Letters of October 14

Actions (and Buttons!) Louder than Words
Wearing an anti-racist button helps make anti-racism a mass issue and can lead to some great revealing conversations.
I liked a recent letter in Challenge about someone who wore a shirt covered in “No to Racism” buttons at the Unitarian Church convention.
I recently bought three “Oscar Grant” buttons while visiting Los Angeles. Many said they liked the button. I gave away the three I had. I had to twist arms to buy 34 more anti-racist buttons. I am now down to 1! People usually give me a dollar as a donation to the PLP.
I was disappointed that the buttons were not being sold at the Party’s 50th Anniversary dinner. All members and friends should be struggled with to distribute or sell the buttons for $1 to their friends, co-workers and neighbors. Some people do not like to wear buttons, but can put them on backpacks, purses or tote bags. It is a very bold symbol that puts us in the very heart of the struggle against police brutality to say, “I am Michael Brown, Kyam Livingston,” etc.
I wanted to share a good conversation I had with a college student who is Brazilian and has many Black friends. I told him that everywhere I go, people of all races and ages tell me they like the button, sometimes in passing on the street or on a crowded elevator. Sometimes they stop and talk and even buy a button. My husband and I notice that the button can be a great icebreaker. The college student asked me, a white woman in her sixties, whether “white people need a badge in order to let Black people know they are not racist.”
I said because of the racist cop killings of young Black and Latin men, and a long history of racism, some Black workers are wary of white workers in some settings. This is more so since the murders of the Charleston Nine by the racist Dylann Roof. A friend who was Black said, in her opinion, Black people are often suspicious of white people because of their personal experiences with racism and their knowledge of historical racist experiences — like the lynching of Emmett Till, Jim Crow in the South and racist experiences now.
Capitalists use lots to keep us divided and oppressed, Black, white, Latin, Asian, immigrant, indigenous. We must bridge the divide by our actions, not just words. The Progressive Labor Party sees racism as one of the most powerful tools the bosses use to keep us apart. Our principled fight against racism included our role in Harlem Rebellion in 1964. A white cop had killed an unarmed Black man. Harlem erupted. PL printed up flyers “Wanted Dead or Alive, Gilligan the Cop.” We defied the injunction not to have demonstrations in Harlem, and some party members were jailed.
If you are fighting for revolution, you do not hesitate to break the bosses’ laws. The history of PL in the last 50 years has shown us to be leaders in the fight against racist police brutality. In so doing, we have demonstrated how essential multiracial unity is to win our struggle against capitalism.
★ ★ ★ ★
Injury to One = Injury to All
Comrades, workers and youth, Donald Trump and the Republicans’ openly racist attack and scapegoating of immigrants in the U.S., along with the Democrats’ hypocrisy are clear indicators of intensifying fascism in the U.S. The fight against racism is our Party’s top priority. It is absolutely crucial that we organize pro-immigrant, anti-racist fightback within the schools, churches and organizations we’re in. An attack on immigrant workers is an attack on the international working class. We cannot underestimate the importance of this anti-fascist struggle. Opportunities to raise political consciousness and build the Party will abound.
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Long Live Pittsburgh Commune
In the fine article on the Katrina Genocide (9/16 issue), the statement that the 1892 New Orleans general strike was the first such “strike in a major U.S. city.” was not accurate.  The first U.S. general strike occurred in Pittsburgh in 1877 as part of a national railroad strike that spread across the country in reaction to the rail bosses’ 10 percent wage-cut.
When rail workers in Pittsburgh refused orders to take out their trains, the mayor and ten cops attempted to run one through. Brakeman Andrew Hice stepped in front of them and cried, “Boys, we might as well die right here.” The train didn’t move. Soon all trains were run up on sidings and all freight traffic, East and West, was halted. A New York Times headline proclaimed, “A Blockade Established — A Thousand Loaded Cars Detained.”
Then the Pennsylvania RR bosses called out the Pittsburgh militia.  When the militia commander saw that these troops were “showing their sympathies with the strikers,” with whom the workers fraternized, he wired the Governor for 2,000 Philadelphia troops. That troop train were stoned all the way to Pittsburgh. At Altoona troops were stopped and forced to return, some of them giving the workers their guns. An additional Philadelphia detachment was captured and guarded by a group of Black workers. Only 1,000 Philadelphia troops ever reached Pittsburgh.
When they arrived they were met by several thousand strikers. Word had spread and soon 30,000 men, women and children — one-sixth of the city’s population — stood on the hillside behind them. Two companies of troops were ordered to fix bayonets and move forward into the very bodies of the rebelling workers.
But instead of fleeing, the strikers grasped the bayonets with their bare hands and twisted them around into the onrushing soldiers. The latter then opened fire into the strikers and the Pittsburgh militia and the crowd on the hill, killing 20. The Pittsburgh regiments started back to their barracks, “vowing…not to be parties to the shooting down of their comrades-in-arms,” and handed their guns over to the strikers.
Soon word of the unprovoked massacre spread and thousands of miners and workers from steel mills and factories along with stevedores from the canals gathered in the city’s main squares.  Short meetings were held and workers proceeded to the gun shops where they were given arms and ammunition by the owners. (Many had been bled dry by domination of the Pennsylvania RR.)
Four thousand workers with flags flying and drums beating marched in semi-military order towards the remaining Philadelphia troops. Then twenty thousand workers sent a burning engine into the roundhouse, smoking out the Philadelphia troops and driving them from the city. At 2:35 A.M. on July 22 the Times’ reporter filed a dispatch saying that the workers of Pittsburgh had “taken possession of the city.”
