>
> WW News Service Digest #63
>
> 1) Key Martin: 1943-2000
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 2) Yugoslavia, 1 Year Later
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 3) Washington's Taiwan Threat
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 30, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>ALWAYS ON THE FRONT LINES: KEY MARTIN--1943-2000
>
>By Deirdre Griswold
>
>>From the first stirrings of the new movement against
>capitalist reaction and war in the 1960s until his death on
>March 18 at the age of 56, Key Martin was in the thick of
>the struggle. His last act before being hospitalized was to
>videotape a demonstration in the Bronx protesting the
>police murder of yet another unarmed Black man, Malcolm
>Ferguson.
>
>Even an abbreviated review of Key Martin's life is like a
>catalogue of the struggles of these past 40 years, and his
>untimely passing has deeply saddened a whole generation of
>militants who knew and loved him.
>
>Martin joined Workers World Party as a young scholarship
>student at Columbia University in 1961. He had learned
>about Marxism from his parents, who joined the Communist
>Party during the height of McCarthyite reaction. Key was
>looking for an organization that would put the struggle
>against capitalist war and racism into practice.
>
>A year later he and others in Workers World formed Youth
>Against War & Fascism, which attracted revolutionary youth
>with its clear anti-imperialist program and militant
>activism. YAWF held the first demonstration in the United
>States against the Vietnam War, drawing public praise from
>Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh.
>
>Key Martin became YAWF's national chairperson. Because of
>its countless demonstrations against the war and in support
>of civil rights and the rising Black liberation movement,
>the group was soon dubbed "the cutting edge of the new
>left" by the press.
>
>Fred Goldstein, who encouraged Key to join Workers World
>Party, recalls those days. "Key became the target of the
>New York Police Department's notorious Bureau of Special
>Services and was singled out for arrest countless times. He
>was even arrested for disorderly conduct while in a phone
>booth making a call from a demonstration! Things got so bad
>that YAWF finally had to go to court to get an injunction
>against the bureau."
>
>On one of these occasions, the arresting officer was
>Anthony Ulasewicz of BOSS. Ulasewicz later surfaced in
>Washington on the payroll of John Ehrlichman, who carried
>out the Watergate burglary and other "dirty tricks" for
>Richard Nixon.
>
>In 1964 during the opening of the World's Fair in Queens,
>the Congress for Racial Equality under the leadership of
>James Farmer called for a shutdown of New York's subway
>system to protest racism in hiring and the denial of civil
>rights. Key led a YAWF detachment that held open subway
>doors. He escaped arrest only because, as police on the
>platform were clubbing him unconscious, he fell back into
>the train and the doors closed. He woke up miles away.
>
>The growing youth movement in this country developed
>various ideological currents, from militant liberalism to
>anti-imperialism to anarchism. It was inexperienced and far
>removed from working-class, Marxist ideology, but it was
>willing to battle the police and the authorities. This
>movement was oriented to direct action, shutdowns, building
>seizures, stopping munitions trains, physically driving the
>military and the Central Intelligence Agency off campus and
>wrecking draft boards.
>
>"This movement was shunned by the reformist parties with
>the excuse that it wasn't Marxist," recalls Goldstein. "As
>a leader of YAWF, a member of Workers World Party, and a
>life-long Marxist, Key fought against the imperialist war
>machine and the racist establishment in the streets, side
>by side with this new revolutionary youth movement."
>
>In 1967 Columbia students seized Butler Library to protest
>against the racist expansion of the university into Harlem.
>Key returned to his former school with other YAWF members.
>The radicals held the building for weeks before being
>ousted by a massive police assault.
>
>"Key brought both the spirit and word of Marxism into this
>and many other struggles. His conduct on the front lines
>demonstrated to the militant youth the combative essence of
>revolutionary Marxism and helped win many of them over to a
>communist world view," says Goldstein.
