5) From Detroit's revolutionary history
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6) Community fights to save DC General Hospital
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7) Cheektowaga, N.Y., protests hit racist harassment
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8) Letter to WW on postponing WWP conference
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9) Racial profiling condemned in Sacramento, Calif.
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10) LGBT pride glows in Ohio
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
DETROIT'S REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY:
HOW EX-STUDENTS LINKED UP WITH BLACK WORKERS
By Debbie Johnson & Jerry Goldberg
Detroit
This is excerpted from talks to a Workers World Party
meeting in Detroit on the 30th anniversary of the party
branch there. It examines the revolutionary heritage of the
working-class struggle in that city, which of course is
ignored in the official
tri-centennial celebrations.
In 1970, the student movement, especially in opposition to
the U.S. imperialist war in Vietnam, was at its peak. In May
of that year, when the U.S. invaded Cambodia, strikes and
demonstrations shut down universities nationwide.
Students at the University of Michigan were in the forefront
of that movement. The leading group was Students for a
Democratic Society.
While SDS had originally begun as a left liberal
organization, based on participatory democracy, it had been
transformed into a revolutionary formation with diverse
ideological currents by the late 1960s.
The Ann Arbor SDS chapter was one of the strongest in the
country, with units in every dorm on campus. In 1969 and
1970 it led many thousands of students in shutting down
military recruiting, opposing the conspiracy trial of the
Chicago 8, defending the Black Panthers and Brown Berets,
and lending active support to Black students on strike for
affirmative action.
It was a period of intense struggle. The SDS members were
constantly studying Marxism and debating revolutionary
ideology. By the spring of 1970, a consensus had developed
among the leadership that to be a serious revolutionary you
had to leave the campus and move to cities where the working
class, the only class that could overthrow capitalism, was
concentrated.
In the spring of 1970, a group of 35 activists left Ann
Arbor and moved to Detroit to become revolutionary working-
class organizers.
This group was not ideologically cohesive. It ended up
dividing into various political currents.
While in SDS, a number of the student leaders had gotten to
know Workers World Party. Among the established left
parties, this party and its youth arm, Youth Against War and
Fascism, were unique in their willingness and ability to
link up with the most militant sectors of the student
movement. They were respected for their organization and
discipline in the many street battles taking place.
The cutting-edge question in that period, as today, was the
defense of the right of oppressed nations to self-
determination, especially the internal colonies of U.S.
imperialism--the Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican and Native
nations. No group defended the Black Panthers, the Young
Lords and the other revolutionary formations of the
oppressed nations with more vigor and determination than
Workers World Party.
As a result, shortly after moving to Detroit, a group that
had formerly been the leadership of Ann Arbor SDS affiliated
with Workers World Party.
When the comrades came into Detroit in the spring of 1970,
the city was a center of revolutionary activity, especially
in the Black community. Detroit had experienced one of the
largest Black rebellions of the late 1960s, triggered by
police brutality. The Black community fought the cops and
National Guard for six days and nights in 1967, suffering 43
deaths.
NATIONAL LIBERATION AND CLASS STRUGGLE
In the late 1960s the auto industry was booming in Detroit.
Unlike today, many of the plants, particularly Chrysler
plants, were located right in the city where the workforce
was predominantly African American. Young Black workers just
out of high school could get jobs in the plants. The
benefits and wages were pretty decent, as long as you were
willing to put up with miserable working conditions.
Detroit was unique in the Black struggle because of the
dominant position and concentration of African American
workers in the auto plants. Here the struggle for national
liberation tended to merge with the working class struggle.
In the rest of the country, because of high unemployment and
generally oppressive conditions in the Black community, the
Black Panthers reached out to the lumpen-proletariat, the
most oppressed and unemployed sectors of the community, as
the base for building their organization. However, as Huey
Newton explained, the Panthers studied Marxist ideology and
understood the historic role of the working class in
overthrowing capitalism.
Detroit's auto industry was then the largest industry in the
country, as it continues to be today on a lesser scale.
Because of the concentration of Black workers, particularly
in the inner-city Chrysler plants, revolutionary leaders in
the Black community saw a unique opportunity to directly
merge their liberation struggle with the working class
struggle to overthrow capitalism.
The formation that reflected this ideological view, and was
unique to Detroit, was the League of Revolutionary Black
Workers.
The base of this political party was among Black workers
organized into caucuses in most of the Chrysler plants. In
Dodge Main, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was
extremely strong and led many job actions. Another powerful
group was the Eldon Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement at
the Eldon Avenue axle plant.
The league also recruited the revolutionary intelligentsia
in the Black community. Among its leaders were attorney Ken
Cockrel and John Watson, who while a student at Wayne State
University became editor of the South End newspaper, turning
it into an organ of the league. The masthead of the South
End read: "One class-conscious worker is worth 1,000
students."
