[IMC-Boston-Editorial] Suggested feature:

[Fred Bergen]

http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/186849/index.php

Providence: Protesters chase off 21st Century Klan
ride

by Fred Bergen

August 8: A spirited group of about 30 protesters
ruined an attempt by racists to recruit followers in
Providence, RI today, by shouting down the RI stop of
the "21st Century Paul Revere Ride". This 48-state
anti-immigrant hate campaign on wheels, blessed by
Colorado representative Tom Tancredo and encouraged by
the bipartisan agenda to pass more repressive laws
against working class immigrants, is an attempt to
rally violent anti-worker racist hate groups across
the country. In Rhode Island, the organizers of the
counter-protest made sure the racists hardly got a
word in edgewise as jeers, taunts, and pro-immigrant
chants rained down on them.

Activists in Hartford were planning to give the racist
motorcycle gang a similar welcome later in the
afternoon.

Cops and Klan go hand in hand

After some early success in disrupting the
anti-immigrant racist gathering (the red banner of
Working Class Emancipation completely obstructed the
Paul Revere banner, preventing the racist rally from
starting), the State Capitol Police forced the
demonstrators back to the perimiter of the capitol
building's wide marble plaza. Even from this distance,
we were able to drown out the speeches of the dozen or
so the Paul Revere racists.

As the racists huddled in the parking lot with their
motorcycles, getting ready to flee the angry group
that had surrounded them, which had grown to include
about 20 youth who were volunteering with local
politicians in the capitol, they got desperate and
opened their bag of dirty tricks. An unidentified
member of the Paul Revere gang falsely accused this
writer and another protester, Troy C., of denting her
vehicle. The police detained us while "reviewing the
evidence", but ultimately could not find enough
evidence to support a criminal charge against either
of us. The police also threatened to arrest protesters
for using "obscenities", while defending the racists
who were spewing far more obscene and violent hatred
at immigrants from the steps of the state capitol
building.

Only socialism can defeat racism

The protesters, organized by the International
Socialist Organzation, the Workers International
League, Working Class Emancipation, and independent
activists, clearly scored a minor victory by
demoralizing the racists and discouraging them from
returning. But as this writer emphasized in a speech
at the protest, only the massive, independent action
of the working class can decisively defeat the racist
vigilante groups like the Klan, the Minutemen, and the
Paul Revere riders and, most importantly, overthrow
the capitalist state apparatus that stimulates and
defends them. The local union leaders, some of whom
are nominally part of the reformist coalition
"Immigrants United", which endoresed the
counter-demonstration, didn't lift a finger to
organize and mobilize their members to stop the Paul
Revere riders. Even though the racists are being used
to split the labor movement and keep millions of
latin@ and other immigrants underpaid through
oppression and fear, the union bureaucrats fear the
eventual awakening of the workers movement more that
the steady dwindling of their membership and
influence.

That's why it is necessary to build a party that can
mobilize the working class, organized and unorganized,
with its own program and for its own interests.
Working Class Emancipation is struggling to build that
party, carrying out the tenacious work of winning the
workers, layer by social layer, to a marxist program.

Members of the ISO criticize us, saying that they,
unlike us, are "building the movement". Everybody
wants to build the movement, but the question is, what
kind of movement do we need? For the ISO, "build the
movement" is a euphemism for keeping their demands and
program within the boundaries of what is acceptable to
the liberals and reformists with whom they are
perpetually forming paper "coalitions". This movement
is going nowhere because it can't answer the burning
questions posed by the concrete needs of the workers
and oppressed. How are we going to stop the racist,
imperialist US government's wars, against Iraq or
against blacks, latin at s, and other oppressed people
within the US? Building the movement that can
accomplish this, a workers movement aimed at the
conquest of state power, begins with telling the
truth. The ISO's banner at the protest read "No human
being is illegal", a fine sentiment, but it gives no
clue as to how to make the slogan into a reality. Our
banner said "Smash racism with socialist revolution",
which is a slogan that the workers really can, and
must, carry out. In the final analysis, the ISO's
reformist program demobilizes the workers by
encouraging them to rely not on the power of their own
organizations, program, and tactics, but on the middle
class-oriented reformists who set the agenda for the
ISO's "movement" coalitions. False counsel leads to
false hopes which lead to disappointment and cynicism.
But the inescapable injustices of class society
creates new obstinate, irreconcilable fighters every
day, and we will organize them into the revolutionary party.

****
Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/labor_action/
****

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