Argentinian Workers Cheer Chavez and Send Bush Packing
Viva Che! Fuera Bush! (REUTERS/Pilar Olivares)
Nov. 5-9, 2005--It didn't take long for George W. Bush to realize he was in enemy territory when he arrived in the Argentinian seaside resort of Mar del Plata and tried to ram a free trade agreement down the throats of 34 South American countries on behalf of the US bourgeoisie. Tens of thousands of Argentinian workers marched through the streets of Mar del Plata denouncing Bush as a fascist and terrorist while chanting "Bush Out"! Nearly 70,000 filled a nearby stadium after the march and cheered Venezuela's leftist president Hugo Chavez's denunciation of US imperialism and his vow to defend his nation's sovereignty against any act of Yankee aggression to seize its oil. The demonstrators also roared their ap proval when Argentinian soccer star Diego Maradona, wearing a shirt that read "War criminal" under Bush's face, accounce that "Argentina has dignity, let's throw Bush out." Maradona also demonstrated his perceptiveness in describing Bush as "human garbage," a sentiment shared by many millions of North Americans as well.
And the proleterian revulsion for Bush and his policies of war, torture and plunder was not limited to Mar del Plata. Protests, walkouts and demonstrations by teachers and public employees occurred in Buenos Aires and dozens of cities throughout the country. Nor were these worker protests confined to Argentina. Anti-Bush, antiwar and anticapitalist protests took place in Montevideo, Uruguaya, Rio de Janeiro, Cacaracas and many other South American capitals.
Bush left the summit empty-handed, beaten, drained and humiliated. He could barely muster the energy to even speak, and seemed stunned over the frosty reception given to him by the South American bourgeois regimes represented at the conference. While these comprador capitalists are completely dependent on their imperialist masters, they are also weak and feeling the pressure of the intense revulsion shown by Argentina's workers toward Bush.
Argentina's proletariat--like the workers throughout South America--have seen enough of Bush's free market nostrums and privatization policies such as steep cuts in social programs and deregulation of financial markets that have created superprofits for foreign investors and huge increases in poverty and unemployment. South America's workers have also seen enough of the IMF and its austerity and devaluation policies which have only further pauperized them.
Chavez blew Bush away; the contrast between the ebuillient Venezuelan leader and the deflated US president reflected the confidence of a fighting, organized working people standing behind their fiery leader and a demoralized US capitalism that senses it doesn't have the surefire hold on the world it thought it had.
And why not? US capitalists should worry that US workers will start noticing that while homelessness is skyrocketing in the richest country in the world, particularly in New Orleans, Venezuela is taking huge steps toward eliminating homelessness; while Bush is trying to slash federal programs to help subsidize heating oil bills for low-income workers, Chavez has offered cheap oil to America's poor to help them through this winter. He is also offering oil at a 40% discount to poor Caribbean nations suffering under the weight of unequal relations of trade and exchange with imperialist countries.
US rightists and even some liberals routinely and falsely label Chavez a "dictator" who threatens American interests. Some dictator. Unlike Bush, who who had to steal the presidency in 2000 because he had lost the popular vote, Chavez won the presidency in 1998 with 56% of the vote. This "dictator" has held eight referendums and elections since then and won all of them decisively, including a referendum on a new constitution and his reelection in 2000. And when a US-backed coup tried to overthrow Chavez in 2002, massive protests by the Venezuelan masses restored him to power in three days.
It's true that Chavez is threatening "American" interests, but the question as always remains, "which America?" Are the interests of poor and working class Americans threatened by Chavez when he gives them free home heating oil to get through the cold winter? Of course not. It's Bush who is threatening the interests of working class Americans by trying to slash federal heating oil assistance programs.
Chavez is threatening the interests of capitalist Americans, of the owners of oil and natural gas companies who won't make the unbridled profits they desire off Venezuela because Chavez, with the people's backing, believes that the Venezuelan workers should receive the benefits of Venezuela's wealth before US capitalists do.
As US workers realize we have more in common with South American workers than we do with George W. Bush and any Democrat, there'll be no stopping us, because we'll have the enthusiastic backing of the international working class.
Sept. 27, 2005--On Sept. 23, 100 armed agents, backed by helicopters and military snipers, stormed the home of 72-year-old Filiberto Ojeda Rios and his wife and opened fire. He was hit with one bullet from a sharpshooter's rifle and was left to bleed to death.
