Workers Vanguard No. 1012	9 November 2012

Free the Class-War Prisoners!

27th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

This year marks the 27th Holiday Appeal for class-war prisoners, those thrown behind bars for their opposition to racist capitalist oppression. The Partisan Defense Committee provides monthly stipends to 16 of these prisoners as well as holiday gifts for them and their families. This is a revival of the tradition of the early International Labor Defense (ILD) under its secretary and founder James P. Cannon. The stipends are a necessary expression of solidarity with the prisoners—a message that they are not forgotten.

Launching the ILD’s appeal for the prisoners, Cannon wrote, “The men in prison are still part of the living class movement” (“A Christmas Fund of our Own,” Daily Worker, 17 October 1927). Cannon noted that the stipends program “is a means of informing them that the workers of America have not forgotten their duty toward the men to whom we are all linked by bonds of solidarity.” This motivation inspires our program today. The PDC also continues to publicize the causes of the prisoners in the pages of Workers Vanguard, the PDC newsletter, Class-Struggle Defense Notes, and our Web site partisandefense.org. We provide subscriptions to WV and accompany the stipends with reports on the PDC’s work. In a recent letter, MOVE prisoner Eddie Africa wrote, “I received the letters and the money, thank you for both, it’s a good feeling to have friends remembering you with affection!”

The Holiday Appeal raises the funds for this vital program. The PDC provides $25 per month to the prisoners, and extra for their birthdays and during the holiday season. We would like to provide more. The prisoners generally use the funds for basic necessities: supplementing the inadequate prison diet, purchasing stamps and writing materials needed to maintain contact with family and comrades, and pursuing literary, artistic, musical and other pursuits to mollify a bit the living hell of prison. The costs of these have obviously grown, including the exponential growth in prison phone charges.

The capitalist rulers have made clear their continuing determination to slam the prison doors on those who stand in the way of brutal exploitation, imperialist depredations and racist oppression. We encourage WV readers, trade-union activists and fighters against racist oppression to dig deep for the class-war prisoners. The 16 class-war prisoners receiving stipends from the PDC are listed below:

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Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” Last December the Philadelphia district attorney’s office announced it was dropping its longstanding efforts to execute America’s foremost class-war prisoner. While this brings to an end the legal lynching campaign, Mumia remains condemned to spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence.

Mumia was framed up for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and was initially sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Mountains of documentation proving his innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner, have been submitted to the courts. But from top to bottom, the courts have repeatedly refused to hear the exculpatory evidence.

The state authorities hope that with the transfer of Mumia from death row his cause will be forgotten and that he will rot in prison until he dies. This must not be Mumia’s fate. Fighters for Mumia’s freedom must link his cause to the class struggles of the multiracial proletariat. Trade unionists, opponents of the racist death penalty and fighters for black rights must continue the fight to free Mumia from “slow death” row in the racist dungeons of Pennsylvania.

Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier’s frame-up for the 1975 deaths of two marauding FBI agents in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, shows what capitalist “justice” is all about. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 68-year-old Peltier is still locked away. Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions and is incarcerated far from his people and family. He is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another 12 years!

Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 35th year of prison. They were sentenced to 30-100 years after the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops when a bomb was dropped on their living quarters. After more than three decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings. None have been released.

Lynne Stewart is a radical lawyer sentenced to ten years for defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric imprisoned for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. For this advocate known for defense of Black Panthers, radical leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state, her sentence may well amount to a death sentence as she is 73 years old and suffers from breast cancer. Originally sentenced to 28 months, her resentencing more than quadrupled her prison time in a loud affirmation by the Obama administration that there will be no letup in the massive attack on democratic rights under the “war on terror.” This year her appeal of the onerous sentence was turned down.

Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Their children were kidnapped at gunpoint by the Feds.

The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals during the Vietnam antiwar movement and by New Leftists who wrote off the possibility of winning the working class to a revolutionary program and saw themselves as an auxiliary of Third World liberation movements. But, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.

Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They were victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now spent more than 40 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter and Mondo new trials despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a 911 audio tape long-suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.

Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, has been in solitary isolation for more than four decades. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole in 2009. Now in his 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious torture chamber, Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit in California, a focal point for hunger strikes against grotesquely inhuman conditions.

Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.

The Demise Of The Occupy General Assembly Idea- What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-The Chartist Movement In Great Britain

Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.

 Markin comment:

 I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the Lessons From History series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.

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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All  Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

 

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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!

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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 for public and private workers to unionize.  

 * Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).  

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran!  U.S. Hands Off The World! 

 *Fight for a social agenda for working people! Quality Free 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!   

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Chartism or The Chartist Movement

Glenn Everett

, formerly Associate Professor of English, University of Tennessee at Martin

[Victorian Web Home —> Political History —> Social History —> Economics —> A History of Chartism]

The "People's Charter," drafted in 1838 by William Lovett, was at the heart of a radical campaign for parliamentary reform of the inequities remaining after the Reform Act of 1832. The Chartists' six main demands were:

1. votes for all men;
2. equal electoral districts;
3. abolition of the requirement that Members of Parliament be property owners;
4. payment for M.P.s;
5. annual general elections; and
6. the secret ballot.

The Chartists obtained one and a quarter million signatures and presented the Charter to the House of Commons in 1839, where it was rejected by a vote of 235 to 46. Many of the leaders of the movement, having threatened to call a general strike, were arrested. When demonstrators marched on the prison at Newport, Monmouthshire, demanding the release of their leaders, troops opened fire, killing 24 and wounding 40 more. A second petition with 3 million signatures was rejected in 1842; the rejection of the third petition in 1848 brought an end to the movement.
More important than the movement itself was the unrest it symbolized. The Chartists' demands, at the time, seemed radical; those outside the movement saw the unrest and thought of the French Revolution and The Reign of Terror. Thomas Carlyle's pamphlet Chartism (1839), argued the need for reform by fanning these fears, though he later became increasingly hostile to democratic ideas in works like "Hudson's Statue" Historians theorize broadly about why this revolutionary movement died out just as the revolutions of 1848 were breaking out all over Europe, but from this distance we can only suppose that the English had a confidence in their government and a sense of optimism about their future possibilities which suggested to them that patience was better than violence; and in fact most of their demands were eventually met — specifically in the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884. The threat of unrest surely influenced such otherwise unrelated reforms as the Factory act and the repeal of the Corn Laws. The radicalism that surfaced in the agitation for the Charter and a desire for a working-class voice in foreign affairs eventually channeled itself into related areas like the Socialist movement.

