Workers’ Advocate
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Vol. 7, No. 1 • March 16, 2015
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Restoring a Long, Great Tradition
On the launching of the weekly Workers’ Advocate
BACK PAGE
First Draft of History By KEVIN KEENE kkeene@workersadvocate.org n Monday, March 9, Wisconsin became the 25th state to adopt socalled “right-to-work” legislation when Republican Governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker gleefully signed the bill into law. “Right-to-work” laws allow workers to reject joining the union representing an organized workplace, thus undermining their position in contract negotiations with the bosses. This “open shop” law means that workers are little more than slaves, subject to the whims of the owners and managers. Not surprisingly, the response of the business unions to this attack was yet another anemic and impotent protest in front of the State Capitol in Madison, with only a few thousand brought out to “bear witness” to the union officials’ bankruptcy and abject failure. Not surprisingly, this prostration before the unionbusters was hailed by Democratic Party politicians, including the Obama White House, who are on the same page as Walker when it comes to forcing through a new round of budget cuts.
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OUT IN THE OPEN GOP Provocations on Iran, Budget Spark Rumors of Right-Wing Coup By CLARENCE FRANKLIN
cfranklin@workersadvocate.org
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he shooting of two St. Louis area police officers at the end of a regular, peaceful protest has been seized upon by the ruling classes and their mouthpieces to continue the attack on those who rightly expressed outrage after the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. The two cops sustained minor injuries after being shot by an unknown person. Witnesses say the shooter was nowhere near the crowd of protesters. Both Democratic and Republican politicians echoed the racist speculation that came from the chief of the St. Louis County Police, much in the same way they did after two New York cops were killed last December. However, this growing evidence that the shooting may have been unintentional. Meanwhile, 51 people have been killed by police since the beginning of March, bringing the total number of those murdered to 227 since the beginning of 2015.
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bviously, all those bodies and all that blood is beginning to weigh on the armed enforcers of capitalism’s “law and order.” The NYPD, in particular, has been especially sensitive about it since last December’s mass protests over the Eric Garner killing. Their solution? Send it down the memory hole. Last Friday, Capital NY reported that recent revisions to the Wikipedia entries on Garner and other victims of NYPD terrorism were traced back to computers located at NYPD headquarters, 1 Police Plaza. This is part of a new trend among police departments to use surveillance and monitoring of social media to try to track opposition to their practices.
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ut the main media frenzy this week was all about Hillary Clinton’s emails. The uproar started at the beginning of the month, when it was discovered that Clinton, during her time as Secretary of State, used a private, personal email server to send and receive correspondence related to her position. Politicians from both parties criticized her lack of “transparency,” while Congress demanded emails related to the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Clinton responded to the criticism with excuses about the capacity of government-issued cell phones. While much of the furor in the media and among politicians has more to do with the 2016 presidential election, there is something to keep in mind: the servers at the U.S. State Department are the easiest of all the government networks to hack into, and everyone who works there knows this all too well.
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A Lesson to Learn What to Make of the Defeat of the Oil Workers’ Strike By MARTIN SAYLES editor@workersadvocate.org
BEAUMONT, Texas, March 14 — It can get demoralizing, frustrating and just plain maddening watching your fellow workers — your brothers and sisters — having to swallow yet another defeat sold to them as a “victory” by the corporatist union officials, especially after spending more than a month walking picket lines in the largest strike of its kind since 1980. Last Thursday, United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard announced the end of the 41-day strike that idled only one-fifth of the country’s oil refineries, claiming that the tentative contract with Royal Dutch Shell, which is meant to set the pattern for contract with the other bosses, “won vast improvements in safety and staffing” due to “the solidarity exhibited by our membership.” In fact, no real improvements in safety or staffing were won. All the USW officials were able to obtain were a series of worthless
promises from the owners that there would be “reviews” and a token “presence” of union safety representatives to rubber-stamp the speed-ups and deadly working conditions that are the hallmark of U.S. oil refineries. The only piece of concrete information that was leaked was about raises over the life of the four-year contract. Workers will receive a 2.5-percent increase in the first year, 3 percent in the second and third, and 3.5 percent in the fourth year of the deal. Given that real inflation (as opposed to the “official” cooked version) is well above 3.5 percent today, and is expected to rise over the next few years, this means real wages will continue to fall. To add a strong measure of insult to injury, this new contract is virtually indistinguishable from the sweetheart deal shoved down the workers’ throats by Gerard and the USW officials in 2012 — current promises notwithstanding. Is this what thousands of workers fought for, more of the same?! CONTINUED ON BACK PAGE Ü
