The Militant (logo) 
   Vol.66/No.14            April 8, 2002 
 
 
Atlanta conference builds communist movement
(feature article)
 
BY JACK WILLEY
ATLANTA--"Those who seek the most effective way to end the horrendous conditions workers, farmers, and youth face around the globe can use this concentrated weekend to consider joining the communist movement now," stated Brian Taylor in his welcome to participants in the Southeast Regional Socialist Conference. The conference took place March 23–24 under the banner, "Join the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialists, Build the World Communist Movement."

More than 100 people participated in the event, which included a reception and panel discussion Saturday evening followed by a social. On Sunday a YS leadership meeting open to all YS-age youth and a class on Cuba and the Coming American Revolution rounded out the conference. The weekend's activities included a national meeting of socialist workers who are members of the United Mine Workers of America. Participation in the conference by leaders of communist leagues and Young Socialists from Australia, Canada, Iceland, and Sweden added to the international scope of the deliberations.

Socialist workers and young socialists from the region worked the week prior to the conference to prepare a range of displays on the themes of the meeting. One described the history of the coal miners' fight for safety and federal health and retirement benefits. It included photos of the coal miners' widows' walk currently underway to Washington. Other displays were on the five Cuban revolutionaries framed-up and imprisoned by the U.S. government, working-class and social struggles that socialists have been part of in the region, and the Cuba-wide book fair and promotional events for From the Escambray to the Congo, a new Pathfinder title by Cuban revolutionary leader Víctor Dreke.

Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press and member of the SWP Political Committee, was one of the keynote speakers on the Saturday evening panel. She spoke on advances in the Cuban Revolution and lessons to more effectively build a communist party in the United States. Waters and a team of other socialists spent a month in Cuba in February and early March where they participated in the Havana International Book Fair and a series of meetings to present From the Escambray to the Congo.

Waters said the experiences of the team helped them gain a better understanding of how working people in Cuba were able to crush counterrevolutionary bands backed by Washington that were centered in the Escambray in the first half of the 1960s. The most important accomplishment of the nine book launchings in Havana and central Cuba, she said, was the chance for Cuban revolutionaries and communists from the United States to share platforms and exchange views and experiences. Through these events, Waters said, Cubans who came to the meetings were able to learn that there are people like themselves who are carrying out revolutionary activity in the United States. In a similar way, tours to the United States by Cuban youth leaders are an aid to revolutionary-minded workers and youth here, she said.

From the Escambray to the Congo presents an important contribution to the history of the fight against racism as fundamentally a class question, Waters said in her talk. Only after workers and peasants take power out of the hands of the capitalists can they also implement a course of action to confront the legacy of slavery. The conditions of blacks in much of Cuba were similar to those in the southern United States under Jim Crow, where beaches, health care, and education were segregated, and where the standard of living of Afro-Cubans was significantly lower than that of other Cubans.

Waters pointed out that the first acts of the revolution included outlawing segregation, implementing a land reform, and carrying through a literacy campaign. Blacks benefited most from these working-class affirmative action measures that were aimed at raising the conditions of life and opportunities for all working people.

The Cuban communist leadership is implementing an affirmative action program today, Waters said, to confront the inequalities and consequences of introducing the dollar into the Cuban economy. She pointed to initiatives such as setting up teacher education schools, a new television channel for the University for All programs, efforts to encourage unemployed school dropouts to go back to school, and schools for revolutionary social work. A centerpiece of the work of the young social workers right now is going door-to-door to work with families to eliminate breeding grounds for mosquitoes that spread Dengue Fever.

"The Cuban Revolution and internationalism are inseparable," Waters concluded. "They always say that those who cannot fight for others cannot fight for themselves."

The fact that communists from the United States were at the book fair and in the Escambray is a statement of proletarian internationalism, she said. Socialist workers, Young Socialists, and party supporters in the United States made it possible for Pathfinder to take some 2,000 books to Cuba to sell in pesos, for about $1 or less a book. Books such as that by Víctor Dreke are part of the continuity of the communist movement. They contain as many lessons and as much education for Cubans as they do for working people in the United States, Waters concluded.  
 
Prisoners of the empire
Martín Koppel, the editor of Perspectiva Mundial and a participant in the Havana International Book Fair, told the meeting about the five Cuban revolutionaries now in U.S. prisons for defending their country and revolution by participating in an internationalist mission to infiltrate counterrevolutionary groups based in the United States. The five, named Heroes of the Republic of Cuba, were framed-up on "conspiracy" charges.

This frame-up is not only an attack on Cuba, Koppel said, but also on workers' rights in the United States. Koppel pointed out that "conspiracy" charges are commonly used by the rulers to victimize individuals in the workers movement because the cops and courts are unable to prove those they target have actually carried out any illegal act. Instead, conspiracy laws target "intentions" or "beliefs."

