WW News Service Digest #302
1) Genoa & the World Capitalist Crisis
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
2) Genoa: Mass Anger over Cops' Brutality
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3) FBI vs. WWP: Intimidation Won't Work
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 2. elokuu 2001 11:17
Subject: [WW] Genoa & the World Capitalist Crisis
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 9, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
GENOA AND THE WORLD CAPITALIST CRISIS
By Fred Goldstein
The battle of Genoa holds out the greatest hope for
rebuilding a mass, militant movement of struggle within the
imperialist countries after more than two decades of
reaction and retreat. It is also a growing nightmare for the
ruling classes.
They are watching in dismay the determined and persistent
growth of a youthful, ascending, anti-capitalist, anti-
imperialist movement, while each new economic report brings
with it renewed confirmation of the descending spiral of the
world capitalist economy in the direction of deepening
crisis.
The movement, which burst onto the world stage in Seattle in
November 1999 with a demonstration of 50,000 strong, has
sustained itself and gathered momentum, from Washington to
Prague to Quebec City to Gothenburg to Papua, New Guinea,
to Barcelona. Now, in Genoa, it has drawn anywhere from
200,000 to 300,000 protesters, with delegations from every
country in Europe, from every continent and from numerous
struggles around the world.
Strengthened and inspired by these growing struggles,
broader layers of the population, particularly the trade
unions, have gravitated toward the fray. Despite the caution
of many of the union leaders in Quebec and Genoa, more and
more workers are getting closer to the struggle. Many have
participated in battles against the police and many more are
undoubtedly imbued with a desire to fight back.
Furthermore, in Seattle the dominant slogans were directed
against corporate greed and globalization in general, but in
Genoa the dominant slogans were directed against the system
itself-capitalism. Many of the groups branded globalization
as imperialism. The movement, particularly in Europe, is
moving ideologically to the left while it also grows more
combative and broadens.
This influence will hopefully spill over into the U.S. in
the coming struggles during the Sept. 28-Oct. 4 days of
meetings of the IMF and World Bank, which are the next
targets of the growing world movement.
The movement met with repression by the ruling class at the
very outset in Seattle as police poured tear gas and rubber
bullets into the crowds. Since then, the repression has only
escalated, culminating in the murders in Papua, New Guinea,
the shootings in Gothenburg, and now the murder of Carlo
Giuliani in Genoa. But repression has only inflamed the
movement.
POST-SOVIET EMERGENCE OF ANTI-CAPITALIST MOVEMENT
The destruction of the Soviet Union and the socialist
countries of Eastern Europe followed 75 years of imperialist
economic blockade, political isolation, military
encirclement, subversion, sabotage and nuclear terror. This
historical anti-communist crusade acted to bring about
internal decay and weakness, allowing the capitalist counter-
revolution to triumph. The ruling classes thought they were
free of any global force antagonistic to their domination.
But now, less than a decade since the collapse of the USSR,
by their arrogance and by the ruthless, exploitative nature
of the system, the bosses and bankers of the imperialist
world have evoked a growing, worldwide anti-capitalist
movement.
After touting capitalism as the highest form of society and
the end of history, they then proceeded to promote global
sweatshops, the destruction of the environment, the plunder
of the resources of the oppressed countries, the trampling
of Indigenous cultures and the sale of women and children
into sex slavery. They have put the profits of drug
companies before the lives of millions with AIDS. They have
milked the Third World bankrupt through debt. They have
promoted racism, sexism and bigotry.
They have carried out military intervention in Yugoslavia
and Iraq. They have armed and supported the Israeli settler
state against the Palestinians, financed death squads in
Colombia, bombed the island of Vieques. They have let racist
police brutalize the masses. And now they are beginning to
get the resistance movement they deserve.
The problem of the movement is not that it is too
rebellious, too defiant, too militant or combative. The
problem is that this militant combativeness has not yet
spread and been organized among broader layers of the
workers and the oppressed.
But the disastrous fruition of the inherent contradictions
of capitalism may change all that. The prospect of the
militant vanguard fusing with the general working class is
no longer some hypothetical prospect in the historical
future, but has become a matter for all genuine
revolutionaries to consider in its practical significance.
SHIVERS ON WALL STREET
While the ruling classes of the world were anxiously
watching Genoa at the end of July, they were also anxiously
awaiting the U.S. economic reports for the second quarter.
And the gloom of Genoa was followed by the gloom of economic
contraction.
