Yet here he is defending himself when he is actually the “hero”.
You will find it interesting that the Cowlitz County Prosecutor has issued a pre-trial notice that she has determined “this is not a constitutional right issue.” I don’t have the exact language in front of me, but it is something our lawyer has not seen before.
Regardless of the final outcome, this will be a possible landmark case at the local level. This case could determine how future demonstration activities are handled here in Cowlitz and prosecuted with our tax dollars.
Furthermore, we thought it worthwhile to note, that as of today, it appears that the construction at the Kalama Grain Terminal will proceed exactly as EGT, using out-of-town-workforce to build, the same contractor has already walked the job, TE Ibberson and affiliates.
It wasn’t until EGT was already built that the longshoremen actually got on board, long after the local construction industry had missed out on all the construction.
I have photos of all the license plates from out of the area that worked on the EGT job. Now it is starting to happen again, just in Kalama, WA and we have no reason to believe that the construction of the facility will be any different than EGT. The longshoremen might get the final work, but as far as the rest of us, most likely we will again be left out in the cold. Meanwhile, the real story of resource exportation/exploitation in order to meet the rising asian food demand is the real story, and how these multinationals aim to do it the cheapest way possible is the other story.
For background reading:
http://tdn.com/news/local/million-expansion-on-the-horizon-for-port-of-kalama-grain/article_b64fb80c-634e-11e1-a2fd-0019bb2963f4.html
http://savelocaljobs.org/egts-new-source-of-wheat
http://savelocaljobs.org/gambling-at-the-taxpayers-expense
http://savelocaljobs.org/santorum-hit-list-includes-dust-bowl-prevention
Feel free to contact me directly.
Just the savelocaljobs blogger...
T. Washburn
WV replies:
We thank Washburn for her letter. It raises several central and ongoing issues coming out of the class battle that pitted the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and its supporters against the union-busting offensive by the giant EGT grain consortium and its allies—from the local and federal cops and courts to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and, in the end, an armed Coast Guard flotilla.
On March 30, Washburn’s husband Jeff was convicted of obstructing/delaying a train last September 7, slapped with a $243 fine and sentenced to 20 hours of community service. The day that Jeff Washburn—then president of the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Council—was arrested, a picket of some 300 ILWUers and other unionists, among them ILWU International president Robert McEllrath, was brutally attacked by cops wielding clubs, tear gas and guns loaded with rubber bullets. In the early morning hours of September 8, longshoremen from throughout the Pacific Northwest poured into Longview.
EGT, its security thugs and the local cops were given a taste of the power that lies in the workers’ collectivity, solidarity and, above all, their capacity to stop production and the flow of goods, which chokes off profits. This is what makes ILWU members and their union allies criminals in the eyes of the courts, cops and prosecuting attorney. Their anti-union vendetta serves to illuminate the purpose of the state in capitalist society. Far from some “neutral” body representing the interests of all classes, it is the instrument for the suppression of the working class in defense of the interests of its exploiters.
In the context of the increasingly glaring social inequality of this society, constitutional rights like freedom of speech and assembly are, indeed, being relentlessly undermined in order to strengthen the repressive powers of the state, centrally to put down working-class and other social unrest. However, the rights of the workers to organize, to strike, to picket and shut down production are not and have never been rights codified in the Constitution. This is for the simple reason that they are an attack on the only actual guaranteed rights in this society—the property rights of the capitalist owners, which are the foundation for the profits they extract through the exploitation of labor. Everything that the workers have won has been through hard-fought class battles against the employers, their state and all of its political parties and other agencies. And these gains can only be defended through such struggle.
It is a bitter, if hardly unusual, irony that Susan Baur, the Cowlitz County prosecuting attorney who is criminalizing those who fought to defend the ILWU, was supported in her bid for office by the local ILWU and other area unions as the Democratic Party “lesser evil” candidate. While the Republicans revel in bashing the unions, black people, immigrants and the poor, the Democrats lie and do the same thing under the cover of being the friends of labor. It is an old shell game, one that has served to subordinate the working class to a party which no less than the Republicans represents the interests of its class enemy. This was more than amply demonstrated in the battle against EGT, whose union-busting efforts were backed by Barack Obama’s NLRB and later the mobilization of the military forces of the Coast Guard to escort the first ship to be loaded from the EGT terminal.
While the state’s Democratic governor Christine Gregoire intervened to broker a deal between the ILWU and EGT, there should be no illusion that the motivation was the interests of labor. On the contrary. In the lead-up to the presidential election, the Democrats could ill afford a conflict unleashing the military might of the Coast Guard against the ILWU, other unions and Occupy forces who were mobilizing in protest. Such a confrontation could have endangered the Democrats’ support from organized labor, whose top officials provide both significant manpower and money to get out the vote.
In the end, the ILWU was able to hold the line against EGT’s union-busting offensive, preserving jobs the union has held for 80 years and maintaining its coastwide organization. But the contract is concessionary, making further inroads against hard-won union gains. These include seriously undermining the union hiring hall by giving EGT veto power over who will be allowed to work its ships, excluding ILWU clerks from work at the terminal and vastly expanding management prerogatives, including allowing the bosses to do longshore work. These concessions will not be lost on the other big grain companies when their contract with the ILWU is renegotiated this fall. And it is not just the ILWU they have been gunning for.
Washburn’s letter is right that the battle in Longview should have begun with labor action to defend union jobs when the EGT terminal was being constructed. But such a fight was never engaged at that time either by the construction trades unions or the ILWU. Instead, the call went out to “Employ Local Workers for Local Jobs,” a slogan on placards at ILWU protests. In fact, EGT did just that, bringing in local area workers from the Operating Engineers Local 701 as scabs against the ILWU. Indeed, EGT’s union-busting offensive provided plenty of “community jobs,” not for the workers but for the union-busting agents of the capitalist state, from the county sheriff to the cops and prosecuting attorney’s office! That they are funded by tax dollars merely demonstrates that this money is not “ours” but rather provides a general fund for the state to do its business. And that business is to defend the property and profits of the capitalist owners.
Now, as Washburn points out, other grain companies in the Pacific Northwest that are refitting and expanding their operations are following in EGT’s footsteps in keeping out unionized construction workers. What is urgently posed is mobilizing labor to fight for union jobs, including organizing the unorganized regardless of where they are from and bringing them into the unions with full union pay, benefits and working conditions. But the fight for union jobs is once again being derailed in the name of defending “local jobs.”
At the Port of Vancouver, Washington, immigrant workers brought in to pour cement for a new United Grain silo are subject to slave-labor conditions. Outside the terminal, protesters have carried signs reading, “Our Ports, Our Jobs” and “Tax Breaks to Import Low Wage Workers.” This plays right into the hand of the bosses, who use racial and ethnic hostilities to keep the workers divided and weak. Instead, labor must link the defense of union jobs to the fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Such a struggle can lay the foundation for workers to stand shoulder to shoulder against the employers, not only to preserve the existing unions but also to replenish the diminishing ranks of organized labor with new fighters.
The fact that the ports are not privately owned does not mean that they belong to the “public.” They are run by local government agencies whose purpose is to serve the interests of the grain, shipping and other companies that lease the land for their operations. Contrary to the myth of a united “community” fighting against a giant multinational corporation, the battle of Longview demonstrated the irreconcilable class divide between labor and capital. The town was torn exactly along this fundamental fault line. As American Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon explained in the aftermath of the hard-fought, 99-day maritime workers strike of 1936-37, which consolidated the power of the West Coast longshore union:
“A conflict between workers and employers is not a mere misunderstanding between two elements who have a common general interest. On the contrary it springs from an irreconcilable conflict of interest: it is an expression of a ruthless class struggle wherein power alone decides the issue.
“Viewed in this light, a dispute between workers and employers cannot be settled fairly by the government; the government is an instrument of one of the parties to the dispute—in this case the capitalists. The class conflict cannot be handed over to the ‘public’ to decide: the ‘public’ is itself divided into classes with different interests and different sympathies regulated primarily by these interests. The polemics of Karl Marx against the conservative labor leaders of his day answered all these questions. All the experience of the labor movement since that time, including the recent west coast strike, speaks for the position of Marx and against all conceptions which overlook the class struggle.”
— “After the Maritime Strike,” (February 1937), reprinted in Notebook of an Agitator (1958)
Writ large, the call to preserve local jobs echoes the cry for “American jobs for American workers.” The AFL-CIO bureaucrats have long promoted this demand as the way to defend union jobs against “cheap labor.” The result has been precisely the opposite. One need only look at the unions that have been destroyed, the strikes busted, the growing mass of unorganized workers and army of unemployed desperate for any kind of work at any wages. In the name of defending “American jobs,” the union misleaders have subordinated the workers’ interests to the profitability of American capitalism, profits which are secured through the increasingly brutal exploitation of labor at home and abroad. This class collaboration has not only pitted American workers against their class brothers and sisters internationally but has also vastly increased the supply of “cheap labor” in this country. Thus, the protests at the port of Vancouver in Washington state are targeting not only immigrant workers but also “out-of-state” U.S. workers being brought in for construction.
Washburn’s letter points to the expanding resource export developments in the region. These include constructing new coal terminals as well as revamping grain-shipping facilities in order to cash in on the growing market for trade with Asia. U.S. agribusiness, the world’s leading grain exporter, seeks to monopolize and control the market to keep prices as high as possible. Far from meeting the food demands of the populations of these countries, the U.S. grain giants condemn millions of working people and poor around the globe to starvation. Food exports are also wielded as weapons to ensure the subjugation of less-developed countries to U.S. imperialism. (See “Imperialism Starves World’s Poor,” WV Nos. 919 and 920, 29 August and 12 September 2008).
At the same time, in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the growing export industry in the Pacific Northwest can serve as a lever for the workers in waging a real fight for union jobs. As the early battles in Longview showed, the power is there to shut down construction, production and shipping at these facilities, but only if the workers rely on their own independent strength. That means putting aside illusions in the “community” and Democratic Party representatives and mobilizing as a class in struggle against the class enemy. Above all, labor must understand that its fight is international—the workers of the world are allies in the class struggle.
Again we thank Washburn for her letter. It is important for the workers and their allies who fought with such courage and determination against EGT’s union-busting offensive to draw the lessons of this battle. Out of such hard-fought class struggle, a new leadership of the unions can be forged, one that fights not merely to defend and better the workers’ conditions but to abolish the tyranny of capitalist wage slavery. For this struggle, the workers need their own party, one that represents their class interests and that fights for the rights of all the oppressed. In a socialist America, the vast resources of this country will be used to provide for the needs of the many, not the profits of the few, and not just here but across the globe.
Workers Vanguard No. 1003
25 May 2012
Lessons of Longview: An Exchange
(Letter)
The following letter was sent to the Spartacist League on March 28.
Thank you for your article, “Protest State Vendetta Against Longview ILWU & Its Allies.”
My husband, Jeff Washburn, President of the Cowlitz Wahkiakum Labor Council and President of the Longview/Kelso Bldg & Construction Trades, was the very first person arrested near the Tracks on Sept. 7th, 2011, the day of the train delay. Today we will go to another pre-trial hearing, if the prosecutor does not ask for another postponement today, we will go to trial on Friday.
He is one of the very few folks that have not been coerced into pleading guilty. He is not a longshoreman and had very good reason to be there. His attorney is Chad Sleight from Vancouver, WA. Although admittedly it would have been easier on our family to plead and get it over with months ago, this had been very time consuming and stressful for all of us. However, someone has to stand up for what is right, it might as well be us.
Jeff was instrumental in getting our State Representatives together and tasking them to push the Governor to meet with the parties. He started coordinating these meetings way ahead, it took them that long to find common meeting times. I firmly believe that had it not been for Jeff, the parties would never have met with the Governor. The strategy was not headed in that direction when he called for the Executive meetings with our state Reps. Yet here he is defending himself when he is actually the “hero”.
You will find it interesting that the Cowlitz County Prosecutor has issued a pre-trial notice that she has determined “this is not a constitutional right issue.” I don’t have the exact language in front of me, but it is something our lawyer has not seen before.
Regardless of the final outcome, this will be a possible landmark case at the local level. This case could determine how future demonstration activities are handled here in Cowlitz and prosecuted with our tax dollars.
Furthermore, we thought it worthwhile to note, that as of today, it appears that the construction at the Kalama Grain Terminal will proceed exactly as EGT, using out-of-town-workforce to build, the same contractor has already walked the job, TE Ibberson and affiliates.
It wasn’t until EGT was already built that the longshoremen actually got on board, long after the local construction industry had missed out on all the construction.
I have photos of all the license plates from out of the area that worked on the EGT job. Now it is starting to happen again, just in Kalama, WA and we have no reason to believe that the construction of the facility will be any different than EGT. The longshoremen might get the final work, but as far as the rest of us, most likely we will again be left out in the cold. Meanwhile, the real story of resource exportation/exploitation in order to meet the rising asian food demand is the real story, and how these multinationals aim to do it the cheapest way possible is the other story.
For background reading:
http://tdn.com/news/local/million-expansion-on-the-horizon-for-port-of-kalama-grain/article_b64fb80c-634e-11e1-a2fd-0019bb2963f4.html
http://savelocaljobs.org/egts-new-source-of-wheat
http://savelocaljobs.org/gambling-at-the-taxpayers-expense
http://savelocaljobs.org/santorum-hit-list-includes-dust-bowl-prevention
Feel free to contact me directly.
Just the savelocaljobs blogger...
T. Washburn
WV replies:
We thank Washburn for her letter. It raises several central and ongoing issues coming out of the class battle that pitted the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and its supporters against the union-busting offensive by the giant EGT grain consortium and its allies—from the local and federal cops and courts to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and, in the end, an armed Coast Guard flotilla.
On March 30, Washburn’s husband Jeff was convicted of obstructing/delaying a train last September 7, slapped with a $243 fine and sentenced to 20 hours of community service. The day that Jeff Washburn—then president of the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Council—was arrested, a picket of some 300 ILWUers and other unionists, among them ILWU International president Robert McEllrath, was brutally attacked by cops wielding clubs, tear gas and guns loaded with rubber bullets. In the early morning hours of September 8, longshoremen from throughout the Pacific Northwest poured into Longview.
EGT, its security thugs and the local cops were given a taste of the power that lies in the workers’ collectivity, solidarity and, above all, their capacity to stop production and the flow of goods, which chokes off profits. This is what makes ILWU members and their union allies criminals in the eyes of the courts, cops and prosecuting attorney. Their anti-union vendetta serves to illuminate the purpose of the state in capitalist society. Far from some “neutral” body representing the interests of all classes, it is the instrument for the suppression of the working class in defense of the interests of its exploiters.
In the context of the increasingly glaring social inequality of this society, constitutional rights like freedom of speech and assembly are, indeed, being relentlessly undermined in order to strengthen the repressive powers of the state, centrally to put down working-class and other social unrest. However, the rights of the workers to organize, to strike, to picket and shut down production are not and have never been rights codified in the Constitution. This is for the simple reason that they are an attack on the only actual guaranteed rights in this society—the property rights of the capitalist owners, which are the foundation for the profits they extract through the exploitation of labor. Everything that the workers have won has been through hard-fought class battles against the employers, their state and all of its political parties and other agencies. And these gains can only be defended through such struggle.
It is a bitter, if hardly unusual, irony that Susan Baur, the Cowlitz County prosecuting attorney who is criminalizing those who fought to defend the ILWU, was supported in her bid for office by the local ILWU and other area unions as the Democratic Party “lesser evil” candidate. While the Republicans revel in bashing the unions, black people, immigrants and the poor, the Democrats lie and do the same thing under the cover of being the friends of labor. It is an old shell game, one that has served to subordinate the working class to a party which no less than the Republicans represents the interests of its class enemy. This was more than amply demonstrated in the battle against EGT, whose union-busting efforts were backed by Barack Obama’s NLRB and later the mobilization of the military forces of the Coast Guard to escort the first ship to be loaded from the EGT terminal.