At the same time the five revolutionaries were being sentenced in federal court, Washington began building permanent cells for prisoners living under barbaric conditions on the illegally-occupied Guantánamo naval base. Koppel described in detail the conditions of prisoners there and called for communists to work with other class-conscious workers to expose this abuse, aimed primarily at setting a precedent to be used against working people in the United States. He called for condemning the outrageous treatment of the prisoners and for their unconditional release.

Linda Joyce, a volunteer in the Pathfinder Reprint Project who participated in the Havana International Book Fair, spoke about the serious political response that Pathfinder titles received among working people and youth hungry for communist literature and information about the class struggle in the United States.

Joyce said the work of Pathfinder at the book fair builds on the accomplishments of previous years. "People constantly came by looking for Pathfinder books--looking for certain titles and persons whom they had met in previous years," Joyce said. "Some would sit and read one or another book for hours."

By chance, on her last evening in Cuba, Joyce bumped into an "urban garden" in Havana--one of the many started since the sharp economic crisis following the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Last year the gardens, cultivated by volunteer labor, produced 2,050,000 metric tons of vegetables and herbs to alleviate food shortages in the cities.

It turned out the volunteer Joyce met--Moisés Javier Sosa Rodríguez--is a member of the Association of Cuban Combatants and had fought in the revolutionary war with Dreke when he was 13 years old.

These experiences and the response at the book fair give a deeper meaning to the Pathfinder Reprint Project, Joyce said. The 150 volunteers in several countries involved in the project prepare Pathfinder titles in digital form ready to be printed by Pathfinders' printshop. They also set up and maintain the pathfinderpress.com website.

The project has now put into digital, ready-to-print form 66 percent of the more than 350 Pathfinder titles--241 books in all--toward their goal of 75 percent by the end of June, Joyce reported.

Arrin Hawkins, a Young Socialists leader who is on her way to New York to volunteer in Pathfinder's printshop, reported on the interest in the work of the YS at the Havana book fair among Cuban and international students.

Hawkins said many students who came by the table were from the Latin American School of Medicine, a university primarily for youth from countries oppressed by imperialism to receive education that is either unavailable or unaffordable in their own countries.

"Young people were particularly interested in the fights that YS members are part of in our own countries, such as the one in Chicago of illegally terminated workers at the Ampac slaughterhouse to win severance pay, and protests against police brutality in Sweden," she said.

"Participating in this festival was part of the Young Socialists' work in building a new international today," she said. Hawkins reported that the team met young people from Brazil, Haiti, Venezuela, and other countries who had also participated in the youth festival in Algeria, making it possible for Young Socialists to continue discussion they had begun at that anti-imperialist event.  
 
War threats and world domination
Jack Barnes, the SWP national secretary, addressed the attempts by the U.S. imperialists to strengthen their position in the world and the devastation it has brought to millions of toilers as a result.

"U.S. imperialism is the mightiest, most brutal, and the last empire that will ever exist in history," he said. By its sheer military and economic weight Washington prevents any other imperialist power from rising up to replace it. The logic of U.S. imperialism is the attempt to dominate the world to try to maintain stability for its interests.

One brazen example is the preparation by Washington, blocking with a wing of the Venezuelan military, to carry out a coup against Hugo Chávez. The rulers will use their so-called "war against narco-trafficking" to justify their role in the accelerating war in Colombia. And they plan to let the Argentine peso continue its free-fall, devastating the lives of millions.

The Pentagon's intentionally leaked "Nuclear Posture Review"--targeting China, Iran, Iraq, north Korea, Libya, Russia, and Syria with possible use of nuclear weapons--has increased the number of targets of U.S. imperialism, Barnes said. "Nobody even claims Iraq, Iran, Syria, or Libya has nuclear weapons, but Washington justifies its actions arguing that 'they may be researching how to make them,'" Barnes stated.

The U.S. imperialists also justify keeping 37,000 troops in south Korea by claiming the government in the north plans to build nuclear bombs. But the real purpose of Washington's massive military presence is to prop up the south Korean regime and keep the maximum pressure on the north to try to starve the population into submission, he said. The greatest threat in Korea right now is not an invasion from the north, Barnes pointed out, but the joint military exercises involving tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed in Japan, Guam, and south Korea.  
 
Assault on workers' rights
Barnes explained that the U.S. government's barbaric treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo--justified by branding the detainees as terrorists--is no different than what the rulers are laying the groundwork to do in the United States. Anyone accused of terrorism, regardless of the country they come from, can be sent there shackled and held without a trial of their peers. U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated that the prisoners will not be released until the war on terror is over. But since the war will never "end," they could be held indefinitely, Barnes said.

The treatment of prisoners and the building of a prison camp at Guantánamo is directly connected to putting four-star generals in charge of "homeland defense" of different territories in the United States and the use of military tribunals against those who resist, he said.

The attempt to roll back workers' rights, however, is failing in this country, Barnes stated. To justify their assault on working people at home, Washington must convince Americans they have something to fear and must give up some of their rights in order for a titanic fight against terror to be waged.