WASHINGTON, D.C., March 15 — It generally goes without saying that, as this country moves closer to the next general election cycle, the rhetoric between the Republican and Democratic parties hits a fever pitch. So, it could be easily argued that the recent statements and actions by the Congressional Republicans is just par for the course, especially since this rhetoric has been particularly ugly since Obama took office in 2009. However, such a dismissive view toward recent events ignores the particularly ominous and dangerous signals coming from the camp of radical reaction — signals that have rightly sparked rumors of a right-wing coup. Since the Republicans succeeded in taking control of both houses of Congress last November, tensions between them and President Obama’s administration have only risen. Not surprisingly, the Democrats responded to this uptick in GOP tough talk with a shrug and a “that’s politics” smile. But the tone changed last month when it was learned that Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on the ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear energy program. The invitation was extended without consulting or even informing the White House, and the address was set to take place March 3, which is two weeks before Israelis are set to vote in a general election that could see Netanyahu’s right-wing government replaced by a center-left coalition. The Israeli prime minister used the well of the Congress as a bully pulpit to roundly attack the UN-sponsored negotiations and Washington’s participation in them, calling Iran a terrorist state and comparing them to both Da’esh (ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State) and, predictably, Nazi Germany. Netanyahu’s visit seemingly provided the perfect backdrop for what came next: an “open letter” to the Islamist mullahs in Iran, signed by 47 Republican senators, that declared that any deal that might be reached with Tehran would never receive approval from Congress, and would be immediately repudiated if the GOP wins the White House in 2016. Nevermind, of course, that since this is a UN deal, neither the current Congress nor a possible future Republican president can tear up this nuclear agreement. Freshman U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (r-ar), the author of the letter, was clear that his intent was to force a breakdown of negotiations and undermine the work of the Obama administration. This provoked instant howls of “treason!” from Democrats and liberals. Even Obama couldn’t resist making the charge, saying the 47 Senate Republicans who signed the letter were “wanting to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran.” But while all this was going on in front of the cameras and being turned into the latest media circus, the dark clouds began to gather around another CONTINUED ON BACK PAGE Ü
Detroit Teachers Under Attack from the Inside By EDWARD BURGHARDT
eburghardt@workersadvocate.org
DETROIT, Mich., March 14 — Usually, when one writes about a local union being under attack, it is either a reference to the latest moves by the exploiting and oppressing classes, or it is an exposé on the betrayals of the pro-capitalist bureaucracy. But in the case of the Detroit Federation of Teachers today, it comes from a clique considered by many to be a part of the left. Last January, in one of the narrowest margins of victory ever, Steve Conn was elected president of the DFT. Conn, a perennial candidate for union office who had the support of several of the bureaucratic “opposition” currents within the local, was the head of a slate of teachers running as the “Equal Opportunity Now/ By Any Means Necessary” caucus against the handpicked successor chosen by outgoing President Keith
Johnson. Only about 30 percent of the 4,000 DFT members voted in the election. Many members of the local saw Conn’s victory as a defeat of an officialdom known for making sweetheart deals with the city and the “EmerSteve Conn gency Manager” (read: dictator) at the expense of teachers. Indeed, Conn and his EON/BAMN caucus have been among the loudest advocates for what they consider the DFT’s interests, and many teachers believed he was the “lesser evil.” But as the saying goes, the lesser evil is still evil. As soon as he took office, Conn began to hand over the apparatus of the DFT to his BAMN cohorts — not the caucus, but the “radical” group of the same name.
BAMN National Organizer Shanta Driver was appointed the DFT’s general counsel, seemingly without approval of the local’s Executive Board. BAMN members who are not teachers were brought in to local meetings, which are supposed to be for members only, and used as both a personal cheerleading section and goon squad to enforce the dictates of Conn/BAMN and to physically threaten any teacher who objected. Moreover, Conn has begun to act as if the DFT is his personal fiefdom, cancelling meetings on a whim, appending the name of the union to leaflets and events called by BAMN (and not endorsed by the membership), attempting to scuttle an election for the union’s Election Committee, and refusing to even discuss the concerns that members have raised about his actions. Indeed, Conn has even raised the ire of the parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, by refus-
ing to honor the loan agreement between the DFT and AFT. This is tantamount to inviting the top union officials to step in and put the local into receivership, effectively crushing any semblance of membership rights and voice under the weight of a bureaucratic junta. “Why is this happening?”, many teachers are asking. “Who’s pulling Conn’s strings? What is BAMN?” For those unaware, BAMN is the latest front for a dubious little group triply misnamed the “Revolutionary Workers League,” which is neither revolutionary, nor working-class, nor a political league. Rather, it is a cult that uses sexual and psychological manipulation to recruit and control its members, and threats of legal action to suppress and isolate any internal dissenters. Once upon a time, the RWL was a run-of-the-mill Trotskyist sect carving out a space for itself in Detroit. CONTINUED ON BACK PAGE Ü
Class against Class – Revolution against Order! H All Power to the Working Class! H Abolish the Wages System and Wage-Slavery!