While the state’s Democratic governor Christine Gregoire intervened to broker a deal between the ILWU and EGT, there should be no illusion that the motivation was the interests of labor. On the contrary. In the lead-up to the presidential election, the Democrats could ill afford a conflict unleashing the military might of the Coast Guard against the ILWU, other unions and Occupy forces who were mobilizing in protest. Such a confrontation could have endangered the Democrats’ support from organized labor, whose top officials provide both significant manpower and money to get out the vote.
In the end, the ILWU was able to hold the line against EGT’s union-busting offensive, preserving jobs the union has held for 80 years and maintaining its coastwide organization. But the contract is concessionary, making further inroads against hard-won union gains. These include seriously undermining the union hiring hall by giving EGT veto power over who will be allowed to work its ships, excluding ILWU clerks from work at the terminal and vastly expanding management prerogatives, including allowing the bosses to do longshore work. These concessions will not be lost on the other big grain companies when their contract with the ILWU is renegotiated this fall. And it is not just the ILWU they have been gunning for.
Washburn’s letter is right that the battle in Longview should have begun with labor action to defend union jobs when the EGT terminal was being constructed. But such a fight was never engaged at that time either by the construction trades unions or the ILWU. Instead, the call went out to “Employ Local Workers for Local Jobs,” a slogan on placards at ILWU protests. In fact, EGT did just that, bringing in local area workers from the Operating Engineers Local 701 as scabs against the ILWU. Indeed, EGT’s union-busting offensive provided plenty of “community jobs,” not for the workers but for the union-busting agents of the capitalist state, from the county sheriff to the cops and prosecuting attorney’s office! That they are funded by tax dollars merely demonstrates that this money is not “ours” but rather provides a general fund for the state to do its business. And that business is to defend the property and profits of the capitalist owners.
Now, as Washburn points out, other grain companies in the Pacific Northwest that are refitting and expanding their operations are following in EGT’s footsteps in keeping out unionized construction workers. What is urgently posed is mobilizing labor to fight for union jobs, including organizing the unorganized regardless of where they are from and bringing them into the unions with full union pay, benefits and working conditions. But the fight for union jobs is once again being derailed in the name of defending “local jobs.”
At the Port of Vancouver, Washington, immigrant workers brought in to pour cement for a new United Grain silo are subject to slave-labor conditions. Outside the terminal, protesters have carried signs reading, “Our Ports, Our Jobs” and “Tax Breaks to Import Low Wage Workers.” This plays right into the hand of the bosses, who use racial and ethnic hostilities to keep the workers divided and weak. Instead, labor must link the defense of union jobs to the fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Such a struggle can lay the foundation for workers to stand shoulder to shoulder against the employers, not only to preserve the existing unions but also to replenish the diminishing ranks of organized labor with new fighters.
The fact that the ports are not privately owned does not mean that they belong to the “public.” They are run by local government agencies whose purpose is to serve the interests of the grain, shipping and other companies that lease the land for their operations. Contrary to the myth of a united “community” fighting against a giant multinational corporation, the battle of Longview demonstrated the irreconcilable class divide between labor and capital. The town was torn exactly along this fundamental fault line. As American Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon explained in the aftermath of the hard-fought, 99-day maritime workers strike of 1936-37, which consolidated the power of the West Coast longshore union:
“A conflict between workers and employers is not a mere misunderstanding between two elements who have a common general interest. On the contrary it springs from an irreconcilable conflict of interest: it is an expression of a ruthless class struggle wherein power alone decides the issue.
“Viewed in this light, a dispute between workers and employers cannot be settled fairly by the government; the government is an instrument of one of the parties to the dispute—in this case the capitalists. The class conflict cannot be handed over to the ‘public’ to decide: the ‘public’ is itself divided into classes with different interests and different sympathies regulated primarily by these interests. The polemics of Karl Marx against the conservative labor leaders of his day answered all these questions. All the experience of the labor movement since that time, including the recent west coast strike, speaks for the position of Marx and against all conceptions which overlook the class struggle.”
— “After the Maritime Strike,” (February 1937), reprinted in Notebook of an Agitator (1958)
Writ large, the call to preserve local jobs echoes the cry for “American jobs for American workers.” The AFL-CIO bureaucrats have long promoted this demand as the way to defend union jobs against “cheap labor.” The result has been precisely the opposite. One need only look at the unions that have been destroyed, the strikes busted, the growing mass of unorganized workers and army of unemployed desperate for any kind of work at any wages. In the name of defending “American jobs,” the union misleaders have subordinated the workers’ interests to the profitability of American capitalism, profits which are secured through the increasingly brutal exploitation of labor at home and abroad. This class collaboration has not only pitted American workers against their class brothers and sisters internationally but has also vastly increased the supply of “cheap labor” in this country. Thus, the protests at the port of Vancouver in Washington state are targeting not only immigrant workers but also “out-of-state” U.S. workers being brought in for construction.
Washburn’s letter points to the expanding resource export developments in the region. These include constructing new coal terminals as well as revamping grain-shipping facilities in order to cash in on the growing market for trade with Asia. U.S. agribusiness, the world’s leading grain exporter, seeks to monopolize and control the market to keep prices as high as possible. Far from meeting the food demands of the populations of these countries, the U.S. grain giants condemn millions of working people and poor around the globe to starvation. Food exports are also wielded as weapons to ensure the subjugation of less-developed countries to U.S. imperialism. (See “Imperialism Starves World’s Poor,” WV Nos. 919 and 920, 29 August and 12 September 2008).
At the same time, in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the growing export industry in the Pacific Northwest can serve as a lever for the workers in waging a real fight for union jobs. As the early battles in Longview showed, the power is there to shut down construction, production and shipping at these facilities, but only if the workers rely on their own independent strength. That means putting aside illusions in the “community” and Democratic Party representatives and mobilizing as a class in struggle against the class enemy. Above all, labor must understand that its fight is international—the workers of the world are allies in the class struggle.
Again we thank Washburn for her letter. It is important for the workers and their allies who fought with such courage and determination against EGT’s union-busting offensive to draw the lessons of this battle. Out of such hard-fought class struggle, a new leadership of the unions can be forged, one that fights not merely to defend and better the workers’ conditions but to abolish the tyranny of capitalist wage slavery. For this struggle, the workers need their own party, one that represents their class interests and that fights for the rights of all the oppressed. In a socialist America, the vast resources of this country will be used to provide for the needs of the many, not the profits of the few, and not just here but across the globe.
From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-U.S. Muslim Imprisoned for Translating-Free Tarek Mehanna!
Click on the headline to link to the International Communist League website.
Workers Vanguard No. 1003
25 May 2012
U.S. Muslim Imprisoned for Translating-Free Tarek Mehanna!
Just as the American capitalist rulers have declared the “war against terrorism” to be eternal, the limits to which they will go in eviscerating civil liberties under that pretext know no bounds. In a frontal attack on the rights of speech supposedly protected in the First Amendment, Tarek Mehanna was convicted in December on bogus “material support to terrorism” charges primarily for translating jihadist documents. The 29-year-old U.S. citizen was sentenced on April 12 to 17 1/2 years in prison. It is in the interest of the working class, all minorities, youth and opponents of imperialist war to denounce Mehanna’s conviction and demand his immediate release!
This was a chemically pure thought-crime prosecution. Mehanna committed no crime, carried out no act of “terrorism,” and even according to what has been the government’s expansive definition, did not provide any “material” support to terrorist activities. According to the indictment, evidence that Mehanna furthered a “criminal conspiracy” was that he “created and/or translated, accepted credit for authoring and distributed text, videos, and other media to inspire others to engage in violent jihad,” “watched jihadi videos,” “discussed efforts to create like-minded youth” and spoke of “admiration and love for Usama bin Laden.” As Yale professor Andrew March pointed out in a 21 April New York Times op-ed piece “A Dangerous Mind?”: “Those acts were not used by the government to demonstrate the intent or mental state behind some other crime.... They were the crime.” One prosecutor gave the game away when he declared about the case: “It’s not illegal to watch something on the television. It is illegal, however, to watch something in order to cultivate your desire, your ideology.”
The government’s case rested on two wobbly legs. The first was making a trip abroad. In 2004 at the age of 21, Mehanna and a friend spent one week in Yemen purportedly in an unsuccessful search for a jihadi training camp from which they would continue on to Iraq to wage war against the American occupiers. The other leg—the core of the prosecution—was translating Islamist documents he found online, centrally a 2003 text by a Saudi religious scholar titled “39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad.” Georgetown University law professor David Cole wrote in the New York Review of Books’ NYRblog (19 April):
“Google ‘39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad’ and you’ll get over 590,000 hits. You’ll find full-text English language translations of this Arabic document on the Internet Archive, an Internet library; on 4Shared Desktop, a file-sharing site; and on numerous Islamic sites. You will find it cited and discussed in a US Senate Committee staff report and Congressional testimony. Feel free to read it. Just don’t try to make your own translation from the original.”
The proscription of what constitutes “material support” to terrorism, first promulgated in the Clinton administration’s 1996 “anti-terror” law and then extended in the Bush administration’s USA-Patriot Act, is so broad and vague as to allow the Feds to make it whatever they want it to be. In the 2010 Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the benign acts of advising the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and Kurdistan Workers Party on their appeals to the UN, engaging in political advocacy on behalf of Tamils and Kurds and training LTTE members in lobbying for tsunami relief would constitute material support to terrorism. (See “Supreme Court Decision Shreds First Amendment Rights,” WV No. 961, 2 July 2010.)
In denying that such prohibitions would violate the First Amendment rights of the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP), the Court ludicrously “explained” that it was not prohibiting “independent advocacy,” i.e., HLP could say whatever it wanted on behalf of a group designated terrorist—just not in consultation with any of its members! Although Mehanna’s prosecution relied on the Holder precedent, he engaged in exactly the “independent advocacy” supposedly approved by that ruling. There were no consultations or communications with Al Qaeda or anyone else the government has deemed terrorists. If upheld on appeal, Mehanna’s conviction will cement a major precedent in the rollback of First Amendment rights, criminalizing just about any speech deemed offensive to this ruling class, the most rapacious in world history.
In his statement to the court before sentencing, Mehanna pointed out how earlier the government had unsuccessfully sought to entrap him into an FBI-initiated terrorist plot (a common ploy in the “war on terror” witchhunt of Muslims), then recruit him as an informant, only to reward his rejections with a terrorism prosecution. Mehanna described how his education as an American schoolchild led him to identify with the cause of the oppressed against their oppressors, citing anti-slavery fighters Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner and John Brown as well as “Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the civil rights struggle.”
Ultimately, Mehanna embraced a reactionary Islamic worldview. However, as he explained, he did not advocate the indiscriminate killing of Americans as retribution for the crimes of the imperialist rulers but rather the defense of those Muslims across the globe being crushed under the boots of the American marauders. Mehanna passionately recounted the devastation of the 1991 Gulf War, the UN starvation sanctions against Iraq, the “shock and awe” invasion of 2003 and brutal occupation that followed as well as the drone attacks in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen today that routinely kill civilians. As he emphasized, “This trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians.... The government says that I was obsessed with violence, with ‘killing Americans.’ But, as a Muslim living in these times, I can think of a lie no more ironic.”
The post-September 11 “war against terrorism” may have been hatched by the Bush administration, but it has been Obama and his top cop Eric Holder who have fed it, cleaned its feathers and let it soar. More so than his predecessor, Obama has targeted leftists. Obama’s Justice Department quadrupled the sentence for 72-year-old leftist attorney Lynne Stewart, who was imprisoned for zealously defending her client, a blind Islamic cleric convicted for an alleged plot to blow up NYC landmarks in the early 1990s. The Obama government has also gone after the Freedom Road Socialist Organization on the basis of purported links to the secular-nationalist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Colombia’s FARC guerrillas. Last year, Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, sanctioning the indefinite military detention of any persons, including U.S. citizens, accused of supporting “terrorism.”
The “anti-terror” laws and well-publicized prosecutions like that of Mehanna serve a dual purpose: purveying the myth of “national unity” and enhancing the repressive machinery of the capitalist state. As the bourgeois rulers ratchet up the grinding exploitation of the proletariat and oversee the brutal oppression of ghettoized black and Latino masses, they portray these measures as necessary to protect the entire population. But there is no unity of interests between the exploited and their exploiters. When the contradictions of American capitalism ultimately propel the working class into struggle, dissolving the “national unity” glue, workers will be confronted with naked state repression bolstered by the “war on terror.” It is incumbent on working people to fight to defend democratic rights, the besieged Muslim population and all those caught up in the “anti-terror” witchhunt. We seek to build a revolutionary workers party, a tribune of all the people, dedicated to leading the working class in sweeping away capitalist class rule and replacing it with a workers government.
Workers Vanguard No. 1003
25 May 2012
U.S. Muslim Imprisoned for Translating-Free Tarek Mehanna!
Just as the American capitalist rulers have declared the “war against terrorism” to be eternal, the limits to which they will go in eviscerating civil liberties under that pretext know no bounds. In a frontal attack on the rights of speech supposedly protected in the First Amendment, Tarek Mehanna was convicted in December on bogus “material support to terrorism” charges primarily for translating jihadist documents. The 29-year-old U.S. citizen was sentenced on April 12 to 17 1/2 years in prison. It is in the interest of the working class, all minorities, youth and opponents of imperialist war to denounce Mehanna’s conviction and demand his immediate release!
This was a chemically pure thought-crime prosecution. Mehanna committed no crime, carried out no act of “terrorism,” and even according to what has been the government’s expansive definition, did not provide any “material” support to terrorist activities. According to the indictment, evidence that Mehanna furthered a “criminal conspiracy” was that he “created and/or translated, accepted credit for authoring and distributed text, videos, and other media to inspire others to engage in violent jihad,” “watched jihadi videos,” “discussed efforts to create like-minded youth” and spoke of “admiration and love for Usama bin Laden.” As Yale professor Andrew March pointed out in a 21 April New York Times op-ed piece “A Dangerous Mind?”: “Those acts were not used by the government to demonstrate the intent or mental state behind some other crime.... They were the crime.” One prosecutor gave the game away when he declared about the case: “It’s not illegal to watch something on the television. It is illegal, however, to watch something in order to cultivate your desire, your ideology.”
The government’s case rested on two wobbly legs. The first was making a trip abroad. In 2004 at the age of 21, Mehanna and a friend spent one week in Yemen purportedly in an unsuccessful search for a jihadi training camp from which they would continue on to Iraq to wage war against the American occupiers. The other leg—the core of the prosecution—was translating Islamist documents he found online, centrally a 2003 text by a Saudi religious scholar titled “39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad.” Georgetown University law professor David Cole wrote in the New York Review of Books’ NYRblog (19 April):
“Google ‘39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad’ and you’ll get over 590,000 hits. You’ll find full-text English language translations of this Arabic document on the Internet Archive, an Internet library; on 4Shared Desktop, a file-sharing site; and on numerous Islamic sites. You will find it cited and discussed in a US Senate Committee staff report and Congressional testimony. Feel free to read it. Just don’t try to make your own translation from the original.”
The proscription of what constitutes “material support” to terrorism, first promulgated in the Clinton administration’s 1996 “anti-terror” law and then extended in the Bush administration’s USA-Patriot Act, is so broad and vague as to allow the Feds to make it whatever they want it to be. In the 2010 Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the benign acts of advising the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and Kurdistan Workers Party on their appeals to the UN, engaging in political advocacy on behalf of Tamils and Kurds and training LTTE members in lobbying for tsunami relief would constitute material support to terrorism. (See “Supreme Court Decision Shreds First Amendment Rights,” WV No. 961, 2 July 2010.)
In denying that such prohibitions would violate the First Amendment rights of the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP), the Court ludicrously “explained” that it was not prohibiting “independent advocacy,” i.e., HLP could say whatever it wanted on behalf of a group designated terrorist—just not in consultation with any of its members! Although Mehanna’s prosecution relied on the Holder precedent, he engaged in exactly the “independent advocacy” supposedly approved by that ruling. There were no consultations or communications with Al Qaeda or anyone else the government has deemed terrorists. If upheld on appeal, Mehanna’s conviction will cement a major precedent in the rollback of First Amendment rights, criminalizing just about any speech deemed offensive to this ruling class, the most rapacious in world history.
