Workers Action Says:
No to Layoffs at Home, Bombs and Sanctions Abroad!
Not A Penny, Not A Person To The Military!

DEFEND IRAQ! DEFEAT IMPERIALISM!

Two Years of Bush:
Two Wars and Two Coup Attempts! Is the U.S. Planning Permanent War?

Since arriving in office, in 2000 by a vote of the Supreme Court and after loosing the popular vote, the Bush Administration has authorized war against Afghanistan and now Iraq, and has attempted to topple the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela twice. The Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair (a Labor Party leader that imperialism adores) made it clear to the world that North Korea is next for the US-UK axis. Bush's far rightist and openly imperialist Paul Wolfowitz aches to make Syria next. But why this unyielding drive to war? Why were the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives determined to permit the installation of Bush's war regime at the expense of even pretending to have fair elections? Bush came to power for a desperate reason: war on the world to loot its resources to feed a dying capitalist system, a system that is in a profound crisis for which there is no economic solution.

The U.S. must beat its capitalist junior rivals of France and Germany to destroy and then rebuild Iraq, Afghanistan. Just as it has laid to waste Belgrade by bombs and scraped tens of thousands of factories for thousands of miles from Berlin to Vladisvostock in the former USSR and eastern European countries.

War At Home: Bush & Co. Take Aim: Workers, Immigrants, Arabs, South Asians, African Americans, Hispanics

One of the significant labor fights since Bush took office was the Longshore lockout by the bosses in the West Coast. Bush took the once militant and fighting union, the ILWU with its largely African American and Hispanic locals, to the mat and forced the bureaucrats to sign a weaken contract under the notoriously repressive Taft Hartley laws little used forced mediation rules. All the time, the ILWU faithfully loaded materiel for the military. Now the Wall Street Journal openly calls for the use of Taft Hartley to strangle the UAW in 2004. If the attack on civil rights of labor weren't enough, the Bush government has, with the fully complicity of the even liberal Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi have voted for the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, stripping civil liberties to their lowest rung. The infamous "disappearances" of Arab American men and the unlawful, yet perfectly legal detainment of the Guantanamo prisoners show that the U.S. is moving ominously beyond the McCarthy era. What Can the We argue against protests that rely on stars, celebrities and fake anti-war politicians who talk peace today and vote for the PATRIOT Act and war credits tomorrow. We say that the Anti-War Movement must orient to the workers of the world. It is the workers whose power can shut down the American war machine! Strikes and other labor actions are the most effective tools to do this!

For An Anti-War Movement Which Will Base Its Power
On The Masses, Not The Elites!

Workers' must oppose the riches' war drive in principle and should not be tricked by the big business politicians who seek to derail our potential power while pretending to support our interests. For instance, amazingly, Michigan Democratic congressman, John Conyers, as introduced a bill calling for the reinstatement of the draft under the pretext of opposing the war! The twisted rationale of this move is that if the sons and daughters of the rich are drafted, then the powerful will think twice before launching war. However, even with a draft, the rich can always get out of risking their lives in doing the bloody work to maintain their profits. Witness the careers of Bush and Cheney, two silver spoon sucking hawks who did not so much as dirty a fingernail in Vietnam. The GOP may complain about Conyer's move but their objections are, in reality, because Conyers has jumped the gun on their intentions. Conyer's move is not an obstacle to big business's war drive. It paves the way for the future reinstatement of the draft. Instead of taking a principled stand opposing a single penny or soldier to the capitalist war effort, Conyers remains loyal to the big business class in his efforts to con working people. With "friends of labor and peace" like Conyers, we don't need enemies.

Any politician who speaks at an anti-war rally should unconditionally oppose any war budget. Any Politician who gives the bloody Bush Administration the gift of reintroduction of the hated military draft should be booed off any stage they speak.

U.S. Labor Against the War

One important development is the creation of organization, U.S. Labor Against the War. Comprised of over 50 trade union activists and leaders, this important new group promises to bring an important new element onto the streets to protest this war, the multi-racial, organized, U.S. working class organized in trade unions. This is significant because the even the fake progressive leadership of the AFL-CIO of Sweeny and Trumka are openly supporting the war along with the Teamsters overseer, Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. We call on the anti-war movement to engage this new group and to orient outreach to union members, locals, and city and state labor councils. The new labor resistance to the war must also start to break with the coterie of pro-war Democrats who have been supported and defended for decades by the AFL-CIO bureaucracy. We say that the labor movement must break with Democrats and all parties which really defend the interests of the bosses and begin to make a political party of its own, beholden to no interest but to the working people. In addition, a significant and growing number of anti-war resolutions have been passed (SF & LA, Labor Councils, Chicago Teamsters). These help to embolden labor militants, and provide the opportunity to push forward toward a class struggle approach to unionism. (See website: http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/ 6 National Unions, 2 State Federations, 20 Central Labor Councils and 150 Local Unions and Labor Coalitions Oppose Bush's War Against Iraq")

Vietnam War: Labor Shackled by
Anti-Communist Purges

During the Vietnam War, unions had just been purged of communist and left wing activists in the 1950s. Thousands of anti-imperialist activists were hounded out of the unions, often out of jobs, and into jail, leaving union leadership under the thumb of ultraconservative strongmen. So right wing was their agenda that they openly assisted the CIA to hamper union activities in Latin America, and to assist pro-capitalist elements in Eastern Europe. The unions, led in the 1960s by a vicious caste of anti-communist bureaucrats, were ill prepared to struggle against the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese by the U.S. with war atrocities reported in the face of every working class family with a TV set. These union bureaucrats helped to send thousand of young working class Americans, often black and brown, to their deaths Vietnam having been lead by a. While not a socialist formation or one entirely independent, yet, of the bosses and the trade union bureaucracy, the emergence of USLAW is an important crack in the social chauvinist, pro-imperialist mentality that has been foisted on the working class for fifty years.