Rios is the legendary Puerto Rican independence fighter who allegedly participated in the 1983 Wells Fargo armored car robbery in Hartford, Connecticut. When the FBI tried to arrest him in 1985, a shootout occurred in which one of their agents was wounded. Rios was tried for attempted murder, but a federal jury in Puerto Rico acquitted him. In 1990, Rios jumped bail before the feds could prosecute him for the Wells Fargo robbery and has lived on the lam ever since.
The FBI could have taken Rios alive. But like their murderous counterparts in the SAS, they implemented a shoot to kill policy and executed an elderly man in cold blood. Big tough guys that they are. Rios was a political prisoner who liberated himself from his imperialist captors and humiliated them for 15 years. He's a hero to the nation of Puerto Rico whose name will be honored throughout history by the oppressed and exploited of the world. His killers will be remembered as cowardly thugs.
Sept. 26, 2005--The federal jury in Binghamton acquitted the four Catholic activists of the most serious felony charge of conspiracy to impede a US officer by "force, intimidation and threat," but convicted them of three misdemeanor charges of trespassing and damaging property.
The "force, intimidation and threat" the defendants were charged with consisting of pouring a small amount of their blood on a military recruiter's vestibule before praying for peace. The government that habitually uses "force, intimidation and threat" to the tune of slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent human beings wanted to put these pacifists in prison for six years. Fortunately, the jury slapped the prosecutor and the government in the face by acquitting these political prisoners on the felony charge.
We need to build on the momentum of this victory by intensfying the demand to extradite Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela to be tried for his role in organizing the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.--August 9, 2005
End Colonial Occupation from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti!
End All Aid to Israel!
Support the Palestinian Right to Return!
US Hands Off Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea & Syria!
Defend Civil Rights!
Stop All Governmental Spying!
Release All Government Files on Sept. 11!
We need to answer Bush's lies and the Democrats complicity in Washington's war crimes by hitting the streets on Sept. 24 in Washington, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
But that's not enough. We need to build a mass socialist movement in the United States. When this begins, we'll be able to hear cheers from all corners of the globe. And terrorism will be on the run. Because Marxism has nothing to do with terrorism. Marxism seeks to mobilize the working people to run society in our interests, to meet human and social needs, not private profit. Terrorism rejects this approach, preferring to shock the rulers into reform while the masses are left as spectators. But this only weakens the working class while strengthening the forces of capitalist reaction.--June 30, 2005
Revolutionary Upsurge in Bolivia!
La Paz, June 6, 2005
Bolivia's workers and peasants have had enough. Enough of multinational corporations ripping off the nation's wealth by controlling the country's principal energy resource--natural gas. Enough of Bolivia's corrupt capitalist rule. Enough of police state repression. Enough of the glories of the free market. Bolivia's workers want to use their nation's natural wealth to benefit the toilers whose labor is the source of those riches.
In recent weeks, mass protests have been occurring throughout the country. On Monday, June 6, hundreds of thousands converged on the capital, La Paz, to let George W. Bush, his puppet Carlos Mesa (now the ex-president!), and the whole world know that the Bolivian toilers are serious about the struggle for state power.
The anger, militancy, and revolutionary convictions of Bolivia's toilers were clearly expressed in the banners, slogans and chants emanating from the crowd that were heard far away in Washington, DC: "Close down parliament; hang the corrupt politicians"; Bourgeois, your days are numbered"; "Enough of bourgeois parliamentary tricks"; "Out with all the politicians!"; and above all, "What do we want? Nationalization! When do we want it? Now!"
These demands are not coming from petty bourgeois radicals, anarchists, or ivory tower college professors. They are coming from Bolivia's working class from one end of the country to the other--Indian miners, peasants, urban workers, teachers. They are serious about using the wealth produced from Bolivia's natural resources to benefit the social needs of the people. They are serious about organizing themselves to fight for a workers and peasants government. People's assemblies and strike committees are sweeping the country.
US workers would be wise to look to our fellow and sister toilers in South America for political guidance and direction. While the Bolivian workers have not yet fully solved the leadership problem, they are a lot further along the road than their counterparts in North America. They don't rely on or trust the representatives of the employer class. They don't look to their class enemy for solutions. Instead, they seek and forge solidarity with other workers and peasants throughout the country. They look to tapping their own strength when using methods of proletarian struggle like demonstrations, general strikes, occupations, and self defense. Bolivian workers are forging the same organizations of class struggle that workers from the Paris Commune to the Russian Revolution have built in varying degrees when challenging the capitalists for state power--workers councils, or soviets.