"The Commerce Department reported," wrote the Wall Street
Journal of July 30, that the gross domestic product grew by
an "anemic 0.7 percent annual rate in the second quarter,
its lowest in eight years. At the same time, revisions in
the prior year's data show growth first dropped below 2
percent in the last year's third quarter-not the fourth-
making the slowdown a year old now.
"The economy," continued the Journal, "has been pushed to
the edge of recession by a breathtaking decline in business
investment. In the second quarter, nonresidential investment
fell at a 13.6 percent annual rate, its worst showing since
1982.... Equipment and software outlays sank 14.5 percent,
also the steepest since 1982, while spending on offices,
factory buildings and other structures, until the first
quarter a source of strength, fell 11.2 percent."
The day before, on July 29, the New York Times reported that
"For the first time in a decade, corporate America's profits
are plunging.... In profit reports released over the last
two weeks, large publicly traded companies said that their
earnings fell an average of 17 percent in the second
quarter.
"The rapid reversal has stunned Wall Street," continued the
Times. "Just seven months ago, analysts expected profits to
rise 9 percent for the full year. They now forecast that
earnings will drop more than 8 percent this year, or $30
billion.... The decline would be the first in annual profits
since 1991."
While the big business media are worrying about a decline in
profits, the working class is worrying about the growing
layoffs. The Wall Street Journal of July 27 carried a
Department of Labor report that "in June there were 2,081
mass layoff actions by employers.... Each action involved at
least 50 persons from a single establishment and the number
of workers involved were 250,359."
This statistic does not include many thou sands who work for
small firms that are either cutting production or going
bankrupt. Mass layoffs have increased in the first six
months of this year to 1.128 million from 819,000 in the
same period last year.
But what is so frightening to the bosses and bankers, and
what is most dangerous to the working class, not only in the
U.S. but everywhere, is that the entire capitalist world is
engulfed in a crisis of overproduction.
The Wall Street Journal of July 2 reported that "The June
euro-zone manufacturing purchasing managers index fell to
its lowest level in two years, hammered by a precipitous
decline in Germany.... Manufacturing in the euro-zone has
been weakening for over a year ... and the latest bleak
statistics only serve to re-emphasize that fact."
Furthermore, the manufacturing index in Britain was "still
firmly in contraction for the third straight month."
In France "orders at industrial companies declined for the
sixth consecutive month" and "inventories continued to
swell," according to the Journal of June 29. Perhaps most
importantly, the July 31 edition of the New York Times
reported that "Japan's industrial output fell again in June,
a gloomy sign that the country has slipped back into
recession."
FROM POST-SOVIET EXPANSION TO WORLD CRISIS
World capitalism expanded steadily, save during the Asian
economic crisis, based upon pushing into the former Soviet
Union and intensifying its plunder of the countries in the
Third World. These countries had formerly been partially
protected and assisted by the USSR. World capitalist
expansion was also based on the scientific-technological
revolution, which enabled the multinationals to move more
production and services abroad.
Now, like every capitalist expansion in history, this one
has resulted in overproduction-only this time it is global
in character and threatens the workers and oppressed with
global hardship. Under capitalism, production for profit is
unplanned and always expands faster than consumption by the
masses. In the end profits drop, investment stops, workers
are laid off or pushed into retirement or put on short time,
and wages and benefits are cut as the capitalists shift the
crisis to the workers. This confirms once again the Marxist
analysis of the laws of capitalist development.
The Black, Latino, Asian, Arab and Native populations,
immigrant workers, women workers and single mothers tend to
be the poorest and suffer the most in such a capitalist
crisis. Such developments can only lead to a multinational
rebellion of the workers and the oppressed in general, and
to pressure for resistance from the rank-and-file of the
unions. This is what makes the rise of the anti-capitalist
movement so potentially significant.
While the movement in the U.S. has been less exposed
historically to Marxism and socialism than the movements in
Europe and Latin America, the anti-capitalist ideological
trend that stood out in Genoa will inevitably spread to the
U.S.
WITHOUT STRUGGLE THERE IS NO SOCIALISM
The only antidote to capitalism is socialism. And the only
road to socialism is militant, revolutionary struggle of the
masses to get rid of capitalism. The movement must make the
leap from expressing a generalized anti-capitalism to
fighting for the only possible historical alternative to
capitalism: an economic and social system that is planned by
and run for the masses of the workers on the basis of
meeting social need and not producing private accumulation
of wealth in the form of profit.