>
>WITH GIS AGAINST THE WAR
>
>That same year, GIs were joining the anti-war movement.
>YAWF was contacted by a group of soldiers at Fort Sill,
>Okla., asking for help. Key and Maryann Nagro Weissman went
>there to help the GIs publicize their views and organize
>support for Private Andy Stapp, who was about to be court-
>martialed for possessing anti-war literature.
>
>Key and Maryann both served six months in federal prisons
>for attempting to enter the base to attend the "public"
>court-martial after the Army had barred them.
>
>Stapp, who later became head of the American Servicemen's
>Union, says that "Key was very well known and well liked by
>the many young soldiers who were coming out against the
>Vietnam War at Fort Sill in the summer of 1967. He showed
>them how to channel their feelings of militant resistance
>into the most effective ways of jamming up the gears of the
>military machine.
>
>"When Key was put in prison it only further enraged these
>GIs, who understood he had sacrificed his freedom in an
>attempt to keep the Pentagon from getting them slaughtered
>in an insane and unjust cause. The GIs knew that Key Martin
>was for the liberation of Vietnam--and for their liberation
>as well."
>
>Key Martin and YAWF constantly educated the youth on the
>nature of imperialism. The war wasn't a mistaken policy,
>they said, but the outgrowth of U.S. corporations'
>uncontrollable need to expand their markets and profits.
>While others focused only on the Vietnam War, YAWF resisted
>the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, the
>CIA-supported fascist military coup in Indonesia that led
>to the slaughter of a million leftists in 1965-66, and the
>1967 proxy war in the Middle East carried out by Israel.
>
>One of YAWF's leading slogans was "Stop the war against
>Black America." The group promoted solidarity and an
>alliance between the advanced elements in the anti-war
>movement and militant organizations from the oppressed
>communities like the Black Panthers and the Young Lords.
>Key led the YAWF delegation at the historic Panther
>convention in Oakland in 1969.
>
>Key's passion for the struggle, his ability to laugh off
>personal hardship, suited him well in the turbulent 1960s.
>But when the war finally ended and that movement waned, his
>knowledge of history and his Marxist worldview ensured his
>continued commitment to fighting for social change. He
>understood the importance of a revolutionary party--he had
>by then been elected to the highest body in Workers World
>Party, the National Committee--and he knew that it had to
>be grounded in the working class.
>
>Key Martin was not from a privileged background. He always
>worked for a living, from driving a Good Humor truck in his
>student days to being a stockroom clerk at a women's
>clinic. It was as a typesetter at Time Inc. that his talent
>for union organizing emerged.
>
>UNION LEADER AT MEDIA GIANT
>
>In 1980 he was elected chair of the Newspaper Guild at
>Time, Local 3 TNG, now part of the Communications Workers
>of America. Representing over 1,200 workers, Martin rebuilt
>the union at this media giant.
>
>"When Key became head of the Guild at Time Inc., where he
>worked as a page coder, the union was in a weakened
>condition," says Bill Doares, Key's comrade and co-worker
>at Time. "He brought it back to life. He waged an unending
>battle to make the company bring on-staff temporary workers
>and give them security and benefits.
>
>"He negotiated revolutionary protection against
>automation-related layoffs. He organized support for the
>Local 32-B building service workers in their 1995 strike.
>He was on the front lines in the Daily News strike and in
>every labor picket line in this city.
>
>"He won the love and admiration of workers in the Guild,
>of 32-B workers, and union activists across this city and
>country. He was the kind of labor leader we need. He was a
>hero of the new labor movement."
>
>Key helped organize a national support campaign for
>fighting workers at the Detroit News and Free Press who
>were locked out of their jobs for over three years by the
>Gannett and Knight-Ridder newspaper monopolies.
>
>Kris Hamel, a former member of Newspaper Guild Local 22 in
>Detroit, worked closely with Key in this strike. "When the
>workers went on strike in July 1995, and in all the years
>following, Key was always one with their struggle," she
>says.
