Polish 'elections' set stage for austerity, repression

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Speakers at the Nov. 1 reception/benefit at San Francisco's Gr. Iral. From the left: Edgardo Garcia, CSN coordinator in Nicar. 'erto Vargas, Nicaraguan cultural attache; Jeff Mackler, of the Mo and Naomi Tutu-Seavers, chair of the Bishop Tutu Refugee Fund. the organizers of the boycott campaign. Jacek Kuron, Janusz Onyskiewicz, Zbig -niew Romazewski, and most of the other 100 signers of Solidarity's boycott appeal were imprisoned for two weeks prior to the elections in what a government statement called a "preventative measure to ensure public order."

In Szczecin, Gregorz Ostrowski, a mem -ber of the Committee for the Defense of Law and Order, was arrested for distributing leaflets calling for a boycott of the elections. He could be sentenced to three years in prison.

Clemency and "reforms"

Eager to portray the ruling party as "reinvigorated" after the elections, Gen. included Keith Johnson and Dave Dyson, labor leaders fresh from the debate at the AFL-CIO convention, where, for the first time in 40 years, the federation backed off from its enthusiastic support for U.S. State Department policy.

"No more young men to die"

Both Johnson, president of the International Woodworkers of America, and Dyson, coordinator of the National Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador, spoke of their fact-finding trips to Central America and the importance of having begun the discussion in the APL-CIO.

Johnson, speaking of his trip to Nicaragua, said, "I want to state very clearly that every single trade unionist we met with, whether pro- or anti-Sandinista, was opposed to American support to the contras."

He branded the contra leaders as former Somoza National Guardsmen and proposed that "Every member of Congress ought to be required to stand and listen while the peasants of Northern Nicaragua describe the realities of the contra war."

Dyson, who spoke eloquently against the U.S. military role in El Salvador, ended his talk with an emotional appeal, "No more young men to die in an old men's war!"

Edgardo Garcia, president of the Nicaraguan Trade Union Coordinating Council, was warmly received by the audience who rose and chanted in rhythmic unison, "No Pasaran!" [They shall not pass--referring to the contra invasions from across Nicaraguan borders.] Garcia traced the deplorable conditions for workers under the old Somoza regime and the advances made with the Sandinista revolution. He explained the state of emer -gency as a measure the Nicaraguan gov -ernment was compelled to take "in defense Jaruzelski decided to step down from his post as prime minister and to offer a limited amnesty to some of the 368 of -ficially held political prisoners.

The new prime minister, Zbigniew Messner, declared in his first address to the new parliament that his government's priority was to "intensify the process of structural change in the economy" and to seek new credits and capital investment from the Western capitalist powers. Poland currently owes $28 billion to the im -perialist banks.

The Nov. 12 New York Times applauded these measures, which it claimed are geared "to permit the adoption of more marketoriented economic approaches on what GEN. JARUZELSKI of our safety and livelihood in Nicaragua."

The state of emergency was an issue where conference speakers clearly disagreed. However, all opposed U.S. intervention and placed the blame squarely on the United States for the situation in Nicaragua.

John Henning, executive secretarytreasurer of the California Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO; Mario Obledo, expresident of the League for United Latin American Citizens; Walter Johnson, secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Labor Council; as well as other labor officials, student leaders, and community activists and elected officials also addressed the conference sessions and workshops.

"In the streets again"

Friday evening, prior to the Nov. 2 event, a benefit for the Mobilization and for the Bishop Tutu Refugee Fund was held at Grace Cathedral. Participants at the benefit some of his [Messner's] advisers will be the Hungarian model."

The Hungarian model includes member -ship in the International Monetary Fund, the reprivatization of major sectors of the economy, layoffs and unemployment for industrial workers, a loosening of state control of the monopoly over foreign trade, and other similar measures.

[Beginning with our next issue, we will be publishing a three-part series on the dangers to the workers' states posed by the economic "reforms" implemented in Hungary and projected in Poland an elsewhere--The Editors.] As part of its attempt to revamp its image internationally--particularly for the Western banks--the Polish bureaucracy decided on Nov. 10 to offer clemency to many of the detained political prisoners.

But the new decree establishes clearly that people who had been freed in earlier amnesties and then jailed again--or those considered "socially dangerous" --would not be released from prison.

These include the best-known political prisoners like Adam Michnik, Bogdan Lis, and Wladiyslaw Frasyniuk, who were recently sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for advocating a 15-minute general strike against food price hikes last February.

Frasyniuk, in fact, was badly beaten up by the guards at the Leczyca prison for endorsing the elections boycott campaign. He was placed in solitary confinement for 14 days and deprived of visitors and mail for three months.

But whatever the self-serving pro -clamations of normalization issued by the ruling bureaucracy, it is clear that Solidarity and the movement for workers' selfmanagement has not been defeated.

included author Alice Walker, Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary), Debbie Allen (of 'Fame"), Edgardo Garcia, and Naomi TutuSeavers. Over 250 people attended and several thousand dollars were raised.

A theme that elicited broad agreement among the diverse conference speakers was the urgent need to mount massive street demonstrations next spring as a means of uniting, in action, the antiwar, anti-apartheid, and anti-nuclear protests and of linking these foreign policy issues with the demands for jobs and justice at home.

Al Lannon, president of Local 6 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and spokesperson for the Mobi -lization, wrapped up the conference with this injunction: "We will be in the streets again next April and again after that and again and again as we did in the '30s and '40s and the '60s and now in the '80s until we have peace, jobs, and justice."

Sociallst Actlon/Alan Benlami Face Cathe agua; Ro bilization;

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Y NO LONGER EXISTS.!... NOW LET'S MOVE ON TO THE LEGISLATION ABOLISHING FOCD SHORTAGES, WINTER, FOREIGN DEBIS, POVERTY, POLITICAL UNRES™W."