In his statement to the court before sentencing, Mehanna pointed out how earlier the government had unsuccessfully sought to entrap him into an FBI-initiated terrorist plot (a common ploy in the “war on terror” witchhunt of Muslims), then recruit him as an informant, only to reward his rejections with a terrorism prosecution. Mehanna described how his education as an American schoolchild led him to identify with the cause of the oppressed against their oppressors, citing anti-slavery fighters Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner and John Brown as well as “Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the civil rights struggle.”
Ultimately, Mehanna embraced a reactionary Islamic worldview. However, as he explained, he did not advocate the indiscriminate killing of Americans as retribution for the crimes of the imperialist rulers but rather the defense of those Muslims across the globe being crushed under the boots of the American marauders. Mehanna passionately recounted the devastation of the 1991 Gulf War, the UN starvation sanctions against Iraq, the “shock and awe” invasion of 2003 and brutal occupation that followed as well as the drone attacks in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen today that routinely kill civilians. As he emphasized, “This trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians.... The government says that I was obsessed with violence, with ‘killing Americans.’ But, as a Muslim living in these times, I can think of a lie no more ironic.”
The post-September 11 “war against terrorism” may have been hatched by the Bush administration, but it has been Obama and his top cop Eric Holder who have fed it, cleaned its feathers and let it soar. More so than his predecessor, Obama has targeted leftists. Obama’s Justice Department quadrupled the sentence for 72-year-old leftist attorney Lynne Stewart, who was imprisoned for zealously defending her client, a blind Islamic cleric convicted for an alleged plot to blow up NYC landmarks in the early 1990s. The Obama government has also gone after the Freedom Road Socialist Organization on the basis of purported links to the secular-nationalist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Colombia’s FARC guerrillas. Last year, Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, sanctioning the indefinite military detention of any persons, including U.S. citizens, accused of supporting “terrorism.”
The “anti-terror” laws and well-publicized prosecutions like that of Mehanna serve a dual purpose: purveying the myth of “national unity” and enhancing the repressive machinery of the capitalist state. As the bourgeois rulers ratchet up the grinding exploitation of the proletariat and oversee the brutal oppression of ghettoized black and Latino masses, they portray these measures as necessary to protect the entire population. But there is no unity of interests between the exploited and their exploiters. When the contradictions of American capitalism ultimately propel the working class into struggle, dissolving the “national unity” glue, workers will be confronted with naked state repression bolstered by the “war on terror.” It is incumbent on working people to fight to defend democratic rights, the besieged Muslim population and all those caught up in the “anti-terror” witchhunt. We seek to build a revolutionary workers party, a tribune of all the people, dedicated to leading the working class in sweeping away capitalist class rule and replacing it with a workers government.
From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-Defend Anti-NATO Protesters! (The May 20th Chicago Anti-NATO Mobilization)
Click on the headline to link to the International Communist League website.
Workers Vanguard No. 1003
25 May 2012
Defend Anti-NATO Protesters!
Chicago
MAY 21—Over 10,000 people marched in Chicago yesterday as part of a week of protests against the annual summit meeting of the U.S.-dominated NATO imperialist military alliance. This gathering of war criminals, hosted by U.S. Commander-in-Chief Obama in his hometown, takes place against a backdrop of the now decade-long U.S./NATO occupation of Afghanistan and last year’s bombing of Libya, not to mention the ongoing austerity forced on working people. Down with NATO!
To shield NATO’s bloody imperialist rulers from justified outrage, Obama’s former henchman and current Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel imposed a state of siege on Chicago. In the months leading up to the protests, Emanuel rewrote city ordinances to limit the rights of demonstrators, including by placing sweeping restrictions on permits. In one case, National Nurses United, whose members are facing a wage- and benefit-slashing offensive, was forced to cancel a march it had planned to accompany its rally.
Thousands of National Guardsmen, active-duty troops and deputized cops from as far away as North Carolina descended on the city. Police brutally attacked protesters, with arrests now totaling 90. Afterward, Obama praised the Chicago Police Department and the mayor, saying they “did wonderfully.”
As part of their effort to intimidate demonstrators and justify the massive show of police force, on May 16 the Chicago cops raided an apartment that housed out-of-town protesters, arresting the residents and charging three for a supposed “terrorist plot.” The men remain in prison in a clear case of entrapment. Two of those living in the apartment were either police informants or undercover cops. “It really is pretty playbook,” said Sarah Gelsomino of the National Lawyers Guild, which has provided legal counsel to the three men. “The police engage in this kind of conduct—very sensational charges and preemptive raids of activists in what we believe to be really an attempt to intimidate people to stop them from protesting.”
A YouTube video posted by the “NATO 3” prior to their arrest captures how the Chicago cops greeted protesters. With squad cars surrounding their vehicle, one officer invoked the police riot against protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He asks, “What did they say back in ’68?” Another cop replies: “Billy club to the f---ing skull.”
The NATO 3 are the first ever charged with violating Illinois state’s anti-terror statutes, which were enacted after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Here is another example of how the “war on terror,” which initially victimized Arab and Muslim immigrants, set into motion repressive measures ultimately meant for leftists, trade unionists and black people. It is in the interests of the working class to defend these men and all anti-NATO protesters against state repression.
The military adventures of the imperialist butchers abroad always come packaged with domestic repression at home. The U.S. capitalist ruling class that devastated Iraq and Afghanistan and is now unleashing its thugs in blue on protesters in Chicago is also responsible for grinding down working people nationwide. Struggle against U.S./NATO’s murderous occupations must be linked to a fight against the capitalist system that inevitably breeds war and depredation. Only through workers revolution can that system be swept away.
We reprint below a May 21 letter by the Partisan Defense Committee—a legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League—to the State’s Attorney.
* * *
The Partisan Defense Committee protests the police attacks on the demonstrations against the NATO summit in Chicago and arrest of over 50 protesters. The massive police mobilization and frontal assault on civil liberties accompanying the summit are directed against labor, leftists, antiwar activists and others who simply seek to exercise their First Amendment rights of speech and assembly.
On May 16, with no warrant but guns drawn and battering rams swinging, the Chicago police stormed an apartment in the Bridgeport neighborhood. Nine people were arrested. Three—Brent Betterly, Brian Church and Jared Chase—face charges of “conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism, and possession of an explosive or incendiary device.” The arrests came less than a week after the accused “NATO 3” had posted on YouTube a video of an officer threatening them: “We’ll come look for you, each and every one of you.” Outrageously, each is being held on a $1.5 million bond and faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted!
The arrests of Betterly, Church and Chase have all the earmarks of a classic case of police entrapment and provocation. According to their attorneys, the allegations were trumped up by informants, who may have been undercover agents, living with them at the time of the police raid. Since then, two other political activists, Mark Neiweem and Sebastian Senakiewicz, have been arrested on terrorism-related charges, reportedly based on accusations by the same police informers. A spokesman for the National Lawyers Guild rightly described these charges as an “effort to frighten people and to diminish the size of the demonstrations.”
We demand that all the charges be dropped! Hands off the anti-NATO protesters!
Workers Vanguard No. 1003
25 May 2012
Defend Anti-NATO Protesters!
Chicago
MAY 21—Over 10,000 people marched in Chicago yesterday as part of a week of protests against the annual summit meeting of the U.S.-dominated NATO imperialist military alliance. This gathering of war criminals, hosted by U.S. Commander-in-Chief Obama in his hometown, takes place against a backdrop of the now decade-long U.S./NATO occupation of Afghanistan and last year’s bombing of Libya, not to mention the ongoing austerity forced on working people. Down with NATO!
To shield NATO’s bloody imperialist rulers from justified outrage, Obama’s former henchman and current Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel imposed a state of siege on Chicago. In the months leading up to the protests, Emanuel rewrote city ordinances to limit the rights of demonstrators, including by placing sweeping restrictions on permits. In one case, National Nurses United, whose members are facing a wage- and benefit-slashing offensive, was forced to cancel a march it had planned to accompany its rally.
Thousands of National Guardsmen, active-duty troops and deputized cops from as far away as North Carolina descended on the city. Police brutally attacked protesters, with arrests now totaling 90. Afterward, Obama praised the Chicago Police Department and the mayor, saying they “did wonderfully.”
As part of their effort to intimidate demonstrators and justify the massive show of police force, on May 16 the Chicago cops raided an apartment that housed out-of-town protesters, arresting the residents and charging three for a supposed “terrorist plot.” The men remain in prison in a clear case of entrapment. Two of those living in the apartment were either police informants or undercover cops. “It really is pretty playbook,” said Sarah Gelsomino of the National Lawyers Guild, which has provided legal counsel to the three men. “The police engage in this kind of conduct—very sensational charges and preemptive raids of activists in what we believe to be really an attempt to intimidate people to stop them from protesting.”
A YouTube video posted by the “NATO 3” prior to their arrest captures how the Chicago cops greeted protesters. With squad cars surrounding their vehicle, one officer invoked the police riot against protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He asks, “What did they say back in ’68?” Another cop replies: “Billy club to the f---ing skull.”
The NATO 3 are the first ever charged with violating Illinois state’s anti-terror statutes, which were enacted after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Here is another example of how the “war on terror,” which initially victimized Arab and Muslim immigrants, set into motion repressive measures ultimately meant for leftists, trade unionists and black people. It is in the interests of the working class to defend these men and all anti-NATO protesters against state repression.
The military adventures of the imperialist butchers abroad always come packaged with domestic repression at home. The U.S. capitalist ruling class that devastated Iraq and Afghanistan and is now unleashing its thugs in blue on protesters in Chicago is also responsible for grinding down working people nationwide. Struggle against U.S./NATO’s murderous occupations must be linked to a fight against the capitalist system that inevitably breeds war and depredation. Only through workers revolution can that system be swept away.
We reprint below a May 21 letter by the Partisan Defense Committee—a legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League—to the State’s Attorney.
* * *
The Partisan Defense Committee protests the police attacks on the demonstrations against the NATO summit in Chicago and arrest of over 50 protesters. The massive police mobilization and frontal assault on civil liberties accompanying the summit are directed against labor, leftists, antiwar activists and others who simply seek to exercise their First Amendment rights of speech and assembly.
On May 16, with no warrant but guns drawn and battering rams swinging, the Chicago police stormed an apartment in the Bridgeport neighborhood. Nine people were arrested. Three—Brent Betterly, Brian Church and Jared Chase—face charges of “conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism, and possession of an explosive or incendiary device.” The arrests came less than a week after the accused “NATO 3” had posted on YouTube a video of an officer threatening them: “We’ll come look for you, each and every one of you.” Outrageously, each is being held on a $1.5 million bond and faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted!
The arrests of Betterly, Church and Chase have all the earmarks of a classic case of police entrapment and provocation. According to their attorneys, the allegations were trumped up by informants, who may have been undercover agents, living with them at the time of the police raid. Since then, two other political activists, Mark Neiweem and Sebastian Senakiewicz, have been arrested on terrorism-related charges, reportedly based on accusations by the same police informers. A spokesman for the National Lawyers Guild rightly described these charges as an “effort to frighten people and to diminish the size of the demonstrations.”
We demand that all the charges be dropped! Hands off the anti-NATO protesters!
From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-Student Strike Shakes Quebec-Mobilize the Power of the Working Class!
Click on the headline to link to the International Communist League website.
Workers Vanguard No. 1003
25 May 2012
Student Strike Shakes Quebec-Mobilize the Power of the Working Class!
(Young Spartacus pages)
MAY 22—We reprint below the translation of a French-language supplement to Spartacist Canada issued on May 17 by the Trotskyist League/Ligue Trotskyste, Canadian section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Since the supplement was issued, the Quebec government has enacted a draconian “emergency law” in an attempt to break the student strike. The law, passed on the evening of May 18, bans any protests in or outside the schools, severely restricts all other protests and threatens huge fines against groups or individuals who defy these edicts.
Student federations, trade unions and the main Quebec nationalist parties have all denounced the law. Many have compared it to the Canadian government’s imposition of the War Measures Act in October 1970, which saw hundreds of leftists, nationalists and union leaders arrested as part of a move to suppress widespread social protest in Quebec. Within hours of the law’s adoption, at least 10,000 students and their supporters took to the streets of Montreal in protest. Police attacks on student protesters continued over the following evenings, with more than 300 arrested on May 20 alone. On May 22, at least 300,000 people marched in solidarity with the students and to protest the government’s emergency law.
* * *
The 2012 student strike has been the longest in Quebec history. After more than three months, about 160,000 students remain on strike, boycotting classes and shutting down universities and Cégeps [junior colleges] with mass pickets, often in defiance of court injunctions. There have been well over 1,000 arrests and protesters have faced brutal, near-daily assaults by the police.
The student struggle has intersected and heightened a growing social crisis in Quebec. The governing Liberal Party of Jean Charest is deeply unpopular and mired in scandals. The 200,000-strong Montreal rally in support of striking students on March 22 was one of the largest demonstrations in Canadian history. One month later, the Earth Day demo, usually little more than a charity parade, drew a quarter million people, many of whom raised slogans against both the Quebec Liberals and the ruling federal Conservatives.
The strike has shown the depth of anger and defiance among Québécois youth, who have kept this massive struggle going despite vicious state repression and bourgeois media slander. With staggering levels of youth unemployment and poverty in Quebec, there is reason for anger. At the same time, this months-long battle has illustrated in a fundamental way the limitations of a struggle that has not been connected to the social power of the working class.
The capitalist rulers around the world aim to make workers and the oppressed pay for the financial crisis that is a direct product of the bourgeois profit system. [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper’s Conservatives have attacked the unions at Canada Post, Air Canada and elsewhere, while bringing down austerity measures against public sector workers. Workers in Quebec have had to taste the strikebreaking medicine of Quebecor, Aveos, Rio-Tinto and more. The student strike, precipitated by the Charest government’s plan to impose a 75 percent tuition increase, has marked something of a break in the mostly one-sided war that the bosses are waging on workers and the oppressed.
The bourgeoisie and its media mouthpieces inveigh against the students’ “violence” and “irresponsibility.” Yet for the last several years the utter venality of the ruling class has been on full display in Quebec. There has been a never-ending string of corruption revelations involving mayors and Liberal cabinet ministers, including Education Minister Line Beauchamp, who quit under the pressure of the student strike. This, together with daily revelations of construction and engineering firms’ illegal kickbacks, provides a sharp contrast to the courage and vibrancy of the student activists. The infamous “five percent”—the unspoken public construction “tax” that ends up in the pockets of various agents of the mafia and the Hells Angels, helping in turn to finance “friendly” politicians—is a practice as old as the hills in Quebec. The federalist Liberal Party is particularly shameless, but such dealings happened under Parti Québécois [PQ] administrations as well. And the notoriously brutal cops of the Montreal SPVM and provincial Sûreté du Québec, whose mutual enmity is legendary, have never been as united as when bashing students’ heads.
From the opposition benches, the bourgeois-nationalist PQ has given lip service to supporting the students as an electoral move against Charest. This is a cynical ploy by a party that only recently attacked the Liberals for being too “timid” in their drive to slash spending and balance the budget. The PQ itself tried to jack up tuition fees when it was in government in the 1990s, part of its sweeping attacks on workers and social programs under the program of “Déficit Zéro.” In any case, PQ leader Pauline Marois promises only a temporary tuition freeze if she becomes premier.
Students: Ally with the Working Class!
When Quebec shook off the yoke of the Westmount Anglo capitalists and their allies in the Catholic church in the 1960s, education was a key battleground. Trade-union struggles had long sought to make higher education attainable for francophone working-class youth. As Patrick Lagacé noted in a 4 May Globe and Mail article in support of the students: “50 years ago, Quebec was closer to a third-world country than a developed nation in terms of education markers.” Of those aged 25 in 1962, 54 percent had not completed Grade 6, and only 7 percent had attended university. A key aspect of the “Quiet Revolution,” the expansion and secularization of education was part of a drive by a modernizing francophone elite to cohere a distinct Québécois bourgeoisie and professional/technocratic stratum in order to be “masters in their own house.”