For the next four days the workers ran the city in what later became known as the Pittsburgh Commune. Black and white workers, women and men, united to patrol the streets and provide needed services. The bosses, fearful of a repeat of the Paris Commune six years earlier, began setting up army camps near big cities and organized what was to become the National Guard. They had their newspapers spread anti-communism, referring to the “Communistic element from Europe,” saying Pittsburgh’s workers were “animated by the devilish spirit of communism.”
The workers’ answer came from a Pittsburgh Critic reporter: “You systematically oppress a people and revolution is not only a right, it is a duty….”
[The complete story is available in a PL pamphlet.]
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Syria: Imperialists On All Sides
In the editorial about migrants in the current issue there is a paragraph that is both factually wrong and politically incoherent. It’s on the second page, right after the subtitle “Imperialism Attacks Refugees Twice.”
The paragraph states:
“In an effort to tilt the balance of regional power and counter the influence of Iran, a Russian proxy, U.S. bosses have financed a brutal rebellion against the state-terrorist, pro-Russian Assad regime. This four-year-old conflict has besieged workers with chemical weapons, routine bombings of civilians, torture and mass imprisonment.”
What’s wrong with this?
1. In the second sentence it’s unclear who’s doing the terrible damage to the civilian population. Is it the “brutal rebellion” or the “state-terrorist, pro-Russian Assad regime”? It should have been crystal clear that it is the Assad regime that is doing virtually all of the bombings, using chemical weapons, and torturing and jailing opponents.
2. However, far worse is the first sentence, which implies that the rebellion against Assad was initiated — and financed — by U.S. imperialism. This is simply not true. CD often falls into a regrettable pattern of ascribing every social movement to one of the competing imperialists, ignoring the agency of ordinary people.
Assad’s regime caters to multi-millionaire cronies at the same time that millions are living in desperate conditions. A class analysis of Syria is important because it shows how the rebellion against Assad was a social explosion following decades of real grievances. It was not the creation of U.S. imperialism and was entirely justified. The recent uprising against Assad began in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring. There were mass demonstrations in the major cities, which were violently attacked by the Syrian military. As a result, peaceful protesters decided that only armed struggle would overthrow Assad. The U.S. — which had a good relationship with Assad — began to support the Free Syrian Army, but the FSA soon fell apart.
Today, the rebellion is led by fundamentalist Islamist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda franchise), Ahrar al-Sham, ISIS and others. They are the best organized, the best trained and best financed of the rebel groups, receiving money from the Gulf States but not the U.S., which is more afraid of these groups taking power than it is of Assad keeping control.
In effect, the U.S. — along with Iran and Russia — is supporting Assad. The CIA has trained fewer than a half dozen fighters! Its firepower is aimed at ISIS, not the Syrian military.
The fact that the major forces in Syria are politically awful should not obscure the class element of the struggle there, or imply that it’s mainly driven by foreign powers.
Editorial response: The writer is no doubt right that Syrian workers hate oppressor Assad and rose up in 2011. But the letter ignores the role played in Arab Spring by U.S. billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, which is active in 37 countries and backs organizations aligned with U.S. imperialism.
Further, the letter fails to mention efforts by both Russia and Iran to prop up Assad. The war in Syria may have started as a homegrown dispute. But the anti-ISIS, anti-Assad campaign, which now involves Britain and France as well as the U.S. (working through both the State Department and the CIA), has clearly become a flashpoint for inter-imperialist rivalry. Anti-U.S. and anti-Saudi ISIS and al Qaeda, both seeking an oil-rich caliphate, are minor but lethal would-be imperialists in their own right.
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Pro-Fascist Francis: Unforgivable
The press is hyping Pope Francis as a liberal leader for the poor but ignoring his complicity in the mass murders of students, trade unionists, and average citizens, in Argentina during the so-called “Dirty War” of the 1970s.
The Argentinian military unleashed a massive campaign of kidnapping, torture, and murder against anyone who protested government policies. This “dirty war” was approved by the United States. U.S. imperialist David Rockefeller travelled to Argentina specifically to tell the Generals that the U.S. would not interfere.
The main targets were communists, trade union leaders, and student and other political activists who opposed the Argentinian dictatorship. But no one was safe. Police and military kidnapped pregnant mothers and gave their babies to army officers and wealthy families to raise. They kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered whomever they wanted, and an estimated 30,000 were “disappeared.”
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, was the head of the Jesuit order in Argentina at that time. What did he do, in the midst of this fascist terror? Nothing. He did not even speak against it, much less do anything. Priests who supported impoverished workers were imprisoned and tortured but church superior Jorge Bergoglio refused to help them and years later hid priests in his home who were being investigated for supporting the military responsible for the “Dirty War.”
So why aren’t we hearing about this shameful past now? Because the Pope, regardless of who he is, supports the exploiters and they support him.
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No Five-Star Rating for Change
I noticed a change in the way letters to the paper are signed.  They’re not!  They’re all just signed with 4 stars.  I think the reason for not having real names is that we want to focus on the ideas, not the person, and I agree with this.  But, there’s nothing wrong with pseudonyms—after all it is a letter section encouraging individuals to communicate with the readership.  The pseudonyms lend some personality to the letters.  But four stars at the end of every letter?  Well, I don’t like it and I wish you’d go back to the old way.
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