>
>"He was at many picket lines and all-night battles with
>cops and goons, standing firm with the workers and
>videographing the struggle from their viewpoint. Key always
>said, even after many years of a long, drawn-out struggle,
>that the newspaper workers in Detroit cost the corporations
>hundreds of millions of dollars, and were a force to be
>reckoned with--that their struggle for justice was not in
>vain.
>
>"He made a real contribution to that struggle and was well
>known and loved by the workers, especially the core group
>of rank-and-file activists who emerged as leaders. Key did
>tremendous work in taking the Detroit newspaper struggle to
>a broader arena and garnering support nationwide.
>Solidarity was a way of life for Key."
>
>Workers in Detroit and in New York are planning to hold
>memorials for him.
>
>CREATING A PEOPLE'S VIDEO
>
>Key saw video as a new technology that should be employed
>as widely as possible by the progressive movement. He set
>up the People's Video Network in 1993 to try and break
>through the curtain of silence imposed by the corporate-
>owned news media on the people's struggle. PVN produced
>innumerable documentaries on the struggle movements in this
>country and got many of them on public access television.
>
>Ellen Andors and Sue Harris worked closely with him in
>PVN. "Key wasn't always great on details, but he was great
>on heart and on vision," says Harris. "One time we
>discussed using an editing package for PVN. It took a long
>time to figure out and when we did, as far as I was
>concerned, we were done. But instead of just keeping it to
>himself, he worked out a deal to teach the technology to a
>whole group of movement videographers like Elisa Chavez and
>Gail Walker and Joe Friendly. What started as a technical
>upgrade became an organizing opportunity for outreach to a
>lot of people. Key thought big and he dreamed big."
>
>Andors says that "Key was very brave and sacrificed a
>great deal to be at every event he knew had to be covered.
>He knew the mainstream media wouldn't get out the truth.
>But he had developed a wide network of people who wanted
>his information in order to fight injustices of all kinds.
>His work gave them strength for the fight."
>
>Key traveled widely, visiting Cuba, north Korea, South
>Africa and Haiti. He was consistent in his support of the
>socialist countries as well as those fighting for their
>liberation from imperialism.
>
>In 1999 he organized a PVN delegation to South Africa with
>his daughter Tamara Martin, Johnnie Stevens and Elena J.
>Peckham. He was working on two video projects--on HIV-AIDS
>in Africa and on the life of assassinated South African
>Communist Party leader Chris Hani.
>
>VIDEO DOCUMENTARY ON CHRIS HANI
>
>Johnnie Stevens was especially close to Key. "Hani met Key
>in socialist north Korea, where he went on a delegation
>with Sam Marcy, the founder of Workers World Party,"
>Stevens remembers. "Hani had been commander of the army of
>the African National Congress during the struggle to
>overthrow apartheid, and later became chair of the SACP.
>For the video documentary `Viva Chris Hani,' hosted by ANC
>Deputy Secretary Thenje Miwkso, we interviewed Blade
>Nzimande of the SACP, Chris's mother Mary Hani, Govin Mikki
>and members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
>
>"Many talked of the need to bring the AIDS struggle back
>to the United States, against Vice President Al Gore and
>the pharmaceutical companies that have prevented South
>Africa from getting access to inexpensive medicines.
>
>"Key Martin was a comrade and a father to me. The many
>seeds of struggle he planted will bear revolutionary
>flowers."
>
>Peckham also recalls that trip. "I have never met anyone
>so focused. Key was determined to document everything--even
>tea time with Chris Hani's family. He had to be persuaded
>to put down the camera and have some refreshments."
>
>Key Martin went behind the walls of U.S. jails to
>interview several political prisoners, including Mumia Abu-
>Jamal, Mutulu Shakur and Russell Maroon Shoats. Key
>produced a widely circulated video about the struggle to
>
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