The rightist and fascist wings of the Bolivian bourgeoisie will try to crush the revolutionary uprising with its own military, and, if that fails, with the willing help of US imperialism--Democratic or Republican. That's why the Bolivian working class needs the active solidarity of the international working class, but most of all, from the American proletariat, which should demand of the US capitalist government: Hands Off Bolivia! And Venezuela! And Cuba! And Colombia! And Haiti!--June 10-11, 2005
Workers and Peasants to Power!
Bolivia's workers and peasants are making significant strides toward establishing the second socialist workers government in this hemisphere. The Peoples' Assemblies that are emerging from this struggle are increasingly resembling the organizational vehicles of the French workers during the Paris Commune in 1871 and the Russian workers during the Russian Revolution--soviets.
From the resolution that launched the People's Assembly in El Alto on June 8:
"The transnational oil corporations, North American imperialism and the treacherous rulers of the Bolivian state have plunged the whole nation into a deep political, economic and social crisis, with the country currently on the verge of total collapse. The aroused masses in the city of El Alto and throughout the country have a decisive role to play; to save the country through a peoples’ government elected from below and with real accountability."
I'm getting fed up with bourgeois writers taking ignorant swipes at Trotsky with ahistorical arguments. If it's not libertarians like Justin Raimondo falsely linking neoconservative warmongering to Trotsky's revolutionary politics, it's "leftists" like Weissman comparing him to Bin Laden.
On what historical basis is this absurd comparison made? Weissman does not provide any because none exists. Trotsky was a working class leader dedicated to the abolition of world capitalism by an international socialist revolution. As such, he was a historical and dialectical materialist who believed that working people could absorb and apply the laws of history and the class struggle in order to build a newer world in THIS life that would be rid of exploitation, oppression, violence, and every other form of degradation that has prevented humanity from truly being human.
Bin Laden's Islamic fundamentalism is a bourgeois ideology that is hostile to the interests of the working class and whose methods have nothing in common with Marxism. Bin Laden hated Saddam Hussein because he viewed the latter's Baath Party as secular and socialist. The chasm between Bin Laden and Trotsky is even wider. Trotsky was a militant atheist. Bin Laden is a religious idealist. Trotsky wanted workers to overcome religious divisions and unite on the basis of common class interests to fight the class enemy of capitalists. Bin Laden wants to fog the minds of all workers with myth and obscurantism.
Weismann's muddleheadedness is apparent in his formulation, "For a revolutionary, even one as reactionary as bin Laden." Bin Laden is not a revolutionary. And by definition, a reactionary cannot be a revolutionary. Reactionaries want to retard progress and go backward. Revolutionaries want to sweep away the status quo and go forward.
One expects bourgeois hacks to make such sloppy and damaging comparisons. Working people are disoriented enough without so-called progressives adding to the confusion by slandering outstanding proletarian leaders.--May 24-June 11, 2005
One Million March Against Terrorism in Havana
"Down with terrorism"--Havana, May 17, 2005
May/June, 2005--On Tuesday, May 17, more than a million Cubans joined Fidel Castro in a march through the streets of Havana demanding the extradition of CIA terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to Venezeula, where he is wanted in connection with the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.
On the same day, international pressure led by the Cubans forced the US to detain Carriles in Miami after he just finished telling reporters at a press conference that Washington was not interested in him and that he had nothing to hide. Washington had no choice. People around the world were beginning to notice that Washington's hypocritical war on terrorism rhetoric was being exposed as the fraud it is while it allowed this known terrorist to waltz into the US with impunity.
"Down with terrorism," Fidel told the crowd. "Down with Nazi doctrines and methods! Down with the lies!"
His countrymen agreed, chanting "Punish the assassins!" and "Bush, terrorist!"
Cubans are well aware of the Bush family's connections to Carriles and fellow terrorist Orlando Bosch, who allegedly helped Carriles execute the bombing of the airliner. Cubans realize that Bosch was pardoned by Bush's father in 1990, and that Jeb Bush is governor due to the efforts of the same anti-Castro Cuban exile organizations that have backed Bosch and Carriles for years. No doubt many Cubans have heard that declassified documents connect Carriles to the airplane bombing and that this gusano had been paid $300 a month in the 1960s and remained on the payroll until 1976.
