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 Special Issue, May 2012 Table
of Contents Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue. |
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
Deportation Elections 2012:
For a Revolutionary Workers Party!
May Day, the international workers day, since the massive marches in 2006 has become the day of struggle of immigrant workers as well. On May Day 2012, the American presidential election campaign is well underway. In the Republican primaries, each candidate tried to be more reactionary than the other. The virtual nominee, Mitt Romney, has called for immigrants to "self-deport." Democratic president Barack Obama, meanwhile, is trying to outdo the Republicans in imperialist war abroad and police-state repression "at home." Even as he appeals for the Hispanic vote by again promising to make immigration reform a priority after reelection, Obama has deported 400,000 immigrants a year, far more than his Republican predecessor ever did, earning him the title "Mr. Deportation." The Internationalist Group fights for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, to break with the capitalist parties and build a revolutionary workers party. Deportation Elections 2012: For a Revolutionary Workers Party! (May 2012)
Trotskyism vs. Social Democracy and Anarcho-Liberalism
The Left, Labor and Occupy
Barely half a year after it burst on the scene, the Occupy Wall Street movement is splintering left and right. This was inevitable in a movement that was united only in what it opposed and could never put forward a positive program, whether of reformist "demands" the capitalist state or of revolutionary action against it. Liberals, who latched onto Occupy hoping it could pressure the Democratic Party in a more populist direction, want to expel "black block" anarchists.Reformist social democrats rail against "ultraleftists" in Occupy and cozy up to the labor tops. On the other side, many (but not all) anarchists oppose unions. Some are simply arrogant petty-bourgeois labor haters. Others are grappling with real problems, but with skewed analysis and dead wrong conclusions. Discussion of recent workers' struggles, from Wisconsin to West Coast longshore, underlines that the key question is leadership, but not just replacing one set of bureaucrats with another. Unions have always faced vicious anti-labor laws, but we have the power to defeat them. It is necessary to drive out the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, the labor lieutenants of capital, in order to turn the unions into instruments of revolutionary class struggle.
The Left, Labor and Occupy (May 2012)
Why Labor Solidarity Matters: Lessons from Portland's D12 Port Blockade
By the Portland Trotskyist Study Group
On December 12th, hundreds of activists from Portland, Oregon converged on the Port of Portland to shut it down as part of the West Coast Port Shutdown called for by Occupy Oakland. Many activists had never been on a picket line before, and debates began as the pickets settled in at the entrances to the Port about the strategies and tactics necessary to carry the day. Although the ILWU leadership resisted the shutdown from beginning to end, the membership decisively supported the action by not going to work that day. The intervention of class-struggle trade unionists from the ranks of the picket was key to avoiding a counterproductive confrontation. The lessons from the D12 shutdown are clear: Rather than acting on behalf of Port workers, it's far more effective to act in solidarity with them. Why Labor Solidarity Matters: Lessons from Portland's D12 Port Blockade (May 2012)
Lynch Law U.S.A.: State Defends Murderer of Trayvon Martin
Outrage over the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin compounds daily as the killer remains free, facing no criminal charges for gunning down the unarmed black youth from Miami Gardens, Florida. On February 26, George Zimmerman, a white self-appointed captain of a "neighborhood watch" team in a gated community in the Orlando suburb of Sanford, shot Martin, a black high-school student, who was returning to the home in the development where he and his father were staying. Police and local prosecutors never charged Zimmerman and accepted his cynical claim that he shot the unarmed youth in "self-defense." Thousands have demonstrated around the country, particularly after police tapes of 911 calls by Zimmerman were released, showing that he was stalking Martin. But the main thrust of liberals is to divert the protests into a movement for gun control laws and to get rid of "Stand Your Ground" laws. The ruling-class response seeks to take the heat off the police and tries to obscure the key fact that this was racist murder.Trayvon Martin was killed for the "crime" of "walking while black." Lynch Law U.S.A.: State Defends Murderer of Trayvon Martin (26 March 2012)
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