Aid for Contra

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TERRONS strategy and tactics needed to build a mass movement against U.S. imperialist policies.

Socialist Action has come under fire in various left papers-in some cases with full-page articles-for the positions we defended and helped carry out in the San Francisco Spring Mobilization for Jobs, Peace and Justice.

Socialist Action has been accused of pushing the San Francisco Spring Mobilization in a "right-wing" direction by voting to prevent revolutionary leaders from Central America from speaking at the April 20 rally. Socialist Action has also been heavily criticized for antiwar movements for well over a year as the key peace organizations, solidarity groups, and unions subordinated their independent organizing to working for the Democratic Party.

The Guardian, People's World, Unity, Frontline, and most of the other left papers that attack Socialist Action for orienting the San Francisco coalition in a "right-wing" direction were doing all in their power to get working peopleBlacks, Latinos, women, the unemployed-to work and vote for the Democratic Party.

Isn't this a bizarre contradiction—to criticize the San Francisco coalition for not being "left" enough in its slogans and, on the other hand, to support capitalist candidates in local and national elections?

The electoral strategy of the various protest and left organizations such as The Guardian consisted in calling on workers to vote for "lesser-evil" Walter Mondale; the same Mondale who promised to quarantine Nicaragua if elected president. (Actually Reagan is simply carrying out Mondale's program.)

The Democratic Party represents the same capitalist power structure as the Republicans: the corporations and the banks that make and carry out Wash. S.F. coalition example "'The Guardian called for votes for Mondale-the same one who would quarantine Nicaragua." 10 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1985

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do not think it is likely or even possible for the anti-intervention movement to attract a mass hearing, then you obviously will fail to appreciate the need for broadening out the appeal of your coalition beyond the traditional peace groups and radicalized sectors of the population.

Fortunately, the leadership of the national April Actions overcame its late start and initial hesitations in time and organized a powerful action. Hopefully, this will encourage these forces to organize more and bigger demonstrations.

Unity in action

Despite a whole series of disagreements on politics and tactics, it is vital for organizations and activists to be able to come together in action around commonly agreed upon issues. The people in Central America cannot await the full settlement of the issues that divide the broad range of organizations and individuals who oppose U.S. intervention.

With full recognition of the differences that exist, the political goal of the anti-intervention movement must be to forge the broadest possible unity against the U.S. government's war policies.

The reason for building a coalition in the first place might seem elementary, but some participants in the movement don't seem to understand it. The idea is to find the points of unity among the various groups and to set the disagreements aside. No one group's program gets adopted. The purpose is to unite around a common independent action in order to increase the numbers and thus the power and influence of the action.

This seems self-evident and almost everyone will proclaim their support for such an approach. But yet this unity in action is extremely difficult to attain in practice. A recent example is the San Francisco Spring Mobilization Coalition for Peace, Jobs and Justice, which organized a successful march of 50,000 on April 20.

Labor's strategic role

The San Francisco April 20 coalition sought and actually achieved a unity of considerable breadth. It was not a "leftist" coalition, like those that have come together for dozens SUPPLEMENT of smaller demonstrations over the past few years. Socialist Action's goal was to help form a coalition that would actively involve trade union officials and workers in a leadership capacity.

Socialist Action recognizes that most of the current trade union officials constitute a serious obstacle to the expression of the power of the American workers-especially on account of their reliance on the Democratic Party.

But the fact is that, for whatever combination of reasons, several union officials in the Bay Area were willing to buck the official AFL-CIO policy on Central America. All eight Bay Area central labor councils supported and helped build the mobilization. Most sent voting delegates to the I NO ERICA official decision-making meetings.

This in itself was a major development in U.S. politics: Important segments of the labor movement were willing to directly oppose the Central American policies of Lane Kirkland who, it must be remembered, was a member of the reactionary "Kissinger Commission."

A united front of virtually all the Bay Area unions was achieved. It did not consist of just the "progressive" unions as in the past. Given the support to the action by Jack Henning, head of the 1.5-millionmember California Labor Federation, it was difficult for any one union or labor council to pull out. This was unprecedented.

The trade union movement was willing to take action around the four issues of the Spring Mobilization: End U.S. intervention in Central America; End U.S. support to apartheid; Jobs and justice; Freeze and reverse the arms race.

This genuine involvement of the labor movement is the key difference with the antiwar movement of the 1960s. Nearly all the union leaderships at that time-it was still the period of "guns and butter" -backed the war policies of Johnson and Nixon.

Things are different today. At the rally itself, Henning blasted the bipartisan war against Nicaragua. "We want the United States out of Nicaragua" he said, "where the Reagan administration is using mercenaries and assassins to interfere with the rights of the people to determine their own form of government."