And the only social force that is ultimately capable of
carrying out an all-around struggle to overcome the
capitalist class and its repressive state is the working
class-by virtue of its fundamental role in society. This is
the ABC of Marxism.
No group has the right to call itself truly Marxist if it is
devoid of the spirit of struggle and resistance shown in
Genoa by many thousands of militants. The essence of Marxism
is struggle. When no mass struggle is taking place, when
leaders of mass organizations sit year after year without
opening an offensive against the criminal exploiters, many
young workers and students are impatient to strike out at
the rapacious ruling class. That should be understood
sympathetically-regardless of ideological or tactical
differences.
To invoke historical or political disagreements with
anarchism as a justification for turning on militants
engaged in a righteous battle against the G-8 imperialists
is a betrayal. Karl Marx's support of the Paris Commune,
which was not led by Marxists, is a case in point of the
correct application of tactics in the struggle against the
ruling class.
Fortunately, communist organizations and individuals also
participated fully in the battles in Genoa.
DENOUNCE POLICE AND RULING CLASS, NOT MILITANTS
Just at the moment when the movement has to unite, the
ruling class is trying to divide it on the basis of
denunciations of "Black Bloc violence" in Genoa. The bosses
want to isolate and destroy militant resistance. If leaders
in organizations that call themselves Marxist and socialist
follow suit, they are playing into the hands of the enemy.
If the Black Bloc was infiltrated by police agents, as is
now widely understood to have happened, and masses who were
unprepared were subjected to indiscriminate violence by the
capitalist police, then the task is to close ranks and
denounce the infiltration and police violence, not the
militants who were infiltrated. Any tactical suggestion
should be made privately and in good faith.
Instead of condemning the militants, the leaders would do
better helping prepare the workers by reminding them that it
was the Italian ruling class that inaugurated fascism as the
most reactionary political form of capitalist rule in the
epoch of imperialism. They unleashed the Mussolini Brown
Shirts upon the insurgent Italian working class in the early
1920s-and this occurred amidst a capitalist economic crisis
such as the one that is in the offing.
This is the same ruling class that initiated the reactionary
violence in Genoa.
Dividing the masses from the militants on the basis of fear
is treachery. Every leadership, of course, has to take into
consideration whether the masses are ready to engage in
combat, what the relationship of forces is in any given
struggle, what the stakes and consequences are, what is the
best tactic under the circumstances, etc. Mass combat cannot
be organized at the drop of a hat. But if the masses are not
ready, that is no reason to denounce the struggle of the
militants.
The proper thing to do is to gain mass sympathy for the
fighters, find ways to support the struggle, expose the
capitalist state as the purveyor of violence and eventually
broaden the struggle.
To denounce the militants on the grounds that they will
alienate the workers is to conceal the fact that the leaders
themselves are opposed to struggle and are hiding behind the
masses. They have bound the masses to capitalism by the
chain of reformism. And that reformism is challenged by the
open struggles that have been taking place ever since
Seattle.
Genuine Marxists, who believe in the historic role of the
working class and who believe in the inevitability of
revolutionary struggle to overcome the resistance of the
ruling class in the fight to establish socialism, must seize
the opportunity to reach out to the militants in the anti-
globalization movement, in the struggle against racism and
the death penalty, in the unions and in the working class in
general, by participating wholeheartedly in and giving aid
to their struggles.
Struggle and anti-capitalism are in the air. As the
capitalist economic crisis deepens, these trends will be
accentuated. The prospects for building a vanguard are very
real in the U.S. The struggle to save Mumia Abu-Jamal when
he appears in court on Aug. 17 in Philadelphia and the
demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank planned for
Washington in September and October promise to be crucial
developments in preparing for the mass struggles that are
sure to come.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 2. elokuu 2001 11:17
Subject: [WW] Genoa: Mass Anger over Cops' Brutality
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 9, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
RESPONSE TO GENOA: MASS ANGER OVER COPS'
BRUTALITY
By Greg Butterfield
"For me Carlo is not a martyr," said Kuno Zahlreich. "He is
just another guy like me. The cops could have shot me."
It was a feeling shared by many people in Italy and around
the world on July 24, the day before Carlo Giuliani's
funeral.
Hundreds of thousands of youths, workers and progressives
took to the streets in big cities and small towns to protest
the young activist's assassination by a paramilitary cop.
Giuliani was killed during the massive anti-globalization
demonstrations at the Group of 8 summit in Genoa.
"Carlo-your blood is our blood," read a banner carried in
Rome.