James P. Cannon

Daily Strike Bulletin

Minneapolis—July 16, 1934

Strike Call of Local 574

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Thanks to the historians at the Minnesota Historical Society for help in locating the The Daily Strike Bulletins of General Drivers Local 574 and other documents from the 1934 Teamster Strikes

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[Below is an article written by SWP leader James P. Cannon for the daily strike bulletin of Minneapolis Teamster Local 574 during its historic 1934 strike.—Editor]

(Unanimously adopted at General Membership Meeting, Wednesday, July 11.)

SINCE the settlement of the strike on May 25, Local 574, through its duly authorized representatives, has been attempting to negotiate wage scales with the employers in accordance with the agreement which brought about the ending of the strike. We have attempted to settle with the employers all other matters left for negotiation. All these attempts to settle the dispute by negotiation, conducted with the greatest patience and persistence, have met with failure. The employers, egged on by the union-hating Citizens’ Alliance, behind which stand the banks and the sinister financial interests of Wall Street, have violated the agreement. They have set out to break our union and rob us of the fruits of our victory.

All the efforts of our union, over a period of six weeks since the ending of the strike, to establish living wages and hours have been frustrated by the arrogant attitude of the employers. The Regional Labor Board by its action, or rather by its failure to act, has aided in every case in upholding the hands of these employers. Every attempt of the union to negotiate and secure satisfaction for the just demands of its members has been met with evasions, tricks and subterfuges. Every approach for practical discussions of our grievances has been answered by columns of paid newspaper advertisements filled with misrepresentations, lies and slanders against the union and its leadership.
The vital questions of wages and hours, which are of life-and-death concern to our members and their families, have been callously ignored. The right of the union to represent all its members, which was explicitly agreed to in the strike settlement, has been denied. Seniority rules, provided for in the agreement, have been violated by a majority of the firms.
In this unscrupulous course, the Citizens’ Alliance and the employers are seeking to shift the issue. They cloak their campaign to wreck the trade-union movement and deprive the workers of decent human lives behind personal attacks on the leaders of the union. The bosses want to dictate to the union what leaders it should have. We reject this dictation. We have the right to be represented by leaders of our own choosing and we intend to assert this right. We reject the insolent demand of the Citizens’ Alliance and the bosses to choose our leaders for us. Local 574 is a democratic trade-union organization. Its membership is fully capable of deciding this question for itself without any advice from the exploiters of labor.
The general membership meeting declares that the leaders of our union have faithfully served the interests of the membership. They have conducted themselves as responsible trade-union officials and have not imposed on the union any issues, political or otherwise, contrary to the interests of the union and its members. They have shown their efficiency as organizers in the building of our union. They have demonstrated their loyalty and courage under fire.
The “red scare” of the Citizens’ Alliance is nothing but a fraudulent maneuver to distract our attention from the struggle for decent living conditions and demoralize our ranks. They will not succeed. The conditions of our lives are too bitter. Nobody can divert us from the fight to better them.
We note with the greatest indignation that D. J. Tobin, president of our international organization, has associated himself with this diabolical game of the bosses by publishing a slanderous attack on our leadership in the official magazine. The fact that this attack has become part of the “ammunition” of the bosses in their campaign to wreck our union, is enough for any intelligent worker to estimate it for what it really is. We say plainly to D. J. Tobin: “If you can’t act like a union man and help us, instead of helping the bosses, then at least have the decency to stand aside and let us fight our battle alone. We did it in the organization campaign and in the previous strike, and we can do it again. We received absolutely no help of any kind from you. Our leadership and guidance has come from our own local leaders, and them alone. We put our confidence in them and will not support any attack on them under any circumstances. ”
We are fighting for more wages, for better hours and working conditions, and for the right of union organization. The conditions under which we work are intolerable for men who want to live as human beings and who aspire to provide a decent existence and a future for their families in this, the richest country in the world. That is our right. We have worked for it, and we intend to fight for it to the bitter end.
In doing so we feel deeply convinced that we are fighters for the preservation of the trade-union movement and for the rights and interests of all workers. Our strength and confidence is multiplied by the conviction that our fellow workers and brother unionists in other trades, who helped us so nobly before, will rally to our aid again. We rely on the sympathy and solidarity of the other unions and workers’ organizations, who endorsed our demands by their presence in the great labor demonstration Friday, July 6. We appeal for the support also of the organizations of farmers and gardeners, of the unemployed workers, of the rank and file of small business and professional people of all who are cheated and oppressed by the financial tyrants who have turned our great, rich country into a land of privation and misery for the masses.
We are confident that our appeal will not be in vain. Therefore, convinced of the justice of our cause, relying on our own strength and the sympathetic aid of the great majority of the population. the general membership meeting solemnly declares:
l. All members of Local No. 574 will go on strike for the enforcement of the union demands on Monday, July 16, at 12 o’clock midnight.
2. We call upon our sister Local No. 120 in St. Paul to take similar action at its general membership meeting Thursday night, and we pledge to Local 120 our solidarity and cooperation in a joint struggle to a successful conclusion.
3. We call upon all other trade unions in the Twin Cities to rally to our support with moral and financial aid, and to hold themselves in readiness to take sympathetic strike action if such becomes necessary to secure our victory and smash the union-wrecking campaign of the Citizens’ Alliance.

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Report on the CodePink delegation to Pakistan

by Joe Lombardo, UNAC co-coordinator

I arrived in Islamabad at 2:30 am on October 3 with about 7 other members of our delegation after a grueling flight from New York. We were part of the Code Pink anti-drone delegation to Pakistan. On arrival in Islamabad, we were amazed to see a large group of people welcoming us from the Aafia Siddiqui movement. This is a movement in support of Aafia Siddiqui who is in solitary confinement in a Texas prison serving an 86 year sentence. Aafia, like other Muslims in prison in the U.S. as part of the phony “War on Terror,” is guilty of nothing. I will explain more about her case later in this report.