Workers’ Advocate
BACK PAGE HHH The Workingman’s Advocate, the first workers’ newspaper in the U.S.; the Workmen’s Advocate, English-language voice of the Socialist Labor Party until 1891; and Working People’s Advocate, voice of the Communist League (2004-2008) and Workers Party (2009-2013).
Restoring a Long and Great Tradition
J
ust in case you haven’t quite figured it out yet, we’ve made a number of changes with our press — the most obvious of which is the launching of the weekly Workers’ Advocate as the voice of the Central Committee of the Party. Our new weekly continues the work of our first newspaper, Working People’s Advocate, with the current name being a variant on the previous. With the return to our original press, in a new package created by the team who produced the Worker-Communist, the Workers Party is also shifting its media policy to place more importance on maintaining its printed press and using it to increase the Party’s political interventions. The Worker-Communist Magazine will, from this point on, be known only as the Worker-Communist, retaining its quarterly schedule, with the first issue scheduled for release in summer 2015. The return of the weekly Advocate is not only a case of the Party restoring the tradition of quality working-class journalism that made WPA one of the best publications in the workers’ movement, but it also reaffirms our connections to, and continuity with, the early revolutionary workers’ organizations that laid the basis for our existence. In 1829, a veteran trade union activist and reformer named George Henry Evans founded the Workingman’s Advocate, the first national workers’ newspaper and a voice of the recently-founded Workingmen’s Party of New York. While the party broke up in 1833, the Advocate continued to publish as a weekly voice for the burgeoning union movement until 1849, and then occasionally from 1851 until 1856, when Evans died. In 1864, as the tide of the Civil War turned decisively in favor of the Union, workers in Chicago re-established the Workingman’s Advocate as a newspaper “devoted to the interests of the producing classes.” The new Advocate was a supporter of the U.S. Sections of the International Working Men’s Association and the National Labor Union of William Sylvis. Many of the “Red ’48ers,” communist and socialist German immigrants who fled Europe after the failure of the 1848 revolutions, promoted the Advocate and financed it, and its columns were often filled with articles and statements from Marx and Engels. When the International dissolved, and the U.S. Sections began to coalesce into the predecessors of what became the Workingmen’s Party in 1876, the Advocate served as a forum for the growing movement, eventually changing its name to The Socialist and being the English-language voice of the WPUS. When the WPUS became the Socialist Labor Party, The Socialist again changed its name, this time to the Labor Standard, which lasted until 1881, when it closed down for good. A new Advocate, now the Workmen’s Advocate, emerged in 1885 as the newspaper of the New Haven, Conn., Trades Council. A year later, control of this paper was transferred to the SLP and became its new English-language voice. In 1891, following the rise of Daniel De Leon to leadership in the SLP, the Workmen’s Advocate was trans-
THE MONDAY MORNING ARMCHAIR COLUMNIST
Miles
Maclane formed into the Weekly People (and, from 1900 to 1914, the Daily People). In 2008, The People, now a bimonthly, finally ceased its print publication. During the 20th century, only one organization, the Marxist-Leninist Party, attempted to use the name, The Workers’ Advocate, and claim its rich history. However, this attempt ultimately failed, as did its organizational sponsor, which voted itself out of existence in 1993 due to it fracturing along differing doctrinaire political lines. In late 2004, the original banner of the Advocate was picked up by the recently-formed Communist League. Starting as a monthly and eventually becoming a weekly, Working People’s Advocate was the voice of the League and a key source for working-class communist analysis of the events of its time, including the occupation of Iraq (and the movement for a democratic, secular and non-sectarian republic based on workers’ councils), the rise of corporatism and the George W. Bush regime, the “liberal” corporatist credentials of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (WPA calling the latter’s electoral victory, “Bush’s Third Term”), the outbreak of the Panic of 2008 and the massive Wall Street bailouts, the collapse of the corporatist business unions, and the rise of the “Arab Spring” and the Occupy movement. When the League helped to found the Workers Party at the beginning of 2009, WPA became its weekly voice. When the decision was made in 2013 to launch the Worker-Communist as the Party’s newspaper, WPA was turned into a monthly magazine; at the end of that year, its publication was suspended in favor of expanding the size of WC — a decision that, in retrospect, was unsustainable and a drain on our meager resources. It was decided to turn WC into a weekly, but the paper never gained the traction or readership that made WPA such an important vehicle. At the same time, the name Working People’s Advocate had been outgrown. In a time when class questions are, at once, becoming ever more prominent within society and ever more marginalized among the so-called left, it was felt that the continued use of “working people” was too vague a term — too much of a blurring of the class line. By taking the name Workers’ Advocate, we are not only restoring a long and great tradition that stretches back nearly 180 years, but also launching a “new” heritage and standard for workingclass communist journalism and reportage that is designed for the 21st century. The new Workers’ Advocate will be available on its website (www. workersadvocate.org), through our Party’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, as a weekly edition on Flipboard, and, coming later this year, as part of a new app available for both Android and iOS. H
