Las Vegas unions still out

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off workers have failed to make installment payments. They have simply seized the worker's car or home, and put him down as a poor credit risk.

In former times even defaults by Latin American countries have not caused undue alarm. Failing all else, the bankers could call on the U.S. Marines to serve as a strong-arm collection agency. In 1915 Haiti was slow in paying. The Marines invaded and took control of the customs service. For 20 years they administered Haiti's taxes and saw that U.S. banks got first call on the receipts. Other Latin American countries have, in the past, been forced to pay up through similar gangster tactics.

The crisis today is different. The bankers know that sending the Marines down to Argentina would not get their money for them. International finance is far more complex today, and the debts involved are a thousand times greater. Argentina owes $47 billion;

On May 4, about 2800 of over 17,000 striking Las Vegas unionists returned to work. Since April 2, members of four hotel and restaurant unions have been on strike against 32 resort hotels in Las Vegas. Union negotiators also reached tentative agreements with Caesars Palace and two downtown hotels. The two Hilton hotels have traditionally served as pattern setters for the industry there.

Striking hotel and casino workers in Las Vegas have contributed to the mounting evidence of a new mood of combativity developing in the ranks of organized labor. Union officials estimated that some 7,500 strikers and their supporters participated in a mass solidarity march led by United Farm Workers leader, Cesar Chavez, on April 14. The new mood was evinced by the slogan most often chanted: "Ready to fight? Damn right!"

The unions, however, faced a profit-hungry and determined adversary who is being given effective aid and assistance from the courts and cops. The striking workers, victims of violent attacks from "security guards, have been harassed by the cops. There have been over 700 arrests of strikers while strikebreakers have been slapped on the wrist.

The company violence has been so flagrant it moved Nevada District Judge J. Charles Thompson to comment: "It was gruesome to see." The judge hypocritically followed this observation with the issuance of a temporary restraining (continued on page 13)

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...U.S. threat against Nicaragua (continued from page 1: “U.S. steps up war against Nicaragua”) restraint on imperialism is the deep antiwar sentiment of the American people and the fear that a major U.S. invasion of Central America would unleash a powerful revolutionary upsurge in the entire Latin American continent that would destabilize capitalist domination there and in the imperialist centers themselves.

The stakes in this struggle cannot be overstated. U.S. imperialism's strategy of utilizing a minimum of military force backed up by a demonstrated readiness to unleash its vast military power embodies a frightening logic. The threat must be believable to work; and to be believable, it must be real!

Interlaced with the media reports is the question of mounting opposition within the ruling class to "Reagan's policies." This milktoast opposition is obvitalist domestic and foreign policy.

All Democrat and Republican "opponents" to Reagan's policies stand on the defense of American (capitalist) interests at home and abroad. They all begin from the premise that "our" interests begin with maintaining the profitability of U.S. industry at home. And this inexorably leads all capitalist factions to defend the profitability of "our" capitalist investments in Central America and everywhere else.

All capitalist opponents of Reagan's policies support the war budget-with proposals for only minor reductions of "wasteful" expenditures. Even the Congressional vote against the Reagan request for the additional military supplies to El Salvador has had no effect in halting continued shipments of the tools of murder to the bloodthirsty SalvaAdversity and defeats, in general, divide classes—each faction seeking to blame the other.

Mass Action The Political Committee of Socialist Action calls upon all those opposed to American imperialist policy in Central America to unite around a program of independent action in the streets against all factions of the twin parties of capitalism, be they Democrats or Republicans. We call upon all antiwar, anti-intervention, and anti-nuclear advocates to organize a national conference in the present emergency to plan mass actions to oppose U.S. intervention and defend the right of the Central American people to determine their own affairs.

The impact of tens of thousands and even millions of people marching in the streets in opposition to imperialist policies cannot be overstated. This kind of NO attack on American workers, only the most craven supporters of imperialism within the labor bureaucracy dare openly support U.S. policy. The attacks against working people will go on. The opposition to these attacks at home and against the military attacks on our sisters and brothers in Central America will mount and ultimately merge into an international struggle against the worldwide capitalist system.

The planned demonstrations at the Democratic Party convention scheduled for July in San Francisco, however, are neither subjectively nor objectively directed against U.S. governmental policy. These demonstrations are openly and expressly organized to appeal to the Democratic Party delegates and to the competing presidential candidates to adopt progressive positions—including anti-interventionist ones.

The demonstrations amount to an appeal to a wing of the twin parties of capitalism in the United States to mod-