After arriving at our guest house where the entire delegation was staying, I had about 1/2 hours sleep before meeting the rest of the delegation at our orientation. Others on the delegation include Col. Ann Wright, who quit the military and her diplomatic post over the invasion of Iraq, Medea Benjamin, the dynamic leader of Code Pink, Leah Bolger, president of Veterans for Peace and UNAC administrative committee member, Judy Bello of the Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars and UNAC administrative committee member and a host of other wonderful activists and individuals, including 3 other members of the Upstate New York Coalition. We were 31 people in all.

On our first day in Pakistan, we met with the acting U.S. ambassador, Richard E. Hoagland, who made the fantastic statement that no civilians have been killed by the drones since 2008 (the year Obama became president). At another time he said the civilian casualties were in the 2 figures (< 100).

We also held a meeting with a leading human rights fighter and with Fowzia Siddiqui, Aafia Siddiqui’s sister.

Aafia Siddiqui is a young Pakistani woman who was educated in the U.S. She did undergraduate work at MIT and got doctorate from Brandeis. She eventually returned to Karachi, Pakistan where her family lives. She had 3 children, 2 born in the U.S., making them U.S. citizens. In 2003, Aafia took her 3 children, ages 6 months to 6 years, on a trip to Islamabad and disappeared. The U.S. and Pakistani government both denied having her in custody. Five years passed and her family feared she and her children were dead when they got word from a reporter that she was alive and at Bagram Air base in Afghanistan. NBC news also confirmed this and the U.S. government finally admitted they had her in custody. She was taken to the U.S. and tried for assaulting a U.S. soldier in Ghazni, Afghanistan while she was in custody waiting to be interrogated. During this alleged incident, 4'11" Aafia was shoot twice. She was convicted and is now serving 86 year in solitary confinement at the notorious Carswell prison in Texas. Her family has had almost no contact with her and have been denied the right to visit. Her son Ahmed, a U.S. citizen, was found in 2008 in Ghazni, Afghjanistan. He was then reunited with Aafia’s sister, who heads her defense campaign in Pakistan. Aafia’s daughter, Maryum, also a U.S. citizen, was mysteriously dropped off in April 2010 near her aunt’s house in Karachi after being missing for 7 years. When dropped off, the only language she knew was English, which she spoke with a perfect American accent. Aafia’s youngest child, a boy, remains missing and is feared dead.

At night, some of us met with members of the newly formed Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) chapter of Pakistan. We had a good discussion. One of the themes that came out and that I have heard from others progressive people in Pakistan was that maybe the drones are not that bad. They only hit the "militants" who are violent themselves, and if they were not used, the Pakistani military would have to attack the "militants" and many more would be killed. We explained our view that the so called "militants" were there because of the war in Afghanistan. If you want to end the "militant" actions, you need to stop the war. This theme of the drones not being so bad is one that we heard a number of times in Pakistan from the secular progressive movement who is against the U.S. wars. People we met from the left, such as the Labour Party of Pakistan (LPP), were clear that they were totally against the drones and the wars but they also held a position against the “militants.” I had long discussions with them on this. The secular left and the conservative Islamic movement, while agreeing on the need to fight U.S. imperialism, have been mortal enemies and, at times, have physically battled each other. Our delegation got a hint of this at a meeting that the LPP set up for our delegation with the Bar Association of Islamabad, which I will report on later in this article. The people from the LPP whom I spoke with understood why, in the U.S., our focus is totally on U.S. imperialism.

On our second day in Pakistan, I spent a lot of time apart from our delegation. In the morning, Judy Bello and I spoke at a press conference with Fowzia Siddiqui and people from the Committee of the Disappeared. As in Latin American under various dictatorships, people in Pakistan were disappeared as happened to Aafia Saddiqui. Judy and I spoke at the press conference along with Aafia’s sister, the woman who heads the Committee of the Disappeared and a couple of other people. There were a lot of media, and they asked a lot of good questions. Outside the press conference, about 100 people, mostly women and children who are family members of the disappeared were waiting for us. We met with them. They wanted to be with us, many were crying. They carried pictures of their loved ones in the hope that it would help them find them. It was one of those situations where you just feel helpless, and there is nothing that you can say.

After the press conference and our meeting with the disappeared, we met up with the rest of our group and attended a press conference with Imran Khan. The press conference was huge and had media from all across Pakistan, from the U.S. and around the world. Medea spoke for our group. It was clear to me at this press conference how important our tour to Pakistan was and how glad I was that

Code Pink had the ability and political clarity to organize it. Our tour raised the profile of the drone issue in Pakistan, the U.S. and other places. It was a big blow to U.S. war policy and put the U.S. on the defensive on this issue. It happened at the very time that a study from Stanford and NYU and another study from Columbia on the use of drone warfare came out condemning drone warfare and explaining the affects on the civilian population. Since then, there have been a number of articles in the corporate media questioning the use of drones.

That night I went to the home of one of the people from the Labour Party of Pakistan (LPP) and met with about 10 people. We had a long informal exchange of ideas. They wanted to know everything about the antiwar movement and the left in the U.S. They told me about their merger plans with two other secular left parties in Pakistan, the Workers Party and the People’s Party. This merger is big news in progressive circles in Pakistan, and we heard about it in several places.

On April 9, 2011, when UNAC held demonstrations against the wars in New York and San Francisco, the Labour Party of Pakistan organized solidarity actions in several cities in Pakistan

After our discussion, I was taken to the office of the Tribune newspaper, where I met the staff and editors and had a long interview.

On our third day in Pakistan, we met with a number of men who had had family members killed in drone attacks. They all were from North Waziristan. Before they came, our hosts told us that they may be uncomfortable in a room with both men and women and may not make eye contact with the women out of respect. Most of the talking was done by one man who lost his son and a brother in a drone attack. He was a Malik, a tribal leader. (On the way back from Waziristan I was able to spend over an hour talking to this man one-on-one.)

According to the introduction to the Federal Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) given by our hosts, these are areas that are part of Pakistan but are autonomous. They have their own governing bodies. The highest governing entity is the jirga, which is a meeting of tribal officials. The main language in Pakistan is Urdu, but in this area the main language is Pashto. The FATA areas of North and South Waziristan are where the drone strikes have taken place, two-thirds of them in North Waziristan.

