Communist Workers Group (CWG-USA)

Questions for the Freedom Socialist Party Presidential Campaign

The following letter was sent to the FSP upon receipt of their campaign statement which we reproduce below our open letter to their presidential campaign.

Open letter to the FSP presidential campaign from the CWG & LC,

  We had great hopes for the FSP presidential campaign.  When brother Durham asked our HWRS comrade in NY to endorse your campaign we discussed it at our EC meeting.  We tasked a comrade to write to your NC and ask about your unserious approach to the Sean Gillis case in Oakland.  Unfortunately a faction fight split the HWRS before the letter could be penned.

  We were concerned that despite your having delegates on the Alameda Labor Council you did not develop resolutions from your locals and bring them to the council to support Sean.  We were concerned with your comrades apparent apolitical approach to developing the case, concentrating solely on the “merits of the case,” in particular the legal issues instead of using your national press and international affiliates to draw out the class dynamics of this case. For socialists this case is  like a beachball floated across the plate.   This case ties together the rampant collusion between the “ole boys network” at the Oakland Fire Department and Emergency Services, the police state, and the trade union bureaucracy.  It was important that the Gillis defense committee allied itself with ILWU defense committee and was a visible part of the anti-police brutality movement of Occupy.  But you took no leadership tying this case to the program of the working class as regards self defense.

  And now we see why. Your program for dealing with racist cop terror is not a working class, revolutionary or dare we say Trotsky’s program, rather it is the program of reformism.  You call for a kinder gentler police force guided by a police review board.  Even without the recent spate of racist cop executions of black and brown people (one every 32 hours,) the day to day terror of “stop and frisk,” the communist movement has always had a program of self-defense.

 You will find the call for workers self-defense guards against state and counter-revolutionary violence going back to the historic program of our movement.  In The Junius pamphlet Rosa Luxemburg elaborated our program. Point one:

“Disarmament of the entire police force and of all officers and nonproletarian soldiers; disarmament of all members of the ruling classes.”  followed by point 3: Arming of the entire adult male proletarian population as a workers’ militia. Creation of a Red Guard of proletarians as an active part of the militia for the constant protection of the Revolution against counter-revolutionary attacks and subversions.”

And in the 1938 Transitional Program we find clear statement of how we defend the working class:

“…This is our point of departure. In connection with every strike and street demonstration, it is imperative to propagate the necessity of creating workers’ groups for self-defense. It is necessary to write this slogan into the program of the revolutionary wing of the trade unions. It is imperative wherever possible, beginning with the youth groups, to organize groups for self-defense, to drill and acquaint them with the use of arms. 

A new upsurge of the mass movement should serve not only to increase the number of these units but also to unite them according to neighborhoods, cities, regions. It is necessary to give organized expression to the valid hatred of the workers toward scabs and bands of gangsters and fascists. It is necessary to advance the slogan of a workers’ militia as the one serious guarantee for the inviolability of workers’ organizations, meetings and press.”

Richard Fraser was a militant advocate of multi-racial working class self defense.  The lessons of the Deacons for Defense and the entire struggle against racist terror across the whole history of the American experience calls out for armed self-defense.  You know our class’ history as well as we do.   Nat Turner, John Brown, Carlota of Cuba,  Malcolm X, Marx, Luxemburg,  Lenin,  and Trotsky championed self defense of the oppressed.  Yet in your presidential campaign, for a supposedly revolutionary organization, you refuse to raise the backbone of the revolutionary workers program the arming and self defense of our class and the oppressed.   You sound like the liberal CopWatchers and the Van Jones followers, not like revolutionaries.  You run for president to advance the program of the proletariat but you advance the program of the petty bourgeoisie.

• DOWN WITH PHONY POLICE REVIEW COMMISSIONS!
• FOR LABOR TO LAUNCH POLITICAL STRIKES AGAINST RACIST COP AND VIGILATE  MURDER!
• FORM UP MULTI RACIAL SELF DEFENSE GUARDS IN EVERY UNION HALL TO END THE RACIST TERROR

 We urge you to change your campaign program to reflect the fact that policing under the rule of capitalism will always be brutal even with police review commissions and YouTube  and streaming video of every bloody murder! Make your participation in the Sean Gillis case political.  Bring his case to the unions you have influence in and then to the Labor Council.  Bring the program of working class self defense to the oppressed and the working class and we will consider supporting your campaign on that bold step toward revolutionary Marxism alone!

For the CWG USA and LC

July 31, 2012

The following is the FSP statement on how to fight racist cop terror:

“Justice for Manuel Diaz and Joel Acevedo:
Curb police violence with elected civilian review boards”

“The weekend of July 21 saw another chapter in the long history of racist police violence in Southern California, with Anaheim police shooting to death two young Latino men. The Freedom Socialist Party campaign of Stephen Durham for president and Christina López for vice president condemns the extreme abuses of police power that ended the lives of Manuel Diaz and Joel Acevedo.