No. 39, April-May 2015  Table of Contents Selected articles linked Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue.

Baltimore Rises Up Over Police Murder of Freddie Gray – National Guard, State Police Impose Emergency Rule Defend Black Baltimore, Cops and Troops Out! For Labor / Black / Immigrant Mobilization Against Police Killings Stamp Out Racist Cop Terror – Fight for Workers Revolution The nationwide outrage over the orgy of racist police murders reached the flashpoint in Baltimore, Maryland. Every day for more than a week there were protests over the cop killing of Freddie Gray. Then following the funeral service for Freddie, black youth were confronted by a wall of police and the frustration boiled over. As the media screamed “riots,” the mayor declared a curfew. The governor imposed a state of emergency, ordering in the state police, thousands of cops from other jurisdictions and the National Guard. As black Democrats join with Republicans to enforce racist “law and order” against those who rise up against injustice, black Baltimore must not stand alone. Across the country, police unleash their pathological violence against the black, Latino and immigrant poor and working people in order to intimidate. To defeat the forces of repression, we need to bring out a more powerful force, that of the organized working class leading all the oppressed. A real fight against the killer cops must be directed against the ruling class, its repressive forces and the capitalist system which spawns racist police terror. Defend Black Baltimore, Cops and Troops Out! (30 April 2015)

Mumia Gravely Ill Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now! Don’t Let Them Kill Him in Prison Mumia Abu-Jamal is in grave medical condition. After earlier being taken from the hospital over objections from his family, and then two days ago removed from the prison infirmary and placed in the general prison population, Mumia’s medical condition is worsening. Readers are urged to contact prison authorities and demand that he be seen immediately, and not be left to go into a diabetic coma. For decades the ruling class whose crimes he has relentlessly exposed and denounced has tried and failed to silence “the voice of the voiceless” by execution. Now they seem bent on killing him through deprivation of urgently needed medical attention. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now! Don’t Let Them Kill Him in Prison (24 April 2015) NJ Teacher Whose Students Sent Get-Well Cards to Mumia Defend Marylin Zuniga (24 April 2015)

ILWU Dock Workers to Shut Port of Oakland & March on City Hall South Carolina AFL-CIO Calls for Workers Solidarity Across U.S. Unions to Mobilize on May Day Against Racist Police Killings Police murders of unarmed black and brown people continue without letup across the United States. Over 350 civilians have been killed by cops so far this year. Working people across the country are outraged, and now key unions have decided the time has come to act. In the wake of the April 4 killing of black worker Walter Scott, the South Carolina state AFL-CIO is reaching out to “workers around the country to join with us on May 1st in actions to protest the continuing unjustified killings.” Also on May 1, ILWU Local 10 of San Francisco Bay Area dock workers will hold a stop-work meeting, shutting down the Port of Oakland and marching on city hall to demand “Stop Police Killings of Black and Brown People.” Class-conscious workers and all opponents of racism should seize this opportunity. Turn May Day 2015 into a massive display of the working-class power that can bring the wheels of society to a stop in protest against the police murder machine. Unions to Mobilize on May Day Against Racist Police Killings (20 April 2015)

Ayotzinapa: To Get Justice, Fight for Socialist Revolution Massacre in Mexico: It Was the Murderous Capitalist State For the last six months, Mexico has been thrown into turmoil over the murder and forced disappearance of students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College. Hundreds of thousands have poured into the streets to demand that the 43 kidnapped normalistas be brought back alive. Guerrero is a bonfire, with state offices burned down, mayors on the run and city halls occupied, while the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán is still aflame. Despite the announcement by the federal attorney general of the “historical truth that supposedly drug traffickers were responsible, the demonstrators won't let themselves be hoodwinked and unanimously cry out, “It was the state”. In reality, the massacre is the continuation of the dirty war which has already lasted half a century, and which in Guerrero never stopped. It is also, and above all, the product of the privatizing assault on public education masterminded by the imperialist financial agencies. Investigative reporting has established that the repressive apparatus at every level participated in the slaughter, including the federal police and army. But the fact that massacres such as that in Iguala keep on occurring demonstrates that it is not just the government of the day, whether of the PRI, PAN or PRD, but the capitalist state that is planting bodies all over Mexico. Appealing to the imperialist “human rights” agencies will produce nothing, the call for a constituent assembly will only serve to divert the struggle. There will never be a democratic Mexico under capitalism. Only by fighting for socialist revolution can we avenge our fallen comrades. Massacre in Mexico: It Was the Murderous Capitalist State (March 2015)  In Guerrero, the Dirty War Never Ended (March 2015)  The True “Historical Truth” of the Crime of Iguala (March 2015)  Ayotzinapa and the Imperialist Assault on Public Education (March 2015)

