O.R. routed-as 2000 defend clinic in L.A

Scan page 4

TUSTIN, Calif.—On July 8, with military-like precision and planning, nearly 2000 pro-choice demonstrators from the Los Angeles area once again routed Operation Rescue (O.R.).

There have been six attempts by O.R. in the past five months to shut down L.A.-area clinics. Never knowing which of the clinics might be "hit" until O.R. car caravans begin moving out at around 7 a.m., the Coalition to Keep Abortion Safe and Legal has developed an exceedingly complex and efficient system of communications to move defenders of women's rights into place.

So far in each case, we have arrived before the anti-choice zealots in sufficient numbers to secure the doors to the medical facilities. Massive reinforcements then arrive in record time. In the most recent "hit," at the Santa Ana-Tustin Medical Pavilion in Orange County, activists traveled from other clinic mobilization sites as far as 50 miles away.

Linking arms, we physically prevented Operation Rescue from sitting in at the door and were able to maintain access until the last patient was seen and safely escorted out of the clinic.

Robin Schneider, executive director of the California Abortion Rights League-South (CARAL), announced on July 8, "We confronted them today and we beat them. Not only did we beat them, but we beat them with style."

Stepped-up violence

We had seen an increase of violence at the previous hit in Los Angeles on June 10, when anti-choice forces kicked, punched, elbowed, and gored people in the spine with •..Operation Rescue (continued from page 16) ominously: "Time is running out for America. If we don't end this holocaust very soon, the judgment of God is going to fall on this nation. Judah was destroyed because some Jews killed their own children and others stood passively by and didn't try to stop them."

These fanatics are not satisfied with adhering to their own religious beliefs. They want to impose their religion on the entire population-to make it the law of the land. And they have counterparts among mainstream religious organizations. The Catholic Church hierarchy, in the person of Archbishop Roger M. Mahoney of the Los Angeles diocese, presented himself in person on June 10, 1989, at an O.R. blockade and praised O.R. as people of "great commitment and If this logic were similarly applied by all religious groups (and fortunately it is not), we would see conservative Methodists demanding that dancing and card playing be outlawed; Amish would push to ban cars, electricity and buttons; Christian Scientists would blockade everyone from using doctors and hospitals and so on and so forth.

These acts would obviously be in violation of one of the most basic principles we have observed in this country—the separation of church and state and the prohibition against the establishment of a state religion.

Operation Rescue has resorted to illegal acts to prevent women from exercising their right to an abortion because they do not have the popular support necessary to build a genuinely massive movement to attain their goal. But they are seriously trying to build such a movement and we cannot take them lightly.

The threat posed cannot be ignored, especially since it is echoed at the highest levels of government. Any success these fanatics have will embolden others who seek to limit or abridge the rights of Blacks and other minorities in this country.

Ultimately, any O.R. success encourages those who seek to prevent workers from protecting their hard-won rights as well as their living standards.

We should make no mistake about the fact that the ruling class and its surrogates first attack those it perceives to be the most vulnerable. But as the recent Supreme Court decisions against affirmative action and workers' rights to return to their jobs after a strike demonstrate, the ruling class is ultimately interested in undermining the democratic rights of women, Blacks, other minorities, and the working class as a whole.

They constantly press to lower our living standards in their drive for greater profits and control over the organizations which are formed to defend our rights.

SOCIALIST ACTION their car keys. While the determination of our forces had prevented these stratagems from being very effective, we were resolved once again to minimize injury to our side.

Hundreds of people were trained in defensive techniques while we waited to be The gut reaction of women, and all those who support women's rights, to Operation Rescue and to the renewed government attacks on abortion has been one of complete indignation and disgust. The anti-abortion forces have inadvertently generated the kind of renewed commitment on a mass scale that can stop them in their own tracks.

What kind of a movement can we build that will do just this? History is replete with lessons on how truly significant advances for women's rights (such as the right to vote, the ending of child labor, etc.) were won. These are the main elements:

We represent the majority!

1) Women are a majority of the population and women's rights are in the direct interest of a majority of men as well. Our movement can and must reach out for support to the majority of the population and expect a sympathetic and supportive response.

For this reason building the National Organization for Women (NOW) and broadly representative action-based coalitions that include every possible organization and individual is an important tactic.

At the very least, the movement should begin by reaching out to the vast numbers of women from all walks of life who have had abortions, those men who supported that personal decision, and those young women who have grown up since the Roe v. Wade decision with the expectation that abortion is an option if the need arises.

At the least, the movement should reach out to those organizations which support women's rights. These include labor unions, Black and Hispanic and lesbian and gay groups. Educational, professional, medical, and legal organizations should be approached.

In short, we should involve the broad spectrum of the population that makes up the pro-choice majority indicated in public opinion polls.

No reliance on Democrats 2) The wealthy rulers of society whose representatives in the two political parties— the Democrats and the Republicansfundamentally control the government, cannot be entrusted to protect or guarantee, much less grant us, our rights. Our movement must be fiercely independent of both political parties.

Rights are won, not granted. They are the product of vast social forces, of workers and their allies, of the oppressed in general, who mobilize in powerful movements against the status quo of inequality, discrimination, and poverty. As a rule, the codification of these rights is resisted by the political parties of the wealthy. This is the lesson of the defeat of the ERA.

After a promising beginning of passing the ERA in Congress and winning a majoriAUGUST 1989 mobilized in the pre-dawn hours. Peacekeeping monitors were ready to break up attacks on individuals by groups of O.R. fanatics.