We must make it clear: The working people have nothing to gain and everything to lose with this war on the world. It is the daughters and sons of the working class who staff the armed services who are forced to pay the ultimate sacrifice for oil and empire. We demand troops out of the Persian Gulf and Mideast. We say not a penny, not a person to the military. We urge the USLAW to stage demonstrations in front of recruiting stations to halt the draft if is reintroduced.

Workers Action Recommends
This Plan of
Action for the Anti-War Movement

1. Organize workplace committees and trade union committees against the war.

2. Labor newspapers against the war should be started and distributed among rank and file workers and published particularly in English, Spanish, Arabic, Korean to mobilize the workers most likely to be targeted by the war regime of George Bush.

3. For a national anti-war conference to be held as soon as possible, with USLAW and all anti-war groups which are committed to mass action. This conference should organize a standing committee to coordinate events and actions on a united front basis. This standing committee should join with international antiwar bodies build a united response against this war, the war against the Palestinians; and the wars planned against Korea, Syria, Cuba, Columbia, and Venezuela.

Workers Action Anti-War Program

1. For the Revolutionary Solution to End War. Workers around the world want peace, for it is we who have the most to lose from war: our lives and the lives our children. It is a different kind of "peace" that the bosses, bankers and businessmen want. We oppose their "peace" by all means available. Theirs is the peace is of poverty and misery. They demand the right to exploit and oppress with out resistance. For that reason, we have no illusions in Pacificism, which falsely equates all violence, whether by the oppressed or oppressor as equal.

2. Against Sanctions! Against Inspectors! US Troops Out Now! The U.S. Military is an Imperialist force and cannot be a force for "democratic change". The word "democratic" means at the will of the people, meaning the national right of self-determination of the Iraqi people. This is a right they won and in their anti-colonialist revolution against the British. Now the U.S. in alliance with the UK is prepared to reinstall a neo-colonial puppet government comprised of some of the most reactionary elements of the Iraqi society and the bought off lackeys of the Kurds and the other oppressed groups in Iraq. We categorically reject all sanctions and inspections on Iraq as a violation of its national sovereignty. The regime of Sadaam Hussein cannot adequately defend Iraq from Imperialism. It is tied hand and foot to imperialist pressure, and manipulates its position between the capitalist rivals of Germany, France and the U.S. Iraq's government is a brutal dictatorship, there can be no question. However, despite all that the Iraqi people have to suffer, they do not have foreign troops occupying their country. Nor do they have a U.N. sanctioned puppet government forced down their throats. The Iraqi people would be better protected from Imperialist war by a socialist republic in a socialist federation of the Mid-East, with full democratic rights for all the peoples of the region, whatever their ethnicity or religion. We call for the self-determination of the Kurdish people of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey to succeed and form their own independent republic.

3. For a multi-racial revolutionary workers party in the United States, for the Refoundation of the Fourth International. We need a party that will uncompromisingly fight on behalf of the working class, to free all political prisoners, to smash the racism and national oppression that are the very basis of U.S. capitalism.

Workers Action is a Trotskyist group in political sympathy the
Movement for the Refoundation of the Fourth International.

To learn more about Workers Action, please contact:
San Francisco: email sf_adam@rocketmail.com
Detroit Email: vorps@yahoo.com

You make it seem like Iraq is this great place........I'm all down for tearing down imperialism, but to "defend" Iraq just sounds like you're cool with what Sadaam has done.

Damn you authoritarian leftists are scary!

Please read the Workers Action statement before you start criticizing.

We wrote," Iraq's government is a brutal dictatorship, there can be no question."

We continue:
"However, despite all that the Iraqi people have to suffer, they do not have foreign troops occupying their country. Nor do they have a U.N. sanctioned puppet government forced down their throats."

We don' t make Iraq seem like a great place. We say it is a dictatorship, but a US invasion will make the condition of the workers and peasants worse not better. Compared to the river of blood that the US has drawn from the those that would stand it its way, Sadaam is a minor murderer. That is not much of a ringing endorsement of Sadaam, even for an "authoritarian leftist"!

Adam

Oral fixation.

On to Baghdad!

Nuke ANSWER!

On to Bodybags.

People die in war, Diogenes. Iraq will be liberated and a great tyrant will be killed and a great people will be free.

On to Baghdad!

Not to mention the fact he's also "BA"

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Step right up to the Simple Simon Deli. We'll shell out slices of simplified reality for the best poor boy sandwiches you'll ever find.

Sometimes reality is simple. You and the rest of the appeasement mongers want to prop up a despot. Shame on you.

And it's a Po Boy, not a Poor Boy.

Be a good boy and get me that rug.