Today, despite Quebec’s continued national subordination within the Anglo-chauvinist Canadian state, Québécois companies like Bombardier, SNC-Lavalin and Quebecor are able to compete on a world scale with American and European multinationals. In the interest of greater profits, Liberal and PQ governments alike have waged ceaseless attacks on the working class and oppressed, including cuts to health care, education and other social programs.
The capitalists seek to invest in public education only what they can realize back in profit. Such profits are the product of labor, the surplus value that the bourgeoisie wrests from the workers through grinding exploitation. Thanks to its central role in social production, the working class has the unique social power to withhold its labor and bring the capitalist system to its knees. Students, a petty-bourgeois layer with no direct relation to production, lack such power. Student struggle can certainly spark broader social battles, as the current strike shows. But ultimately the only way forward is to ally with the working class.
In turn, it is in the interest of workers to actively support the combative students. This includes taking up the call for free, quality education for all and a living stipend for students. Against mounting debt servitude to the banks, we call to abolish the student debt. The cops now occupying a number of universities and colleges must be driven out. We call to abolish the administrations, the enforcers of capitalist rule on the campuses. For student/teacher/worker control of the Cégeps and universities!
The multisided attacks on workers and the poor can be stopped for good only through a broader political struggle centered on the social power of the working class. This must be infused with the understanding that the entire capitalist system must be swept away and replaced with an egalitarian socialist society geared to human needs, not private profit. Only workers revolution can rip the means of production from the hands of the bourgeois criminals who exploit the working class and its youth component. Victory in this struggle requires the forging of revolutionary vanguard parties of the working class—Trotskyist parties—throughout the world.
Students, Labor and the Union Bureaucracy
Support for the student strike and hatred for the Charest government have been palpable throughout the conflict. To their credit, the bulk of unionized teachers and professors affected by the strike have refused to cross the students’ picket lines, despite court injunctions pressing them to do so. Yet the nationalist union bureaucracy, while claiming to support the students, has not lifted a finger to mobilize the workers in strike action against the attacks of the Charest government. Instead, the labor tops have worked to restore “social peace.” The abortive May 5 deal to end the student strike was brokered by former Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe and the leaders of the three main union federations, only to be rejected by students all over Quebec.
The union bureaucracy shackles Québécois workers to the capitalist system through their support to the bourgeois-nationalist PQ and Bloc. This is also true of the [student] leaders of the Fédération Étudiante Universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) and Fédération Étudiante Collegiale du Québec (FECQ), who are allied with the labor tops in the Alliance Sociale. The majority of striking students are part of CLASSE (Coalition Large de l’Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante), the more left-wing, anarchist-influenced student union. In a late April call titled “Toward a Social Strike,” CLASSE noted:
“The striking students are aware of their inability by themselves to force the government to retreat from these various measures. Hence the necessity for the student movement to be joined by all social forces in our fight against Finance Minister Bachand’s cultural revolution. We are not appealing here for some superficial support, with a few union full-timers writing a news release repeating for the umpteenth time their support for the student struggle.... It is therefore a call for a social strike that we are issuing to the population as a whole!”
Uniting students in struggle with the social power of the working class is an absolute necessity. But CLASSE’s appeals for solidarity are not linked to a broader perspective of working-class struggle against capitalism. Like the FEUQ and FECQ, they end up looking for ways to refurbish the education system within the confines of the capitalist system. Thus the short-lived deal signed by all the student federations on May 5 sought to balance out the increase in tuition fees by finding “efficiencies” within individual universities and colleges. This amounts to agreeing to yet more austerity within the education system, and could very well turn against university and Cégep employees in the form of wage cuts and layoffs.
The solution lies outside the “regular” realm of student and trade-union politics, which are strictly confined to what is “practical” under capitalism. Against the sellout labor tops, it is necessary to fight for a class-struggle opposition in the unions dedicated to unleashing labor’s vast potential power on behalf of all the victims of the bourgeoisie’s profit system. Among other things, that means defending the rights of immigrants and ethnic/religious minorities—notably Muslims, who face a concerted racist offensive from nationalist and federalist politicians alike.
Québec Solidaire: Fifth Wheel of the PQ
The student struggle has illuminated, again, the reality of the national divide between English Canada and Quebec. For the first month or so, the English Canadian bourgeois media simply blacked out any news of the protests. Then as the cop violence against the students escalated, the media denounced the student strikers with not a small dose of sneering Anglo chauvinism. The Harper Conservatives, whose origins are in Western Canada, have essentially written off Quebec in their electoral calculations, and are implementing reactionary policies on crime, the military, the monarchy and the environment that appear to most Québécois to be coming from Mars. The various Anglo editorialists and commentators who had declared the Quebec national question (once again) “dead” are now eating their words.
Quebec is a distinct and increasingly separate society from that of the rest of Canada. Anglo chauvinism and the Québécois nationalism that it fosters have long served to divide the working class along national lines, reinforcing the illusion that workers have common interests with their “own” respective bosses. As proletarian internationalists, we Marxists advocate Quebec independence. This is the way to cut the Gordian knot and remove the national question from the political agenda; it would help make clear to the workers in both nations that they have no allies among their own capitalists, thus removing a major obstacle to united working-class struggle against the capitalist system.
The PQ’s goal is to build an independent capitalist Quebec in the interest of the Québécois bourgeoisie. Its many austerity attacks while in power have alienated a layer of workers and radical youth who seek an alternative. One product of this has been the petty-bourgeois populist Québec Solidaire (QS). While claiming solidarity with the student strike’s demands, when the struggles were peaking in late April QS leader Amir Khadir issued an “appeal for calm.” The same QS statement coupled criticism of police violence with an attack on so-called “vandalism” by “rioters” among the student protesters (see quebecsolidaire.net, 26 April).
QS’s program offers nothing beyond cosmetic reforms of the capitalist system to make it more “social,” not unlike the PQ’s original “project of society” of the late 1960s and the 1970s. As if to make this clear, QS leaders have recently sought electoral non-aggression alliances with the capitalist PQ. None of this has stopped the bulk of the pseudo-Marxist left in Quebec from supporting QS, into which they have by and large liquidated. Both wings of the Communist Party, Gauche Socialiste, La Riposte, Alternative Socialiste (AS) and more—these reformists all fraudulently present QS as some kind of step toward socialism.
This is laid out with particular clarity in a leaflet distributed at this year’s May Day marches by AS, a group affiliated with Peter Taaffe’s Committee for a Workers International. After cynically noting that “QS is neither a class party nor a socialist party,” AS claims: “Nonetheless, QS has opened a breach in the dominant discourse and contributes to making more and more people realize that the source of our problems is capitalism.” Taking parliamentary cretinism to new heights, they conclude:
“The possible outcomes of the current general strike of the student movement show that it needs a political intermediary in parliament to implement its projects and keep alive the flame of protest after it peters out on the street. Free education won’t be implemented on René-Lévesque Boulevard. In the next elections, striking students won’t have 36 different solutions. Only Québec Solidaire will defend their positions.”
— “Pour un parti de masse des travailleur-euse-s!”
The idea that “the flame of protest” will burn in the National Assembly’s Blue Chamber is laughable. But behind AS’s unintended humor is the reformist political program shared by all the left groups buried in QS. To wit: Quebec is “our state” and said state can serve the interests of workers, youth and the oppressed, if only the right “social” policies are implemented. This is a lie.
A number of the groups who champion QS also saluted the NDP [social-democratic New Democratic Party] “orange wave” that swept Quebec in last year’s federal election. A case in point is La Riposte, which declared that the NDP’s rise was a rejection of “the stale Federalist vs. Nationalist debate” and “a real opportunity for class politics to come to the fore and for the NDP to become the political conduit for the fight back against the Harper austerity” (marxist.ca, 3 May 2011).
So what was the NDP’s role in the student strike, the most significant social struggle in Quebec in many years? Thomas Mulcair’s NDP members of parliament have been told to keep quiet lest they “alienate” possible “centrist” voters. However, Mulcair—a former Charest cabinet minister, and before that a lawyer for the Anglo-chauvinist Alliance Quebec—did speak out...to denounce Quebec students’ “violence” (La Presse, 29 April)! Always a right-wing social-democratic party, the NDP is increasingly moving to cut its links to labor in English Canada. The New Democrats are deeply hostile to Quebec’s national rights and, when the national question again becomes a burning issue (which is only a matter of time), these contradictions will blow the party apart in Quebec. Marxists fight against any illusions that the NDP represents a “progressive” alternative for workers and youth.
The Repressive Apparatus of the Capitalist State
The staggering level of repression against student strikers points to a basic Marxist truth about the nature of the capitalist state. The cops have used massive amounts of tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets on students, usually after declaring protests “illegal.” At the May 4 Victoriaville protest against the Quebec Liberal Party convention, one student lost an eye and another suffered life-threatening head injuries following a particularly vicious cop assault. Police violence on the streets is supplemented by a CSIS secret police witchhunt targeting anarchist activists and various left groups including the Maoist Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire (PCR). A new federal bill making it a crime for demonstrators to wear masks carries possible prison terms of up to ten years.
Never a “neutral arbiter,” the core purpose of the capitalist state is to defend the rule of capital. The state is an organ of repression against the working class and the oppressed; under the executive power of the government, it consists of the cops, judges, prisons and army. As Lenin, leader of the only victorious workers revolution in history—the 1917 Russian Revolution—pointed out, it is “a machine for the oppression of one class by another” (The State, 1919). Under the Liberals and PQ, this is unambiguously the case, but it is equally so when the state is run by parties that fraudulently claim to have some sympathy with the working people. When in power, as in Ontario and British Columbia in the 1990s, the NDP always rules for the bosses. And so would QS if it ever got the opportunity.
La Riposte and Alternative Socialiste push the outrageous lie that cops are “workers in uniform,” i.e., potential allies of working-class struggle. The last three months of struggle and police repression should put to rest any such illusions. These deeply reformist outfits are both offshoots of the Labour Party-loyal Militant group in Britain (which issued layoff notices to some 30,000 city workers when it ran Liverpool city council in the 1980s!).
Against the violence-baiting of student protesters by the NDP and QS, we call to defend all the activists ensnared by the state’s dragnet and demand that all charges be dropped. The media has been particularly rabid about “vandalism” by protesters who have targeted offices of university administrators as well as symbols of corporate power. From the standpoint of the working class, such actions are not crimes—unlike the intense police brutality endured by the striking students and the still greater barbarism of the capitalist system as a whole. However, the “direct action” perspective pushed by various anarchists offers only a sideshow of ineffectual rage. Successful social struggle must seek to mobilize the power of the working class, and this is necessarily linked to the fight for proletarian revolutionary leadership.
Some anarchists and Maoists denounce the organized labor movement as “bought off” and reactionary. The Maoist PCR, for example, declares that the unions in Quebec “have become a tool in the hands of capitalists to control and subdue the working class,” adding: “It is not only a matter of changing the union’s orientation that would change its nature” (“Programme du Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire”). This eliminates any distinction between the working-class base of the unions and the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, a parasitic caste that rests atop the labor movement and receives some of the crumbs off the bosses’ table. Having renounced the unions, the basic defense organizations of the working class, the PCR lays out its own class-collaborationist perspective, claiming that “the path to revolution in Canada” lies through “protracted people’s war.” This is flatly counterposed to the proletarian core of Marxism (in addition to being ludicrous).
And then there are the political bandits of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and its World Socialist Web Site. An April 16 statement on the student strike by this outfit states, in bold characters no less: “It is necessary to reject an orientation to the trade unions.” It adds: “Here as elsewhere in the world, the role of the unions is to subjugate the workers to the profit system and the capitalist state.” An “edited version” of the same statement issued in English two days later is even more explicit, calling to assist the workers “in breaking free of the pro-capitalist trade unions.” While the SEP sometimes dons a fraudulent Trotskyist mask, its aim of seeing the unions destroyed converges with the interests of the capitalist bosses. So too does its position on the national question, where it echoes the chauvinist Anglo Canadian ruling class in opposing Quebec’s right to self-determination.
The destruction of the trade unions would inevitably mean lower wages, less benefits and more dangerous working conditions. They must be defended against the bosses’ attacks. At the same time, the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy must be ousted by a class-struggle leadership fighting against the politics of bourgeois nationalism. Only then can the unions be transformed into organizations fighting for working-class emancipation.
The Quebec working class, allied with the vibrant student youth, has the power to be a key component of a revived North American workers movement, which has been battered by decades of austerity and strikebreaking. In May 1972, the spontaneous Quebec general strike against the jailing of union leaders gave a taste of this power. But in the upshot, the aspirations of the Québécois workers were channeled into the framework of bourgeois nationalism as represented by the PQ. Unchaining the power of the proletariat requires a political break with such nationalism, including today its “left” variant in Québec Solidaire.
The only road to socialism lies through a workers revolution that smashes the capitalist state and replaces it with a workers state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. That means replacing bourgeois democracy—a “democracy” for the rich—with workers democracy. Only then will the road be open for the construction of an egalitarian communist society where both poverty and a repressive state are relics of the past.
The Trotskyist League/Ligue Trotskyste fights for the forging of a binational, multiethnic and internationalist workers party dedicated to the struggle for such revolutions across Canada, throughout North America and beyond. This is integral to our perspective of reforging the Fourth International, world party of socialist revolution. We urge those militant students who, coming out of the bitter struggles of the past several months, seek the road to a broader program for social liberation to examine the program of authentic Trotskyism.
Workers Vanguard No. 1003
25 May 2012
Student Strike Shakes Quebec-Mobilize the Power of the Working Class!
(Young Spartacus pages)
MAY 22—We reprint below the translation of a French-language supplement to Spartacist Canada issued on May 17 by the Trotskyist League/Ligue Trotskyste, Canadian section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Since the supplement was issued, the Quebec government has enacted a draconian “emergency law” in an attempt to break the student strike. The law, passed on the evening of May 18, bans any protests in or outside the schools, severely restricts all other protests and threatens huge fines against groups or individuals who defy these edicts.
Student federations, trade unions and the main Quebec nationalist parties have all denounced the law. Many have compared it to the Canadian government’s imposition of the War Measures Act in October 1970, which saw hundreds of leftists, nationalists and union leaders arrested as part of a move to suppress widespread social protest in Quebec. Within hours of the law’s adoption, at least 10,000 students and their supporters took to the streets of Montreal in protest. Police attacks on student protesters continued over the following evenings, with more than 300 arrested on May 20 alone. On May 22, at least 300,000 people marched in solidarity with the students and to protest the government’s emergency law.
* * *
The 2012 student strike has been the longest in Quebec history. After more than three months, about 160,000 students remain on strike, boycotting classes and shutting down universities and Cégeps [junior colleges] with mass pickets, often in defiance of court injunctions. There have been well over 1,000 arrests and protesters have faced brutal, near-daily assaults by the police.
The student struggle has intersected and heightened a growing social crisis in Quebec. The governing Liberal Party of Jean Charest is deeply unpopular and mired in scandals. The 200,000-strong Montreal rally in support of striking students on March 22 was one of the largest demonstrations in Canadian history. One month later, the Earth Day demo, usually little more than a charity parade, drew a quarter million people, many of whom raised slogans against both the Quebec Liberals and the ruling federal Conservatives.
The strike has shown the depth of anger and defiance among Québécois youth, who have kept this massive struggle going despite vicious state repression and bourgeois media slander. With staggering levels of youth unemployment and poverty in Quebec, there is reason for anger. At the same time, this months-long battle has illustrated in a fundamental way the limitations of a struggle that has not been connected to the social power of the working class.
The capitalist rulers around the world aim to make workers and the oppressed pay for the financial crisis that is a direct product of the bourgeois profit system. [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper’s Conservatives have attacked the unions at Canada Post, Air Canada and elsewhere, while bringing down austerity measures against public sector workers. Workers in Quebec have had to taste the strikebreaking medicine of Quebecor, Aveos, Rio-Tinto and more. The student strike, precipitated by the Charest government’s plan to impose a 75 percent tuition increase, has marked something of a break in the mostly one-sided war that the bosses are waging on workers and the oppressed.