In Rome, Milan, Venice, Bari, Turin, Siena, Bologna,
Palermo, Florence, Trieste and Potenza marchers called for
the resignation of Italy's top cop, Interior Minister
Claudio Scajola.
Many pasted bulls-eyes on their foreheads in defiance of the
police.
Giuliani was shot in the head twice and an armored police
vehicle backed over his body. He and other activists had
been trying to stop the van from ramming a group of
protesters.
Other marchers carried signs supporting Tomas Aleinikovas
from Lithuania. During the cops' brutal revenge attack on
the Genoa Social Forum, Aleinikovas allegedly tried to
defend himself with a knife. He has been charged with
attempted murder.
Also on July 24 in Genoa, 200 people held a sit-in at the
Ducal Palace, where George W. Bush and other G-8 leaders met
from July 19-22. The G-8 includes the seven most powerful
imperialist countries-the United States, Britain, Japan,
Germany, France, Canada and Italy-plus capitalist Russia.
Protests weren't confined to Italy. After Giuliani's death
on July 20, actions targeting Italian embassies were held in
most major European and North American cities, as well as in
Buenos Aires, Argentina; Santiago, Chile; Istanbul and
Ankara, Turkey; Seoul, South Korea, and many other places.
One of the biggest was in Athens, where 5,000 Greek
activists clashed with police.
On July 26, some 1,500 people marched through central Paris
chanting, "Police everywhere, justice nowhere." Some carried
posters with pictures of the G-8 leaders and the slogan
"Wanted: These dangerous people make up the G-8 band."
A general strike by Italy's labor unions, which some
activists had proposed, never materialized.
TRUTH COMES OUT
Italy's right-wing prime minister and media mogul Silvio
Berlusconi, acting on behalf of the other G-8 bandits, had
transformed Genoa into a war zone during the summit.
Twenty thousand riot police and paramilitary cops were
mobilized. A 13-foot steel-mesh fence was erected around the
summit site.
Rail stations, highways and the airport were shut down for
days.
Clearly, the leaders of these imperialist "democracies" did
not want to hear the demands for equality, justice and an
end to the debt trap for poor nations.
The mass media broadcast alarming reports about violent
protesters and terrorist threats to justify the repression.
The CIA, Scotland Yard, Interpol and other political police
agencies were heavily involved in the planning.
U.S. and European corporate media spoke with one voice
during the summit. They blamed protesters for the violence
and hailed the police.
They cooperated with the police strategy of trying to turn
the movement against itself by talking about "good
protesters" and "bad protesters."
But afterward, as tens of thousands of activists made their
way home-many bearing wounds and broken bones from police
attacks-it became impossible for all of the European media
to continue this charade.
The July 21 late-night attack on a school housing the Genoa
Social Forum, the umbrella group that organized many of the
protests, and the Independent Media Center across the street
was especially glaring.
The raid's aftermath was caught on film by some media,
including Berlusconi's own Canale 5 TV network.
Occupants of the school described police beating people who
had been asleep. When the cops left, the school's walls were
covered with blood.
Those arrested told of physical and psychological torture in
jail. There were more beatings. They were not allowed to go
to the bathroom. They were told they would die and were
forced to chant fascist slogans. Women were threatened with
rape.
German journalist Kirsten Wagenschein told the TAZ news
agency: "There was an unbelievable mix of psycho-terror,
violence and arbitrary treatment. We had to stand for hours
with our legs spread apart and our faces to the wall. Women
and men with broken arms and legs too.
"The police hit us with batons and kicked us with their
boots. On my way to the toilet I saw a man being beaten up
in another cell. He was lying on the ground while the
policeman hit him again and again with his baton, in the
stomach."
Most of those arrested at the school were eventually
released for lack of evidence. But Eddie, a correspondent
for the Independent Media Center in Genoa, wrote July 27:
"The remainder ... are in very bad shape at the hospital and
it is thought that the government does not want to draw any
more attention to the brutality. Reports are that at least
three underwent surgery, one has a severely broken jaw and
another is still said to be in critical condition."
Italy's police forces are rife with pro-fascist elements.
Berlusconi's coalition government includes the National
Alliance, the group descended from Mussolini's fascist
party.
POLICE CHIEF SAYS SCAJOLA KNEW
On July 23 Italy's parliamentary opposition parties,
including the Democratic Left, the Greens and the
Refoundation Communists, called for a vote of confidence to
try and oust Scajola.