But struggles like the widows' march, which stands on the shoulders of past struggles by coal miners for black lung benefits and the fight to democratize the United Mine Workers union, could not happen if the rulers were succeeding in beating back workers' rights, he said.

During the discussion period, a participant from Birmingham spoke about rightist attempts to introduce religion in the schools and place the 10 commandments in state institutions.  
 
Attempts to built rightist movement
Barnes said that there are ongoing attempts to build an ideological right wing in the United States and the battle against teaching science in the schools is common across the country. Patrick Buchanan, an ultrarightist who attempts to build a cadre to fight in the streets, argues that people need more "discipline" and must adhere to a "religious foundation" in order to "save America" from the "deprivations of the dark-skinned people" of the world, including in the United States. He champions the call of other ultra-rightists who campaign to honor Confederate war veterans and to create a Robert E. Lee day on the same day as the Martin Luther King national holiday, reported Barnes. He reminded the audience that Buchanan's three heroes are Generalisimo Franco, the fascist dictator who ruled Spain, Gen. Douglas McArthur, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the United States.

In their attempts to roll back gains of the working class, and advances in rights of Blacks and women conquered through massive struggles, the U.S. rulers run into the fact that it will not be easy to turn back history. The gains won since the 1960s are historically recent and are defended by working people.  
 
Palestinian struggle and Israel
The imperialist-backed Israeli regime is not succeeding in beating down the Palestinian people, Barnes stated. He pointed to several facts. In the first intifada, the ratio of deaths was 35 Palestinians to one Israeli Jew. In this war, the ratio is about three to one. In the first, no Israeli tanks were blown up; so far two have been destroyed. One Palestinian gunman recently shot 10 Israeli soldiers and escaped unscathed. The Israeli army is becoming demoralized and some troops are calling for an end to the war. It has been impossible for Tel Aviv's military forces to destroy an entire village through bloody brute force, and each attempt to do so creates more people who are ready to fight.

In the discussion period one person said the only solution to the conflict is for both sides to broker an agreement.

Barnes explained that what was once an imperialist conquest is now coming apart and pointed to the Socialist Workers Party's stance toward the struggle. There is no viable solution to the conflict short of the total immigration of the Palestinians back to their land and the abolition of the Israeli state. The question is not of "resolving" the "violence" but of defending this just struggle.

The imperialists are trying to cobble together an agreement, he said, but whatever they end up with, if anything, will be shorter-lived than the previous attempts. And the next struggle will explode even more violently, he said. Unless the people of Israel in large numbers become politically won to the Palestinian struggle, the state of Israel becomes an even greater death trap for the Jews.

Barnes said communists put forward the only solution for both the Jews and Palestinians, that of a democratic, secular Palestine. Communists call on Jews to join the Palestinian people in their struggle to topple the Israeli state.

Jews in the United States will also divide, Barnes said, as a growing number begin to question long-held views about Israel and draw the conclusion that whether the Jews will survive or not is a historically open question. The unfolding conflict in the Middle East means communists will find a greater interest in Pathfinder's books and pamphlets, such as the title How Can the Jews Survive? by George Novack.  
 
Catholic church's greatest crisis in U.S.
The Roman Catholic church faces its greatest crisis in the United States and is weaker than at any time in its modern history, Barnes said. While it is taking the form of growing revelations about pedophile priests and the long delay by the pope in making any statement condemning their acts, the roots of the crisis can be found in the oppression of women and the fact that the Catholic church includes the most reactionary doctrine of any major Christian religion today.

Never before has there been such a gap between the real views, the real practices, and the real doubts of the faithful, on the one hand, and the doctrine of the hierarchy, on the other, he said. The hierarchy cannot get a majority to agree with their line that using contraception is a sin in the eyes of God, for example. In order to survive and reverse its decline, the church hierarchy will be forced to carry out a radical transformation.

Barnes said that communists support and draw strength from all battles that defend the interests of the toilers around the world. They also recognize all gains are partial and fundamental questions such as the threat of nuclear war, wage slavery, oppression of Blacks or women, anti-Semitism, environmental devastation, and others can only begin to be confronted once working people and all of those who ally themselves with the workers movement take power out of the hands of the capitalist exploiters.

To that end, the communist movement is accelerating the international scope of its work as part of building a world communist movement. Socialist workers and Young Socialists will participate in several gatherings in the next couple months, Barnes announced. This includes trips to the 40th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Union of Young Communists of Cuba; events in north Korea celebrating the founding of the Workers Party there; the Tehran, Iran, book fair; the Midwest Regional Conference in Chicago; the conference founding the Young Socialists in Haiti; and trips to Iceland and Britain to work with communists in those countries to deepen the proletarian character of their work.
 
 
Related articles:
Meeting maps out YS campaign
Participants study 'Cuba and the Coming American Revolution'
Youth snap up Marxist classics  
 
 
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