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IN THE OPEN Ü CONTINUED FROM FRONT PAGE
issue that is a point of contention between the two parties — and, thus, the different factions of the corporatist exploiting and oppressing classes. At a GOP-sponsored event in New Hampshire on March 8, Senator Lindsey Graham (r-sc) talked about the current conflict over the federal budget and funding for the Pentagon. Saying he was “sick to my stomach” about a possible extension of cuts made during the 2011 debt “crisis,” Graham declared that, if he was president, “I wouldn’t let Congress leave town until we fix this. I would literally use the military to keep them in if I had to.” Graham’s staffers later tried to say that this was a “joke” and shouldn’t be taken “literally” —
Vol. 7, No. 1 • March 16, 2015 even though “literally” was the word Graham used. This threat becomes less of a “joke” when you consider what is being said by the heads of the military. For example, at a recent hearing, Marine Corps General John Kelly said of continuing the cuts: “It will be a catastrophe.... We could be talking not about higher risk or severe risk, but defeat.” When the military brass begins to talk about the potential of “defeat” in military operations due to possible actions by the White House (i.e., a fear that Obama will want to continue the 2011 cuts), talk of using the military to force the civilian government to bow to the Pentagon’s wishes is no joke. This openly belligerent tone is a reflection of the views of the radically-reactionary faction of the ruling classes and marks a sinister turn in advance of the upcoming electoral contest. More to the point, this militarist approach to resolving leg-
islative differences has as much (if not more!) to do with the growing domestic unrest taking place as it does with taking on declared enemies. This was made clear when Governor Scott Walker, a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president, unashamedly compared the resistance to his policies mounted by the business unions in 2011 to the actions of Da’esh. This “gaffe” was a revealing admission of how the ruling classes see workers. This conflict among the exploiting and oppressing classes is now out in the open. But we must be clear: the only real differences on these issues between the Republicans and Democrats are tactical — how to strip workers of their rights, how to subjugate Iran, how much more to give to the Pentagon. For us as workers, our only course of action to defeat these coming attacks is through organizing ourselves and fighting for a workers’ republic. H
OIL WORKERS Ü CONTINUED FROM FRONT PAGE
It became clear early on in the strike that the workers wanted more than mere piecemeal, limited strike at a handful of refineries. Many of those on the picket lines wanted the USW to call out all refinery workers and completely shut down the industry (i.e., not let the refineries continue to operate with scabs and managers running them, which is what the USW union officials allowed to happen). Gerard was under increasing pressure from both his own members and other workers in the industry, and from working people in general, to expand the strike to every facility. However, from the perspective of the corporatist business union officials, the loyal labor lieutenants of capitalism, that meant a risk of the strike getting “out of control.” The desire to mount a serious and militant counterattack against the exploiting and oppressing classes among broad sections of the working class has been growing for years, and the union officials of the AFL-CIO and Change To Win federations know this. That is why they are working overtime to keep strikes limited and isolated, all while accepting agreements that allow them to proclaim a phony “victory” and get workers back on the job. In this respect, the union officials act as little
DETROIT
Ü CONTINUED FROM FRONT PAGE Over time, however, the ostensible politics of the RWL were replaced by personal relations, personal loyalty and personal attacks. Those opposed to this cult turn were isolated, hounded out, subjected to psychological warfare that would make the CIA blush and, in at least three documented cases, driven to the point of institutionalization or suicide. At the same time, their actions became more
A visibly worried USW President Leo Gerard during negotiations. He faced a stark choice: represent his members and expand the strike, or side with the exploiting and oppressing classes by isolating the workers and signing a sellout agreement. Guess what he chose. more than another layer of management — the “understanding boss” that tells you they understand your anger and do what they can for you while hustling you back to work as quickly as possible. More and more, workers are beginning to understand and assimilate the lessons from recent battles. The tactics of all-out strikes, mass pickets and class solidarity are already accepted as necessary to win. At the same time, larger and larger sections of the working class — especially among public sector workers — are also realizing that economic action alone is not enough, and that the fight for workers’ basic rights and livelihoods is also a political one.