Scajola survived the no-confidence vote Aug. 1. The
parliament, dominated by Berlusconi's allies, voted 180-106
in his favor.
According to a report in the Guardian of London, "Scajola
and the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, tried to distance
themselves from the raid on the headquarters of the Genoa
Social Forum.
"To guffaws of disbelief, they insisted that they did not
know in advance that 200 police officers would attack the
forum. More than a dozen of the 93 people arrested were
carried out on stretchers.
"'A pack of lies,' responded Vittorio Agnoletto, a spokesman
for the forum. 'It was authorized butchery.'"
At a special session of parliament July 27, Berlusconi
rejected the opposition's call for an official inquest into
police brutality against the protesters, while claiming that
"we will not cover up any truth."
He later agreed to a "limited"investigation.
But Chief of Police Gianni De Gennaro, who was in charge of
the operation, contradicted his bosses. In a televised
interview July 25 he said Scajola had "always been informed"
of what was happening. (French Press Agency, July 26)
And on July 25 the Italian newspaper Repubblica published an
interview with an unnamed cop involved in the raid, who
admitted that the reports of brutality at the school were
"all true." Orders came from the very top in Rome, the cop
said.
As of Aug. 1, the Italian Independent Media Center reports,
80 people are still missing; 49 remain in jail; and five are
hospitalized.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 2. elokuu 2001 11:17
Subject: [WW] FBI vs. WWP: Intimidation Won't Work
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 9, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
FREEH'S ATTACK ON WORKERS WORLD PARTY: FBI
INTIMIDATION WON'T STOP THE MOVEMENT
By Deirdre Griswold
The outgoing director of the FBI, Louis J. Freeh, presented
a statement to the Senate committees on Appropriations and
Armed Services and the Select Committee on Intelligence May
10 on the subject of the "Threat of Terrorism to the United
States."
The text of his statement can be downloaded from the FBI's
web site.
The overt purpose of the FBI statement was to pat itself on
the back for "successes in responding to acts of terrorism"
while motivating the agency's request for an additional $32
million in its 2001 budget and an extra $12.3 million in
2002 to "improve and enhance existing counter-terrorism
capabilities and operations."
The statement was not just a budget request, however. It was
a political assertion meant to intimidate the dynamic new
anti-capitalist movement, which burst on the scene with the
Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization,
by linking it to "terrorism."
By far the most deadly act of extra-state terrorism in U.S.
history, of course, was the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma
City federal building. After the media and FBI spokespeople
initially tried to pin the blame on "Arab terrorists," the
police arrested Timothy McVeigh, almost by accident, on a
traffic violation.
It turned out he was a rabid racist and right-winger,
trained in the U.S. military, who confessed to the bombing.
The opportunity to disclose whether more than one other
person, Terry Nichols, was involved, and what connections
McVeigh had to the organized ultra-right, were suppressed
with his execution.
RIGHT-WING TERRORISTS GET OFF LIGHTLY
Freeh's statement, however, says very little about the ultra-
right, either at home or abroad, considering its role in the
world today. In a section on international terrorism,
there's no mention of the terrorists who ran Chile with U.S.
support under General Augusto Pinochet, or the terrorists
based in Miami who bombed Cuban airliners and hotels, or the
bloody history of Ariel Sharon, now prime minister of
Israel, who is trying to terrorize the Palestinian nation
into submission. Sharon ordered the 1982 invasion of Lebanon
and the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra
and Shattila refugee camps.
The international thrust of Freeh's statement is directed
mainly against groups and countries that have been invaded
and/or subverted by U.S. imperialism, especially in the oil-
rich Middle East--which has been exploited by Western
corporations to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
As for "the domestic terrorism threat," Freeh devotes three
meager paragraphs to "right-wing extremist groups." These
have to do with arrests of people planning "potentially
large-scale, high-casualty attacks," like an unnamed right-
wing group alleged to have been planning to blow up a large
propane storage facility in Elk Grove, Calif. That would
certainly have been hard to overlook in Freeh's report.
This section on the right wing contains not one word about
the organized campaign by bombers and snipers against
doctors and clinics that provide abortion and other
reproductive services for women. And of course it says
nothing about the ongoing epidemic of racist police
brutality in this country, or the terror raids by heavily
armed commandos that routinely invade poor working-class
communities as part of the so-called "war on drugs."