We learned that drones fly overhead 24 hours a day. People are afraid to congregate, fearing they we be seen as a gathering of “militants” and will be attacked. Children no longer go to school because of fear that they will be attacked. This has caused a lot of psychological disorders in this area, and for the first time in their communities they are seeing instances of suicide. At one point, the regional jirga was targeted and 54 people were killed. Typically, the U.S. and Pakistan don’t give compensation when someone is killed by the drones, but in this case they offered $6,000 for each family. This is a lot of money for these people, but it was refused by everyone. They said they want justice, not money.

Also at the meeting was a journalist from North Waziristan who has been documenting the drone strikes. When there is a strike, he gets notified and goes to the site and records who is killed and takes pictures. Some of these pictures were blown up and put on our busses as we rode towards Waziristan the following day. Because of their customs, he is unable to take pictures of women or even record their names, but he has recorded the time and place where 670 women have been killed by the drones. This is far different than what we heard from the ambassador. I tend to believe the journalist from North Waziristan rather than our government who lied to us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

After this meeting, we went with these men from North Waziristan to a rally against drones organized at a close-by shopping area by the youth group of Imran Khan’s Justice Party.

We then went back to our hotel to get ready for our journey north to Waziristan the following morning. Before leaving for Waziristan, the U.S. government made one last attempt to stop us. The ambassador called and told us that they had received “creditable reports” that if we were to go to Waziristan, we would be attacked. To me, this indicated the power of our march to Waziristan. All three tribal leaders in South Waziristan wanted us to come. They said we were their guests and would be protected. This march included Americans and Pakistanis and was supported by those in the tribal areas. It indicated that we all want peace, so it raised the question, why do we have war?

On Saturday morning we boarded our busses to meet up with Imran Khan’s convoy to head to South Waziristan. Almost immediately, everything fell apart. We were supposed to by right behind Imran Khan, but never quite got into that position. At times on the way north, we seemed to lose the caravan and then would meet up with it again later. The caravan went through poorer rural areas and beautiful landscapes. At times when we were separated, our hosts got concerned and asked us to close the curtains on the busses and make sure that the women had their heads covered.

As we passed through towns on the way north, we were met by crowds of members of Imran Khans party. The convoy stopped at several of these towns and held anti-drone rallies. Because we were not up front near Imran Khan in the convoy, we did not hear or participate in these rallies, but the crowds remained, knowing that our busses would pass by them. When we did pass them, they cheered and flashed peace signs.

We reached our destination for the night very late, around midnight. We stayed in the compound of a big farm about 10 km (around 6 miles) from the border with Waziristan. Outside and inside the compound were crowds of people spending the night, getting ready for the trip across the border. As we walked from our busses into the compound, we were treated like heroes. People shouted welcome and peace. Everyone wanted to take a picture with us. We were fed a meal at midnight and held a meeting. Some were concerned that the security that we were supposed to have on our ride to the border never materialized and wanted to make sure that it was rectified in the morning.

That night we learned that the military had blocked the roads into Waziristan with big storage containers and would not let us cross the border. They said that this was for our own safety. Imran Khan was determined to make an effort to cross the border despite the containers. In the morning he met with our group and leaders of his party, and our hosts encouraged us not to go with him the extra 6 miles to the border. If we were stopped by the containers, they understood that it would be difficult to turn all the cars in the large caravan around, and there would be a massive traffic jam.

In this situation our safety might be of concern. Instead, before leaving they organized a big rally at the compound where Imran and Medea spoke to cheering crowds shouting “Welcome,” “Peace,” and “Stop, stop, stop drones attacks.” This rally was held on October 7, the 11^th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan as demonstrations were taking place in the U. S. and other parts of the world.

It was understood that the political power of this trip with our delegation had already been achieved, and therefore, the risk was not worth it at this point. So after the caravan cleared out of the compound heading north, we left and headed south accompanied by a police escort all the way back to Islamabad.

On the way back to Islamabad, we stopped at a rural college that was built by Imran Khan. This was a college of engineering and computer science he established primarily for those who might otherwise not have access to higher education. Ninety percent of those attending are there on scholarship. It was meant to be the first of many schools accessible to everyone within a “city of knowledge” envisioned by Imran Khan. We also were told about a cancer hospital he’d built at which anyone could obtain treatment, whether they could afford it or not.

After returning to Islamabad, we rested. The next day, Monday, was a slow one. We did have a follow-up meeting with the Ambassador. Only six of us, including me, attended this meeting. We asked him to hear the evidence we had of Pakistani civilian deaths from U.S. drone attacks. He said he would. Some people in our group felt the Ambassador opened up to us more on this occasion than is usual. At times, he asked us to turn off the recording devices so he could say something off the record. However, he stuck to the line that there were almost no civilian deaths and that if there were, they were anomalies. I did not have much hope that our talk with the Ambassador would advance our cause at all.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Judy Bello and I separated from the group to spend a day in Karachi with the Aafia folks and another in Lahore with the LPP folks. When we got off of the plane in Karachi, we were met by a group of people holding a big banner stating, “Welcome to our honored guests, Joe Lombardo and Judy Bello.” We were taken by car to Aafia’s home to meet her mother and children. All along the road, we saw banners and wall writing in honor of Aafia Siddiqui. My favorite sign said, “86 years to Aafia – bullshit.” At one point, there was a truck in the middle of the road surrounded by people and cars. The truck had speakers on it that were playing a song sung in Urdu. It was a popular folk song written about Aafia. Our car fell in behind the sound truck and started a caravan to Aafia’s house. As we got closer, the road became packed with people welcoming us, waving, chanting, giving peace signs, and throwing flowers. The major road we were on was taken over by this crowd, and our car went along with them at a slow pace. At one point I got out and walked with the crowd. The police escorted us and smiled and waved at us. As we got closer to Aafia’s home, we saw that her entire street had been plastered with huge pictures of demonstrations held across Pakistan and in other countries demanding her release. There was one picture of a demonstration in Pakistan that we were told was attended by over a million people.