The bourgeoisie and its media mouthpieces inveigh against the students’ “violence” and “irresponsibility.” Yet for the last several years the utter venality of the ruling class has been on full display in Quebec. There has been a never-ending string of corruption revelations involving mayors and Liberal cabinet ministers, including Education Minister Line Beauchamp, who quit under the pressure of the student strike. This, together with daily revelations of construction and engineering firms’ illegal kickbacks, provides a sharp contrast to the courage and vibrancy of the student activists. The infamous “five percent”—the unspoken public construction “tax” that ends up in the pockets of various agents of the mafia and the Hells Angels, helping in turn to finance “friendly” politicians—is a practice as old as the hills in Quebec. The federalist Liberal Party is particularly shameless, but such dealings happened under Parti Québécois [PQ] administrations as well. And the notoriously brutal cops of the Montreal SPVM and provincial Sûreté du Québec, whose mutual enmity is legendary, have never been as united as when bashing students’ heads.
From the opposition benches, the bourgeois-nationalist PQ has given lip service to supporting the students as an electoral move against Charest. This is a cynical ploy by a party that only recently attacked the Liberals for being too “timid” in their drive to slash spending and balance the budget. The PQ itself tried to jack up tuition fees when it was in government in the 1990s, part of its sweeping attacks on workers and social programs under the program of “Déficit Zéro.” In any case, PQ leader Pauline Marois promises only a temporary tuition freeze if she becomes premier.
Students: Ally with the Working Class!
When Quebec shook off the yoke of the Westmount Anglo capitalists and their allies in the Catholic church in the 1960s, education was a key battleground. Trade-union struggles had long sought to make higher education attainable for francophone working-class youth. As Patrick Lagacé noted in a 4 May Globe and Mail article in support of the students: “50 years ago, Quebec was closer to a third-world country than a developed nation in terms of education markers.” Of those aged 25 in 1962, 54 percent had not completed Grade 6, and only 7 percent had attended university. A key aspect of the “Quiet Revolution,” the expansion and secularization of education was part of a drive by a modernizing francophone elite to cohere a distinct Québécois bourgeoisie and professional/technocratic stratum in order to be “masters in their own house.”
Today, despite Quebec’s continued national subordination within the Anglo-chauvinist Canadian state, Québécois companies like Bombardier, SNC-Lavalin and Quebecor are able to compete on a world scale with American and European multinationals. In the interest of greater profits, Liberal and PQ governments alike have waged ceaseless attacks on the working class and oppressed, including cuts to health care, education and other social programs.
The capitalists seek to invest in public education only what they can realize back in profit. Such profits are the product of labor, the surplus value that the bourgeoisie wrests from the workers through grinding exploitation. Thanks to its central role in social production, the working class has the unique social power to withhold its labor and bring the capitalist system to its knees. Students, a petty-bourgeois layer with no direct relation to production, lack such power. Student struggle can certainly spark broader social battles, as the current strike shows. But ultimately the only way forward is to ally with the working class.
In turn, it is in the interest of workers to actively support the combative students. This includes taking up the call for free, quality education for all and a living stipend for students. Against mounting debt servitude to the banks, we call to abolish the student debt. The cops now occupying a number of universities and colleges must be driven out. We call to abolish the administrations, the enforcers of capitalist rule on the campuses. For student/teacher/worker control of the Cégeps and universities!
The multisided attacks on workers and the poor can be stopped for good only through a broader political struggle centered on the social power of the working class. This must be infused with the understanding that the entire capitalist system must be swept away and replaced with an egalitarian socialist society geared to human needs, not private profit. Only workers revolution can rip the means of production from the hands of the bourgeois criminals who exploit the working class and its youth component. Victory in this struggle requires the forging of revolutionary vanguard parties of the working class—Trotskyist parties—throughout the world.
Students, Labor and the Union Bureaucracy
Support for the student strike and hatred for the Charest government have been palpable throughout the conflict. To their credit, the bulk of unionized teachers and professors affected by the strike have refused to cross the students’ picket lines, despite court injunctions pressing them to do so. Yet the nationalist union bureaucracy, while claiming to support the students, has not lifted a finger to mobilize the workers in strike action against the attacks of the Charest government. Instead, the labor tops have worked to restore “social peace.” The abortive May 5 deal to end the student strike was brokered by former Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe and the leaders of the three main union federations, only to be rejected by students all over Quebec.
The union bureaucracy shackles Québécois workers to the capitalist system through their support to the bourgeois-nationalist PQ and Bloc. This is also true of the [student] leaders of the Fédération Étudiante Universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) and Fédération Étudiante Collegiale du Québec (FECQ), who are allied with the labor tops in the Alliance Sociale. The majority of striking students are part of CLASSE (Coalition Large de l’Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante), the more left-wing, anarchist-influenced student union. In a late April call titled “Toward a Social Strike,” CLASSE noted:
“The striking students are aware of their inability by themselves to force the government to retreat from these various measures. Hence the necessity for the student movement to be joined by all social forces in our fight against Finance Minister Bachand’s cultural revolution. We are not appealing here for some superficial support, with a few union full-timers writing a news release repeating for the umpteenth time their support for the student struggle.... It is therefore a call for a social strike that we are issuing to the population as a whole!”
Uniting students in struggle with the social power of the working class is an absolute necessity. But CLASSE’s appeals for solidarity are not linked to a broader perspective of working-class struggle against capitalism. Like the FEUQ and FECQ, they end up looking for ways to refurbish the education system within the confines of the capitalist system. Thus the short-lived deal signed by all the student federations on May 5 sought to balance out the increase in tuition fees by finding “efficiencies” within individual universities and colleges. This amounts to agreeing to yet more austerity within the education system, and could very well turn against university and Cégep employees in the form of wage cuts and layoffs.
The solution lies outside the “regular” realm of student and trade-union politics, which are strictly confined to what is “practical” under capitalism. Against the sellout labor tops, it is necessary to fight for a class-struggle opposition in the unions dedicated to unleashing labor’s vast potential power on behalf of all the victims of the bourgeoisie’s profit system. Among other things, that means defending the rights of immigrants and ethnic/religious minorities—notably Muslims, who face a concerted racist offensive from nationalist and federalist politicians alike.
Québec Solidaire: Fifth Wheel of the PQ
The student struggle has illuminated, again, the reality of the national divide between English Canada and Quebec. For the first month or so, the English Canadian bourgeois media simply blacked out any news of the protests. Then as the cop violence against the students escalated, the media denounced the student strikers with not a small dose of sneering Anglo chauvinism. The Harper Conservatives, whose origins are in Western Canada, have essentially written off Quebec in their electoral calculations, and are implementing reactionary policies on crime, the military, the monarchy and the environment that appear to most Québécois to be coming from Mars. The various Anglo editorialists and commentators who had declared the Quebec national question (once again) “dead” are now eating their words.
Quebec is a distinct and increasingly separate society from that of the rest of Canada. Anglo chauvinism and the Québécois nationalism that it fosters have long served to divide the working class along national lines, reinforcing the illusion that workers have common interests with their “own” respective bosses. As proletarian internationalists, we Marxists advocate Quebec independence. This is the way to cut the Gordian knot and remove the national question from the political agenda; it would help make clear to the workers in both nations that they have no allies among their own capitalists, thus removing a major obstacle to united working-class struggle against the capitalist system.
The PQ’s goal is to build an independent capitalist Quebec in the interest of the Québécois bourgeoisie. Its many austerity attacks while in power have alienated a layer of workers and radical youth who seek an alternative. One product of this has been the petty-bourgeois populist Québec Solidaire (QS). While claiming solidarity with the student strike’s demands, when the struggles were peaking in late April QS leader Amir Khadir issued an “appeal for calm.” The same QS statement coupled criticism of police violence with an attack on so-called “vandalism” by “rioters” among the student protesters (see quebecsolidaire.net, 26 April).
QS’s program offers nothing beyond cosmetic reforms of the capitalist system to make it more “social,” not unlike the PQ’s original “project of society” of the late 1960s and the 1970s. As if to make this clear, QS leaders have recently sought electoral non-aggression alliances with the capitalist PQ. None of this has stopped the bulk of the pseudo-Marxist left in Quebec from supporting QS, into which they have by and large liquidated. Both wings of the Communist Party, Gauche Socialiste, La Riposte, Alternative Socialiste (AS) and more—these reformists all fraudulently present QS as some kind of step toward socialism.
This is laid out with particular clarity in a leaflet distributed at this year’s May Day marches by AS, a group affiliated with Peter Taaffe’s Committee for a Workers International. After cynically noting that “QS is neither a class party nor a socialist party,” AS claims: “Nonetheless, QS has opened a breach in the dominant discourse and contributes to making more and more people realize that the source of our problems is capitalism.” Taking parliamentary cretinism to new heights, they conclude:
“The possible outcomes of the current general strike of the student movement show that it needs a political intermediary in parliament to implement its projects and keep alive the flame of protest after it peters out on the street. Free education won’t be implemented on René-Lévesque Boulevard. In the next elections, striking students won’t have 36 different solutions. Only Québec Solidaire will defend their positions.”
— “Pour un parti de masse des travailleur-euse-s!”
The idea that “the flame of protest” will burn in the National Assembly’s Blue Chamber is laughable. But behind AS’s unintended humor is the reformist political program shared by all the left groups buried in QS. To wit: Quebec is “our state” and said state can serve the interests of workers, youth and the oppressed, if only the right “social” policies are implemented. This is a lie.
A number of the groups who champion QS also saluted the NDP [social-democratic New Democratic Party] “orange wave” that swept Quebec in last year’s federal election. A case in point is La Riposte, which declared that the NDP’s rise was a rejection of “the stale Federalist vs. Nationalist debate” and “a real opportunity for class politics to come to the fore and for the NDP to become the political conduit for the fight back against the Harper austerity” (marxist.ca, 3 May 2011).
So what was the NDP’s role in the student strike, the most significant social struggle in Quebec in many years? Thomas Mulcair’s NDP members of parliament have been told to keep quiet lest they “alienate” possible “centrist” voters. However, Mulcair—a former Charest cabinet minister, and before that a lawyer for the Anglo-chauvinist Alliance Quebec—did speak out...to denounce Quebec students’ “violence” (La Presse, 29 April)! Always a right-wing social-democratic party, the NDP is increasingly moving to cut its links to labor in English Canada. The New Democrats are deeply hostile to Quebec’s national rights and, when the national question again becomes a burning issue (which is only a matter of time), these contradictions will blow the party apart in Quebec. Marxists fight against any illusions that the NDP represents a “progressive” alternative for workers and youth.
The Repressive Apparatus of the Capitalist State
The staggering level of repression against student strikers points to a basic Marxist truth about the nature of the capitalist state. The cops have used massive amounts of tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets on students, usually after declaring protests “illegal.” At the May 4 Victoriaville protest against the Quebec Liberal Party convention, one student lost an eye and another suffered life-threatening head injuries following a particularly vicious cop assault. Police violence on the streets is supplemented by a CSIS secret police witchhunt targeting anarchist activists and various left groups including the Maoist Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire (PCR). A new federal bill making it a crime for demonstrators to wear masks carries possible prison terms of up to ten years.
Never a “neutral arbiter,” the core purpose of the capitalist state is to defend the rule of capital. The state is an organ of repression against the working class and the oppressed; under the executive power of the government, it consists of the cops, judges, prisons and army. As Lenin, leader of the only victorious workers revolution in history—the 1917 Russian Revolution—pointed out, it is “a machine for the oppression of one class by another” (The State, 1919). Under the Liberals and PQ, this is unambiguously the case, but it is equally so when the state is run by parties that fraudulently claim to have some sympathy with the working people. When in power, as in Ontario and British Columbia in the 1990s, the NDP always rules for the bosses. And so would QS if it ever got the opportunity.
La Riposte and Alternative Socialiste push the outrageous lie that cops are “workers in uniform,” i.e., potential allies of working-class struggle. The last three months of struggle and police repression should put to rest any such illusions. These deeply reformist outfits are both offshoots of the Labour Party-loyal Militant group in Britain (which issued layoff notices to some 30,000 city workers when it ran Liverpool city council in the 1980s!).
Against the violence-baiting of student protesters by the NDP and QS, we call to defend all the activists ensnared by the state’s dragnet and demand that all charges be dropped. The media has been particularly rabid about “vandalism” by protesters who have targeted offices of university administrators as well as symbols of corporate power. From the standpoint of the working class, such actions are not crimes—unlike the intense police brutality endured by the striking students and the still greater barbarism of the capitalist system as a whole. However, the “direct action” perspective pushed by various anarchists offers only a sideshow of ineffectual rage. Successful social struggle must seek to mobilize the power of the working class, and this is necessarily linked to the fight for proletarian revolutionary leadership.
Some anarchists and Maoists denounce the organized labor movement as “bought off” and reactionary. The Maoist PCR, for example, declares that the unions in Quebec “have become a tool in the hands of capitalists to control and subdue the working class,” adding: “It is not only a matter of changing the union’s orientation that would change its nature” (“Programme du Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire”). This eliminates any distinction between the working-class base of the unions and the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, a parasitic caste that rests atop the labor movement and receives some of the crumbs off the bosses’ table. Having renounced the unions, the basic defense organizations of the working class, the PCR lays out its own class-collaborationist perspective, claiming that “the path to revolution in Canada” lies through “protracted people’s war.” This is flatly counterposed to the proletarian core of Marxism (in addition to being ludicrous).
And then there are the political bandits of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and its World Socialist Web Site. An April 16 statement on the student strike by this outfit states, in bold characters no less: “It is necessary to reject an orientation to the trade unions.” It adds: “Here as elsewhere in the world, the role of the unions is to subjugate the workers to the profit system and the capitalist state.” An “edited version” of the same statement issued in English two days later is even more explicit, calling to assist the workers “in breaking free of the pro-capitalist trade unions.” While the SEP sometimes dons a fraudulent Trotskyist mask, its aim of seeing the unions destroyed converges with the interests of the capitalist bosses. So too does its position on the national question, where it echoes the chauvinist Anglo Canadian ruling class in opposing Quebec’s right to self-determination.
The destruction of the trade unions would inevitably mean lower wages, less benefits and more dangerous working conditions. They must be defended against the bosses’ attacks. At the same time, the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy must be ousted by a class-struggle leadership fighting against the politics of bourgeois nationalism. Only then can the unions be transformed into organizations fighting for working-class emancipation.
The Quebec working class, allied with the vibrant student youth, has the power to be a key component of a revived North American workers movement, which has been battered by decades of austerity and strikebreaking. In May 1972, the spontaneous Quebec general strike against the jailing of union leaders gave a taste of this power. But in the upshot, the aspirations of the Québécois workers were channeled into the framework of bourgeois nationalism as represented by the PQ. Unchaining the power of the proletariat requires a political break with such nationalism, including today its “left” variant in Québec Solidaire.
The only road to socialism lies through a workers revolution that smashes the capitalist state and replaces it with a workers state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. That means replacing bourgeois democracy—a “democracy” for the rich—with workers democracy. Only then will the road be open for the construction of an egalitarian communist society where both poverty and a repressive state are relics of the past.
The Trotskyist League/Ligue Trotskyste fights for the forging of a binational, multiethnic and internationalist workers party dedicated to the struggle for such revolutions across Canada, throughout North America and beyond. This is integral to our perspective of reforging the Fourth International, world party of socialist revolution. We urge those militant students who, coming out of the bitter struggles of the past several months, seek the road to a broader program for social liberation to examine the program of authentic Trotskyism.
Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- Eddie Cochran’s “Sittin’ In The Balcony”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Eddie Cochran performing “Sitting In The Balcony.”
SITTIN' IN THE BALCONY
By Johnny Dee
©1957 Cedarwood Publ.
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
Just a-watchin' a movie
Or maybe it's a symphony
I wouldn't know
Don't care about the symphonies
Those cymbales and tympanies
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
I hold your hand and I kiss you, too
The feature's over, but we're not through!
Mmmm, just a-sittin' in the balcony
Holdin' hands in the balcony
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
We may stop lovin' to watch Bugs Bunny
But he can't take the place of my honey!