"This is march against terrorism and in favor of life and peace," Fidel told the assembly. He said that terrorist attacking Cuban targets had "always acted under the orders of the government and special services of the United States."
Fidel said that the fact Washington is protecting a terrorist illuminates the hypocrisy of Bush's so-called "war on terror."
On a television appearance the night before the march, Fidel reiterated his charge that Washington is attempting to destabilize Cuba by supporting groups dedicated to restoring capitalism. "This is the empire's answer, money to foment destabilization...money for terrorist acts, m oney for subversion."
From Karl Marx to the Fourth of July
July 2, 2005--The following article was written in 1951 by James P. Cannon, leader of the Socialist Workers Party at the time. It was published in the Militant on July 16 of that year. Cannon was the founder and leader of the American Trotskyist movement. His thoughts on Marx and the Fourth of July have a particular relevance to today's events. They serve notice on the flag-waving national chauvinists and reactionaries of all stripes that they don't own a monopoly on the revolutionary traditions of 1776. Indeed, they belong to the working class. The Revolutionary War was the first American Revolution. The Civil War that crushed the slavocracy and unified the nation was the second American Revolution. The coming American socialist revolution will accomplished the unfinished bourgeois democratic tasks of these first two revolutions and complete what the revolutionary colonists began in revolting against British colonialism.
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"I’m a Fourth of July man from away back, and a great believer in fire crackers, picnics and brass bands to go with it. You can stop me any time and get me to listen to the glorious story of the greatness of our country and how and when it all got started. The continent we inhabit has been here longer than anyone knows—but as a nation, as an independent people, the darlings of destiny favored above all others, we date from the Declaration of Independence and the Fourth of July.
"The representatives in Congress assembled 175 years ago were the great initiators. When they said: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident,' they started something that opened up a new era of promise for all mankind. That’s what I am ready to celebrate any time the bands begin to play—the start and the promise. But nobody can sell me the Fourth of July speeches which represent the start as the finish and the promise as the fulfillment. I quit believing in them a long time ago. As soon as I grew old enough to look around and see what was going on in this country—all the inequality and injustice still remaining—the beneficiaries of privilege, claiming the heritage of our first revolution, struck me as imposters. I recognized the standard Fourth of July orators as phonies, as desecrators of a noble dream. They didn’t look like the Liberty Boys of ’76.
"But that never turned me against the Fourth of July, as was the case with so many American radicals and revolutionists in the past. I thought the Fourth of July belonged to the people. I always regarded its renunciation as one of the biggest mistakes of American radicalism. It is wrong to confuse internationalism with anti-Americanism; to relinquish the revolutionary traditions of our country to the reactionaries; to let the modern workers’ revolutionary movement, the legitimate heir of the men of 1776, appear as something foreign to our country.
"That is why it did my heart good to see The Militant blossom out this year in a special Fourth of July issue, with its front page manifesto greeting the people of Asia, fighting for their national independence, in the name of our own revolution of 1776—and a whole page of special articles devoted to this revolution and its authentic leaders. The articles in this special issue are obviously the result of serious study and historical research. They throw new light on the most important features of the revolution which have long been obscured, and even deliberately hidden, to serve the special interests of the present-day Tories. These revelations put a powerful propaganda weapon into the hands of those who see in the coming revolution of the American workers not a negation, but a continuation and completion of the revolution for national independence of 175 years ago.
"The authors of these remarkable articles were guided in their research by a theory which required them to look for the essential facts and study them in their inter-relationship. They sought to uncover the motive force of the class struggle—the key to the real understanding of all history. The theory which inspired the authors of these articles to study the first American revolution, and guided them in their work, is Marxism—which Congress and the courts would outlaw as a 'foreign' doctrine, and the teaching of which in the schools is now virtually prohibited.
"The procedure through which these articles in the Fourth of July issue of The Militant finally took shape is an interesting story in itself. They are the work of students in our party school of Marxism. We are committed to the proposition that the cadres of our party have a historical task to accomplish. That task is to organize and lead the coming revolution of the American working class. How better can one prepare to take effective part in such a colossal enterprise than to study the revolution out of which this nation was born? And how can one study revolutionary history seriously and profitably without the aid of the only revolutionary theory of history there is? That’s our point of view anyway. And we are serious enough about it to take a group of our leading people of the younger generation out of everyday activity for six months every year to study the history of their country and this 'foreign' doctrine which alone explains it.
