No. 9, November 2011 Table of Contents Selected articles linked  Newspaper of CUNY students from the Revolutionary Reconstruction Club and Internationalist Clubs, for the program of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, published in accord with the Internationalist Group, U.S. section of the League for the Fourth International Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue.

 

Outrage! NYC Evicts Occupy Wall Street Workers and Students, Shut the City Down! At 1 a.m. on November 15 hundreds of New York City police descended on Zuccotti Park in the city’s financial center to shut down Occupy Wall Street. Ordered by billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, the dead-of-night police attack is the culmination of two months of mounting pressure from NYC authorities and the recent unrelenting propaganda barrage against OWS from the media, both conservative and liberal. The eviction was part of a nationally coordinated crackdown, coming just a day after a similar attack on Occupy Oakland in California, and weekend raids in Portland, Oregon, Denver and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Democratic and Republican mayors have been united in their determination to put an end to the occupations. In the face of the cop assault on OWS, what is urgently called for is a massive mobilization of labor’s power to bring New York to a standstill over this police-state repression. Within hours of the police attack, the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (CUNY) together with Class Struggle Education Workers and the IG distributed hundreds of leaflets calling for “Workers and Students, Shut the City Down!” Outrage! NYC Evicts Occupy Wall Street – Workers and Students, Shut the City Down!  (15 November 2011)

“99%” Populism Is No Solution Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution Occupy Wall Street: A Marxist Analysis In the two months since Occupy Wall Street burst onto the scene it quickly swept the nation. There have been over 600 occupations in cities across the U.S., and many more around the globe. In New York City, “All day, all week, Occupy Wall Street” is not just a protest chant but an accurate description of local politics. The “Occupy movement” has crystallized a popular mood of anger and frustration as the world enters the fourth year of a full-fledged economic depression. Thousands of students burdened under a mountain of debt and college graduates unable to find work have taken to the streets to protest. Unions have given different kinds of support. But while denouncing the filthy-rich “1%” in the name of the other 99% of the population, it has not put forward any program for what is to be done. And the various demands and proposals floated by Occupy proponents do not challenge the capitalist system. While there are diverse tendencies among the occupiers, the ideological glue that has held them together is bourgeois populism. But in the course of the struggle, particularly under the blows of repression, political outlooks can change sharply.  Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution (14 November 2011)

Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution! NYPD: Guard Dogs of Finance Capital Students and Workers: Shut the City Down! On October 1, the New York Police Department lashed out at the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, arresting over 700 demonstrators as they marched into a police trap on the Brooklyn Bridge. Coming after the arrest of 85 OWS protesters a week earlier, and the videotaped pepper-spraying of trapped women marchers by a top police official, the mass bust provoked outrage in the NYC population. On October 5, tens of thousands came out at the call of the labor unions in solidarity with the protesters and against the wanton police brutality. CUNY Internationalist Clubs marched, chanting “Students and workers, shut the city down!” Many OWS demonstrators have huge illusions in the police, calling on them to join the protests. Cops are not fellow workers but the armed fist of capital. Despite vituperation in the right-wing media, the vast majority of the protesters are not radicals but angry liberals. The occupation’s list of grievances points toward a slightly reformed, “green” capitalism, while protesters have been waving the American flag, symbol of U.S. imperialism. Yet tinkering with financial regulations will not solve mass unemployment, racist repression and imperialist war. Most of the left has written gushing articles about the occupation, refusing to tell the truth, that capitalism cannot be reformed to “serve the people,” it must brought down through a struggle for workers power. NYPD: Guard Dogs of Finance Capital (5 October 2011) Video of Internationalist intervention at OWS protest against mass arrests (1 October 2011) Isn’t That the American Flag They’re Waving? (6 October 2011)

Internationalists Protest Imperialism’s “Dr. Shock” What the Hell Was Economic Hit Man Jeffrey Sachs Doing at Occupy Wall Street? On October 7, economist Jeffrey Sachs spoke at the Occupy Wall Street protest in the New York financial district. High-flying academic Sachs is notorious for implementing free market capitalism with a vengeance. He made his reputation with economic “shock treatments” that produced misery and death for untold numbers of working people in Bolivia, Poland and the former Soviet Union. When Internationalist supporters learned of his appearance at OWS, we rushed to the square to expose this economic hit man and inform those present of his crimes. Here is some of the evidence. The fact that this top capitalist privatizer and imperialist criminal was invited to spout off at OWS says a lot about the agenda of those who invited him. What the Hell Was Economic Hit Man Jeffrey Sachs Doing at Occupy Wall Street? (99 October 2011)

Georgia to Carry Out Legal Lynching Troy Davis Case Shows: There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts Mobilize Workers’ Power to Smash the Racist Death Penalty! On September 20, the Georgia State Board of Pardons turned down the appeal of Troy Davis to commute his death sentence. Davis was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1989 shooting death of an off-duty Savannah police officer. There have been worldwide demonstrations demanding that he not be executed. Last week more than 630,000 letters were handed to the Board asking to stop the execution of Davis on the grounds that there is “too much doubt” about this case. In fact, massive evidence shows that beyond a shadow of a doubt Troy Davis is innocent. If Georgia carries out the death sentence, it will be nothing less than state murder, a legal lynching. It will show, as a number of black Georgians bitterly remarked to the press, that racist Jim Crow “justice” is alive and well in the state that was the lynching capital of the South in the 1920s. It will demonstrate that for the racist U.S. injustice system, innocence is not a defense – especially for a black man accused of killing a white cop. It will prove, once again, that there is no justice in the capitalist courts. But the legal lynchers can be stopped, by mobilizing the power of the working class. It will take nothing less than socialist revolution to sweep away this rotting system that lives on death. Troy Davis Case Shows: There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts (211 September 2011)

Why I Joined the Internationalist Group

It Will Take Socialist Revolution to End Racist Repression NYPD’s “Stop and Frisk”: Racist Attack on Black, Latino and Immigrant Youth

All Cops Off Campus! NYPD Out of the Schools!

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!

¡Libertad para Mumia Abu-Jamal, ya!