Henning continued, "We want jobs. We don't want $14 million sent, either in arms or economic aid, to the subversive forces of Nicaragua at the very time Reagan is cutting aid from the senior citizens, from the welfare people of America, and from the students of America."

The fact that today millions of working people are being forced to pay for the U.S. government's military policies with wage concessions and cuts in social programs has changed the situation dramatically.

Unlike the '60s, today it is possible to build coalitions that can raise additional demands around apartheid, nuclear weapons, and jobs without being driven off their independent mass-action course into the capitalist electoral arena.

A hue and cry The San Francisco coalition has become a center of controversy in the anti-intervention movement because its political orientation differed significantly from that of the Washington, D.C., April Actions coalition.

The Guardian, Frontline, and other left papers raise a hue and cry that the San Francisco coalition did not add the demand, "U.S. Out of the Middle East, Asia, Pacific and Europe" to the major four demands-as the Washington, D.C., coalition had done. They also charge that San Francisco failed to present representatives from revolutionary organizations in Central America at its rally.

Frontline, the newspaper of Line of March, laments that the San Francisco coalition did not adopt an approach more associated with the anti-imperialist, left wing of the peace movement, solidarity groups, communist organizations, and leading forces in the Black liberation struggle, in particular those identified with the Rainbow Coalition."

These pro-Mondale "left" critics maintain that part of the leadership of the San Francisco coalition-including members of Socialist Action-capitulated to the pressure applied by the trade union officials in the coalition.

The May 13 issue of Frontline exclaims, "With such a watered down program, they were able to win endorsements from a broad range of respectable forces, including all seven Bay Area labor councils."

Nicaragua in forefront

First of all, there was nothing watered down about the program of the Bay Area coalition. What is "right-wing" about the demand to end all forms of U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean, or the demand to end U.S. support to the murdermachine in South Africa?

Isn't it obvious that the U.S. government is dead set in its course to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and that a defeat for the workers and peasants in Nicaragua would be a major blow to working people in every country of the world?

Isn't it clear that the impoverished masses in this region are in the forefront of the international class struggle against the main enemy of humanity: U.S. imperialism. When Daniel Ortega recently visited Uruguay, over 300,000 people turned out to greet him. They fully understood that a defeat of the Nicaraguan revolution would be a defeat for them as well.

The recently imposed U.S. trade embargo agairist Nicaragua is another sign that the U.S. government is planning a fight to the finish against the Nicaraguan revolution. As in the 1960s during the Vietnam War, the U.S. government is escalating its role step by step before the actual introduction of U.S. troops.

Contra funding, although opposed by the Congress on April 23, remains a top priority for the Reagan administration. Renewed efforts to appropriate $14 million in aid to the contras received bipartisan support in the Congress only days after the vote opposing such funding was taken. Later this year Reagan will ask for $28 million to finance a contra army of 35,000.

Isn't it therefore incumbent upon us in this country to help forge the broadest possible coalition to demand, "U.S. Hands Off Nicaragua"? Isn't this the most effective way to support the revolution?

A flexible approach The inclusion of official representatives from the Salvadoran FDR/FMLN or from the Nicaraguan FSLN as speakers at the San Francisco rally would have jeopardized efforts to involve some major unions and would have prevented Jack AFL-CIO, from accepting the invitation to co-chair the April 20 rally. This was a simple fact.

The coalition steering committee correctly subordinated the tactical question of any particular speaker to the overall strategic goal of building • a broad mass action. By making these kinds of political decisions the coalition was able to retain its unprecedented amount of labor and community support.

In the case of the FDR/ FMLN speaker an alternative proposal was made to accommodate the valid concerns that were raised. The official representative of the Salvadoran revolutionary movement was invited to speak, but in his role as an exiled trade unionist whose name is on the death list.

This flexible tactical approach satisfied the overwhelming majority of the San Francisco coalition and was a model of the kind of give and take so vital to preserving broad participation in a coalition.

Obviously, it is important for the American people to hear first-hand from the victims of the U.S. foreign policies we oppose-particularly from Nicaragua and El Salvador, where 100,000 people have died as a result of these policies. This can only contribute to a more informed and stronger anti-intervention But this does not mean that the only Nicaraguans or Salvadorans who can or must speak at the mass anti-intervention rallies are the representatives of the revolutionary organizations in those countries.

Trade union leaders, students, teachers, refugees, human rights activists, or religious leaders are often just as capable of presenting vivid and highly political first-hand accounts of the horrors of U.S. imperialism. Their testimonies can be very accessible and politicizing for U.S. working people.

Tactical decisions regarding these kinds of speakers-as opposed to the official representatives of the revolutionary organizations-can only be made by carefully evaluating the actual state of coalition building in every local area.