We held a well-attended press conference at Aafia’s house and met her mother and her son and daughter. As always, they fed us till we could not look at food anymore.

After meeting the family, we were taken to the University of Karachi, where Judy and I spoke to a lecture hall full of students and answered questions. It was a very good exchange, and they were friendly and happy to see us, but the questions brought home once again how much people hate the U.S. government and don’t understand why it does such terrible things.

After the University meeting, we were taken to meet the Pakistani 1%. We were brought to an exclusive club on the ocean and sat at a table with the big owners of the textile mills and other industries in the industrial city of Karachi. Aafia’s sister, Fowzia, explained that they hoped to get money from these people for their campaign. These people knew about our delegation and the trip to Waziristan with Imran Khan. They were very interested in what we had to say, and they too expressed confusion and anger towards the policies of the U.S. government.

On the way back from this meeting, we were taken to a commercial area near the docks. There we found the sound truck again playing Aafia’s song and a crowd of young men demonstrating for her freedom. Once again, we were greeted like heroes. We all got out of the car and marched with the protesters. We carried lit torches through the streets.

On the last day of our trip, October 10th, we flew to the city of Lahore, near the border with India. Members of the LPP met us and took us to a hotel, where we rested for a few minutes before we were picked up by Farooq Tariq, one of the LPP leaders.

We were taken to the Lahore headquarters of the LPP, where we had an informal discussion with a group of members, and then went to a meeting with the Punjab Union of Journalists. We were also interviewed by some journalists from U.S. media. But the meeting had to be cut short because, as the world knows, on this last day of our trip, which had gotten daily headlines in the Pakistani media, a 14 year old girl, Malala Yousufzai, was shot by the Taliban. Demonstrations against the shooting were quickly organized. Judy and I attended two of them organized by the LPP and other groups in Lahore. At the same time, the rest of our group attended a similar demonstration back in Islamabad.

One other incident occurred with our group back in Islamabad while Judy and I were in Lahore. Lawyers who are members of the LPP organized a meeting for the group at the Bar Association in Islamabad. There had been some tension among members of the Bar Association, some of it centered around a case that some of the lawyers were defending. A while ago, the governor of Punjab province came out publically for getting rid of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. After this, he was shot and killed by a police officer. The police officer was caught and is now on trial. Some of the conservative lawyers supported the action of the police officer and are defending him. These lawyers decided that Americans should not come to the Bar Association and tried to block the group. There was a verbal confrontation but they backed down and the meeting went on over their objection.

While we were on our way to Waziristan on October 6th and 7the, there was a meeting held in Lahore with 100 representatives of progressive secular groups from Pakistan and Afghanistan. There were around 80 people from Pakistan and 20 from Afghanistan at this meeting. The people from the LPP saw this as a very important meeting, as did I. They told me that they want to work closely with the U.S. antiwar movement.

The trip to Pakistan was very important, in my opinion, in building the U.S. and Pakistani movement against the drones and the wars. It showed people in Pakistan that not all Americans are bad. We got tremendous publicity throughout Pakistan and were even able to break into the U.S. corporate media as well as media around the world. Drones are now on people’s radar (no pun intended) as never before inside the U.S. and Pakistan. Our 31 activists can now bring this message of peace and no-drones back to our communities and build a stronger movement. Code Pink is to be applauded for organizing this trip, and we all need to read Madea Benjamin’s book, Drone Warfare, Killing by Remote Control, to further arm ourselves for the struggle ahead.

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PHOTOS

The 2012 Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration March and Rally

This year marked the seventh annual Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration March and Rally on the streets of Boston. Our march was lively and noisy, with puppets supplied by Bread & Puppets, but we had to march this year without a marching band because of an unforeseen schedule confict. We also learned at the last minute that the band Vanzetti would not be able to perform. However, we made up for this with the addition of an excellent musical performance of radical songs by Jake and the Infernal Machine and heartfelt labor songs by Bill Bumpus accompanied by his concertina.

The Boston City Council passed its annual resolution declaring March 26th Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Day. The resolution was introduced before the Council by Councilor Charles Yancey. This year’s event was co-sponsored by the Society and, for the first time, the IWW, and was formally endorsed by the Lantern Collective, the Bread and Roses Heritage Committee, Common Struggle, and the Socialist Workers Party. The event was dedicated to all political prisoners and victims of state repression under the slogan "Justice Crucified No More!"

Speakers made frequent references to the political prisoners held at this moment by the United States including Tarek Mehanna, Chuck Turner, Bradley Manning, Mumia Abu Jamal, Leonard Peltier, the Puerto Rican political prisoners and, in particular, Oscar Lopez Rivera, the Guantanamo war prisoners, and many others who have been the target of state repression. Among those who spoke were historian Bob D'Attilio, representing the Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society, and Sergio Reyes, who read a short message sent by Chuck Turner from prison and who made reference to the City Council Resolution. From the IWW we heard Geoff Carens and SteveKellerman, from the Bread and Roses Heritage Committee, Linda Siegenthaler, Al Johnson from the Bradley Manning Defense Committee, and Sarah Ullman, U.S. Senate candidate from the Socialist Workers Party.


Ted Grippo at the Boston Public Library

As part of this year’s commemoration of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Society also organized two presentations by Theodore Grippo, author of the book "With Malice Aforethought, the Execution of Sacco and Vanzetti." A well attended lecture at the Boston Public Library followed by another informal talk at the Dante Alighieri Italian Cultural Center focused on new information regarding the miscarriage of justice carried out by both the judge and prosecution.

For a photo album click here.

Veterans and Allies Arrested in New York as Afghanistan War Enters Year 12

Twenty-fine people, most of them U.S. military veterans, were arrested while laying flowers at a war memorial in New York City Oct. 7. They were engaged in a peaceful vigil to honor those killed and wounded in war and to oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan as it entered its 12th year.
The vigil was held at Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza in lower Manhattan and began with a program of music and speakers including Vietnam veteran Bishop George Packard, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Chris Hedges, and Iraq combat veteran Jenny Pacanowski. At 8:30, the protesters began reading the names of the New York soldiers killed in Vietnam who are commemorated at the plaza and the military dead in Afghanistan and Iraq.