The league struggled to free James Johnson, a Black worker
who, fed up with racism at the Eldon Avenue plant, shot a
couple of supervisors and a labor relations representative.
The league's newspaper ran a famous poem about him that
concluded, "Whenever Black workers are under attack, there
will be thousands of Johnsons back to back. James Johnson
needed a Thompson." Because of the legal and political
struggle on his behalf, Johnson was found not guilty by
reason of temporary insanity and even won workers'
compensation benefits.
Even after the League of Revolutionary Black Workers began
declining organizationally in the 1970s, the link between
the Black liberation and working class struggle continued.
In the summer of 1972, two Black workers took over the power
plant and shut down the Jefferson Assembly Plant in Detroit
to demand the firing of a racist foreman.
Some 5,000 workers surrounded the power plant to defend
them. They won.
This was followed by other wildcats, or unsanctioned,
strikes.
The movement began impacting white workers, who recognized
the Black workers in the union as the militant force.
In 1971, at the Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, Mich., where
only about 15 percent of the workers were African American
and the union leadership had been virtually all white and
very racist, Jerry Goldberg of Workers World Party and
another radical worker were instrumental in forming a multi-
national rank-and-file caucus and newsletter. The caucus got
a shop committee elected of five African Americans and two
whites.
Even though there was still plenty of racism among the white
workers, they knew they were exploited every day on the
assembly line and needed representatives who would fight for
them. They saw the strength and militancy of the Black
workers in Detroit who were constantly battling the bosses.
And they wanted some of that fight in their plant as well.
This was a sign of the dynamic developing in Detroit at that
time. Revolutionary Black leadership in the auto plants was
becoming a pole of attraction to white workers looking to
fight their oppressive conditions as well.
- END -
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: maanantai 25. kesäkuu 2001 10:00
Subject: [WW] Community fights to save DC General Hospital
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 28, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
KEEP DC GENERAL OPEN! COMMUNITY FIGHTS TO SAVE HOSPITAL
By Malcolm Cummins
Washington, D.C.
Health care for the majority African American population in
the District of Columbia has been under assault for many
years. DC General Hospital, the only full-service public
hospital in the city, has borne the brunt of the attack for
allegedly being mismanaged and running over budget.
The crisis was starkly revealed in May this year, when 1999
figures for the infant mortality rate in the city were
released. In Anacostia, the poorest part of DC, 27.5 babies
died per 1,000 live births, a shocking figure. Infant
mortality is regarded as a key indicator of the health of a
community. The national average for the United States is
7.5.
The attacks came to a head on April 30, when the DC
Financial Control Board signed a contract to privatize
health care in the city.
The privatization would result in the closing of DC General,
which has deep ties to many in the Black community. DC
General is mandated to treat all who come through its doors,
regardless of their ability to pay. The actions of the
control board have outraged many in the city, and they are
fighting back to save the hospital.
Congress and President Bill Clinton established the control
board in 1995 to impose severe cutbacks in city services and
jobs. The City Council and then-Mayor Marion Barry had
refused to carry out this racist, reactionary program, so a
neocolonial entity was established that could force it
through without any accountability to the Black masses.
The control board has tried to privatize many city services,
including primary, secondary and tertiary education,
prisons, health care and even the sidewalks. It has been met
with strong opposition at every step, and has been only
partially successful.
The struggle to save the hospital has tremendous support in
the community. On May 19, supporters organized a car
caravan. Cars honked, drivers waved and people on the street
shook their fists. The message was that the struggle to save
the hospital continues.
Pastor Mildred King went on a hunger strike to call
attention to the crisis. A week into the fast, Pastor King
collapsed. The struggle to get her to a hospital became a
metaphor for the crisis in health care. The ambulance had to
be rerouted twice because of full emergency rooms, and
finally had to wait in line behind seven other ambulances.
The workers at DC General have been threatened with mass
layoffs. In an attempt to neutralize opposition, the mayor
has organized job fairs and promised retraining.
Dennis Cain of Government Employees Local 631 at the
hospital denounced the mayor's plan: "The job fairs are just
a coverup to smooth the transition. The mayor has no good
intentions towards the workers."
Vanessa Dixon represents interns and residents. They are
fundamental to patient care, and many are immigrants. "Many
interns will have to leave the country without completing
their internships if the hospital closes," Dixon charged.
The community is waging its own struggle to save DC General.
When the hospital was forced to divert ambulances away from
the emergency room because of staffing shortages, people
started arriving by car and on foot. One man with a severe
stab wound even managed to walk in.
Activists charge that at least 10 people have died since
April 30 because of the crisis. Supporters are being asked
to call the control board to protest this outrage. The
number is (202) 504-3400.