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
Just a-snootchin' in the balcony
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
Just a-huggin' and a-kissin'
With my baby in the very last row
(source: Standard Songs Pop/ Country/ Blues/ Folk/ Instumentals/ Novelty, Acuff-Rose Publications Inc. 1956-1973)
Two un-star-crossed youth, or let’s hope they are un-star-crossed, one an emerging boy-man the other a girl-woman, emerging too, strictly junior high school kids, fresh from some morning chores are walking close together, although not touching. Jesus. Not touching in public. What if somebody had seen them? Jesus floats again in both their minds. He, having just finished cleaning his room to earn nickels and quarters to take in the weekly Saturday double- feature movie at the Strand. She, helping mother dear, to do the weekly laundry before heading out to that very same double feature at the Strand. No money changed hands between mother and daughter though.
They are walking, if not closely, together, one, because he, boy-man had gotten up the nerve after several weeks of hid and seek talk between them to ask her to the movies, a special place for him (and her too). And, she, as she told her girlfriends at the mandatory Monday morning before school girls’“lav” session where all the latest talk gathered, almost answered yes before he asked she was so impatient, and thrilled. And two, times are hard just then in old North Adamsville, and while he, boy-man, really likes her, girl-woman, he cannot swing bus fare, two movie tickets, AND popcorn on the nickels and quarters made from the half-ass way he cleaned his room. She understood she said and she LIKED to walk. Can you believe that, she liked to walk?
So they walked, walked not very closely, but walked and were jabbering like two blue-jays, the mile, or mile and one half, uptown to the Strand. They had started at noon to be sure to make the one o’clock start of the first show, "The Son Of Big Blob," a monster film (the other was a “romance,” kids-style, “Jenny Belinda"). But, truth, if anybody had bothered to notice the pair as he paid for two tickets at the ticket window (two children’s tickets, not adult’s, as the looking askance cashier questioned them about their ages, fortunately they looked, if they did not feel, under twelve), it could have been an old people’s Humphrey Bogart/Katherine Hepburn double feature. Especially as she was standing somewhat closer to him now that they had moved out of the public spotlight of the streets. So close he could smell, drive him crazy smell, the bath soap she had bathed in or perfume she had put on. Ya, drove him crazy.
Inside the theater two decisions needed pressing resolution, one, popcorn now, popcorn between the two films. Resolved: later. Two, down in the orchestra pit, or in the balcony. No big deal, right. Wrong, where have you been? Orchestra meant nothing but sitting and watching the movies, maybe holding sweating hands like goofs and old people did. The balcony meant, well, it meant the possibility of adventure, of, well, or more than holding hands. Jesus, where have you been, petting, heavy petting, okay. So he, boy-man gulped, and asked which place, and she, girl-woman answered, gulp, balcony. So they climbed the stairs, fought for a conveniently isolated spot and sat down waiting for the previews to start that would bring the lights down low. And they did. And I am willing to bet six-two-and even on two propositions. One, neither of them could, in twenty-five words or less, give the plots of either of the films. Two, she, girl-woman, would have plenty to mandatory tell come Monday pre-school girls’ “lav” session. Oh ya, and he will still be swimmingly intoxicated by that perfume (not bath soap, that’s kid’s stuff) she copped from her mother’s bureau and that wore just for him on Saturday. Growing up absurd in the 1950s, or anytime, maybe.
SITTIN' IN THE BALCONY
By Johnny Dee
©1957 Cedarwood Publ.
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
Just a-watchin' a movie
Or maybe it's a symphony
I wouldn't know
Don't care about the symphonies
Those cymbales and tympanies
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
I hold your hand and I kiss you, too
The feature's over, but we're not through!
Mmmm, just a-sittin' in the balcony
Holdin' hands in the balcony
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
We may stop lovin' to watch Bugs Bunny
But he can't take the place of my honey!
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
Just a-snootchin' in the balcony
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
Just a-huggin' and a-kissin'
With my baby in the very last row
(source: Standard Songs Pop/ Country/ Blues/ Folk/ Instumentals/ Novelty, Acuff-Rose Publications Inc. 1956-1973)
Two un-star-crossed youth, or let’s hope they are un-star-crossed, one an emerging boy-man the other a girl-woman, emerging too, strictly junior high school kids, fresh from some morning chores are walking close together, although not touching. Jesus. Not touching in public. What if somebody had seen them? Jesus floats again in both their minds. He, having just finished cleaning his room to earn nickels and quarters to take in the weekly Saturday double- feature movie at the Strand. She, helping mother dear, to do the weekly laundry before heading out to that very same double feature at the Strand. No money changed hands between mother and daughter though.
They are walking, if not closely, together, one, because he, boy-man had gotten up the nerve after several weeks of hid and seek talk between them to ask her to the movies, a special place for him (and her too). And, she, as she told her girlfriends at the mandatory Monday morning before school girls’“lav” session where all the latest talk gathered, almost answered yes before he asked she was so impatient, and thrilled. And two, times are hard just then in old North Adamsville, and while he, boy-man, really likes her, girl-woman, he cannot swing bus fare, two movie tickets, AND popcorn on the nickels and quarters made from the half-ass way he cleaned his room. She understood she said and she LIKED to walk. Can you believe that, she liked to walk?
So they walked, walked not very closely, but walked and were jabbering like two blue-jays, the mile, or mile and one half, uptown to the Strand. They had started at noon to be sure to make the one o’clock start of the first show, "The Son Of Big Blob," a monster film (the other was a “romance,” kids-style, “Jenny Belinda"). But, truth, if anybody had bothered to notice the pair as he paid for two tickets at the ticket window (two children’s tickets, not adult’s, as the looking askance cashier questioned them about their ages, fortunately they looked, if they did not feel, under twelve), it could have been an old people’s Humphrey Bogart/Katherine Hepburn double feature. Especially as she was standing somewhat closer to him now that they had moved out of the public spotlight of the streets. So close he could smell, drive him crazy smell, the bath soap she had bathed in or perfume she had put on. Ya, drove him crazy.
Inside the theater two decisions needed pressing resolution, one, popcorn now, popcorn between the two films. Resolved: later. Two, down in the orchestra pit, or in the balcony. No big deal, right. Wrong, where have you been? Orchestra meant nothing but sitting and watching the movies, maybe holding sweating hands like goofs and old people did. The balcony meant, well, it meant the possibility of adventure, of, well, or more than holding hands. Jesus, where have you been, petting, heavy petting, okay. So he, boy-man gulped, and asked which place, and she, girl-woman answered, gulp, balcony. So they climbed the stairs, fought for a conveniently isolated spot and sat down waiting for the previews to start that would bring the lights down low. And they did. And I am willing to bet six-two-and even on two propositions. One, neither of them could, in twenty-five words or less, give the plots of either of the films. Two, she, girl-woman, would have plenty to mandatory tell come Monday pre-school girls’ “lav” session. Oh ya, and he will still be swimmingly intoxicated by that perfume (not bath soap, that’s kid’s stuff) she copped from her mother’s bureau and that wore just for him on Saturday. Growing up absurd in the 1950s, or anytime, maybe.
Out In The 1960s Psychedelic Night- The Byrds-Fifth Dimension - A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Byrds performing Eight Miles High.
CD Review
Fifth Dimension, The Byrds, Warner Brothers, 1966
Eight miles high and when you touch down
You’ll find that it’s stranger than known
Signs in the street that say where you’re going
Are somewhere just being their own
Nowhere is there warmth to be found
Among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town known for it’s sound
In places small faces unbound
Round the squares huddled in storms
Some laughing some just shapeless forms
Sidewalk scenes and black limousines
Some living some standing alone
Hari, hari, hari, rama, hari, hari came some hidden from view sound from the street, the street of street dreams and scores, or just the street outside Harvard Yard, just off Mount Auburn Street near Tommy’s Lunch, as music, stereo music, blared out from some fourth floor garret signaling the advent of the next day of the “new world.” Music, blaring night and day, and if anybody minded they kept it to themselves. More likely they craned their ears for a closer listen, listening until the notes meshed with their brains, and the slightest trance-like movement began to shake their bodies. Then the guitar sound high and shrill like no Bobby Darin flip or Percy Faith bong from a couple of years before when the music was s-q-u-a-r-e gave forth sounds that became you, man, became you. Dig it.
Just another mid-1960s Cambridge day, a day that had started fresh with a joint passed around by those fourth floor garret “squanders,” (not really, the guy whose name was on the lease was away in Europe for the summer trying to find himself and he had “sublet” the place to his hometown friend, some Cos Corner place in Connecticut, and that friend had multiplied his friends in his midnight crave wanderings around Cambridge Common), four refugees at this hour, jammed every which way on the floored mattresses that passed for sleeping quarters. Four refugees, two boys and two girls, trying to keep their heads attached, literally, against the hard war news, another seventy death casualties this week and no end in sight and one of the boys very, very draft ready.
Trying to keep their heads together, literally, against the crowding day, the do this and do that day, the day of work and more work for no real purpose in a world they did not make, and were scratching their heads to figure out. And not winning on that bet. Topped off, trying to keep their heads together, literally, against some hard drug news, hearing earlier that another comrade had been busted “for possession” down in death hole Texas. Adios amigo, there are not enough prisons for us though
That chant, that hidden from view chant, could only mean, that the Hari Krishnas, just then thick as thieves and growing in the incense, jingle-jangle bell, saffron, or whatever they called their silken sheet garb, in Harvard Square were getting ready to attend to their daily ministrations, meditations, and frankly irritating beggings. Then, like magic, The Byrds’ Eight Miles High started playing on the stereo. And another joint, or maybe just a bogart made the rounds and the four denizens of that new world started to, well, giggle, giggle that pretty soon they too would be eight miles high. And the daily bummers could wait a little longer to be figured out.
CD Review
Fifth Dimension, The Byrds, Warner Brothers, 1966
Eight miles high and when you touch down
You’ll find that it’s stranger than known
Signs in the street that say where you’re going
Are somewhere just being their own
Nowhere is there warmth to be found
Among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town known for it’s sound
In places small faces unbound
Round the squares huddled in storms
Some laughing some just shapeless forms
Sidewalk scenes and black limousines
Some living some standing alone
Hari, hari, hari, rama, hari, hari came some hidden from view sound from the street, the street of street dreams and scores, or just the street outside Harvard Yard, just off Mount Auburn Street near Tommy’s Lunch, as music, stereo music, blared out from some fourth floor garret signaling the advent of the next day of the “new world.” Music, blaring night and day, and if anybody minded they kept it to themselves. More likely they craned their ears for a closer listen, listening until the notes meshed with their brains, and the slightest trance-like movement began to shake their bodies. Then the guitar sound high and shrill like no Bobby Darin flip or Percy Faith bong from a couple of years before when the music was s-q-u-a-r-e gave forth sounds that became you, man, became you. Dig it.
Just another mid-1960s Cambridge day, a day that had started fresh with a joint passed around by those fourth floor garret “squanders,” (not really, the guy whose name was on the lease was away in Europe for the summer trying to find himself and he had “sublet” the place to his hometown friend, some Cos Corner place in Connecticut, and that friend had multiplied his friends in his midnight crave wanderings around Cambridge Common), four refugees at this hour, jammed every which way on the floored mattresses that passed for sleeping quarters. Four refugees, two boys and two girls, trying to keep their heads attached, literally, against the hard war news, another seventy death casualties this week and no end in sight and one of the boys very, very draft ready.
Trying to keep their heads together, literally, against the crowding day, the do this and do that day, the day of work and more work for no real purpose in a world they did not make, and were scratching their heads to figure out. And not winning on that bet. Topped off, trying to keep their heads together, literally, against some hard drug news, hearing earlier that another comrade had been busted “for possession” down in death hole Texas. Adios amigo, there are not enough prisons for us though
That chant, that hidden from view chant, could only mean, that the Hari Krishnas, just then thick as thieves and growing in the incense, jingle-jangle bell, saffron, or whatever they called their silken sheet garb, in Harvard Square were getting ready to attend to their daily ministrations, meditations, and frankly irritating beggings. Then, like magic, The Byrds’ Eight Miles High started playing on the stereo. And another joint, or maybe just a bogart made the rounds and the four denizens of that new world started to, well, giggle, giggle that pretty soon they too would be eight miles high. And the daily bummers could wait a little longer to be figured out.
June Is Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Free Bradley Manning Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest information on his case and activities on his behalf .
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
From the American Left History Blog, March 28, 2012
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Fort Meade Maryland On Wednesday April 25th At 8:00 AM - A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Last year I wrote a little entry in this space in order to motivate my reasons for standing in solidarity with a March 20th rally in support of Private Bradley Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he was then being held. I have subsequently repeatedly used that entry, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner, as a I have tried to publicize his case in blogs and other Internet sources, at various rallies, and at marches, most recently at the Veterans For Peace Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade in South Boston on March 18th.
After I received information from the Bradley Manning Support Network about the latest efforts on Private Manning’s behalf scheduled for April 24th and 25th in Washington and Fort Meade respectively I decided that I would travel south to stand once again in proximate solidarity with Brother Manning at Fort Meade on April 25th. In that spirit I have updated, a little, that earlier entry to reflect the changed circumstances over the past year. As one would expect when the cause is still the same, Bradley Manning's freedom, unfortunately most of the entry is still in the same key. And will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Brother Manning until that great day.
*****
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Fort Meade , Maryland on April 25th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will also be standing at the front gate of Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient for my standing at the front gate at Fort Meade on April 25th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an additional reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a citizen-soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about brother soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came”.
Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me get through the tough days inside. So on April 25th I will be just, once again, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, Brother Manning, are a true winter soldier. We were not able to do much about the course of the Iraq War (and little thus far on Afghanistan) but we can move might and main to save the one real hero of that whole mess.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us and hear about our rally in your defense outside the gates. Better yet, everybody who reads this piece join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to high heaven against this gross injustice-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
From the American Left History Blog, March 28, 2012
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Fort Meade Maryland On Wednesday April 25th At 8:00 AM - A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Last year I wrote a little entry in this space in order to motivate my reasons for standing in solidarity with a March 20th rally in support of Private Bradley Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he was then being held. I have subsequently repeatedly used that entry, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner, as a I have tried to publicize his case in blogs and other Internet sources, at various rallies, and at marches, most recently at the Veterans For Peace Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade in South Boston on March 18th.
After I received information from the Bradley Manning Support Network about the latest efforts on Private Manning’s behalf scheduled for April 24th and 25th in Washington and Fort Meade respectively I decided that I would travel south to stand once again in proximate solidarity with Brother Manning at Fort Meade on April 25th. In that spirit I have updated, a little, that earlier entry to reflect the changed circumstances over the past year. As one would expect when the cause is still the same, Bradley Manning's freedom, unfortunately most of the entry is still in the same key. And will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Brother Manning until that great day.
*****
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Fort Meade , Maryland on April 25th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will also be standing at the front gate of Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient for my standing at the front gate at Fort Meade on April 25th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an additional reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a citizen-soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about brother soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came”.
Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me get through the tough days inside. So on April 25th I will be just, once again, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, Brother Manning, are a true winter soldier. We were not able to do much about the course of the Iraq War (and little thus far on Afghanistan) but we can move might and main to save the one real hero of that whole mess.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us and hear about our rally in your defense outside the gates. Better yet, everybody who reads this piece join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to high heaven against this gross injustice-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
From #Ur-Occupied Boston (#Ur-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-The Embryo Of An Alternate Government-Learn The Lessons Of History-Lessons From The Utopian Socialists- Charles Fourier and The Phalanx Movement-“Commerce”
Click on the headline to link to the archives of the Occupy Boston General Assembly minutes from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. The General Assembly is the core political institution of the Occupy movement. Some of the minutes will reflect the growing pains of that movement and its concepts of political organization. Note that I used the word embryo in the headline and I believe that gives a fair estimate of its status, and its possibilities.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
*******
Markin comment October 1, 2011:
There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
**********
In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the ‘new world’ we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked to lately were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one of the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work- checks and balances-form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those of the "one percent" having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one.
Previous historical models readily come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right of public and private sector workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dues on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
*******
cCharles Fourier (1772-1837)
“Commerce”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: Analyse du mecanisme d'agiotage, La Phalange, VII (1848).