The San Francisco coalition was destined to stir up such (continued 11)

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No Socialist Action/Joe Ryan "Many who are willing to act on Central America are still confused California AFL-CIO News Official Publication of The California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO (continued from page 10) controversy precisely because it represented a different direction and orientation for a movement that in the past had been centered on relatively small solidarity committees and peace groups.

A new direction From the start, the Bay Area trade unions-in alliance with the Nuclear Freeze Campaign and some important church groups-became the moving force building the April 20 actions. Unfortunately, some groups on the left acted as if the same program which was sufficient for a narrow coalition would also be appropiate for a broad one.

Over the past few years, the traditional peace and solidarity groups, like CISPES, have played a very important role in mobilizing support for the people in Central America through about the Middle East."

educational activities and in medical and financial-aid campaigns.

However, neither CISPES nor the combination of dozens of other solidarity groups have been able to mobilize the large numbers of people who are opposed to intervention.

The anti-intervention demonstrations which have occurred in the Bay Area over the last two or three years have generally ranged from several hundred to only several thousand, with a high of 15,000 at the "Vote for Peace" rally held outside the 1984 Democratic Party convention.

What accounted for the inability of these groups to draw in large numbers of people into their projects? The most important factor was their orientation of making political support to the revolutionary forces in Central America a central axis of their activities. This political stance prevented the formation of a large and broad united front-type action CALIFORNIA AFL CIO mum affect policy does not come by raising demands for solidarity-which are demands focused on the movement, not the government-but rather by mobilizing in action against the U.S. government's policies.

Of course, every group has a right to define itself politically in any way it chooses. That is not the question here. It is not a question of supporting the Central American revolutions. For our part, Socialist Action unconditionally supports the revolutionary struggles of the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran workers and peasants.

Solidarity in action

But support to the revolutions cannot be the basis for building a broad anti-intervention coalition. The real issue before the coalition was how to achieve the broadest possible unity in action among the majority who oppose U.S. intervention in Central America and who support the other three demands.

The fundamental political orientation of the San Francisco coalition was to develop slogans, structures, activities, speakers, and materials directed to the majority of working people.

The consciousness of working people will be raised by participating in independent actions like demonstrations, rallies, and picket lines—not by the simplistic addition of slogans or speakers.

Mass actions against the policies of the U.S. government help convince working people that they are the majority and that they have the power to affect change. Such actions expose the contradiction between the U.S. government, which represents the capitalist minority, and the aspirations of the millions of Americans who desire peace. Small-scale "radical" actions fail to achieve this goal.

The powerful objectively anti-capitalist effect of a united action coalition such as the Spring Mobilization in San Francisco occurs despite the inclusion in the coalition of the many supporters of one of the capitalist parties.

• The Middle East slogan One of the major charges made by the pro-Mondale advocates of "left-wing" coalitions is that the San Francisco coalition did not adopt the Middle East slogan raised by the national coalition.

People's World, the West Coast organ of the Communist Party USA, goes so far as to denounce the Middle sponsible" vice to the region." S.F. COALITION the "omission" of East slogan as "irreand a "great dissercause of peace in the At first glance, the inclusion of a slogan around the Middle East would appear morally imperative. The state of Israel is based on the dispossession of the Palestinian people from their lańd and on the subjugation of the Arab population within its boundaries.

Israel is expanding its boundaries by initiating wars of aggression against its neighbors. June 6, in fact, marks the 18th anniversary of Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights and the third anniversary of the Israeli occupation and invasion of Lebanon.

Israel could not long thrive without the massive military and economic aid provided by the successive Democratic and Republican administrations. Israel, indeed, has become a surrogate for the United States in its war on the liberation April 26, 1985 GROOIN OR struggles throughout the world.

Nevertheless the inclusion of this slogan in the April 20 coalition would have been incorrect. First of all, those who think that all the moral and political issues have been addressed with the inclusion of the Middle East are simply short-sighted for there are hundreds of just, courageous, and progressive struggles all over the world.

Why not include the demand of "England out of Ireland,' or of Puerto Rican independence, support to Polish Solidarnosc, the need for a labor party, abortion rights, gay rights—all of which deserve our support? If slogans around all these just struggles had been included, we would have surely had a rather small turnout on April 20.

But more important, the Middle East slogan was politically divisive-particularly for the labor movement. Important sectors who are willing to act around Central America are still either confused or backward on the Middle East.

The San Francisco coalition was initially formed in December 1984 around the original four demands of the national coalition. The demands at that time did not include the Middle East. The national coalition only added that slogan later on-after the San Francisco coalition had been formed.

Had the Middle East slogan been added, the bulk of the Bay Area labor movement and some religious organizations

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