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: maanantai 25. kesäkuu 2001 10:01
Subject: [WW] Cheektowaga, N.Y., protests hit racist harassment
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 28, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
AS MOTORISTS HONK IN SUPPORT: PROTESTS HIT RACIST HARASSMENT
By Beverly Hiestand
Cheektowaga, N.Y.
A small group of activists--just a baker's dozen--helped
bring tremendous awareness to the population of Buffalo and
its segregated suburbs on June 15 on the issue of racist
police brutality.
The 13 activists--nine African American and four white--held
a protest in front of the Cheektowaga Police Department to
spotlight a pattern of racist profiling and brutality by
the cops, all 133 of whom are white.
They carried handmade signs denouncing police mistreatment
of African Americans and demanding justice for the Griffith
family.
In December this elderly African American couple had been
harassed by the Tops supermarket store security in
Cheektowaga after being falsely accused of stealing a $100
bill from a white shopper. Even though the shopper found her
misplaced money, Cheektowaga police arrived and harassed the
82-year-old woman and her 76-year-old husband. The couple
were thrown out of the store and verbally abused by the
cops.
Police also tried to intimidate a white nurse who spoke up
on the couple's behalf and arrested a white immigration
lawyer who came to their aid.
Racist profiling in Cheektowaga has been so exposed that the
town was the site of a month-long boycott by Buffalo's Black
community. Protests were set up at the Walden Galleria Mall,
one of the most frequently cited locations where
African American shoppers are targeted and harassed.
The June 15 protest was the first aimed at Cheektowaga
police. It was called jointly by the Stop Racist Profiling
Commit tee of the International Action Center/Buffalo and
Concerned Citizens Against Police Abuse.
The police chief came out to try to soften protesters with
sugary words and offers to use the precinct bathroom. But in
a nearby parking lot, the real attitude of the police was
made clear as they recorded the license plates of
protesters. Inside, a police lieutenant told the press, "We
support our officers' actions in the [Griffiths] incident."
Perhaps the most unexpected result of the protest was what
turned into an impromptu poll of anti-racist sentiment.
Several of the signs that demonstrators held read "Honk
Against Racism." Even these activists were surprised by the
many hundreds of rush-hour drivers who beeped and blared
their horns, flashed solidarity fists, victory signs and
thumbs up to register their support.
The demonstration received extensive footage on all three
Buffalo television stations and written coverage in the
Buffalo News.
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: maanantai 25. kesäkuu 2001 10:02
Subject: [WW] Letter to WW on postponing WWP conference
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 28, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
LETTER TO EDITOR: ON POSTPONING WWP CONFERENCE
I have been involved in a number of progressive
parties/organizations over the past 40 years, and during
these years I've been moved by some of their theory and
actions. But the decision by the Secretariat of Workers
World Party to cancel their June 2 conference and reschedule
it because it would be in conflict with the protest march
taking place in Cincinnati on the same date showed me just
how committed the party is in working with all people who
are confronting injustice.
I knew Workers World Party was special, I just hadn't
realized how special the party was. I offer both my support
and profound thanks to the party on their awesome position.
Nathaniel Atkins
Massachusetts Correctional Institute
Shirley, Mass.
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: maanantai 25. kesäkuu 2001 10:03
Subject: [WW] Racial profiling condemned in Sacramento, Calif.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 28, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
SACRAMENTO, CALIF: RACIAL PROFILING HIT
Several hundred protesters rallied on the Capitol steps in
Sacramento, Calif., on June 18 calling for an end to racial
profiling and the epidemic of murders of Latinos and African
Americans at the hands of police in California and
nationwide.
The rally was called by the California State Conference of
the NAACP and was sponsored by a number of unions and
progressive organizations, including AFSCME, the American
Civil Liberties Union, Justice for Janitors, Sacramento
Veterans Resource Center and the International Action
Center.
Nelson Rivers, national field director of the NAACP, told
the crowd that there was a conspiracy to sentence people of
color to fill the new prisons-for-profit system. "Why is it
that 78 percent of prison time is done by people of color in
this country?" he asked.
-- Bill Hackwell
From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: maanantai 25. kesäkuu 2001 10:03
Subject: [WW] LGBT pride glows in Ohio
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 28, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
LGBT PRIDE GLOWS IN OHIO
For the 12th year in a row, thousands of lesbian, gay, bi,
and trans people and their straight supporters marched
through the streets of downtown Cleveland to celebrate
Pride.
The June 16 march drew youths and students, religious
groups, AIDS activists, lesbian/gay/bi/trans people of color
organizations, and others. For the first time the newly-
formed Radical Ohio Queers marched under the a banner
reading "Anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist, pro-
queer." Led by lesbian/gay/bi/trans students from Kent State
University, this group was backed up by Pride At Work--AFL-
CIO, the lesbian/gay/bi/trans labor organization. Together,
these two groups led militant chanting with such slogans as
"We're here, we're queer, we're gonna free Mumia."
--Martha Grevatt
- END -
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