VFP board member Tarak Kauff reads names of soldiers killed in Vietnam Oct. 7. To his left is Jay Wenk, ringing a gong as flowers are laid at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Minutes later, both had been arrested. Photo by ELLEN DAVIDSON

At 10:15 pm, the police informed the group that the park was officially closed and that if they remained they would be arrested. Many chose to continue reading names and laying flowers until they were handcuffed and taken away. One of the arrestees was Word War II Army combat veteran, Jay Wenk, 85, from Woodstock, NY.
The veterans had four aims:

• Demand an end to the 11-year war in Afghanistan
• Demand an end to all U.S. wars of aggression
• Remember all those killed and wounded by war
• Stand up for our right, and duty, to assemble and organize

Vietnam veteran Mike Hastie is arrested Oct. 7. Photo by ELLEN DAVIDSON

Photojournalist, poet and Vietnam veteran Mike Hastie was the first arrested, after appealing to police not to force the veterans out of the war memorial: “This is a sad day. I was a medic in Vietnam. I watched soldiers commit suicide. I had soldiers’ brains all over my lap. How can you do this? How can you arrest me for being at a war memorial?”
Former VFP President Mike Ferner said, “I bet a lot of the arresting officers tonight were also military veterans; a number of them didn’t look too happy with the job they were told to do.”
“War is a public health problem, not only because of those killed directly, but also for the lingering trauma it causes,” said leading health care activist Dr. Margaret Flowers. “Ending war would be a good preventive health care measure.”
Poet Jenny Pacanowski read part of her poem “Parade,” which began “The funeral procession from Syracuse airport to Ithaca NY was over 50 miles long./Dragging his dead body through town after town of people, families and children waving flags./The fallen HERO had finally come home./I wonder how many children who saw this, will someday want to be dead HEROS too./I did not wave a flag that day or any day since my return.” She went on, “I live in a dream called my life. Where the good things don’t seem real or sustainable./I live in the nightmares of the past called Iraq and PTSD that never run out of fuel./Is it better to be dead hero?/Or a living fucked up, addicted, crazy veteran?”
“As long as we keep exposing the truth about these wars, then these people will not have died in vain,” said VFP board member Tarak Kauff.
Video by Will Holloway
Video by Fred Nagel
Link to more photos by Ellen Davidson
Articles about October 7
Kevin Zeese
Margaret Flowers
Micah Turner
Jefferson Siegel
Link to poem read by Mike Hastie
Link to poem read by Jenny Pacanowski
Link to Nate Goldshlag’s video of reading of names
Link to Nate Goldshlag’s video of Mike Hastie getting arrested
Link to Crystal Zevon’s video of Iraq vet Javier Ocasio
Link to Crystal Zevon’s video of Kevin Zeese
Link to Crystal Zevon’s video of Watermelon Slim
Link to Crystal Zevon’s video of Jenny Pacanowski
Link to Crystal Zevon’s video of Doo-Occupy “Oh Holy Planet”
Link to Crystal Zevon’s video of David Rovics
Link to Crystal Zevon’s video of Mike Hastie
Link to Crystal Zevon’s video of Doo-Occupy “The Pretty Ugly”
Link to Sandi Bachom’s video of Chris Hedges
Link to Sandi Bachom’s video of GI resister Sgt. Micah Turner
Link to Crystal Zevon’s video of Tarak Kauff
Link to Crystal Zevon’s video of Paul Appell
Text of Chris Hedges’ remarks

Radio interview with Tarak Kauff, Mike Hastie, and Ellen Davidson

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Issue 82 • March-April 2012

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Year one of the Egyptian Revolution

Mostafa Ali, a member of Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists and journalist for Ahram Online, talked about the first year of Egypt’s revolution—and what comes next.

ONE YEAR ago on January 25, a rebellion began in Egypt that in a matter of 18 days toppled the U.S.-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power. Egypt has been transformed—but the revolution still faces many challenges. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which has ruled Egypt since Mubarak resigned, has stepped up its repression against left-wing organizations. The SCAF has new allies as well—the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations that won a large majority in the new Egyptian parliament. However, the army’s attempt to use the 74 deaths at a soccer match in Port Said on February 1 backfired; rather than prompting calls for greater security, it has increased the level of anger and suspicion toward the Egyptian military.

JANUARY 25 marked the start of the Egyptian Revolution one year ago. Where do things stand today, one year later?

THE TURNOUT for the demonstrations for the one-year anniversary of the revolution have been quite massive—much larger than most people expected given the line in the media about how support for the revolution has weakened within the population.

There must have been at least 1.5 million people in Tahrir Square. Not only the square itself, but the bridges leading into Tahrir were packed with people. Some of the feeder marches were three to four kilometers long. There were people in some neighborhoods who hadn’t even left yet while those at the beginning of the marches had already reached Tahrir.

I’m saying this because in the weeks and months before January 25, the mainstream media here have been pushing the idea that most of the population is fed up with the revolution and fed up with protests, and wants things to go back to normal—they want the wheel of production to get going again.

So the turnout was a blow to the months and months of propaganda by the military council and government newspapers who claimed most people would stay away from Tahrir. In reality, this demonstration was larger than any protest against Mubarak during the 18-day uprising.

One year ago, I’m sure that 99 percent of the people who were celebrating in Tahrir on February 11 when Mubarak fell left the square believing that the military council supported the revolution. The slogan repeated over and over again was that the army and the people were one hand.

Most people didn’t return to the square after February 11 because they believed their job was done, and that the army supported the revolution and would bring about the reforms that would achieve its demands. This allowed the military council to set the tone in the months that followed the revolution.

A year later, after everything that happened throughout this year, you can see that there’s a new generation of people, many of them young people, that has developed a very sophisticated radical consciousness. As we can see in the demonstrations on the anniversaries of last year, this new generation understands now that the military council is part of the old Mubarak regime and is opposed to the revolution.

WHAT CONCLUSIONS have people reached about the military council?

THERE IS a growing consciousness that the military council acted in the way that it has because it is a key part of the ruling class, controlling somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of the economy—that the generals are beholden to U.S. imperial interests and to the neoliberal policies that impoverished people over the last 30 years.

It took a whole year for this process of radicalization to develop. But you can see that, as a result of the victories and the defeats of the past year, this new generation of people is quite convinced that you can’t continue the revolution without taking on the military council and the entire military establishment.