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unveil the intrigues of the stock exchange and the brokers is to undertake a Herculean task. I doubt that the demi-god felt as much disgust in cleaning the Augean stables as I feel in probing the sink of moral filth which is called the bordel of exchange and brokerage. This is a subject that science has not even touched upon. To discuss it you need a practitioner grown grey in the service and raised in the mercantile pen, as I have been since the age of six. At that age I began to notice the contrast which exists between commerce and truth. I was taught at catechism and at school that one must never lie; then they took me to the store to accustom me to the noble trade of deceit or the art of selling. Shocked by the cheating and deception which I witnessed, I began to take the merchants aside and tell them what was being done to them. One of them, in his complaint, made the mistake of betraying me, and this earned me a hard spanking. My parents, who saw that I was addicted to the truth, exclaimed reproachfully: “This child will never do well in commerce.” In fact, I conceived a secret aversion for commerce; and at the age of seven I swore an oath like that which Hannibal swore against Rome at the age of nine: I swore myself to an eternal hatred of commerce.
They got me into commerce against my will. I was lured to Lyon by the prospect of a trip; but at the very door of Scherer’s banking house where they were taking me, I deserted, announcing that I would never be a merchant. It was like backing out of a marriage on the altar steps. They took me to Rouen where I quit a second time. In the end I bent to the yoke, and I lost the best years of my life in the workshops of deceit. Everywhere I went I heard echoes of the sinister prophecy: “What a fine, honest lad! He will never do well in commerce.” In fact, I have been duped and robbed in all my undertakings. But if I have no talent for the practice of commerce, I am quite able to unmask it.
*************
Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“The Rise of Commerce and the Birth of Political Economy”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: Manuscrits de Charles Fourier. Années 1857-58.
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
Proofread: by Andy Carloff 2010.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well! Why have nations taken so long to realise that the commercial order is a temporary monstrosity, an utterly senseless system that places the three productive classes — proprietors, farmers and manufacturers — at the mercy of a parasitical class which has no national loyalty and which can do whatever it wishes with the fruits of industry over which it exercises arbitrary control? So faulty a system is obviously the result of a failure in social science. Commerce could have seemed tolerable in the childhood of human societies, although even then it was scorned. But it is unworthy of the modern age which aspires to enlightenment and perfectibility, and which boasts of seeking the truth — of which commerce is the mortal enemy. Let us then investigate why the invention of a better system has been put off until our own time and why no effort has been made to discover some means of liberating society from the influence of commerce and deceit.[16]
I have already said that the wise men of antiquity never made commerce an object of study; they simply treated it with the scorn which it deserves. The masters of the world, the Alexanders and the Caesars, would have smiled with pity if someone had advised them to subordinate their policies, in today’s fashion, to the interests of dealers in oil and soap. The privileges that commerce had enjoyed at Carthage[17] were alone sufficient to debase it in the eyes of Rome., thus the Roman writers relegated it to a place among the filthy professions.
As for the small republics of Tyr, Carthage and Athens, which were devoted to traffic, they never influenced opinion in the great empires. They vaunted their trade for the same reason that brigandage was vaunted by the Tatars and piracy by the Algerians. They fleeced their neighbours as often as possible, and they were regarded as birds of prey whose voracity is abhorred but who are tolerated because they are not entirely useless...
The role of commerce in antiquity amounted to very little. Just what was the vaunted trade of Tyr, Carthage and Athens? I would say that the activity of these three ports was barely equal to that of three of our small ports, like Nice, Bayonne and Dieppe, in peacetime. At that time there was little to exchange among the states on the shores of the Mediterranean. Since the goods which they produced were just about the same, farming and industry provided few occasions for trade. The backwardness of navigation prevented them from finding markets for their goods in the torrid and cold zones... It is clear that the commerce of antiquity must have been quite insubstantial when we consider that its most important branch, the grain trade, was frequently controlled by rulers. We read that Hiero, the King of Syracuse, made shipments of wheat to the Roman Senate. Thus in the nations of antiquity commerce was only a shadow — no more than a tenth — of what it is today. For this reason it is not surprising that the statesmen of that time paid little attention to their merchants and scorned their wiles without trying to reform them, just as the gross customs of the lower classes are disdained but tolerated today. Antiquity neither could nor would devote itself to the search for another mode of exchange; it simply tolerated commerce as a vulgar vice.
Circumstances are very different today. Various unforeseen events have produced a colossal growth in commerce. Progress in the art of navigation, the discovery of the East and West Indies with all their resources, the extension of farming to northern latitudes, the establishment of communications between the three zones, the rapid development of manufacturing, and the competition for trade among a multitude of nations — all these factors have led to a prodigious increase in the volume of commerce. It can be said to have increased ten-fold since Antiquity. Trade has now become one of the principal branches of the social mechanism; it has finally drawn the attention of the philosophers; they have ceased to ridicule it. Among them one group of men, who are called the Economists, has devoted itself to the study of industrial policy...
When political economy emerged as a science, commerce was already powerful and revered. The Dutch had already accumulated their hoards of gold, they had discovered the means to bribe and corrupt kings and their courts long before anyone had heard of the Economists. At the outset, then, commerce was a giant and political economy was only a dwarf. When political economy entered the lists against commerce, the ports were already swarming with wealthy ship-fitters and the great cities were full of those dandified bankers who are intimate with ministers and give orders to diplomats. It was no longer possible, as in antiquity, to treat commerce as a laughing stock, for there is no greater title to respect in civilisation than a bulging safe. The first efforts of political economy were all the more modest in that its authors possessed neither wealth nor an established body of doctrine. Since the legacy of antiquity amounted to no more than a few jeers about commerce, they had to create everything for themselves. Deprived of the wisdom of antiquity and thrown back on their own resources, the poor Economists were obliged to adopt modest and timid dogmas. This was only becoming in a few unknown savants who had to enter the scientific world by doing combat with the Croesus of the age.
There could be no doubt about the outcome of such a combat. Political economy made only a faint gesture of resistance. Praise for that gesture is due to Quesnay, the leader of the French sect.[18] Trying to make the truth known, he propagated dogmas which tended to subordinate commerce to the interests of agriculture. But the English cabal, which had sold out to commerce, triumphed with the help of a few religious intrigues. Philosophy, which had opened hostilities against the priesthood, was in need of reinforcements; it prudently decided to ally itself with the money-bags and to flatter commerce, which was beginning to acquire a great influence. Thus the Economists hitched themselves to the wagon of commerce. They proclaimed it infallible like the ancient popes. They declared that a merchant’s dealings could never fail to promote the public interest and that the merchant ought therefore to enjoy an absolute liberty. All the dogmas were adapted to this paradox.
Soon merchants were being showered with adulation. Raynal, Voltaire, and all the most eminent philosophers could be seen kneeling before the golden calf. But they secretly scorned it; for when Voltaire dedicated his play Zaire to a London merchant, whom he overwhelmed with banal compliments, he was no more sincere than when he dedicated his Mahomet to Pope Benedict. Voltaire was himself a consummate practitioner of mercantile trickery; he excelled at duping book-sellers. Thus he knew the true worth of the fine art of trade; he knew that merchants detest learning, that they scorn the sciences and the arts, that they are bored even by the flattery of writers when it does not serve to fine their pockets. But the philosophical party was in need of new recruits, and so they praised the merchants to the skies. ...
It must be said in defence of the philosophers that during the eighteenth century commerce was not as perverse as it is today. There were relatively few merchants then and they made their profits easily. Thus they did not need to resort to the innumerable subtleties and audacious tricks that degrade their profession today. This is so true that elderly merchants are constantly voicing their stupefaction at today’s wiles. They are agreed in describing modern commerce as a snare, a Black Forest, by comparison with the friendly spirit in which trade was carried on before the Revolution. We should add that at that time the English monopoly was not yet dominant. France was still standing up to England and, along with its allies, it had a very substantial monopoly of its own. That is why the French philosophers were not alarmed by an abuse from which their own nation benefited. Everything conspired to make this mismatch seem attractive to philosophy. In associating itself with commerce philosophy behaved just like a young noblewoman who marries a commoner whom she supposes to be an honest man. And, in fact, it was impossible at that time to predict the immensity of vices and scourges that commerce was going to inflict upon the nineteenth century.
But now the mercantile spirit has shown its profound malevolence. The mask has fallen; monopoly and deceit are now revealed. Philosophy can no longer deceive itself about the infamies of the serpent with which it has been associated. It is time for philosophy to break with commerce and return to the path of Truth, which is wholly alien to the mercantile spirit. A discovery is about to banish commerce from the womb of civilisation. If it was pardonable to encourage commerce when there was some doubt about its perversity, it would be odious to do so today, now that Truth has unmasked it and cast it into disgrace.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
*******
Markin comment October 1, 2011:
There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
**********
In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the ‘new world’ we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked to lately were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one of the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work- checks and balances-form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those of the "one percent" having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one.
Previous historical models readily come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right of public and private sector workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dues on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
*******
cCharles Fourier (1772-1837)
“Commerce”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: Analyse du mecanisme d'agiotage, La Phalange, VII (1848).
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unveil the intrigues of the stock exchange and the brokers is to undertake a Herculean task. I doubt that the demi-god felt as much disgust in cleaning the Augean stables as I feel in probing the sink of moral filth which is called the bordel of exchange and brokerage. This is a subject that science has not even touched upon. To discuss it you need a practitioner grown grey in the service and raised in the mercantile pen, as I have been since the age of six. At that age I began to notice the contrast which exists between commerce and truth. I was taught at catechism and at school that one must never lie; then they took me to the store to accustom me to the noble trade of deceit or the art of selling. Shocked by the cheating and deception which I witnessed, I began to take the merchants aside and tell them what was being done to them. One of them, in his complaint, made the mistake of betraying me, and this earned me a hard spanking. My parents, who saw that I was addicted to the truth, exclaimed reproachfully: “This child will never do well in commerce.” In fact, I conceived a secret aversion for commerce; and at the age of seven I swore an oath like that which Hannibal swore against Rome at the age of nine: I swore myself to an eternal hatred of commerce.
They got me into commerce against my will. I was lured to Lyon by the prospect of a trip; but at the very door of Scherer’s banking house where they were taking me, I deserted, announcing that I would never be a merchant. It was like backing out of a marriage on the altar steps. They took me to Rouen where I quit a second time. In the end I bent to the yoke, and I lost the best years of my life in the workshops of deceit. Everywhere I went I heard echoes of the sinister prophecy: “What a fine, honest lad! He will never do well in commerce.” In fact, I have been duped and robbed in all my undertakings. But if I have no talent for the practice of commerce, I am quite able to unmask it.
*************
Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“The Rise of Commerce and the Birth of Political Economy”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: Manuscrits de Charles Fourier. Années 1857-58.
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
Proofread: by Andy Carloff 2010.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well! Why have nations taken so long to realise that the commercial order is a temporary monstrosity, an utterly senseless system that places the three productive classes — proprietors, farmers and manufacturers — at the mercy of a parasitical class which has no national loyalty and which can do whatever it wishes with the fruits of industry over which it exercises arbitrary control? So faulty a system is obviously the result of a failure in social science. Commerce could have seemed tolerable in the childhood of human societies, although even then it was scorned. But it is unworthy of the modern age which aspires to enlightenment and perfectibility, and which boasts of seeking the truth — of which commerce is the mortal enemy. Let us then investigate why the invention of a better system has been put off until our own time and why no effort has been made to discover some means of liberating society from the influence of commerce and deceit.[16]
I have already said that the wise men of antiquity never made commerce an object of study; they simply treated it with the scorn which it deserves. The masters of the world, the Alexanders and the Caesars, would have smiled with pity if someone had advised them to subordinate their policies, in today’s fashion, to the interests of dealers in oil and soap. The privileges that commerce had enjoyed at Carthage[17] were alone sufficient to debase it in the eyes of Rome., thus the Roman writers relegated it to a place among the filthy professions.
As for the small republics of Tyr, Carthage and Athens, which were devoted to traffic, they never influenced opinion in the great empires. They vaunted their trade for the same reason that brigandage was vaunted by the Tatars and piracy by the Algerians. They fleeced their neighbours as often as possible, and they were regarded as birds of prey whose voracity is abhorred but who are tolerated because they are not entirely useless...
The role of commerce in antiquity amounted to very little. Just what was the vaunted trade of Tyr, Carthage and Athens? I would say that the activity of these three ports was barely equal to that of three of our small ports, like Nice, Bayonne and Dieppe, in peacetime. At that time there was little to exchange among the states on the shores of the Mediterranean. Since the goods which they produced were just about the same, farming and industry provided few occasions for trade. The backwardness of navigation prevented them from finding markets for their goods in the torrid and cold zones... It is clear that the commerce of antiquity must have been quite insubstantial when we consider that its most important branch, the grain trade, was frequently controlled by rulers. We read that Hiero, the King of Syracuse, made shipments of wheat to the Roman Senate. Thus in the nations of antiquity commerce was only a shadow — no more than a tenth — of what it is today. For this reason it is not surprising that the statesmen of that time paid little attention to their merchants and scorned their wiles without trying to reform them, just as the gross customs of the lower classes are disdained but tolerated today. Antiquity neither could nor would devote itself to the search for another mode of exchange; it simply tolerated commerce as a vulgar vice.
Circumstances are very different today. Various unforeseen events have produced a colossal growth in commerce. Progress in the art of navigation, the discovery of the East and West Indies with all their resources, the extension of farming to northern latitudes, the establishment of communications between the three zones, the rapid development of manufacturing, and the competition for trade among a multitude of nations — all these factors have led to a prodigious increase in the volume of commerce. It can be said to have increased ten-fold since Antiquity. Trade has now become one of the principal branches of the social mechanism; it has finally drawn the attention of the philosophers; they have ceased to ridicule it. Among them one group of men, who are called the Economists, has devoted itself to the study of industrial policy...
When political economy emerged as a science, commerce was already powerful and revered. The Dutch had already accumulated their hoards of gold, they had discovered the means to bribe and corrupt kings and their courts long before anyone had heard of the Economists. At the outset, then, commerce was a giant and political economy was only a dwarf. When political economy entered the lists against commerce, the ports were already swarming with wealthy ship-fitters and the great cities were full of those dandified bankers who are intimate with ministers and give orders to diplomats. It was no longer possible, as in antiquity, to treat commerce as a laughing stock, for there is no greater title to respect in civilisation than a bulging safe. The first efforts of political economy were all the more modest in that its authors possessed neither wealth nor an established body of doctrine. Since the legacy of antiquity amounted to no more than a few jeers about commerce, they had to create everything for themselves. Deprived of the wisdom of antiquity and thrown back on their own resources, the poor Economists were obliged to adopt modest and timid dogmas. This was only becoming in a few unknown savants who had to enter the scientific world by doing combat with the Croesus of the age.
There could be no doubt about the outcome of such a combat. Political economy made only a faint gesture of resistance. Praise for that gesture is due to Quesnay, the leader of the French sect.[18] Trying to make the truth known, he propagated dogmas which tended to subordinate commerce to the interests of agriculture. But the English cabal, which had sold out to commerce, triumphed with the help of a few religious intrigues. Philosophy, which had opened hostilities against the priesthood, was in need of reinforcements; it prudently decided to ally itself with the money-bags and to flatter commerce, which was beginning to acquire a great influence. Thus the Economists hitched themselves to the wagon of commerce. They proclaimed it infallible like the ancient popes. They declared that a merchant’s dealings could never fail to promote the public interest and that the merchant ought therefore to enjoy an absolute liberty. All the dogmas were adapted to this paradox.
Soon merchants were being showered with adulation. Raynal, Voltaire, and all the most eminent philosophers could be seen kneeling before the golden calf. But they secretly scorned it; for when Voltaire dedicated his play Zaire to a London merchant, whom he overwhelmed with banal compliments, he was no more sincere than when he dedicated his Mahomet to Pope Benedict. Voltaire was himself a consummate practitioner of mercantile trickery; he excelled at duping book-sellers. Thus he knew the true worth of the fine art of trade; he knew that merchants detest learning, that they scorn the sciences and the arts, that they are bored even by the flattery of writers when it does not serve to fine their pockets. But the philosophical party was in need of new recruits, and so they praised the merchants to the skies. ...