"You will never find two subjects which fit better together. Marx sketched the whole broad outline of American capitalism as it is today in advance of its development. In return for that, American capitalism in all its main features is the crowning proof of Marxism. Our students go to Marx to study America, and study America to verify Marx.
"Marxism is a hundred years old, and has been refuted a thousand times by professional pundits. Not satisfied with that, its opponents—who have far more than a scientific interest in the matter—continue to refute Marxism daily, weekly and monthly in all their publications and other mediums of misinformation and miseducation. Our students know all about that, and examine all the refutations conscientiously as part of their study of the doctrine itself. In the course of this examination and counter-examination they become real Marxists. They learn their doctrine thoroughly, and in learning they proceed to apply it. Marxism is not a dogma to be studied for its own sake, but a theory of social evolution and a guide to action in the class struggle. It is not a substitute for the knowledge of concrete reality, past and present, but a theoretical tool for its investigation and interpretation. Our students understand it that way. They went to Marx—and discovered America.
"And that, in my opinion, is a very important discovery. We have nothing to do with jingoism, or any kind of vulgar national conceit and arrogance. We are internationalists, and we know very well that our fate is bound up with that of the rest of the world. The revolution which will transform society and bring in the socialist order is a world-wide affair, a task requiring international cooperation to which we contribute only a part. But our part in this international cooperation is the revolution here at home. We must attend to that, study it and know it. And we can’t do that properly unless we know our country and its history and traditions. They are, for the greater part, good. The country itself is good, and so are the great majority of the people in it. Their achievements are many and great. There is nothing really wrong with the USA except that the wrong people have usurped control of it and are running it into the ditch.
"The cure for that is not to throw away the country and its traditions, but to get rid of the usurpers by the process popularized by our forefathers under the name of revolution. This new revolution will have to complete the work started by the men of 1776. They secured the nation’s independence. The Second American Revolution of the Sixties, known as the Civil War, smashed the system of chattel slavery, unified the country and opened the way for its unobstructed industrial development. The task of the Third American Revolution is to take this great industrial machine out of the hands of a parasitical clique who operate it for their own benefit, and operate it for the benefit of all.
"That’s the general idea. But it is not quite as simple as it sounds. There are complications and complexities. The workers have to make their way through a jungle of traps and deceptions. They need a map and a compass. They need a generalization of the experiences of the past and a theoretical guiding line for the future. That’s what Marxism is. The American workers will come to Marx, and with him they will be invincible. 'Marx will become the mentor of the advanced American workers,' said Trotsky. We have the same opinion, and we are working to realize it.
"Karl Marx, the German Jew, who lived and worked out his profound theory in England, is native to all countries. The supreme analyst of capitalism is most of all at home in the United States where the development of capitalism has reached its apogee. Marx will help the American workers to know their country, and to change it and make it really their own."
Workers Worldwide Reclaim OUR Day--May 1
New York City, May 1, 2005
May 3-4, 2005--On May 1, 2005, thousands of workers and youth demonstrated in New York City in celebration of the international workers day known as May Day. New York's protesters, who rallied in historic Union Square, then marched for an end to US aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, against the budget cuts, and for jobs, health care, education and workers rights.
Actions like this are important in the US because they serve to connect American workers to earlier generations of working class struggles, including the fight for an 8-hour day that began in 1886. Decades of a moribund labor movement weakened by class collaborationism cannot be allowed to obscure the fact that it was the American proletariat which led the international fight to limit the workday to 8 hours--a vast improvement over the endless toil that capitalists had previously imposed on us by force. In 1886, thousands of workers assembled in that same Union Square to demand an 8-hour day, joining workers who rallied in cities all across the country, including 80,000 in Chicago.
On this May Day, millions of workers around the world mobilized for workers rights, particularly IMMIGRANT workers rights, the right to organize, a decent wage, and against US military aggression, including Washington's rampant use of torture that has emerged as a central weapon in the US rulers' war of terror against working people everywhere.
More than a half million marched in Germany. Thousands demonstrated in Bangladesh for better wages and safety on the job--something every worker can relate to. Thousands more protested in Nepal demanding that the king lift the US-supported martial law. More than 10,000 mobilized in Manila against the puppet Arroyo regime. In Japan, hundreds of thousands called for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. Twenty thousand workers marched in Moscow for a decent wage. Tens of thousands more demonstrated in Turkey and Mozambique.