On the other hand, to be realistic and sober about the situation, the country is also much more divided than it was last January. There are millions of people who support the revolution and want it to continue, but there are also have big sections of the middle classes that supported the ousting of Mubarak last year, but who have jumped ship and turned against the revolution. This is exemplified by the victories that the Muslim Brotherhood achieved in the parliamentary elections.

Last year, the Muslim Brotherhood was part of the uprising against Mubarak—its leaders may have hesitated, but the organization was pulled into the struggle. This year, in Tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood was part of the demonstrations, but it is trying to play the role of being the political arm of the military council.

If you enter Tahrir today, you’ll find thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters who are in the square to prevent the demonstrations from challenging the military council. This actually caused a physical confrontation between thousands of protests and the Muslim Brotherhood, on the anniversary of the first Friday of protests.

The Muslim Brotherhood came to Tahrir to celebrate the first anniversary of the revolution, but the vast majority of the protesters who were in the square and the people who support the revolution refuse the idea that this should be a celebration. They say that the revolution has not achieved its goals, and so we shouldn’t celebrate. As some newspapers pointed out, that was one of the most popular chants on the demonstration: “This is a revolution, not a celebration.”

This is an important development in terms of consciousness. Last year, the overwhelming number of people left it to the military council to carry out the revolution. This year, millions of people—not a majority of the population, but a significant minority—have come to believe that they must organize themselves and take matters into their own hands. They understand that the only way to continue the revolution is to organize grassroots movements and reach out to wider working-class communities.

WHY WAS the Muslim Brotherhood able to dominate the recent elections in Egypt?

ONE OF the best ways to understand the Muslim Brotherhood is to think of the Democratic Party in this country. It’s an organization that is perceived as being reformist, but it’s committed to capitalism. There are major differences, of course, but that’s a good way to understand how the Brotherhood is viewed in the eyes of many of its supporters.

The Muslim Brotherhood never really opposed, on principle, any of the economic policies of the Mubarak regime over the last 30 years. It criticized some of the excesses—for example, Mubarak’s privatization programs that impoverished millions of people. But the Brotherhood has never on principle been against privatization.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its leaders are very committed to capitalism—much more so even than Mubarak’s own former ruling party, the National Democratic Party, or NDP. They believe even more strongly in free market policies. But they did have to criticize some of the most flagrant portions of Mubarak’s economic policies in order to continue to connect with their own base.

After February 11, there were many struggles and demonstrations in Tahrir, with more and more of them developing into protests against the military council. The Muslim Brotherhood boycotted 90 percent of these demonstrations and explicitly told its supporters to stay out of Tahrir. Ironically, It was funny—some of the Muslim Brotherhood people who were in Tahrir on January 25 hadn’t set foot in the square since February 11 of last year.

Many people now look at the Muslim Brotherhood and understand that it wants to play the role of being the political wing for the military council. The ruling class in this country has the military council as the physical force protecting the system, and now the Muslim Brotherhood, with its Freedom and Justice Party, the largest party in the country, is the new political wing of the ruling class. People call them the NDP with long beards—the saying goes that we have the NDP again with NDP policies, but carried out by a man in a beard with a Koran in his hands.

But there’s also a contradictory situation. Clearly, millions of people voted for the Freedom and Justice Party and support the Muslim Brotherhood.

There were two types of votes. There are some people who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood on an ideological basis—who see it as a party that will push the values of Islam. But there are also many people who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood because they believe it will bring about social justice.

The Muslim Brotherhood was an opposition party for so long. It was repressed by Mubarak, and thousands of its cadre were imprisoned and tortured, so many people look at them as fighters and militants. Moreover, the Brotherhood leaders are Islamists, so they are perceived as not being as corrupt as Mubarak—and because they were kept out of power, they don’t have any involvement in the corruption and exploitation of the regime.

Many of those who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties believe these parties will redistribute the wealth, fight poverty, improve education and health care, and go after all the corrupt businessmen who destroyed this country—because, after all, they are honorable good Muslims. A lot of people will say they voted for the Muslim Brotherhood to give them a chance, and if they don’t deliver, we will vote them out, and go back to the streets and continue to fight for the demands of the revolution.

So the vote for the Muslim Brotherhood was not a reactionary vote. Many of the people who voted for the Brotherhood support the revolution, but they haven’t yet reached the consciousness of the younger generation that has radicalized over the course of the year and that understands that going through the parliamentary process won’t fulfill their social and economic interests.

This is very important. There’s not a simple split between a reactionary part of the population that follows the Muslim Brotherhood and those who support the revolution against the Brotherhood.

WHAT KIND of effect is this contradictory situation having within the Muslim Brotherhood?

THE MUSLIM Brotherhood leaders are under tremendous pressure to deliver on a number of issues, now that they are the main party in parliament. The expectations are actually quite wild—that the Muslim Brotherhood will really turn this system upside down. So the leaders understand that they must, on the one hand, deliver very quickly on a number of issues, but on the other hand, figure out a way of dampening expectations.

At the same time, a lot of young people in the Muslim Brotherhood are very unhappy with the obvious alliance between the leadership of the organization and the military council. The military council has attacked everybody in the revolutionary camp over the past year, from leftists to liberals to workers. The only people the army hasn’t attacked, either ideologically or physically, is the Muslim Brotherhood—instead, the military council has met with the Brotherhood and allowed it a smooth ride to take control of parliament.

In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood’s daily newspaper has been attacking the Revolutionary Socialists and other left-wing organizations with articles meant to incite people against the left. There was a headline in the lead-up to the anniversary that warned people about the anarchists who plan to burn down Egypt on January 25. This caused an uproar—that the Muslim Brotherhood paper looks exactly like a Mubarak paper used to.

Many members of the Muslim Brotherhood are therefore aware that their leadership has entered into an unholy alliance with part of the Mubarak regime that repressed the organization for so long—and they aren’t happy at all. Especially on their Facebook pages and the Internet, young members tell people that they feel ashamed of what some people in their leadership are doing, and they distance themselves from the outright reactionary politics.