To Smash Capitalist Austerity, Mobilize Workers’ Power to Rip Up Eurobankers’ Diktat on Road to Socialist Revolution Greece: The SYRIZA Illusion Exploded When SYRIZA, the “Coalition of the Radical Left,” won the Greek elections of January 25 Frankfurt and London bankers warned of impending doom while leftists from Paris and Madrid to Latin America and the U.S. hailed the new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, as the messiah of struggle against austerity. Yet within hours the “radical leftist” party leader announced the formation of a governing coalition with the rightist pro-military, anti-immigrant Greek Democrats. Then, barely three weeks later, the flamboyant finance minister Varoufakis capitulated to the hated Eurobankers who had put Greece through hell for the last five years. SYRIZA had been peddling an illusion. Leftists in SYRIZA and their international supporters have acted as enablers for the next round of wage cuts, privatizations and debt gouging. Revolutionary Marxists stand for intransigent political opposition to the bourgeois Greek government. In the face of the unrelenting capitalist onslaught, there is no reformist or national solution to the immiseration of Greek working people, whether through illusory negotiations within the imperialist EU or by a Greek exit from the euro. What’s needed is to mobilize workers’ power in sharp class struggle leading to Europe-wide socialist revolution. Greece: The SYRIZA Illusion Exploded (March 2015) Bourgeois Populist “Radicals” Based on Middle-Class Sectors What Is SYRIZA? After the capitulation of the Coalition of the Radical Left to the demands of the rapacious Eurobankers, many a disillusioned leftist has to be asking, “How could this happen, and so fast?” With a makeover following its electoral surge in 2012, today, SYRIZA is not a “far left” party at all, or even part of the workers movement, but a party based on the petty bourgeoisie whose “left” rhetoric masks a  bourgeois populist program. It occupies the political space (and has recruited many cadres) from the now-discredited PASOK. The phenomenon of capitalist parties proclaiming themselves “radical,” “socialist” and “revolutionary” is hardly new. In the Greek case, the weak bourgeoisie of this “second-tier” imperialist country requires a strong state sector to survive in the face of the multinational giants of the Eurozone. In this way, it resembles various populist bourgeois parties in Latin America. What Is SYRIZA? (March 2015)  Centrists Waffle in Greece (March 2015)

For Workers Mobilization to Stop Racist Cop Terror Outrage Over Police Murder of Mexican Worker in Washington State Protesters have flooded the streets of Pasco, Washington over the police shooting of Mexican agricultural worker Antonio Zambrano Montes on February 10. Zambrano was killed by multiple shots from three officers firing on him while the unarmed man had his arms raised. Then they left his body in the street overnight. This was a cold-blooded execution, as millions could see in a video circulated on the Internet. Coming after the wanton cop murders last year of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley and Tamir Rice, all African American, this cold-blooded execution shows that racist police killing of unarmed victims continues unabated, despite massive protests. The cop murder of Antonio Zambrano was no isolated incident: police in Pasco gunned down four people over the last six months. Pasco is a segregated Latino city in the Tri-Cities metropolitan area, in which police act as if they are dealing with a population with no rights. Justice for those who toil in the fields can only come from the working class itself, through an all-out war against racism, injustice and the ruling class that creates it. Outrage Over Police Murder of Mexican Worker in Washington State (17 February 2015).

French Leaders Declare War After Charlie Hebdo Massacre Defend Muslims in Europe Against Racist “War on Terror” Backlash! Imperialist Mass Murderers Seek to Exploit Indignation No to Equating Muslims with Terrorists! Drive French and U.S. Imperialism Out of the Middle East and Africa! On January 7, the offices of the French weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris were subjected to a horrific massacre. Two days later  a gunman killed four Jewish customers at a Kosher supermarket. The killers proclaimed their allegiance to rival Islamist jihadi groups. The shock of the killing spree deeply shook France, and the rulers rushed to assert control. Government and opposition leaders called for “national unity” against terrorism, and staged a massive parade led by 44 heads of state and government in which millions declared “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie). It is grotesque to demonstrate “against terrorism” marching behind blood-soaked imperialist terrorists and their puppets. And now “anti-terrorist” repression, not only in France but around Europe, is targeting the Muslim population as well as those of North African and Arab origin. At the same time as we denounce the murders of the journalists and Jews, we state frankly our disgust at those Charlie Hebdo cartoons which were deliberately insulting to oppressed sectors of the population. It is vital to mobilize the workers movement to defend those threatened by this witchhunt. Defend Muslims in Europe Against Racist “War on Terror” Backlash! (16 January 2015)