And in Cuba, more than a million campesinos rallied in Havana to defend their revolution and denounce the US imperialist wars that are enveloping the planet. No surprise that the largest May Day mobilization occurred in the nation where working people have state power.
The Cuban Revolution is inspiring the unfolding revolution in Venezuela, whose toilers despise George W. Bush and revere Fidel Castro. The Venezuelan masses have thus far rebuffed several attempts by Washington to destabilize the Chavez government and replace it with a puppet regime. Venezuelan workers are seizing control of factories as a first step toward workers management, which they will realize in the aftermath of the coming socialist revolution.
Those who forever lament the retarded class consciousness of US workers and slow tempo of the class struggle here forget that North American workers are part of an international working class that includes the militant toilers of Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. US workers have much to learn from our brothers and sisters south of the border. And we will.
300,000 Sunnis and Shiites Demand: US Out of Iraq!
Baghdad, April 9, 2005
April 12, 2005--Two years to the day after US troops and a handful of Iraqis and bussed-in Kuwaiti puppets staged the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdos Square, 300,000 Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians flooded that site to bluntly tell Washington to get the hell out of their country. Chanting "No, No, to America" and "No, No to Occupation," the demonstrators showed impressive political sophistication by burning effigies of George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Saddam Hussein. Marching under banners that read, "Leave Our Country," "Force the Occupiers Out of Our Country," "No to Occupation, No to Terrorism," the predominantly Shiite mobilization answered Bush's lies that Iraqis view the occupiers as liberators and bestowers of democracy, that most Iraqis opposed to the occupation are terrorists, and that most opponents are Sunnis.
"Leave Our Country!"
"America is the mother of all terrorism. All the explosions are happening because they are here."--Baghdad protester, April 9, 2005
March 19--On a Global Day of Protest, Hundreds of Thousands Demand: US Out of Iraq! Bring the Troops Home Now!
From Harlem . . . (JoeCitizen.org)
March 21, 2005--In over 1000 cities across this planet, demonstrators protested against the war in Iraq on the second anniversary of the criminal US invasion. Fifty to 100,000 in London. Twenty five thousand in San Francisco. Twenty thousand in Los Angeles. Tens of thousands marched from Harlem to join thousands more in Central Park, New York. Six thousand in Chicago. Five thousand in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of the 82nd Airborne. Mobilizations in Rome, Cairo, Budapest, Madrid, Manila, Sydney, Tokyo, Mexico City, Stockholm, Sao Paulo, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and beyond.
The numbers were not as massive as they were two years ago on the eve of Washington's invasion. But that does not mean antiwar sentiment is declining, or that support for the aggression is growing. A recent Washington Post-ABC poll showed 53 percent of Americans disagree with George Bush that the war was worth fighting. Seventy percent believe the 1,500 American deaths are unacceptable. Other polls indicate that 40 percent desire an unconditional withdrawal of US forces from Iraq--a sentiment that is taboo in the mainstream framework of bourgeois politics.Veterans and their families are organizing in groups like Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace, and Iraq Veterans Against the War. High school and college students are kicking military recruiters off their campuses.The Army and the Marines are not meeting their recruitment goals.
Mass movements ebb and flow. The relationship of class forces two years into this invasion is not identical to that which existed before the war--inside and outside the United States. A feeling of burn-out exists regarding mass demonstrations, as well as some disillusionment that those huge 2003 demonstrations did not prevent the horrors that have taken place. There's a sense among many that something more is needed. And they are right. We need to build a mass socialist movement, because the only way to stop capitalism's wars is to organize a working class movement against capitalism.
What is important about the March 19 worldwide demonstrations is the central role played by youth and soldiers in organizing them. This was evident in New York City, where thousands of young people rallied in Harlem's Marcus Garvey Park before marching to another rally in Central Park, holding signs reading, "Military Recruiters Out of Our Schools!" It was evident in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of the 82nd Airborne and the US Special Forces Command, where thousands cheered speakers like Kara Hollingsworth, wife of a soldier in Iraq, for saying, "I cannot remain silent...I can't slap a yellow sticker on my car and call it supporting the troops. It's time for us to bring our troops home." [From the World Socialist Web Site, 3/21/05]