So the Muslim Brotherhood is facing pressure from many different directions. But it’s clear that the Brotherhood leaders will move ahead in certain ways. The organization and its political party are controlled by a large number of big businessmen who are very committed to neoliberal politics and policies. The millionaires who control the Brotherhood are now, according to the media, in negotiations with former Mubarak economists and ministers.

In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood is not only in alliance with the military council, but it has opened channels of communication with Mubarak’s old NDP. All that is going to increase tensions and opposition, even within the organization.

HOW HAS this new generation that you’ve talked about developed its consciousness about the tasks of the revolution?

I THINK people cut their teeth in a number of very important grassroots campaigns over the summer. These were mostly defensive campaigns. The biggest was “No to Military Trials”—thousands of people have been organizing around the country against the fact that the military has put 12,000 people on trial—three or four times more than the number of people subjected to a military trial during 30 years of Mubarak’s rule. Thousands of people participated in that campaign, and it began to develop people politically.

Another activity was a popular grassroots media campaign called “Kazeboon,” which means “Liars.” A short film, about 10 or 11 minutes, was made a couple of months ago about the crimes of the military council, and some of the activists who gained a lot of experience in the No to Military Trials campaigns, started bringing projectors and screens into working-class neighborhoods to show the film.

Hundreds of people would turn out in dozens of poor neighborhoods to watch the film. So this became a medium to reach poor and working-class people and initiate political discussion. Many of those film showings were attacked by supporters of the military council, and so people had learned how to defend the film showings.

This was very useful actually in the lead-up to the anniversary of the revolution. Thousands and thousands of people got to watch what the military council was doing. They got to watch how the army attacked people in Tahrir over and over again, and singled out women especially for abuse.

It was really a brilliant tactic, because the mainstream media is still controlled by the government and the same ruling class, and it’s still spewing lies about the revolutionaries and demonizing them—so we have to break out of that and create a new form of grassroots popular revolutionary media.

Those campaigns in the last few months were defensive campaigns, but they allowed all these young people to channel their energies, develop their skills and reach out to working-class communities, where they could build roots.

Part of the consciousness that has developed is that we can’t stay in Tahrir Square and hold sit-ins and wait for the army to come in and massacre us. This allows the army to isolate us, politically and ideologically. Tahrir is very important as a symbol of the revolution, and we will always go back there for big events, but we have to take the revolution into every single working-class neighborhood in this country.

WHAT ABOUT the working-class movement that was so important to the overthrow of Mubarak?

IT HAS definitely been impacted by the general political situation and the last four or five months of massive attacks by the military council against the left and against working-class resistance. That, I think, dampened many people’s confidence. Strike activity, which hit a high point right before February 11 and definitely helped shove Mubarak out, suffered a lot in the fall.

But in the last few weeks, a more sophisticated and more confident revolutionary movement has begun to rebuild itself, and I think that has had an impact in giving workers the confidence to begin to strike again.

So, for example, in the wake of mass protests at the end of January, sections of labor have announced that they plan on organizing strikes on February 11 to coincide with the deadline set by left organizations for when the military should return to the barracks. So far, port workers at Ain Sukhna on the Red Sea and Suez Canal workers are set to join the stoppage. Transport workers in Cairo, textile workers in Mahalla and ports workers in Alexandria are also discussing the possibility of striking.

On the other hand, another reason for the drop in strikes was the same as why the Muslim Brotherhood did so well in elections—that many workers are willing to wait for the new parliament to act on their demands. There are still many illusions that have to be overcome. But as a result, I think we can expect workers to start returning to protest to show that they expect their demands to be met. Only this time, they won’t be protesting the NDP and Mubarak, but a parliament controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood that is continuing the old regime’s attacks on the working class.

All of this is part of the radicalizing consciousness, which is most advanced among a lot of young people who understand now that winning this revolution is not going to be an easy matter. They recognize that mass demonstrations in Tahrir aren’t enough, and that that the ruling class is much more violent and oppressive, and willing to do whatever it takes to hold onto power.

I think this realization has set in with a lot of people, and it will help them to pace themselves for a longer-term fight. They know you can’t rely on the military council or the Muslim Brotherhood, and repeat the same mistake of last year when everybody left the square and went home thinking that someone else was going to finish this revolution. There is a new generation that believes that its own self-activity will be the key to continuing the struggle.

THE PORT Said massacre on February 1 has created a great deal of anger, not just among the ultras—avid soccer fans—by among millions of Egyptians who are angry over the deliberate lack of security. What has been the political fallout from it?

THE ULTRAS, especially those who belong to the two most popular teams Ahly and Zamalek, have become politicized in recent years and played an important role in the uprising against Mubarak last year on January 25, 2011, and again during the battle of the Camel on February 2, when pro-Mubarak thugs launched an armed attack on Tahrir square. Throughout the year, they took part in demonstrations against the military; several of their members faced military trials; and they taunted the police with huge political banners and songs at every soccer game. Just a few days before the massacre, the Ahly Ultras chanted against the Field Marshal Tantawi at a regular league game.

Meanwhile, the government owned media and most sports commentators (who are pro-old regime) subjected the Ultras to a vicious slander campaign for months calling them hooligans and bums because they refused to respect the authority of the police.

Many believe that the SCAF at least had word that someone was preparing a big attack on the Ahly Ultras at the Port Said stadium to punish them for their role in the revolution and let it happen. On the day of the massacre, the police opened the doors of the field to groups of armed individuals before and during the match. The military police, which has been present in most major games to back up regular forces, disappeared from the vicinity of the stadium that day. Army tanks stood by less than half a mile away while 74 people were slaughtered in less than 20 minutes.

It was a watershed moment for the revolution. Thousands of fans, led by soccer players, bid farewell to the fallen in processions that chanted against the SCAF and held it responsible for the blood of many young people.

The choice of Port Said by those who orchestrated the massacre was quite on target for the purposes of punishing revolutionaries. Port Said is a symbol of resistance to British colonialism; popular committees have fought the British and Israelis there over the decades. And, in recent months, students and industrial workers in Port Said have showed growing willingness to take part in more protests against SCAF.

Transcription by Karen Domínguez Burke and Rebecca Anshell Song. The greater portion of this interview first appeared on www.socialistworker.org on February 2, 2012