N.Y. antiwar forum urges unity in action

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NEW YORK CITY-The stakes in Central America and the challenge confronting antiwar forces to halt the intensified U.S. aggression against the people of that region was the theme of a meeting held here on Nov. 18.

Reflecting the growing involvement of students in this movement, three campus groups, the Central America Solidarity Committee of Hunter College, the Latin American Student Organization of the New School for Social Research, and the New York University Central America Solidarity Committee cosponsored the event.

More than 100 participants heard Dianne Feeley, a Socialist Action member who worked with the Marvin Jose Lopez International Brigade in Nicaragua; Francisco Acosta, a representative of the National Federation of Salvadoran Workers—a labor umbrella comprised of 23 trade unions; James Haughton, director of Harlem Fightback; and veteran activist Dave Dellinger, who had observed the Nicaraguan elections with the Center for Constitutional Rights and toured behind the front Jim Lafferty, a regional coordinator of the Emergency National Conferenceunable to participate because of illness—sent a message stressing the urgency of unity in the antiwar movement. This appeal to link the multitude of groups opposing U.S. intervention was a prominent feature of all the presentations. I have asked Socialist Action to reprint excerpts from the statements of some of the speakers.— SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1985 where people can turn for comfort? Fosbrink noted. "But we said, let's not just comfort these people. Let's help them any way we can."

When the Rev. Roth and other pastors in the valley joined the DMS, the initial purpose was to study the economic problems of the area. When DMS went beyond academic fact-gathering to criticism of the power structure, the Lutheran hierarchy, under Bishop May, withdrew their support. When DMS joined 15 unions to form the Network to Save the Mon/Ohio Valley, Bishop May became further alarmed.

Skunk oil

The Network found that it had to confront the big corporations that dominate the Valley-specifically U.S. Steel and the Mellon Bank. The Mellon Bank has drained money out of the steel towns to invest in steel plants in Brazil and other low-wage areas.

Polite requests to Mellon officers for conferences to discuss these problems were ignored, so the Network decided to employ other tactics. "The Rev. Roth led workers in non-violent protest actions such as putting skunk oil in deposit boxes and throwing pennies on the bank floor, Fosbrink said.

While some Network members did not approve of these tactics, the media took note of it and spread the story of the Valley and the moribund steel industry far and wide.

GUL TONN lines.

BERTA LANGSTON [Racism] takes its toll in the inability of the American people to get their act together....It is insidious and powerfully divisive.... It lays us bare before a ruling class more vicious, more violent, more predatory than ever before.

It seems to me that we have to develop some political alternative to the established political parties....As long as we are locked into that kind of political structure, we are not going to be able to extricate ourselves from these enormous problems, both international and domestic. It would seem indicated, therefore, that there is a need for a political party based on the working people of this country that is not tied to the Democratic or Republican parties.

[To that end we must build] a mass movement with millions of people demanding that the government build houses for people who are desperately in need of them. This ties into the attack that we all should be constantly waging against the military budget. Take it out of the military. Put it into meeting human needs.

Such a mass movement, with vast demonstrations demanding that this country keep its hands off Nicaragua and that it permit the people of El Salvador and other countries in Central America to resolve their own domestic problems, will stay the hand of the U.S. government. As long as masses of people are putting forth this demand it is difficult for the government to sneak in and do the kind of dirty work that it did in Grenada.

There is going to be a big action in April. It will help our brothers and sisters in Central America fulfill their historic tasks.

Our federation believes that it is very important that people in the United States become more and more involved in the solidarity movement with the ple. There are 23 million people living in Central America. If there is a U.S. invasion, many people would die.

Is there still time to avoid this? ...More than 50 percent of the possibilities for changing this situation depend on the United States-depend on you. That means that an important task is to approach new sectors of the population.

We especially need to work with the union movement. Why the union movement? Because people have to understand the links through labor issues, through the multinational companies.

Unfortunately there are big problems in the union movement in the United States. To approach the union leaders here is not easy. Our federation is not conservative. We have nothing to conserve. But we are very firm that our goal is to change the economic and political structure and to create a new society.

Everyone I talked with in Nicaragua expressed the sentiment that there seemed to be so many Americans engaged in antiwar work but so little unity among them. They were puzzled over this lack of unity.

I was pleased to be able to report that representatives of various national peace and social justice groups were now putting together a united movement—a movement of peace, antinuclear, and social justice aggregates-that would enable us in 1985 to stage the most powerful protest to date against U.S. military intervention in Central America and the Caribbean.

The response to my report was always the same: That is just what is needed; we'll be watching for this great moment with hope in our hearts.

And so the main message I would have tried to convey this evening is that we must all immediately accept the task of building the spring mobilization. Let us build all over this land citywide coalitions open to all who share our common goal.

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James Haughton hits twin parties

Francisco Acosta points to labor

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