Most important was our sheer weight of numbers, having again outmobilized O.R. ty of the State Legislatures through a massive, visible, public campaign punctuated by made a fatal error. They relied on the Democratic Party instead of continuing and deepening the massive street demonstrations which brought the ERA to public attention in the first place.

They adopted as the main strategy the trading of political support to candidates of the Democratic Party for a promise of a proERA vote in state legislatures.

The "pro-ERA" candidates, once safely in office, frequently dropped their support and betrayed the women's movement, voting down the ERA. Not only did we lose this important battle, but the movement was demoralized and demobilized. It lost membership and sustained other losses as well, inkey pamphlet The War on — *40494 *X*X49 Rights: How to Fight 'Operation Rescue' ana the 'Right to Life' By Carole Seligman Price: $1.00 Mail order to: 3435 Army St., Rm.

308, San Francisco, CA 94110.

cluding federal funding for abortion, affirmative action programs, and more.

History has proven that we cannot rely on the Republicans or Democrats to defend our rights. We can only rely on organizing our own power. Hopefully the movement will learn from these defeats and not repeat mistaken strategies.

Power in numbers

3) Though we struggle through the legislature and the courts to defend and extend our rights, we must recognize that our real political power lies in our numbers. Thus, the strategy of building a highly visible, public, mass-action movement, through powerful and nationally coordinated demonstrations is most important.

The Oct. 29, 1988, mobilization in Boston against Operation Rescue and the national actions initiated by the National Organization for Women for abortion rights and the ERA on April 2 and April 9, 1989, are a stunning example of the power we can genby more than 3 to 1. We literally encircled attackers, dividing them into smaller groups and forcing them onto the street.

We had learned that creativity plays a large part too. At the June 10 confrontation, one of the most violent attackers was a Catholic priest. As he attempted to kick his way to the clinic door, dozens of people chanted, "Father Leo is kicking, Father Leo is kicking!" This proved to be very embarrassing to him, as it exposed the hypocrisy of O.R.'s self-proclaimed comparision to the non-violent civil rights movement.

Operation Rescue purports to be non-violent, yet instances of violence are increasingly common. At O.R. training sessions, some individuals show each other how to pinch, elbow, and "car key" clinic defenders without being caught in the act by the police or media.

A new threat by O.R.

During the week of Aug. 8-18, O.R. has asked anti-abortion forces from all over the country to come to Los Angeles to close down the clinics in the area.

Their so-called "Live-In" will coincide with the beginning of trial proceedings for O.R. leader Randall Terry, who is charged with conspiracy for his role in the March 25 "Holy Week of Rescue."

This major threat by O.R. must be met by a major mobilization of pro-choice forces from all over the Southwest. Once again, we will let Operation Rescue and the Catholic Church know, "Not the Church, not the state, women will control their fate."

For information on how to join us, call the American Civil Liberties Union pro-choice hotline at (213) 487-INFO or Socialist Action at (213) 250-4608.

erate. The larger the mobilizations of all supporters of women's rights, the less effective Operation Rescue will be, and more important, the harder it will be for the Administration and courts to get away with chipping away at our rights.

An editorial in the January 1989 National NOW Times states, ".. ...landmark Supreme Court decisions that affect the course and direction of American life are as much, if not more, political decisions than they are 'legal' decisions."

This is the crux of the matter. The ability of the women's movement to create a strong pole of attraction for all those who sympathize with our cause will be the decisive factor in the months ahead.

The mobilizations which renewed the pro-choice movement on April 9, 1989, cannot end. Our strategy must be one of ever broadening and building mass actions. The larger our actions, the more power we have to enforce our right to access to the clinics.

The aim of mass actions is to create a political climate in which both legal and illegal attacks against a women's right to choose will not be tolerated.

Mass demonstrations to stop Operation Rescue from their campaign at the clinics will make it impossible for them to operate and will at the same time demoralize them. Local police forces, under the scrutiny of a mobilized movement, will have to clear out the Operation Rescue blockaders far more expeditiously than they have up to now or we will have to do it ourselves.

The size and determination of our mobilizations will also have the effect of providing moral support to those women who have been compelled to bear the brunt of the O.R. invasion of the right to privacy.

Petition campaigns and campaigns in support of pro-choice legislation can be good tactics that go hand in hand with efforts to mobilize mass actions at the state and national level. But they must not be seen as substitutes for the direct involvement of powerful social forces, of women and all their allies.

Mass action is the key to winning because it is active, not passive. It is done in concert with others instead of alone. It therefore has the effect of diminishing the sense of powerlessness that the anti-abortion zealots would like us to feel. Mass actions can also be the vehicle for recruiting clinic defenders in the numbers needed to render O.R. totally ineffective.

Mass action is already revitalizing the movement after its long slump. A massaction strategy will give impetus to the movement to expand from one that defends our endangered rights to one filled with renewed efforts to win the ERA, childcare, equal pay, job rights, and more.

Through such a process we can begin to organize a movement that can fight for and win genuine equality for everyone.

Scan page 5

... NOW national rally (continued from page 1: “NOW calls pro-choice majority to march in Washington D.C”) current of urgency and readiness to build a militant mass movement flowed among the delegates. the role of the multi-national corporations. Their drive for profit is stripping the Third World of its resources and, in the process, impoverishing its people and fouling the ganized mass action outside of the two capitalist parties. She was later quoted in The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Boston Globe.

The workshop expressed a desire to drop the losing strategy of reliance on the Democrats. The conference resolution approved the day after this workshop called for NOW to "form an exploratory commission to investigate the formation of a new party THE SLIGHT TO Rights

----- pull-quotes -----

TOn Rescue ian/Socialist Action UNualcome lat tieen 0:

massive street demonstrations, many central leaders of the women's rights movement