It must be said in defence of the philosophers that during the eighteenth century commerce was not as perverse as it is today. There were relatively few merchants then and they made their profits easily. Thus they did not need to resort to the innumerable subtleties and audacious tricks that degrade their profession today. This is so true that elderly merchants are constantly voicing their stupefaction at today’s wiles. They are agreed in describing modern commerce as a snare, a Black Forest, by comparison with the friendly spirit in which trade was carried on before the Revolution. We should add that at that time the English monopoly was not yet dominant. France was still standing up to England and, along with its allies, it had a very substantial monopoly of its own. That is why the French philosophers were not alarmed by an abuse from which their own nation benefited. Everything conspired to make this mismatch seem attractive to philosophy. In associating itself with commerce philosophy behaved just like a young noblewoman who marries a commoner whom she supposes to be an honest man. And, in fact, it was impossible at that time to predict the immensity of vices and scourges that commerce was going to inflict upon the nineteenth century.
But now the mercantile spirit has shown its profound malevolence. The mask has fallen; monopoly and deceit are now revealed. Philosophy can no longer deceive itself about the infamies of the serpent with which it has been associated. It is time for philosophy to break with commerce and return to the path of Truth, which is wholly alien to the mercantile spirit. A discovery is about to banish commerce from the womb of civilisation. If it was pardonable to encourage commerce when there was some doubt about its perversity, it would be odious to do so today, now that Truth has unmasked it and cast it into disgrace.
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
The Latest From Bradley Manning Square (a.k.a.) Davis Square -Somerville, Ma
Click on the headline to see a video of The Latest From Bradley Manning Square (a.k.a.) Davis Square -Somerville, Ma
Quebec-Mass student strike passes 100th day
Quebec-Mass student strike passes 100th day
23/05/2012
When authoritarianism faces resistance
Olivier Lachance, Alternative Socialiste (CWI Quebec)
For the past one hundred days, students in Quebec have been on strike against hikes in tuition fees in the amount of C$1625. This movement has faced harsh repression from the beginning, and things have only gotten worse since the government implemented the “Law 78”, which imposes strict limits the right to demonstrate. Despite this horrendously anti-democratic law (see box at end of article), there were reports of as many as 250,000 demonstrating yesterday in Montreal to protest the rise of tuition fees as well as Law 78 itself. To mark the occasion of the hundredth day of the struggle, we publish an article about the ongoing strike movement by Olivier Lachance from Alternative Socialiste (CWI Quebec).
Socialistworld.net
Despite the pronouncements of journalists and politicians about the marginalization and slowing down of the student movement, in reality the struggle against rising tuition fees is setting new records. About 150,000 students are still on strike after three months of struggle. Demonstrations and protest actions are taking place day after day in every corner of Quebec. Several trade unions, popular movements, and political and citizen organizations are siding with the students.
Moreover, the struggle has evolved a lot since the beginning of the conflict. The point is no longer merely to express disagreement with the government’s decision to increase the tuition fees by C$1625, but also to resist an unprecedented authoritarian crackdown, which is a last-ditch attempt by the government to defeat the student movement.
Indeed, what has been seen in the last several days is quite disturbing. But this will not prevent the fight from continuing. On the contrary, this is one more reason to struggle.
Confronting an opposition that was too big to simply ignore, the Charest government had to offer proposals to students despite Charest saying he does not have to comply with their demands. Of course, these proposals were nothing more than a decoy – distractions from the genuine changes being demanded by students. The first was only a trivial change in the amount of financial aid available for students, and the second was an offer to discuss the management of universities with the students unions, on the conditions that they condemn the protestors’ “hooliganism”. Fortunately, the students have not been fooled, and the attempts to divide them were ineffective.
Heads of universities and colleges are up against the wall. Consequently, some of them tried to end the conflict themselves at the beginning of May. Their solution: seeking court injunctions to forcibly end the student strikes at their respective institutions, ignoring the decisions democratically taken by the students. But whether the injunctions are granted or not, it was a fanciful hope by the government that such a movement would simply concede to this ridiculous measure.
At Valleyfield and Saint Jean-sur-Richelieu colleges, students and professors have continued demonstrating, forcing classes to be cancelled despite the injunctions. The same thing happened at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, where the situation soon degenerated when the rector (a sympathiser of the Liberal Party) called out the security forces. Over the course of three days, several hundred students, professors, and others were arrested. This only spurred the demonstrations to grow stronger, but the demonstrators suffered severe repression, resulting in several people being injured by the brutality of the police.
At the University of Montreal, the injunction was not granted. Nonetheless, the college administration, carried forward by the momentum of its own repressive zealousness, asked its security agents, the police, and a private security company to come put an end the protests anyway. This provocation brought with it a growing atmosphere of intimidation and anger, and it resulted in some property damage.
Though there are not many strikers in Quebec City, the struggle is taking place all the same. On 17 April, there was a march to denounce a piece published in an important local newspaper by a high-ranking official praising the methods used by fascists to suppress protests. Another spontaneous demonstration took place two days later to protest the threats by a head administrator of CEGEP (a secondary school) against a teacher who wanted to lecture outside to symbolically oppose the rise of tuition fees. The police once again abused their authority during this otherwise peaceful demonstration, making approximately 50 totally arbitrary arrests.
It was in this context that the day of action on 20 April took place, when hundreds of determined demonstrators tried to disrupt a speech the prime minister was giving in Montreal. The tension rose quickly. When the police used all they had (including teargas, batons, violent arrests, sound grenades, and rubber bullets) to attempt to once again repress the demonstration arbitrarily, demonstrators started a riot that lasted several hours. Barricades in the streets, projectiles from all sides, smoke clouds from the fires and gas – it was complete mayhem, ending not only with numerous arrests, but with many injured demonstrators, bystanders, and even policemen.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister (compelled to delay starting his “Plan Nord” presentation to the businesspeople gathered at the Congress Palace) could do no more than make jokes about the situation, saying that, thanks to him, students could go find jobs in the north of the province, and that soon enough we would not be hearing from them anymore. This “joke” is not only an insult to all students trying to be heard on an issue that concerns them, but also an insult to the population as a whole, who want a real dialogue and a real solution to this crisis.
The incompetence of the Liberals in managing this conflict – coupled with corruption scandals and their “Plan Nord”, which is selling off Quebec’s natural resources at a discount to the private sector – only exposes the fact that the government does not care at all what the people of Quebec think or want. All that matters for them is their own interests and the interests of their friends in big business. But even using force, their contempt for the population was not able to shut down the students and their allies. The struggle against rising tuition fees must go on – and this ongoing struggle is in fact a type of victory in itself. Of course, this is not a total victory for the moment, but this struggle has already developed a consciousness and an approach of mobilizing large numbers of demonstrators that will help to defend our collective interests in Quebec in the future.
This is why we, Alternative Socialiste (CWI in Quebec), believe that the struggle can and must progress even further. In particular, we have to widen the struggle to fight against austerity as a whole and build a base among ordinary working people, who, with the students, will be able to act as a counterbalance to the scheming of our elites. But this struggle must not only beat back the attacks of the establishment. It also has to be channelled into a political struggle to overthrow the dictatorship of markets generating all these problems.
Hikes in tuition fees: a “baton law” to impose the reactionary views of the government
Everyone in the streets against corruption and fees!
This 17 May the Liberals, led by Jean Charest, adopted a special law (Law Project 78) to try to destroy the student struggle, a measure reminiscent of the “Grande Noirceur” (“Great Darkness”) era during the regime of Maurice Duplessis.
Basically, this baton law will impose special arrests and fines (C$7,000 and more) on anyone (such as students and professors, mainly) who encourages, prepares, or participates in activities forbidden by the court injunctions and compulsory return to lectures in August. Students’ associations can receive fines of more than C$25,000 for taking part in these activities. This law also requires all demonstrations of more than 25 people to inform the police of their march route at least eight hours before they take place. The police are then empowered to change the route. Additionally, some cities as well as Stephen Harper’s government are now about to implement a law forbidding the wearing of masks during demonstrations.
We are already facing police brutality, arbitrary arrests, and unfair court injunctions; these new measures will only speed the transformation of Quebec into a police state designed to forcibly suppress the struggles of social movements. Indeed, the crisis facing Quebec is so deep that our rulers are ready to do anything to get what they want.
Let’s not be intimidated by this authoritarian government! Today more than ever, we have to intensify the struggle! Everyone should stay in the streets to continue demonstrating and occupying!
Students and workers, we are all being victimized by the hypocritical policies of the establishment. We have to stand up and unite against the handful of liars in power and their friends in the private sector who are making us foot the bill for their poor management, and who are only interested in their own individual profitability. In our students unions and trade unions, let’s organize a general strike against corruption, fees, and privatisations!
Let’s stop tolerating and complying with the Liberal Party of Quebec and with the CAQ and PQ, both of which are incapable of defending us and whose main concern is befriending the elites. Only Quebec Solidaire has the potential to become the loudspeaker of this protest movement. Let’s get involved in this party and back it!
23/05/2012
When authoritarianism faces resistance
Olivier Lachance, Alternative Socialiste (CWI Quebec)
For the past one hundred days, students in Quebec have been on strike against hikes in tuition fees in the amount of C$1625. This movement has faced harsh repression from the beginning, and things have only gotten worse since the government implemented the “Law 78”, which imposes strict limits the right to demonstrate. Despite this horrendously anti-democratic law (see box at end of article), there were reports of as many as 250,000 demonstrating yesterday in Montreal to protest the rise of tuition fees as well as Law 78 itself. To mark the occasion of the hundredth day of the struggle, we publish an article about the ongoing strike movement by Olivier Lachance from Alternative Socialiste (CWI Quebec).
Socialistworld.net
Despite the pronouncements of journalists and politicians about the marginalization and slowing down of the student movement, in reality the struggle against rising tuition fees is setting new records. About 150,000 students are still on strike after three months of struggle. Demonstrations and protest actions are taking place day after day in every corner of Quebec. Several trade unions, popular movements, and political and citizen organizations are siding with the students.
Moreover, the struggle has evolved a lot since the beginning of the conflict. The point is no longer merely to express disagreement with the government’s decision to increase the tuition fees by C$1625, but also to resist an unprecedented authoritarian crackdown, which is a last-ditch attempt by the government to defeat the student movement.
Indeed, what has been seen in the last several days is quite disturbing. But this will not prevent the fight from continuing. On the contrary, this is one more reason to struggle.
Confronting an opposition that was too big to simply ignore, the Charest government had to offer proposals to students despite Charest saying he does not have to comply with their demands. Of course, these proposals were nothing more than a decoy – distractions from the genuine changes being demanded by students. The first was only a trivial change in the amount of financial aid available for students, and the second was an offer to discuss the management of universities with the students unions, on the conditions that they condemn the protestors’ “hooliganism”. Fortunately, the students have not been fooled, and the attempts to divide them were ineffective.
Heads of universities and colleges are up against the wall. Consequently, some of them tried to end the conflict themselves at the beginning of May. Their solution: seeking court injunctions to forcibly end the student strikes at their respective institutions, ignoring the decisions democratically taken by the students. But whether the injunctions are granted or not, it was a fanciful hope by the government that such a movement would simply concede to this ridiculous measure.
At Valleyfield and Saint Jean-sur-Richelieu colleges, students and professors have continued demonstrating, forcing classes to be cancelled despite the injunctions. The same thing happened at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, where the situation soon degenerated when the rector (a sympathiser of the Liberal Party) called out the security forces. Over the course of three days, several hundred students, professors, and others were arrested. This only spurred the demonstrations to grow stronger, but the demonstrators suffered severe repression, resulting in several people being injured by the brutality of the police.
At the University of Montreal, the injunction was not granted. Nonetheless, the college administration, carried forward by the momentum of its own repressive zealousness, asked its security agents, the police, and a private security company to come put an end the protests anyway. This provocation brought with it a growing atmosphere of intimidation and anger, and it resulted in some property damage.
Though there are not many strikers in Quebec City, the struggle is taking place all the same. On 17 April, there was a march to denounce a piece published in an important local newspaper by a high-ranking official praising the methods used by fascists to suppress protests. Another spontaneous demonstration took place two days later to protest the threats by a head administrator of CEGEP (a secondary school) against a teacher who wanted to lecture outside to symbolically oppose the rise of tuition fees. The police once again abused their authority during this otherwise peaceful demonstration, making approximately 50 totally arbitrary arrests.
It was in this context that the day of action on 20 April took place, when hundreds of determined demonstrators tried to disrupt a speech the prime minister was giving in Montreal. The tension rose quickly. When the police used all they had (including teargas, batons, violent arrests, sound grenades, and rubber bullets) to attempt to once again repress the demonstration arbitrarily, demonstrators started a riot that lasted several hours. Barricades in the streets, projectiles from all sides, smoke clouds from the fires and gas – it was complete mayhem, ending not only with numerous arrests, but with many injured demonstrators, bystanders, and even policemen.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister (compelled to delay starting his “Plan Nord” presentation to the businesspeople gathered at the Congress Palace) could do no more than make jokes about the situation, saying that, thanks to him, students could go find jobs in the north of the province, and that soon enough we would not be hearing from them anymore. This “joke” is not only an insult to all students trying to be heard on an issue that concerns them, but also an insult to the population as a whole, who want a real dialogue and a real solution to this crisis.
The incompetence of the Liberals in managing this conflict – coupled with corruption scandals and their “Plan Nord”, which is selling off Quebec’s natural resources at a discount to the private sector – only exposes the fact that the government does not care at all what the people of Quebec think or want. All that matters for them is their own interests and the interests of their friends in big business. But even using force, their contempt for the population was not able to shut down the students and their allies. The struggle against rising tuition fees must go on – and this ongoing struggle is in fact a type of victory in itself. Of course, this is not a total victory for the moment, but this struggle has already developed a consciousness and an approach of mobilizing large numbers of demonstrators that will help to defend our collective interests in Quebec in the future.
This is why we, Alternative Socialiste (CWI in Quebec), believe that the struggle can and must progress even further. In particular, we have to widen the struggle to fight against austerity as a whole and build a base among ordinary working people, who, with the students, will be able to act as a counterbalance to the scheming of our elites. But this struggle must not only beat back the attacks of the establishment. It also has to be channelled into a political struggle to overthrow the dictatorship of markets generating all these problems.
Hikes in tuition fees: a “baton law” to impose the reactionary views of the government
Everyone in the streets against corruption and fees!
This 17 May the Liberals, led by Jean Charest, adopted a special law (Law Project 78) to try to destroy the student struggle, a measure reminiscent of the “Grande Noirceur” (“Great Darkness”) era during the regime of Maurice Duplessis.
Basically, this baton law will impose special arrests and fines (C$7,000 and more) on anyone (such as students and professors, mainly) who encourages, prepares, or participates in activities forbidden by the court injunctions and compulsory return to lectures in August. Students’ associations can receive fines of more than C$25,000 for taking part in these activities. This law also requires all demonstrations of more than 25 people to inform the police of their march route at least eight hours before they take place. The police are then empowered to change the route. Additionally, some cities as well as Stephen Harper’s government are now about to implement a law forbidding the wearing of masks during demonstrations.
We are already facing police brutality, arbitrary arrests, and unfair court injunctions; these new measures will only speed the transformation of Quebec into a police state designed to forcibly suppress the struggles of social movements. Indeed, the crisis facing Quebec is so deep that our rulers are ready to do anything to get what they want.
Let’s not be intimidated by this authoritarian government! Today more than ever, we have to intensify the struggle! Everyone should stay in the streets to continue demonstrating and occupying!
Students and workers, we are all being victimized by the hypocritical policies of the establishment. We have to stand up and unite against the handful of liars in power and their friends in the private sector who are making us foot the bill for their poor management, and who are only interested in their own individual profitability. In our students unions and trade unions, let’s organize a general strike against corruption, fees, and privatisations!
Let’s stop tolerating and complying with the Liberal Party of Quebec and with the CAQ and PQ, both of which are incapable of defending us and whose main concern is befriending the elites. Only Quebec Solidaire has the potential to become the loudspeaker of this protest movement. Let’s get involved in this party and back it!
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