Workers also understand the need for a new union movement — one that can break the constraints placed on them by the business unions — and have often used strike votes as a means of expressing their lack of confidence in the officials. But what has yet to be learned and understood is that no one but workers themselves can bring this new, revolutionary industrial union movement into being. The Workers Party is willing to work with all our brothers and sisters to build the basis for a revolutionary industrial union movement that can displace the business unions, unite our class and lead the fight to establish a workers’ republic. H
erratic, staggering between provocation and capitulation. One day, they would push strikers into a police line in order to provoke a physical battle (from which they would retreat immediately, leaving workers to take on the cops); the next day, they would side with the union officials and help force a concession contract down the workers’ throats. Then there are the lingering charges of RWL members crossing picket lines, sabotaging movements not under their control (even if it meant that no organized opposition would exist), and embezzling union funds in the union locals they control.
When it comes to taking control of union locals, the RWL/BAMN tactic of wearing down the membership and turning enough of them off to the “internal politics” so they can unleash their true believers and packing enough meetings to take over has been moderately successful, from their perspective. From the Oakland Educational Association to AFSCME Local 207 in Detroit to the DFT, the RWL/BAMN has used its “palace coup” tactics to demobilize and atomize workers while posturing as “the leadership” and even, at times, “the union.” In all cases, though, there is one constant: the workers themselves are locked out of any measure of control, and their rights are all but obliterated. In the case of the DFT, and by extension all of the Detroit Public Schools unions, the only solution to dealing with this anti-worker cult called BAMN is to organize to drive them out of the union leadership, marginalize them as a force within the local and take direct control of their collective organization. The Workers Party has been talking with members of the DFT, advocating the development of a revolutionary industrial union movement that can strip Conn and BAMN of their power, and place it into the hands of the teachers themselves, while also burying the business union officialdom and organizing for the greater battles ahead. H
RWL/BAMN, in one of its previous incarnations, decided that the 1994-1996 Detroit Newspaper strike was not “militant” enough, so it stood behind the picket line and pushed it into the line of police in Sterling Heights, Mich. As the workers were being pepper sprayed and beaten by the cops, the RWL provocateurs retreated and scurried away from the area.
HONCHO AND LEFTY by Hammond Eggs
“Save the Fails” THAT’S A LOT OF I HAVE TO STUFF. WHAT’S STOCK UP! THE PROTEST? I NEED FOAMCORE POSTER SAVING THE BOARD, PAPER PLANET. FOR LEAFLETS, A NEW STAPLE GUN, PLASTIC BAGS IN CASE IT RAINS... OH! AND A BIG CASE OF BOTTLED WATER.
HEY, LEFTY! WHERE ARE YOU OFF TO IN SUCH A GOOD MOOD?
Name: ___________________________________ Address: ________________________________ ______________________________________ City: ____________________ State: _________ ZIP: ___________ Phone: __________________ E-Mail: ___________________________________ Organization: ___________________________
THE FIRST BIG PROTEST HAS BEEN CALLED! THE SEASON HAS BEGUN!
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EDITORIAL BOARD: Martin Sayles (Editor); Robin Wakipajan; Edward Burghardt CONTRIBUTORS: Anna Dawes; Clarence Franklin; Kevin Keene; Miles Maclane CLOSING DATE: March 15, 2015 • NEXT DEADLINE: March 22, 2015 The Workers’ Advocate (ISSN 2428-2022) is published weekly (with bulletins in between issues as needed) as the voice and Organ of the Central Committee of the Workers Party in America, the worker-communist party in the United States. The Workers Party in America is part of the international worker-communist movement. To contact us, submit an article or letter, or ask a question, write to: WA, c/o WPA, P.O. Box 96503, PMB 59359, Washington, D.C. 20090-6503; phone: (800) 569-0747; e-mail: editor@worker-communist.org. To contact the Workers Party directly, e-mail: party@workers-party. com; web: www.workers-party.com. Signed articles and letters to the editor do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the Central Committee or the majority of the membership of the Workers Party in America. Those are expressed in editorials and signed statements.
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