Four paragraphs, however, are devoted to "Left-wing and
Puerto Rican extremist groups" and another two to "Special
interest extremists." In the first category, Workers World
was interested to read the following ungrammatical sentence
(perhaps it was added or changed at the last minute?):
"Anarchists and extremist socialist groups--many of which,
such as the Workers' World Party, Reclaim the Streets, and
Carnival Against Capitalism--have an international presence
and, at times, also represent a potential threat in the
United States." Freeh adds, "For example, anarchists,
operating individually and in groups, caused much of the
damage during the 1999 World Trade Organization ministerial
meeting in Seattle."
So while the right-wingers who were planning to blow propane
storage tanks to kingdom come remained anonymous in the
report, Workers World has the honor of a full mention--for
the crime of having "an international presence."
WWP OPENLY MARXIST AND PROUD OF IT
Workers World Party has been in existence since 1959,
putting out a newspaper and running in the presidential
elections with a program that clearly defines the party as
Marxist and Leninist. The party propagates the class
struggle as the fundamental vehicle for social change, and
works at building solidarity among all who are oppressed by
the capitalist system.
Workers World Party members have traveled all over the world
to conferences, rallies, demonstrations, challenges against
U.S. sanctions, and other political events. They have
organized solidarity events and been outspoken opponents of
U.S. policy on Iraq, Korea, Vieques, Cuba, China, the former
socialist bloc, South Africa--you name it. Any FBI agent
wanting to prove that WWP has an "international presence"
wouldn't have to work very hard. They certainly wouldn't
have to bill the taxpaying workers millions of dollars for
their great investigative work. Reports on these activities
are published in this newspaper and can be searched for by
topic on our web site, www.workers.org.
WWP can only interpret this passage in Freeh's statement as
an attempt to intimidate anyone who is part of the militant
new anti-capitalist movement that has blossomed all over the
world in response to the obscene polarization of wealth
alongside growing absolute poverty.
The politics of WWP have earned the attention of the
capitalist government and its repressive organs before, of
course. Any political group that challenges the plutocracy
of wealth in this country can expect such tender attentions.
This writer remembers vividly the efforts made by the
government to stifle the youthful anti-war movement in the
1960s.
In 1966, members of WWP's youth group, Youth Against War &
Fascism, which was described by the media as "the cutting
edge of the New Left," were among the hundreds who went to
Washington to demonstrate during hearings by the House
Unamerican Activities Committee. These hearings into the
anti-war movement, chaired by Rep. Joseph R. Pool, Democrat
of Texas, had a "legislative purpose"--to help pass the
infamous Pool bill, which would have set penalties of up to
20 years in jail and a $10,000 fine for anyone convicted of
"aiding the enemy" while the U.S. was engaged in hostilities
with another country.
Prominent figures in the anti-war movement were called by
HUAC to testify, but their failure to cringe and grovel
infuriated the inquisitors. Pool gaveled down witness after
witness when they used the opportunity to denounce the
Vietnam War.
If they didn't shut up, these subpoenaed witnesses were
dragged off the witness stand by federal marshals and
charged with "disorderly conduct."
YOUTH DEFEAT HUAC
Young people lined up around the block to attend these
hearings. Once they were seated in the ornate hearing room,
they would listen for a while and then make their feelings
known. When they were dragged out and arrested, others would
take their place.
This writer was dragged out by marshals for having the
temerity to stand up and yell "Murderer!" at an admiral who
was testifying about the noble aims of the war.
Pool, by the way, had launched his political career in the
Texas State Legislature, where he won the approval of the
powers that be by sponsoring a bill that would have made it
illegal for the federal government to station any military
unit in Texas that had a person in it married to someone of
"another race." His other great contribution to freedom was
a bill introducing capital punishment for membership in any
"subversive" organization--which he defined as starting with
the NAACP and moving left.
Of course, the members of this kangaroo court were convinced
that the anti-war youth were "aiding the enemy" when they
passed out leaflets to GIs or sent medical aid to Vietnam.
But the resistance to the HUAC hearings by the anti-war
movement of that time was so intense that the hearings were
abruptly canceled after three days, although they had
originally been scheduled to last two weeks. HUAC itself was
quietly disbanded a decade later.
The heavy repression of the war period only infuriated the
movement and goaded it on. That was because the resisters
knew they were right and they knew that a growing segment of
the population agreed with them.
That is also the mood in the current youthful anti-
capitalist movement, of which a new generation of WWPmembers
are a part. If the FBI thinks that labeling this new
movement, and anyone who participates in it, as "terrorist"
will make it go away, they are sadly mistaken.
